The executioner in the corridor stopped again. He listened intently for a moment, then resumed his awkward, slow steps. It was nothing special; he had stopped suddenly many times along the way.
That didn't mean he found anything suspicious, his mind and body had been severely damaged a long time ago. It's a complete mess. The best physicians and wizards the Queen could find were unable to do anything. Sometimes he could hear the most brilliant, even attackers sneaking toward him from another dimension, and sometimes he just caught the muffled sound of a rock smashing into a body of water two systems away. These things can happen under any conditions, and there is no rule. And as everyone who knew him believed, he didn't care at all. An attacker is no different to him than a stone.
He paused for a moment. No one attacked him, so he resumed his duties toward the task required of him by the House of Ethics. Unlike those instantaneous hunters who had chased down intruders, he moved very slowly, but he was not in a hurry: first, he was working for the infinite city of the end, and the city itself gave him plenty of time. This day will never end until he completes his task; secondly, he does not have the physiological mechanism that can promote the feeling of "anxiety" in a living body.
The executor feels no pain or joy, he can only feel one thing - confusion. The feeling was permanently fixed in his mind. He would try to eliminate it, and he would try again and again when he had the chance, starting with the loudest or brightest things. Sometimes that results in massacres, other times in celestial disasters and stellar explosions. However, those are very few examples. And it’s not like the Queen can’t handle it. As the heroic immortal cat commented, as a guy who committed a heinous crime, the ending he got was good enough. Those mistakes were excusable to a certain extent, but that didn't mean he could escape repayment. The Queen may want to do this, but the cost of trying to cure the Executor far exceeds his contribution to the existing universe. That is completely frowned upon.
The boring and long corridor walk was finally over. The executor walked slowly down the last corridor. He came to the reception hall. The old cat who served as the receptionist yawned and glanced at him, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end. As today's receptionist, it knows him. Of course every cat in the universe knows him. Faced with an executor who is not restrained and imprisoned, the immortal cat has given the wisest advice to all its kin: don't move or make a sound - that can't be said to be 100% safe. Man. But you always forget to hit the ball when it's not rolling, right?
The receptionist followed the advice faithfully. It lay peacefully on the reception desk, watching the executor's lizard head turn towards the reception desk. Those cloudy and frantic eyes passed over it like other inanimate objects. He was not interested in it, or more so than other dead things. The receptionist wasn't going to ask him to sign the register either. This was out of order, but Meow didn't care.
The executor turned his cold and terrifying head and continued walking towards the exit. It wasn't like he didn't notice the chaos at the reception desk. That whirlpool of flowing emotions. Or life. The flower of consciousness emerging from matter. He is eager to pluck and burn. The vortex must be calmed, but the vortex here was very weak, so weak that he could hardly detect it. And greater chaos lies in the distance. quick. quick. The House of Ethics urged him. His consciousness also urged him. Bring death. Bring to calm. Go find them now, the restless beings who bring chaos.
He walked awkwardly to the heavy metal door. The shadow slid to the door first, shaking a few times as if being blown by the wind, and the internal mechanism of the door made a sound. It will open, leading to a mountain path that will never happen again, and then to a city street, after which the Executor will arrive in the square to control and recover the residents who are causing chaos. During this process, the Ethical House will try its best to keep him away from all irrelevant residents. But that's not an absolute guarantee. In the long run, all residents are unique and at the same time easily replaceable. That is completely incomparable with the importance of keeping the computing center running stably.
"Hey!" shouted the receptionist behind him, "You have to sign!"
This is a wrong move. The old cat doesn't care much about letting one or two people slip through. It doesn't matter if he sneaks in or out. It won't have any impact in the end anyway. But this time it found three people - when the executor was about to walk out of the House of Ethics, three heads poked their heads at the entrance of the corridor, seeming to completely ignore its existence.
One or two doesn't matter, but three is considered "a lot". And it also saw a section of snow-white fluffy feather wings. Damn it. Its nerves immediately became excited, completely ignoring the occasion. Damn it! But those feathery wings are so fluffy!
It cried out with strong desire and excitement. The next moment the executioner's ugly mutated head turned back. It knows that his ears (assuming there really is such a hearing organ) are not always bright. Unfortunately, this time it happened at the wrong time. He "heard" it. There were some hazy twists and turns in those shadowy eyes.
Then, the receptionist disappeared where she stood. Where it once lived was a transparent, twisted wave of fire. The fire was not red, black or cyan, but an indescribable color full of filth. It reminds people of decaying plant flowers and biological organs, stagnant water that has accumulated for too long, and the light of stars in nightmares. In the middle of the filthy invisible fire, only a little color of old cat hair remained. When the executor blinked next time, the light and the remaining color disappeared in place like an illusion.
His turning glance literally killed the receptionist. There was no complicated preparation or aftermath, like the endless disasters he had wreaked in the Queen's past. But the House of Ethics acquiesced in the matter. The receptionist is not counted as an official resident and does not have to contribute to its survival. When the executor actually left the Ethics House, the old cat yawned and walked out of the lounge behind the reception desk.
"Hey! No outsiders are allowed in here!" it shouted to the three people standing in the center of the reception hall, "You have to sign!"
The three men who had slipped into the center of the reception hall looked at it in unusual silence. They looked suspicious, nervous, and hostile, as if they were in some state of stress after witnessing something horrific. But the receptionist doesn't care about that much, rules are rules. These three people could completely turn around and run away, but it had to make clear requests to them.
There was silence. Finally, the horned woman among the three came over. She stood at the reception desk and asked, "What are we going to do?"
The old cat tapped the register on the table with its tail: "Sign."
The woman did as she was told. There was another pause as she signed her name. The old cat glanced at it without interest. It found that the woman's gaze fell on the note left by the previous signer - Ji Xun - above her own signature.
"Don't look around," it warned. But actually I don't care. The woman signed the name "Yagale" and looked at it with a smile.
"I'd like a little help," she said.
"What do you want to do?" the old cat asked warily. Meow never likes to be asked for something, no matter what it is.
"I'm looking for someone," the woman said. "What should I do if I want to find someone here?"
"Read its house number," the receptionist replied impatiently. The other two people didn't seem to want to sign, so it rushed them out of the reception hall. The three of them passed through the door that the executor passed through and came to an empty and deserted mountain path. They looked at each other, and Bodie asked, "What's the house number?"
"You call it a house sign," Yaleriga said, "but if it's called a house number, I think it should be a number."
"What the hell," said Purdy. He looked on both sides of the path, trying to find any house in the empty mountain pass filled with lavender light. but none. Even behind them there was no door leading back.
He hesitated for a while, and finally said to Yaleriga: "Maybe we should wait here."
"Why?"
"I can't tell. Don't you think everything that happened here is weird? That hairy monster just now, and that lizard head... what's going on with those lights? What that hairy monster told us is totally a lie . If we continue walking, we may encounter danger. I don’t know if you have ever seen this kind of thing, but just my personal opinion-I don’t want to be targeted by that lizard head.”
Yaleriga looked at him speechlessly. Qiaoqiao Tianyi also rarely remained quiet. Bodie glanced at the two of them with a frown, looking a little confused.
"What?" he said, "What did I say that was illogical? That shouldn't be done in your place?"
"No." Yaleriga replied, "You said it very well."
Bodie looked even more puzzled. But then the other two began to approach him, at a controlled and dangerous pace. Yaleriga put her hands on his shoulders and stared at him with her bright golden brown eyes.
"You did a great job," she said, "but you didn't understand something. That's not your fault, because you never saw the universe take another shape. You just made the best decisions based on your knowledge. Good decision, so that's not a fault. You don't really know me, Purdy. You think you're going to deal with me just like any other female you've ever encountered, but that's not going to work. I'm from you Unexpectedly, what you get from me is only a very small part.”
Bodie paused for a moment: "Well, you rarely take the initiative to talk to me so much."
"Only this one time."
"What's wrong? Are you going to kill me?"
"I don't want to do this. But if you try to impede my movements... I'm not a law-abiding person, Purdy."
"I didn't do anything," Purdy clarified.
Yaleriga began to sigh. Qiaoqiao Tianyi looked at her sideways as if accusingly. Yes, even she had to admit it - no matter whether young or old, she had always encountered some rather disappointing males recently. Lembart is perhaps the most ideal companion in the entire world of light. She really should go back and see him more often instead of wallowing in the wishing machine.
"Purdy, I've known this for a long time," she said. "Remember when we were chatting together on the slopes of Frost House? That's when I suspected you had discovered something. I managed to spy on your mountain walks, and I also saw that you were in contact with the awakened immortal - that man's name was Kimo, right? I know what you discussed with him, even though you were using sign language that I didn't recognize. I didn't ask for this part from you, because I don’t want to alarm you. But things are different now. I’m grateful that you sent me here, but I’m not going to follow your plan—I have my own schedule.”
