"You—" The Herrscher's face twisted. She didn't understand! She knew this was a trap set by humans for her! But why would Gu Chu appear here with these people?!
And the one who had just attacked her from behind... wasn't that the child who had launched that sword strike in the Jieyang Mountain Valley?
The Herrscher remembered it clearly! How she was born here, how she was chased by Gu Chu to Shenzhou, and how she managed to escape back here.
At that time, she had just been born, and her consciousness was still in a chaotic state. In her confusion, she had done many things based on the instinct of seeking advantages and avoiding disadvantages.
She remembered all of this after she finally mastered her own body!
It was precisely because of the sins she had committed at that time that the Herrscher had embarked on the path of judging all living beings, wanting to atone for her sins as much as possible before finally judging herself.
And Gu Chu... this person who was born almost at the same time as her, seemed to have developed her reason a little earlier. She had actually traveled thousands of miles from Shenzhou to chase after her!
She had chased her all the way to Shenzhou, and then let her go in Shenzhou.
At that time, she thought that Gu Chu and the two terrifying people in ARC City had perished together. She didn't expect this person to have reached a cooperation with those humans?
Why cooperate? How could a person like Gu Chu tolerate someone weaker than herself cooperating with her?!
Now it seemed that this person was probably after her!
The Herrscher's face darkened, and black and gold chains began to emerge from behind her, floating and aiming at Gu Chu who was standing in front of her.
Gu Chu also pulled her other hand out of her pocket, but her other hand was still holding the chain.
"It seems you don't plan to waste any more time," Gu Chu snorted coldly, her body already poised for action. "I just don't know how you, with one arm already disabled... are going to escape from my hands?!"
Gu Chu's figure instantly disappeared, and a burst of sand and dust showed how much force she had used when she leaped.
The golden chains intertwined at the same time, and the force that erupted instantly pulled Gu Chu back to her original position.
"You have no right to say that about me!" The veins on the Herrscher's forehead bulged, and her eyes with the divine pattern looked directly at Gu Chu's dark eyes. "You haven't even accepted your own power! How are you going to kill me?!"
"I don't need that kind of thing to deal with you!" Gu Chu quickly got up as if nothing had happened, wiped the sand off her face, and gave the Herrscher a ferocious smile. Then she clenched her fists and charged again.
Did this person think she was still the same as before?!
The Herrscher calmed her heart and quickly repelled Gu Chu's attack again.
Because she had been chased by Gu Chu since she was born, she had actually been influenced by him to some extent, and had subconsciously rejected the Herrscher's power. Even after her consciousness became clear, she had not fully accepted her own power.
It was not until a short while ago, when she witnessed Siegfried's self-vindication and found the goal she should truly pursue, that she had wholeheartedly accepted the Herrscher's power and become a qualified Herrscher.
And Gu Chu was still the same as before, extremely repelling her own power... what ability did he have to stop her?!
The Herrscher controlled the chains to bombard Gu Chu's position, while her mind sank to the other side, the arm that Gu Chu said had been severed.
In fact, Gu Chu's words were an understatement. She was not just missing an arm now.
In that space, although the dark monsters were already in a state of decline, when she looked at the sins that Tafira was accused of, she couldn't help but twitch the corner of her mouth.
"Incitement, fraud, cholera, massacre, greed, disregard for the rights of others..." It took her a full half a minute to read out Tafira's charges alone, and her voice was trembling as she spoke.
"Do you plead guilty!!" In the end, due to various factors, the Herrscher had to suppress her voice to ask this question stably.
The knight's glowing spear grazed Tafira's withered face, leaving a long, thin wound on the old man's delicate skin.
If it weren't for the fact that the monsters had erupted with the same madness as these knights, this single-handed knight would have already taken the old man's head.
But the old man did not react much. He just chuckled and looked at the Herrscher, "Really? I've forgotten why I have these charges. Maybe you can tell me about my glorious deeds?"
The Herrscher took a deep breath, and the moment she raised her hand, dense memory fragments appeared in every corner of the trial court.
Even the seemingly boundless jury could not compare to the sky full of memory light screens.
And each light screen would play a person's short and sad life at a speed of two seconds, and then quickly switch to the next person's life cycle, making the jury's eyes dazzled.
"During your forty-seven years in the core level of the City of Sighs, you established a total of nineteen new rules, during which a total of people were forced to end their lives under the rules you established!"
"Really?" the old man raised his eyebrows in surprise. "It seems that among these eight hundred thousand people, only a few have the guts to turn into vengeful ghosts and come to me in my dreams to claim my life. I thought only tens of thousands of people had died under these nineteen rules."
The gavel fell heavily, shattering Tafira's words. The Herrscher's eyes were as cold as a butcher's knife.
"So... you plead guilty?"
"Of course..." Tafira dragged out his words without a care, and then, as expected, a turning point occurred. "I don't admit it... I can admit that I made the rules, but you would pursue the law-maker for the sake of a criminal who was executed. In my opinion, you are more unreliable than I am.
"What I can admit is that among the eight hundred thousand people you mentioned, more than six hundred thousand of them did die from various false accusations and being forced into it, but it is still just a rigid law. It is there, and everyone can avoid it.
"As for those who fell for it... do you think I should pay for their greed and stupidity?"
The old man's eyes flickered. "Just like before I began my forty-seven years of rule, I perfectly avoided all the harsh rules here and made those old things who tried to exploit me fall from their high platforms.
"Since I can do it, why can't they? This is the City of Sighs. Everyone came here after being bathed in the rain of the Day of Pardon."
Everything Tafira said was sophistry, but at least one thing he said was from the bottom of his heart.
This was the City of Sighs, a place that those who shouted about the injustice of fate did not dare to touch.
Because this place really did not have any injustice of fate.
In a world without a bottom line, all failures would be easily covered up by the phrase "your skills are inferior."
Do you think someone else's monopoly is more than yours? Then take a knife, plan a murder with your wisdom, and then rob him of everything.
Do you think someone else's appearance is better than yours? Then use your ability to bypass her protective net, take her to some underground clinic, and change your skin.
Do you think the descendants of the higher-ups definitely have private rights that you don't know about? Then try to imitate him, get rid of him, and completely replace him, and then see if there is really any favoritism.
What? You can't do it? Then it's because your skills are inferior. These are all theoretically possible facts. Why can't you do it?
This was a huge demon-revealing mirror that would completely reveal how much capital a person had. In the end, there would be no more excuses, only a sigh.
Why was the Apocalypse family able to single-handedly divide the noble families into three, six, and nine grades? One had to know that except for an outlier like Kaslana, no noble was willing to be subordinate to others, not even Schariac.
It was because the coming-of-age ceremony for the eighteen-year-old young master of the Apocalypse family was to throw him into the City of Sighs alone and let him climb out by himself.
Otto had brought Kallen in with him back then, and had also brought Kallen back intact. It was also because of Otto's precedent that Tafira dared to raise his granddaughter, Susannah, to be so innocent and naive.
Since someone could do it, then he could too. This was Tafira's confidence, and also the only survival rule of the City of Sighs.
"Absurd words," the Herrscher snorted coldly. If it had been before she met Siegfried, Tafira's nonsense might have really made her fall into a brief period of thought. But after she had truly seen a pure soul, she already knew how to face these self-righteous smart people.
"You can say you're right, you can also say it's not you who's wrong, it's your environment, it's the things you've experienced, it's the people you've met, it's this whole world," the Herrscher said, and took the initiative to walk down from the stage.
Her left hand held the scale, and her right hand was raised.
A glorious knight broke away from the battle and respectfully handed his spear to the Herrscher.
"You can shirk responsibility, you can say it has nothing to do with you, you can even look down on those fools who have put themselves in extreme despair from a high position, say they have made a futile move, and pitifully and ostentatiously tell them your so-called survival secrets.
"You can take it for granted that as long as you are alive, as long as you are comfortable and happy, people should be selfish..."
Wherever the Herrscher passed, the knights would open a path for her. This time, even those dark monsters could not stop her. They could only watch as the Herrscher walked to the old man and raised the spear in her hand.
"But those who voluntarily step into other people's mud can also say to you without any psychological burden..."
"You are just a bunch of beasts."
She pressed the tip of the spear against Tafira's chest, but Tafira did not react in any way.
"You don't belong to the human race. You're just a bunch of evil creatures who were mistakenly born as humans."
Tafira's eyelids lifted slightly. Of course, he would not be moved by the Herrscher's simple words. He was already over eighty years old. Even a person who had lived a mediocre life would have an absolutely firm worldview at this age.
But at this moment, he actually felt some emotion towards the Herrscher's words.
For no other reason than that he had also seen the figure in the Herrscher's eyes. And not long ago, that person had been standing in front of him, grabbing his collar and questioning whether he was a human.
"The theory of innate goodness..." he sighed long and closed his eyes.
He had not given an answer to that person's question at that time. Now, here, at the end of his life, he could finally submit the last big question of his life.
What is a person born as?
His answer was evil.
Compared to raising the status of "human" to a level he could not reach, he was more willing to worship those with love in their hearts as even higher gods.
As for those who had failed to become gods?
They could all go to hell with him.
Even though the tip of the spear was already at his chest, the old man still raised his hand and meticulously tidied up his appearance in front of the Herrscher.
After straightening his badge, Tafira smiled and looked at the Herrscher.
"I plead guilty."
"Sinner Tafira," the Herrscher's scale tilted, and smashed to the bottom towards the end without the feather. "I sentence you to the crime of blood congealing into needles."
In reality, Bianka, who was looking for an angle to enter the battle, suddenly felt something and looked back at Tafira, who was being protected behind her.
Then, Gu Chu, who was moving around in the chains, also turned her head and frowned at Tafira.
She had thought this old thing could last longer, but she didn't expect him to only last for a little more than half a minute... well, for a normal human, he had indeed lasted for a long time.
All the blood flowing in Tafira's body instantly congealed, and then every red blood cell, platelet, and other blood cells began to change in shape.
They turned into thin needles that were invisible to the naked eye, piercing through tissues from the arteries, veins, capillaries, and other places, and appearing on the surface of the skin.
Tafira's figure was frozen in place, surrounded by a faint blood-colored light refracted by the dense threads.
The last trace of his consciousness wanted to move his body, but even his eyeballs were pierced by tens of millions of thin needles and firmly fixed in place.
The next moment, the blood began to flow again, maintaining this state.
After tens of trillions of thin, transparent needles had moved around in his body for just one second, Tafira's figure could no longer maintain its original form.
He turned into a cloud of fine red smoke and merged into the gradually raging wind and sand.
It seemed that he had died without any pain, but in fact, only one person knew the pain of that moment.
And at this moment, no one would stop to grieve for him, because the moment Tafira died, the Herrscher, who had taken back her power, had already aimed it at the next target.
Not Gu Chu, but Cecilia, who had cooperated with Gu Chu and Li Sushang to hold the Herrscher down.
She could see that Sushang had a sword heart. Although it was not a pure white paper like Siegfried's, it was also without any impurities.
And although Gu Chu resisted her power, there would still be resistance if she actively invaded.
Only Cecilia!