The Council

The center of Boundary City.

The Council Tower stood tall and majestic in the center of this enormous, almost boundless "Boundary City." Its scale reached into the clouds, while its rigid lines gradually narrowed upward, bringing to mind the shape of some kind of monument—but no one could say exactly when, or by whom, such a magnificent building had been constructed.

Every Boundary City dweller seemed born accustomed to this towering structure. They felt it simply ought to stand in that proper place, as a matter of course. No one questioned its existence or felt curious about how it had been built. Even after thousands of years had passed, even as the tower's appearance continued to change with the times in the eyes of successive generations of Boundary City dwellers, people naturally blended those "changes" into their "normal understanding."

The Boundary City dwellers' sense of "of course" even extended to the Council's five members. Everyone knew that the councilors ruled the city, but it seemed no one had ever considered the origins or "unreasonableness" of those five councilors. Several of the councilors never appeared in public, yet people had never found that strange.

For thousands of years, the members of the Crossroads Affairs Council had never changed. Their existence was as ancient and "stable" as the tower in the city center, as if they were some kind of "wedge" firmly driven into The Crossroads. No one in the city, including the countless ordinary people who worked in the Council Tower, had ever questioned this.

Footsteps broke the peace of the upper levels of the Council Tower. As usual, Baili Qing crossed the connecting area leading to the central elevator with an expressionless face. Along the way, the ordinary people working there occasionally bowed respectfully to her in greeting. Although her