Convention - Ch. 4 Four Entropy Queen

It’s not often that so many people gather at the ice cliffs near the slums.

Since the beginning of recorded history, life on this planet has stayed away from the edge of the land beneath their feet. Ice fields of tens of millions of square hectares wide rise from the deep sea, and the distance between the height of their cliffs and the sea is measured in kilometers. No matter what kind of person, if you accidentally fall, you can only experience a long period of weightlessness and eventually be buried in the belly of the fish. The fear of falling such a distance was something the people who are alive can not imagine, but this fear is only the civilians have.

But now is different, the scene is very strange, the people gathered near the cliff, not only did they not leave but scrambled to the border between life and death, like a moth to a flame. It really amazed people.

The good thing is, now this place has been urgently installed guardrails and prevents people from falling into the depths of the ice cliff. But before the guardrail was installed, something still happened, those who rushed in the forefront on the loose ice, bracing themselves like acrobats to stand firm, and after a few minutes, unfortunately, were pushed into the sea by the surge of people.

What exactly were they scrambling to see?

It was the first day that the spectacle took place, and the entire country, the number of deaths due to the accidental fall reached an appalling six figures. The bodies recovered from the sea contained all kinds of creatures, and it can be said that all the life on the entire planet surged towards the middle of the sea, towards the sudden appearance of the shining sphere on the surface.

After two weeks, the lustful power of the Ice Age became more and more obvious, and the temperature was a few degrees lower, which seemed to calm people’s feverish heads a bit, although the number of deaths continues to rise, it was slower than before. They brought the furniture of their homes and built simple shacks. As the peak of the Ice Age approached, people no longer hid in shelters for the winter as usual but migrated en masse to the coastline, where it used to be the coldest.

Looking down from the watchtower of the Queen’s chamber, one could see a dead city, and camps set up on the edge of a circle of sea cliff lines like new colonies. In just two weeks, the entire state apparatus had come to a near standstill. Even under the threat of force, all the factories in the city have stopped working, not only the workers have gone on strike, but also the factory managers, the security guards, and even some of the military, have all gone to the coastline in one fell swoop. In the past, the Queen’s Palace, which stands in the middle of this ring-shaped continent, was the only pilgrimage site on the planet, but now, all the creatures on the planet are turning their backs on the Queen and worshiping over the sea.

The Queen saw everything in her eyes.

But at first, she did not care about them, and her worries were not due to the loss of people’s reverence and obedience, but rather the loss of the population’s sanity. She was more alarmed by the collapse of agriculture than by the stagnation of industrial production. The city’s factories had stopped working, as had the planned agricultural clusters on the outskirts of the city, and in many ways worse than the factories, because the pilgrims to the coastline had slaughtered almost all the livestock, and they had taken with them the plant seeds they were supposed to keep as rations for the long road trip. According to the calculations of the planet’s scientists, a full-scale famine is coming in less than two months.

The queen looked up, even from the highest point of the planet, she still had to look up to see the strange sight floating in the sky.

Is that, really, such a haunting thing?

On this planet of blue and gray, gold is a color that exists only in theory, and due to the distance of the stars and the thickness of the atmosphere, only cool colors and a very few warm colors of poor purity can be seen on this planet.

Therefore, when a touch of gold that no one had ever seen before appeared in the sky, people looked up in amazement and could not name the color.

At first, only the sky was drenched with this color, then thin clouds, and then the color even spread to the sea, along with the waves, forming a strange wave light, spectacular, even the royal white glacier that has never been violated by a different color, was also covered with a little mysterious color.

Soon, from the middle of the thick creamy yellow, a new color, the color has an indescribable noble feeling, emitting as some kind of precious metal-like texture, and then more and more luxurious and heavy, but also holy. This color, which people have never seen before, not only visually shocked the nerves of the witnesses but also brought the treasures that these witnesses sought.

—warmth.

For life in the universe, the survival environment varies, creating their relative adaptability, some life can not live without water, some life can not live without minerals, and in this extremely cold planet, life only needs a condition — body temperature.

No matter how much life evolves, there is ultimately a limit to how much it can adapt to harsh natural conditions, and even people who have lived on this planet for nearly 10,000 years cannot use the power of their genes to overcome the power of the blooming ice age. In a sense, this planet, far from the stars and with a thick atmosphere, is cursed, and the species that was born on this planet and moved forward in the oath, step by step, to gradually thrive and prosper, is undoubtedly also bumpy. But the reward for this bravery is simply hard mettle. Their ancestors stoically guarded the pioneering land for countless months but in exchange for only a limited amount of warmth every day.

Although technological advances have made it possible for the people living on the tundra not to freeze to death, the lack of resources has made warmth a luxury that only a few people can always enjoy.

But now, along with the unseen color, the unheard-of warmth also came, as if their hundred years of perseverance had been rewarded, and people got free temperature for the first time. And bathed in this golden light, most of them also finally for the first time in their lives, took off their heavy warm clothes outside, to experience the heat that will bring sweat out of the body with drenching pleasure.

Even if the city’s secret towering skyscrapers blocked most of the light, they couldn’t stop people from recognizing it. They left their jobs behind and rushed out of the city as if they were crazy, to get a wider view of the place, they hit the few traffic arteries to the edge of the world, towards the edge of the less-traveled areas.

And it’s been three weeks since that day.

It’s been three weeks since the central heating system stopped working due to lack of manpower, and the entire city has frozen on a thin layer of ice except near the coastline. The Queen still stands high above the chamber, overlooking the deserted city. The scene reminded her of the fate of the Phoenix Queens through the ages, which in turn reminded her of the ‘end’ that the gravitational messenger had spoken of.

“No leader has ever died on the battlefield.”

The spectacle over the planet lasted three weeks, during which time the Queen remained unaccompanied and unvisited atop the tower of her chambers, and her sister was nowhere to be found. The coastline was still bustling with people who did not want to leave, who began to deceive themselves into believing that the spectacle would come again, historians, artists, scholars, religious people, all kinds of people recorded the event in their own way. The Queen seemed to be forgotten, although solitude had been with her since her birth.

The building, planned with extreme pragmatism, was motionless in the cold wind as if tens of thousands of years had passed. At this moment, the sky has long been free of the ashes left by the miracles burning in the sky, and the gray sunken by the uninteresting sky has changed back to the appearance that lasted tens of thousands of years. And with the miracle that disappeared was the drifting warmth cast. Although for the Queens, the word warmth itself is ethereal, with the four entropy stones, she felt from the beginning of the definition of cold and warm pain and love was vague.

Just then, she was slightly stunned.

The airflow in the room suddenly and subtly changed, and behind her, the black sludge-like alien creature once again appeared silently in her room.

“Haven’t you learned to knock after being here for so long?”

“I’m sorry to make you laugh.”

The emissary from the enemy country tossed his indeterminate form as if he was making a bowing gesture.

“I really can’t figure out what you call a door, so I won’t knock either, I’m really sorry.”

“Hmm.”

The queen sighed, still unconcernedly exposing her back to the enemy. This careless attitude was out of her own strong confidence.

“So, what are you doing here again? I think my attitude is clear enough.”

“Then this time, consider me to be visiting you on a personal basis, I just have some questions I want to ask you.”

Black Slime said this and slightly crept forward a short distance in the direction of the queen.

“Do you have any opinion about the phenomenon that happened in the previous weeks?”

“Did you create that?”

The Queen turned her head back slightly, squinting at the black mud, then turned her eyes back again.

“A, a rare physical phenomenon?”

“You’re exaggerating, it looks to me like it’s just fireworks.”

“It’s beautiful, thank you.”

“You flatter me, I just thought the colors on this planet were too monotonous and wanted to come up with something new to please you.”

“But you didn’t please me, on the contrary, you pleased my subjects.”

“Ahahahahahaha.”

“Let me tell you a story.”

“A story? I like stories.”

The messenger said, pulling out the well-worn notebook and pen from his tumbled body.

“I’m going to write this down as a remembrance of this world.”

“This may be the last story you ever hear.”

The Queen said, straightening her body that was leaning on the railing, and turned around to face the messenger, exuding a strange pressure, and when her eyes fell on the messenger, the messenger felt that the streams that kept moving in his body became sluggish.

“Do you know how many generations there are in my family line?”

“I have still done my homework on this, according to your history, it is sixteen generations, right?”

“Yes, sixteen generations, sixteen Queens, since birth, a four entropy stone will be formed inside our clan, this is the source of our power, each four entropy stone has a different ability, the four entropy stone will not grow and will not die out, it will always exist in our body unless we give it up ourselves.”

“So that’s how it is.”

“Among my ancestors, the fifth and eleventh queens have done some amazing feats, such as this continent under our feet, do you really think that this planet’s only continent was formed naturally?”

“Could it be that one of your ancestors did it?”

“The fifth Queen’s work, she reshaped all the land plates of the entire galaxy according to her ideal, organized the original irregular land into what it is now, with glaciers on one side, seawater on the other, and a ring-shaped continent in the middle.”

“That must have caused quite a few natural disasters.”

The ambassador interjected, but the Queen did not take heed.

“And the eleventh Queen, abandoning the previous principle that those in power do not interfere in world affairs with the four entropic stones, ended the chaotic division of the galaxy, united all things, and distributed power equally to each of the people, and then the people’s ignorance and barbarism chilled her heart, so she purified heaven and earth with a god-like rage, in such a low temperature, she released the fire actually burned in the land Twenty Phoenix Ages, the glaciers were burned dry along with the sea.”

“That long, that’s really scary.”

“So don’t make unnecessary tricks, our social structure is not the same as you think.”

“I think I understand what you mean, you are very great and intimidating, I have been here for a long time without knowing what you are capable of, I think you should be the most powerful of all the queens of all times.”

“No need for compliments, I just want you to know one thing, the Queen is the Queen not because of the love of her subjects, but they are in charge of the life and death of all things.”

The Queen’s voice was loud and clear, echoing in the high silent sky.

The messenger was silent, and the tumultuous flux of his body sank together, slowly flowing to the ground, and even his barely visible human form could not be maintained, melting into a puddle like melted snow.

“I’m disappointed.”

The messenger who could no longer maintain his, and then repeated once more.

“I’m very disappointed.”

Gradually, the puddle it turned into precipitated out from the cracks of the room floor, becoming less and less, while his voice, too, gradually fell silent.

“I thought you were different from the monarchs of other worlds, but it seems that they are all not too far apart. It won’t take long for you to be disintegrated along with your civilization.”

The messenger said, his voice and body fading to disappear from the room.

“Your Highness, please don’t forget that our gods come from another dimension, they don’t hate life, much less destroy the universe you and I live in, they just loathe civilization.”

Again, leaving these words behind, its breath completely disappeared from the room.

The Queen frowned, feeling that his words held more depth of meaning than the last time.

She walked into the room, spun around, and then walked back out onto the terrace, questions written between her frowning brows. Was this just something he said to confuse her? Or was it just a false move?

Rubbing her chin, she returned to the terrace once again, propped her body on the railing, and stared vacantly at the deserted city.

And at this time, suddenly, she watched, in the distance, the sea shrouded by the darkness of the night suddenly revealed a point of light, this point of light floating along the waves, like a distant swaying firefly, and then another point, the waves without warning with these points of light as the core, put out bright light, as if the countless searchlights laid on the seafloor, and then lit up together, turning the ocean into a large golden gem.

The light of the ocean lit up the camps of pilgrims along the coast, and then woke them up from their sleep, and at one time, all kinds of sounds of people mixed, moving cries, frightened shouts, enthusiastic cheers, and awe mixed with all kinds of things.

The miracle that had been absent for two weeks woke up the people who were drowsy in the cold wind, forcing them to go crazy, and at first glance, it sounded as if they had been attacked by something, and this downtown-like noise actually reached the queen’s chambers from the border that was separated by ten thousand miles.

And this time, the Queen felt the so-called temperature.

Indeed, she did not have a clear concept of warmth, because of the power of the Four Entropies clan, she could not perceive the cold experienced by ordinary people.

But that sea did put out a great warmth, which even melted the thin ice covering the deserted city thousands of miles away.

What surprised her, even more, was that when the chaos of human voices ended, the rhythms gradually unified and became a ‘Hail’, with people shouting the word that should have been cheered to her, but with their backs turned to her. And to her amazement, her chambers seemed to shake with these shouts, something she never knew these mortals could do.

As she had said before, she did not care at heart for the actions of her subjects; in the society of the Phoenix civilization, the Queen’s race and other beings were originally two kinds of creatures, with clear boundaries between them. She just didn’t know if this was a test by the visitor or if there was another intention, would this be the bottom card of the gravitational civilization? It was a bit pedestrian, and what did it mean by ‘disintegration’.

That night, the Queen declared the highest state of emergency on the planet, all armed forces began to assemble and had the press officer release reports that the ‘light sphere’ could cause harmful radiation to life. She ordered the population to stay away from the ‘light sphere’ immediately, and those who disobeyed the above order would be executed on the spot. To shock the people, the queen then arrested 30,000 people and imprisoned them on the huge terrace in front of the palace, where she wanted to execute them in public.

On the day of the execution, the sky was cloudy and gloomy like a crying child, and tiny raindrops began to fall. In this civilization, rain is a rare natural phenomenon, and some kind of corrosive substance unique to the planet falls from the sky, and ordinary creatures are burned by it and endanger their lives, so the rain has been regarded as an evil omen since ancient times. Although it is still only raining lightly, the dull roar over the clouds seems to foretell what is going to happen next. A chilling atmosphere permeated the square, and the ministers of the kingdom arrived in full force with their rain gear. At this time the Queen stood on a high platform in the square, not wearing any rain gear, she likes this rare weather, when a little rain drops on the skin, she can feel a refreshing sense of relief, although this feeling for her, is only a psychological effect, in fact, her body will not feel anything.

As the Queen stood in the middle of the execution chamber, the miniature microphones around her opened an invisible barrier to stop the humble nature from desecrating the Queen’s hair and crown, and those waiting to be executed, shoulder to shoulder and ankle to ankle, just surrounded her in a circle around the huge terrace of the palace. She twisted her snow-white neck, her silvery-white hair swinging like a flowing cloud, and passed through the eyes of the prisoners who were nearly a hundred meters away from her.

She had to memorize the appearance of these people, because these people did not die because of their crimes, but just not lucky enough, and in the final analysis, these people are just political sacrifices.

There were 30,000 condemned prisoners at the scene, and they were all calm or at least seemed to be, they wore detention suits, hooded, looking like some kind of doll that hadn’t had time to be processed yet, although they looked motionless and generous to death, in fact, the Queen could feel the horrified expressions under the hood, some had even gone into shock from fear, with a mess below, and some were desperately twitching their muscles trying to move, but their lower limbs had long been stuck in thin ice and couldn’t move.

The covered face of the condemned is a long-ago tradition of the Phoenix civilization, which is to avoid unnecessary psychological burden on the executioner. It is said that a certain Queen in the killing of their own arrogant clan relatives developed rules, the former Queen personally executed the clan relatives, including his sister.

And now, this Queen has also made a rule that any mass execution on the planet will be carried out by her personally, a decision made after her deliberation. Her sister asked why, and the answer she received was ‘I don’t like to waste time’. The figure of 30,000 was calculated by the scientists in the kingdom, and human executions could do enough to deter without affecting the production of society. Her cold heart now had only one goal, and that was to quickly restore order in the country and prepare to resist the incomers.

People on the edge of the terrace were watching her, among them, the blood relatives of those present at the execution, their friends, and their lovers. The Queen could clearly feel the eyes of the crowd.

Either hostility, or grief, or unrealistic fantasies. They were angry at this behavior, gloomy about it, and others, praying in their hearts that the Queen would be merciful at the end. As a civilization that has suffered from the ravages of nature, the Phoenix civilization has always been known for its optimism in the aftermath of disasters, and optimism is considered to be their most important quality. But among the countless sightings, not a single pair of eyes carried optimism.

Even the emissary from the enemy country seemed to be amazed by the Queen’s stone-heartedness, and stayed in the special seat she had prepared for her, observing all this quietly from a hidden corner. Although the Queen could not judge the mood of the messenger by the facial expressions of the primates at this moment, it must not be gloating.

The Queen took one last look at the prisoners who were about to be executed. The fearful faces of the dying were taken to heart. Later she will remember these innocent and unfortunate people in other ways.

The time had come.

Although the sun was obscured by thick rain clouds, the bell of execution had signaled the arrival of death.

The Queen took a deep breath and exhaled heavily. She stretched out her right hand straight and soon a glowing black rectangle emerged on her palm, an odd cube surrounded by the ancient inscriptions of the Phoenix civilization, the meaning of which was known only to the queen.

Immediately after, the black rectangle began to rotate at high speed, the light also dimmed, it rotated faster and faster, and finally could not even see that it was a rectangle as if it formed a small black hole, like an abyss.

It was the first time that people in the audience saw the Queen use such power, so they all held their breath, not daring to take a breath. People’s eyes were sucked by this black abyss, which burst out of the Queen’s palm with terrifying power, and also with a thunderous sound, even overshadowing the thunderbolt falling from the sky at the same time, like the pulse of a nuclear weapon explosion, the shock wave from the rectangle spread out with the Queen’s palm as the center.

The raindrops were spread out by the impact and flew towards the ministers like a stream of vectors, scaring them into falling and using their rain gear as cover to protect themselves from burns.

When all eyes were once returned, the shockwave slowly disappeared, and people looked carefully there through their protective gear, the spinning black rectangle had been put back inside by the Queen, and after a brief period of calm, a roar came from there.

The space around the Queen appeared visibly distorted, and the ground beneath her feet began to crack. The wild air currents also blew her hair loose, the magnetic field around the high platform began to fluctuate, while the Queen’s entire physique became more and more unstable, sporadic and elusive as if it were a dazzling aurora borealis, which in turn formed a radiant ball of light. Everyone was stunned by the sight, it was the first time they had seen the Queen use the power of the four entropy stones, and the black mud in the corner floated up from his chair in excitement.

In the distorted space, the black hole vision gradually appeared, the debris surrounding the Queen stayed in mid-air, and everyone present felt a gravitational force that would tear everyone apart. After a wave of heat, the properties of the visual field were erased, and gravity gradually returned to normal, the stagnant debris continued to move at high speed, and the Queen in the center of the ball of light began to become real, the aurora spread out into wings of light, forming a huge plasma life form, suspended in the air. For the Queen at this point, time is only a concept, and space is an ocean that she can travel through at will.

Suddenly, her light wings closed backward and turned into a white light, instantly rushing towards the crowd, leaving behind her countless strong light into a flashing white line. The first ladder of prisoners bore the brunt of the huge impact that destroyed their perception system, the Queen’s appearance in the beam of light gradually emerged, but the prisoner’s eyes still reflected in the mid-air flashing light wings.

The prisoners did not have time to react, the original black hair began to rapidly turn white and fall off, the young face began to become flabby, the gnarled muscle outline became blurred, the heart muscles no longer work, the bacteria in the abdominal cavity began to devour every cell, the distended chest cavity gushed with corpse water, their eyes were covered with murky liquid, gradually collapsed, the skin on the surface of the body in the distorted space around the Queen began to be oxidized and decomposed, in this way, the prisoners in a short subtle time, rapidly aging, turned into a pile of white bones.

Immediately afterward, the Queen flipped up and down, as if a white ghost of life, the second batch of prisoners in the eyes of the reflected light wings have not yet closed back, but the Queen has already left the white bones to fly towards the third batch of prisoners. She danced to one group of prisoners after another, and everywhere she went, all disappeared into ash.

The light bar around the entire execution ground, the sound of the second hand swinging throughout the ground, only 3.26732 seconds have passed, the Queen cross the 30,000 prisoners, and back to the original position, when the air debris quickly smashed to the ground, as the Queen exit the “time away” state, a wave of heat blow the stench to the air high above

The 30,000 people are still kneeling squarely on the terrace as they did a few seconds ago, forming a circle around the Queen. Only, in their bodies, there is no longer the uncomfortable restraint clothes, but also no vital signs, hair, flesh, and blood, all gone, leaving only the white bones, then the wind blew, and all have fallen to the ground, mixed up.

The rain fell even harder.

The sound of the rain covered the sudden outbreak of wailing and crying after a short period of silence, perhaps mixed with accusations and curses.

This is the expected situation, although from the crowd this outbreak of resentment did make the Queen slightly shaken, soon she regained her normal mind, how can a mortal shock God’s mind?

The loved ones were simply erased from the world in a matter of seconds, and anyone would feel sad that such an efficient way of slaughter made their lives seem even more microscopic. Perhaps for the relatives of the deceased, one-by-one execution would be more acceptable.

The Queen raised her head and looked toward the hidden seat she had prepared for the messenger, where there was now no trace of the black slime. He had left. But the Queen hoped it politely watched the last seconds of the execution so that the message she wanted to send got through — leave my planet or end up like them.

Actually, Black Slime didn’t go far, it just walked around the palace and then came back to the execution ground, it saw the Queen sitting on the corpse hill, looking a little tired, it didn’t know what the Queen was thinking, but it looked a little wretched.

The black mud burrowed out of the ground and floated to the foot of the corpse mountain, its heart began to be filled with more and more questions, not long ago the Queen had told it how great and wise her kingdom was, could it be that its judgment of civilization was off, or that the Queen was exaggerating.

Black slime looked at the Queen, silent, only occasionally emitting ‘hmm, hmm’ sound, it thought to itself, this may be the most powerful creature it has ever met, even some higher energy bodies at the edge of the universe, can not be compared with the Queen, in the three-dimensional universe, there is no individual life can do to control the entropy increase, maybe some stellar-level Mechanical lifeforms can do it, but that’s almost a species, but should this power be attributed to the four entropy stones or the Queen? If it had the stone, what would it be, Black Slime could not figure it out a bit.

It wants the stone but does not want to become like the Queen, it has dealt with countless tyrants in the universe, they want to open up the frontier, even want to enter the universe of higher dimensions, but the Queen is different, black slime can not see the Queen, it does not know what the Queen is guarding, political means is difficult to defeat such an opponent, not long ago the spectacle was a test, but the result led to a massacre by the Queen, she is too powerful, and the subjects are so weak, she is the god of this barbaric land, she can eliminate any creature that goes against her, trying to bring down this civilization by coup is obviously wrong.

Because there is no civilization here, only the Queen.