However, when the Butcher's gaze fell upon Sloan on the ground, his roar was cut short as if being squeezed by a pair of invisible hands.
The man who normally gave orders like a god's spokesperson on earth, who held everyone's fate in his hands—Sloan—was now lying in the glass shards on the floor like a discarded dead dog.
Those eyes of his, which had always been full of majesty and depth, now held only a gray aura of death, staring at the ceiling without closing.
A violent commotion broke out among the crowd.
A never-before-felt fear and wavering spread through these top assassins like a plague.
"You killed the Administrator!" The Repairman bellowed, veins bulging on his arms as he raised the oil-stained steel pipe. "Cross, you've ruined everything for us!"
"Am I a traitor?" Cross countered calmly, his voice not loud but clearly piercing through the noise. "Or have we been fools played in the palm of someone's hand from beginning to end?"
He didn't launch into a long-winded defense; instead, he threw out a ledger.
The ledger slid across the smooth floor with a dull friction sound, finally stopping accurately before The Repairman's oil-scented work boots.
"Pick it up," Cross said coldly, his gaze piercing The Repairman's soul. "Turn to page 42 and see exactly how much that so-called future terrorist you killed last year was worth in Sloan's private account."
The Repairman hesitated for a moment but still bent down to pick up the ledger with his rough, large hands.
"Don't listen to him, kill him! He's shaking our resolve!" the Gunsmith shouted from the back, but his voice also carried a hint of self-doubt that even he hadn't noticed.
The Repairman ignored him; he held his breath and roughly flipped to that page.
November 12, 2024
Payer: North Sea Oil Consortium
Amount: 3,000,000 USD
Target: Green Vale, leader of a radical environmental group.
Cause of Death: Brake failure.
Executor: The Repairman.
The Repairman's hands began to shake violently; the ledger, which wasn't heavy, now seemed to weigh a thousand tons.
He clearly remembered that young man named Green Vale. He was a man who was even somewhat thin, and when he died, he was still tightly clutching a slogan protesting oil spills and protecting offshore ecology.
Sloan had told him at the time that according to the loom's prediction, this person would turn extremist in three years and blow up a dam in a densely populated area, thereby drowning thousands of innocent villagers downstream.
The Repairman had believed it implicitly back then.
He felt he was exercising a sacred judgment, using the blood on his hands to trade for the lives of many more.
But now, the line on the ledger with the bank stamp of the North Sea Oil Consortium was like a loud and cruel slap across his face.
"Pass it on," Cross's voice rang out again, carrying a nearly cruel calmness. "Let the Butcher see if that serial killer he chopped up last month was actually just a holdout who hindered a certain senator's real estate development because he refused an unreasonable demolition compensation agreement."
The ledger began to pass among the assassins.
With every page turned, the killing intent in the room dissipated by a fraction.
A silence heavier than battle spread through the air.
These were the World's top assassins. They could endure the sharp pain of broken bones, the loneliness of lurking in a sewer for three days and nights, and even the sorrow of watching friends and family die.
Because they had always possessed an armor called faith.
They believed they were the executors of fate; they believed their killings were to maintain the balance of the Universe.
But now, this ledger full of the stench of money told them...
They were just slightly more expensive, cheap thugs with a sacred license.
They weren't just executioners; they were Jokers who had been used and mocked.
"This is forged! Cross must have forged this!" the Gunsmith cried out, raising his gun to point at Cross.
"the loom does not forge." Alice's crisp voice broke through the Gunsmith's final struggle as she pointed toward the distant roar coming from the hall. "That is binary code; it is mathematics. And the ledger is Sloan's translation of mathematics for his own greed. You can all think for yourselves—were those missions you executed, those details, those motives, truly as airtight as Sloan said?"
Once the most primitive and direct evidence was presented, the muzzles that were originally pointed at Cross and Wesley slumped one after another.
This kind of ending was more destructive than death.
If Sloan were still alive, they might have fought to the death to defend the organization's dignity and that false faith.
But Sloan was dead, the fig leaf of lies had been ruthlessly torn away, and the reasons for their fighting had all support drained out in an instant.
When the tree falls, the monkeys scatter.
This ancient proverb materialized into the scene before them at this moment.
The Repairman stared fixedly at the ledger, suddenly letting out a wretched cry that sounded like both a sob and a laugh. He slammed the ledger onto the ground, spat, and turned to leave.
He walked very slowly, his shoulders slumped and his back hunched, as if he had aged ten years in just a few minutes.
The Butcher retracted his knife without looking at anyone; in those eyes that had once terrified countless victims, there was now only a deathly silence like gray dust.
He turned around silently, his heavy footsteps fading into the distance.
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