Residence

Joker led his two new "subordinates" to his temporary transitional building.

It was a dilapidated apartment building in the eastern district of the city.

"Come on, find a place to sit yourselves, and pour your own water from the table." Joker had learned the proper enthusiasm for hosting guests from Chen Miemie.

The two men, whose bodies had been severely stretched and were still in extreme pain, looked around the room and shook their heads in unison.

"We're fine standing."

It wasn't that there was no sofa in the living room, but rather that there were already "people" on it.

There were two corpses lying back on the sofa, with a faint trace of a smile still visible on their faces.

The corpses had dried up, clearly having been dead for some time. There were slashes on their wrists, and the sofa cushions and the carpet underneath were covered in dark, dried blood.

Joker, the "host" of the room, was very casual.

He sat directly between the two corpses, completely unbothered by touching them.

"Oh, by the way, let me introduce them. These two are the original owners of the house. They were suffering from terminal illnesses and in immense pain. With my help, they completed their bucket list and finally bravely went to a new world together.

In return, they gave me the brief remaining right to use this house."

If Chen Miemie were here, he would know that Joker was returning to his old profession, acting as an "assisted release specialist" again.

The two men standing opposite him didn't believe a word of it. To them, this was simply murder and home invasion.

They weren't surprised by murder and home invasion, but the problem was, if he stole the place to live in, shouldn't he clean up the bodies? Was he just going to live with them?

"Don't just stand there. You look a bit unfamiliar, so introduce yourselves—yes, including your [Mystic] abilities."

The man in the baggy black trench coat spoke first:

"Lord Joker, I am Scent Fiend. I have an extraordinary sense of smell and can 'smell' emotions, diseases, lies, and even the 'scent ghosts' left behind by past events."

The man in the white suit, whose clothes looked ready to burst, followed up:

"I am Echo Keeper. I can capture and store echoes, and release them elsewhere. I can make my own voice have multiple heavy accents, attacking the ears and brain, and interfering with thought."

Joker wasn't very satisfied with their introductions: "And what else? What are your weaknesses?"

At this moment, they were meat on the chopping block. The two had no choice but to confess honestly.

Scent Fiend: "As my abilities have improved, I find it increasingly difficult to taste food, only perceiving its 'pheromones', and I am sometimes troubled by strong, pungent odors."

Echo Keeper: "I have lost my original voice. My speech comes with its own echo, and I feel weak in quiet places."

Joker then clapped his hands: "Very good. I like your honesty. However, your codenames are a bit of a mouthful, so I'll just call you Black Trench Coat and White Suit. You don't mind, do you?"

The two nodded in agreement.

They had a bit of an objection when they first met, but as a result, their whole bodies were compressed and stretched. What objections could they possibly have now? They wouldn't dare.

"Tell me, what good news have you brought me? Pick something I'd be interested in."

White Suit cursed inwardly: How am I supposed to know what a lunatic like you is interested in?

But his mouth wasn't slow at all: "I was sent by the Church to handle the affairs in Sixiang City. If we had known Lord Joker was still in the city, our coming here would have been completely superfluous."

Joker wouldn't allow him to be so self-deprecating: "No, if you didn't come, I wouldn't have anyone to use. Since it's the Church's arrangement, you have to work hard for me and not slack off."

Black Trench Coat added: "I am a support. I was originally going to be responsible for developing a group of potential members to join the Church."

After the two finished speaking, Joker put down his water glass, the smile on his face instantly vanishing as his expression completely changed:

"So, you can't provide any valuable intelligence. If you have no value, I'll just have to..."

"Wait, Lord Joker, I also came with a mission," White Suit quickly shouted.

"Oh?" Hearing this, Joker refilled his glass with another half cup of water.

"Yes, according to the intelligence gathered by the Mist Church, the key figures in this Sixiang City sealing incident are Bishop Jing and Chen Miemie. The Church hopes we can turn these two into our own people."

Black Trench Coat also rushed to confess:

"Yes, Chen Miemie is now somewhat of a semi-public figure. There are many eyes and ears around him, so we didn't dare to approach him easily. Instead, we mobilized our underground forces to search for Bishop Jing with all our might.

Today, our people found some traces related to Bishop Jing and located one of his key subordinates in the city.

As a result, that guy actually cursed at us remotely through watch messages, saying that asking him to convert was blaspheming his faith.

It would have been fine if we just couldn't agree, but before that subordinate died, he even tampered with our vehicle. If I hadn't smelled the pungent odor, we would have been blown up halfway.

Our next step is to give up on Bishop Jing, this tough nut to crack, and focus all our efforts on taking down Chen Miemie."

Joker let out a weird "hehe" laugh.

He was also laughing inwardly: The Mist Church really knows how to pick people. They can't even poach Father Jing, and yet they want to scheme against Chen Miemie. You guys have no idea what kind of existence Chen Miemie is.

And so, Joker asked, and the two answered.

The Mist Church didn't care about loyalty; it only believed in the law of the jungle. If they could save themselves, selling out others was taken for granted.

Joker was about to regain control of the Mist Church's forces in Sixiang City.

When Chen Miemie woke up, it was night again, and he felt refreshed.

He had slept for nearly 20 hours straight.

He walked out of Room 706.

The door number had been changed; it was no longer 606.

Baibai quickly appeared.

The hotel had a rule against peeking into guests' rooms. Even Baibai and Yarn Ball could only notice Chen Miemie when he stepped out of his room and into the hallway.

"Oh? Old Class Monitor Fengling was looking for me? I got it. Is there any food?"

"Currently, the hotel only has cat food and various kinds of roast chicken."

Chen Miemie was a bit surprised: "You guys moved so fast that the roast chicken is already on the menu?"

"Yes, Bobo directly provided over thirty flavors. We selected six of them and are trying a different flavor every day."

Chen Miemie's attention wasn't on the roast chicken: "By the way, how did that waiter in the hotel kitchen get hired?"

"That's a demonkin. He can get many different kinds of fish. The cats in the hotel, including Yarn Ball, all like him very much. Yarn Ball hired him as the head chef."

"So, the cat food he makes is proper cuisine made from fish, and it's edible?"

"From the perspective of a cat or a human, yes."

"Then get me a serving."

Soon, both the fish and the roast chicken were delivered to his room.

"I didn't order the roast chicken, did I?"

The roast chicken on the plate jumped up by itself: "Haha, this is complimentary from the hotel, a combo meal! Surprise?"

"I was wondering why I didn't see you earlier. Bobo, you ran off to the back kitchen."

"The hotel's kitchen is very large, barely worthy of my status as Bobo."

It was obvious that Bobo really liked the hotel's large kitchen.

Chen Miemie continued chatting with Baibai, wanting to clarify his doubts about the hotel as much as possible.

"Baibai, are the cats in the hotel real cats or...?"

"There are real cats that ran in from the surroundings, and there are also people who have been mutated into cats."

"Turning them into cats, was that your doing?"

"No, it was Yarn Ball.

Before [No Tomorrow], there were two ways people were attacked in the [Fat Orange Hotel].

One was when Yarn Ball took action. It would usually act before I could, turning people into cats first. Although they couldn't turn back, at least they didn't lose their lives. That was its clumsy method of saving people back then.

The other was when I took action. Against those who broke the hotel's rules, I gained the authority to manipulate the hotel.

I would compress the room, crushing the people inside into a plaster-like concentrate, and finally process them into cat food."

Chen Miemie asked the question he had been burying for a long time.

"Why would Yarn Ball, an anomaly, want to save people, while you, a 'human', want to kill them?"

Baibai took a deep breath.

"Yarn Ball originates from cats. Even though the cats in the city have a feral nature, they still like humans.

I didn't actually want to kill people. No matter how many I killed, it wouldn't let me seize control of the hotel.

However, when I tried to kill, Yarn Ball would step in to stop me.

Whether through luring or deceiving, I kept finding loopholes in the hotel's rules to kill people. In order to stop me, Yarn Ball continuously drained its own power to patch those loopholes and create new rules.

For instance, I once moved your room from the sixth floor to the seventh, hoping you would enter the wrong room. In truth, I had also tampered with the stairs going down, secretly increasing the height of each step. You were never supposed to notice that.

To catch your attention, Yarn Ball restored the stairs, which created a massive flaw in my trap. It even established a new rule because of that, completely preventing me from using similar tricks in the future."

Chen Miemie let out a soft sound of realization. No wonder the number in Baibai's name had increased that day.

He pondered for a moment, straightening out his thoughts. "So, it wasn't the influence of an anomalous body. You decided to intentionally kill people just to achieve your goal?"

Baibai's eyebrows curved into a smile.

"Yes. Even when I was still human, I loved killing people.

In this world, the ones who kill the most have always been humans."