Xu Xi instinctively looked down.
It was an orange tabby with fishbone patterns, its belly and four paws white.
Multiple wounds on the orange cat were still oozing blood; after falling from a height, it was already on its last breath.
No, to be more accurate, it should have been thrown down.
He looked up toward the second floor.
The thick curtains effectively blocked the outside view.
But Xu Xi's sharp eyes still spotted the pair of eyes peering through the narrow gap.
Soone had thrown the orange cat from the second floor and was now hiding behind the window, watching the scene below.
The orange cat's injuries were too severe; lying on the ground, it didn't even have the strength to cry out. Soon, it gradually stopped breathing.
The pair of eyes behind the curtains also vanished.
Xu Xi waited quietly for a while, but no one ever ca down. He then gently moved the orange cat's body to the side of the road as well, forced himself to stop staring at it, and proceeded toward the next floor.
『Congratulations, your judgnt is correct.』
『It simply couldn't understand what it had done wrong.』
The 10th Floor.
A man carrying a briefcase, head bowed and shoulders slumped, was on a phone call.
"I've given you so many chances, and each ti you ss up worse than the last!" The male voice on the other end was rough and gruff, its impatience completely undisguised.
"I'm sorry, boss. Please give one more chance. This ti I'll definitely get it right!" The man groveled, pleading with the person on the other end.
"Hmph, last chance. If you don't fix this version, get the hell out!"
The other side had already hung up, but the man was still repeatedly thanking and promising.
The next call rang imdiately.
The man answered, his voice noticeably lighter: "Hey, Jingjing, I just got off work. What's up?"
"Zhou Cheng, let's break up."
The man's tone instantly panicked: "Weren't we doing fine? Why break up all of a sudden? Is it your parents? Do they disapprove, look down on for being an orphan? Tell them, I'll do anything to marry you, even kneel. Jingjing, please don't break up. I really love you. I'll die without you!"
The man said a lot, but the response from the other side was brief.
"Zhou Cheng, I sincerely suggest you go get checked at a ntal hospital. I'll co pick up Orange Treasure in twenty minutes. Let's just end it here."
Hanging up the phone in a daze, the man, radiating utter dejection, brushed past Xu Xi.
Xu Xi turned around, watching the man's figure gradually recede into the distance, eventually fading into the street.
『Congratulations, your judgnt is correct.』
『Sotis, a wicked thought often takes root and sprouts in that single instant, and once it does, it can no longer be stopped.』
This line of text confird for Xu Xi that the protagonist of this third story was indeed the man from just now.
The man wasn't a cat trafficker, just an ordinary office worker facing unemploynt and a breakup.
Orange Treasure was likely the orange cat that had just been thrown down.
The owner of the eyes hiding behind the curtains didn't need further thought either.
So, this story is actually about... the man, taking out his work frustrations and the pain of his girlfriend's breakup, venting all his malice onto the orange cat his girlfriend kept?
And then finding a twisted pleasure in the process, becoming uncontrollably addicted, starting to torture cats repeatedly to gain that pleasure?
The appearance of the black cat with the small bell in this story proves its suffering wasn't an accident.
Its two hind legs broken, deliberately thrown onto the road, maliciously run over multiple tis by car wheels...
All were the man's thods.
The girl's words, "I sincerely suggest you go get checked at a ntal hospital"—were they sarcasm, or did the man genuinely have ntal issues?
Xu Xi leaned toward the latter.
He turned and continued to the next floor.
The sequence of this story was different from the first two; it was told in reverse.
But the beginning didn't ntion the man's outco. Presumably, the later cycles would reveal it.
The 11th Floor, nothing unusual, passed.
The 12th Floor, also no anomalies, passed.
The 13th Floor.
As soon as Xu Xi entered the street, he keenly spotted scattered bloodstains on the ground.
The not-yet-dried bloodstains extended all the way to the front of that residential building.
As if sothing had been dragged along this path.
Xu Xi initially thought it was more traces left by the man after abusing a cat. However, as he approached the residential building, he faintly heard the man's agonized wails.
At this mont, the man was just like the cats he had abused, whimpering in pain, letting out intermittent, pitiful cries.
The sa residential building front, the sa spot. The difference was that this ti, it was the man being thrown from the second floor.
The mont he clearly saw the man's miserable state, Xu Xi couldn't help but suck in a sharp breath.
The man's limbs seed completely twisted, his skin and flesh torn open, his entire body bloody, not a single patch of intact skin. His eyes bulged as he emitted aningless guttural sounds, "heh, heh."
He looked like he had endured imnse torture.
Xu Xi looked up toward that window.
The curtains were drawn open. In the dark interior, another figure stood by the window, looking down from above. Only after watching the struggling man for a long ti, until he finally breathed his last, did the figure slowly turn and leave.
Had the man been retaliated against?
『Congratulations, your judgnt is correct.』
『Evil people have their own evil torntors.』
Evil people?
Staring at the text, Xu Xi thought, this story is almost over. Could the next story be about that "evil person" who retaliated and killed the man using the sa thods?
After all, judging from the three known stories so far, they are all sowhat interconnected.
The 14th Floor, no anomalies, passed.
The 15th Floor.
Xu Xi obtained the third photograph.
A man with an honest-looking face, holding a briefcase, dodging the cara's lens.
——
【Ahhhhh damn it! What did the kitties do wrong to be treated like this!】
【This instance feels so heavy. The oppressive environnt is one thing, but the content is depressing too.】
【I suddenly realized, whenever there's a cycle with background storytelling, Master Xu Xi slows down his pace.】
【The master is probably also watching the stories. Otherwise, with his previous 2x speed, he could have cleared it long ago.】
【True, a solo instance doesn't have teammates to provide him with amusent.】
【Xu Xi: Watch your words. I'll give you two seconds to rephrase that.】
【That man ended up being tortured to death too. It really is poetic justice.】
【The ending is still pretty good. I was afraid he'd live to a ripe old age without a scratch.】
【Even though the text says 'evil person,' based on the fact that person finished off this guy, they're a good person in my book.】
【The black cat is such a pity. I can't imagine how it would feel if it knew its owner also committed suicide by slitting their wrists after its death.】
【After the black cat passed on, it was probably still worried, wondering if its owner would be too grief-stricken, crying their eyes out without it. Then it opens its eyes and finds its owner has arrived too.】
【Damn it, you up there, go to sleep!】
【Why is no one ntioning the girl who lost Orange Treasure? Orange Treasure, Orange Treasure... a precious little orange kitty, just cruelly tortured to death like that.】
【Holy crap, now that you ntion it, I'm worried that guy might have impulsively killed his girlfriend too?】
【!!!】
【Oh my god, no way?】
【That's really not impossible. That guy didn't seem ntally stable at all.】
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