There seemed to be no doubt about the trial of the Mellovan Radicals. The ones we captured were all high-ranking officers of the Mellovan Radicals. It was these people who had committed a series of unforgivable crimes. When they were being tried, the only problem the Empire's court faced was that the current law did not even have the ability to impose a maximum sentence on them.
Ninety percent of the officers of the Radicals had committed several serious crimes, and every one of them exceeded the maximum sentence!
Therefore, at the beginning of the trial, according to the usual practice, the court's central computer made a prejudgment on these Mellovan officers, which was to apply an unlimited sentence. In other words, after analyzing all the existing laws and cases, the central computer believed that even if the trial ended, there would not be a second result. This punishment was an extremely special type of judgment in the Empire's court. It was also known as the "Fourth District."
This was a rather rare situation. The Fourth District, as an extreme execution ground, rarely appeared in the judgments of the Empire's courts. It was only used for extreme criminals who had gone through a strict examination and determined that any existing punishment was insufficient for their crimes. Under normal circumstances, such extreme criminals would not appear in large numbers. Since the establishment of the Fourth District, the Empire's court had established a connection with the Fourth District. There were only a few hundred of such criminals, and this number was accumulated from the trillions of people in the entire Macro World. A normal intelligent creature, under the circumstances where their mind was clear and the basic moral environment was normal, would not easily be crazy enough to enter the Fourth District, no matter how cruel they were. Even if they had completely abandoned their conscience, an intelligent creature with a brain would still have a minimum psychological limit. Therefore, under normal circumstances, the spatial passage that led to the Fourth District, nicknamed the "Flea Path," was usually quite deserted, and new prisoners were rarely sent in.
In the end, this time, the Empire's court might have to send a group of people in at once … It could only be said that Barrian had successfully led a group of villains that shocked even the central computer of the court. I heard that the central computer was planning to specially create a case database for this group of Mellovan people, removing them one by one from criminology and forming a separate subject …
However, even though there was a prejudgment, the normal trial process still had to be carried out. Today was the day of the trial for some of the high-ranking officers of the Radical Faction. Under the initiative of my sister, I brought her to the court.
The court in the City of Shadows was the highest judicial organ in the Empire. It was only used to deal with extreme crimes brought up by the lower courts, as well as direct crimes against the Imperial Army. It wasn't in the main city area of the City of Shadows. Instead, it was right below the City of Shadows. We knew that the City of Shadows was actually a floating city in the sky. It was like an inverted island hovering in the sky above Gaia. All the residents of the City of Shadows lived in the front of the floating city, but the back of the floating city wasn't empty. There were also a small number of Empire facilities distributed here, arranged along the back of the raised island, like a group of palaces built against the mountain. Most of these facilities were the maintenance devices of the City of Shadows, such as the energy center, mathematical stabilizers, and the synchronous data transmission array with Gaia. The remaining facilities included some military factories and secret departments. These buildings were scattered on the desolate hills behind the City of Shadows, forming a sharp contrast with the prosperous Capital of Worlds on the other side of the land.
The highest court of the Empire was located in the center of this gloomy and desolate land, on the highest point of the raised island's back. It was a huge building in the shape of a symmetrical cross. The main part was a circular vaulted hall. With this hall as the center, there were four rectangular corridors that extended symmetrically in all directions. The entire building was made of sturdy interstellar alloy, glowing with a silver-white cold light. There were no decorations on the surface. Looking down from the sky, the court looked like a sharp cross nailed to the ground.
At the entrance of the court, there was a huge holographic projection of me and Sandora. This should be equivalent to the stone lions at the entrance … Alright, I knew that this was a little problematic, but that was how I had always interpreted it. Below the holographic projection, there was a line of huge words written in the language of the Empire:
Confess everything! Those who enter this door, lying is equivalent to lying to the Emperor!
"… I still feel like they are two stone lions …" After silently reading the line of bold words floating in midair, I couldn't help but think about the stone lions again. "I heard from Sandora that during the era of the old Empire, there was this rule at the entrance of the highest court in every Sky zone. They had to place a statue of the Emperor and write this sentence on it. But now, the Empire is governed by two Emperors at the same time, so they can only place one statue on each side of the entrance … "
My older sister seemed to be absent-minded. If it was in the past, she would definitely have a lot to say when she saw the two eye-catching projections at the entrance. But now, she simply waved her hand and pulled me in.
The court of the Empire's court might be very different from the court of law that many people had in mind.
There were no seats for the jury here, and there were no defense lawyers for both sides. The "judge" didn't need any defense, nor did they accept any accusations from a subjective third party. All information related to the trial was collected by a completely independent team of "searchers." The members of this team were experienced special agents and information recording experts. They worked with pure rationality. They didn't make any comments about the crime or the criminal. Their only job was to collect all useful information and submit it to the court's mainframe. The information they collected was not allowed to contain any descriptive or rhetorical information. In fact, the information provided by the "searchers" was more like an accurate snapshot of history. They recorded the crime scene when it happened, the actions of all the people, the reasons for all the people's actions, the results of every related individual's actions … Everything was made into a list that didn't contain any rhetorical elements. And this information was submitted to a special group of judges. The group of judges was made up of three court mainframes, three judges, and three recorders. The court mainframe was divided into the coordinating mainframe, the database mainframe, and the logic mainframe. The coordinating mainframe was responsible for combining all the information — from the searchers and the database mainframe — to compare, and to accurately correct every piece of information to ensure that it was completely in accordance with the law. At the same time, the coordinating mainframe would make a judgment based on its own comparison results. This judgment was not linked to the final judgment, but it would be recorded and used to correct the next generation of mainframes. Then, the coordinating mainframe would submit its comparison results to the logic mainframe. The logic mainframe would analyze the case according to the law of the Empire, and at the same time, correct the final judgment based on the perceptual thinking of intelligent beings. The database mainframe didn't participate in any analysis throughout the process. It was only responsible for accurately submitting data that could be analyzed, and then saving the data that the recorders uploaded as a case.
In fact, the main judges of the court were these three mainframes, and the three judges' job was more like assisting the mainframes. As for the three recorders, they had no right to make any suggestions.
So, did this kind of trial guarantee absolute fairness?
No, it only guaranteed absolute compliance with the law of the Empire.
Every race had their own worldview, and even every intelligent individual had their own worldview. Under this premise, absolute fairness did not exist, and the Shiring Apostles didn't have the time to study an absolutely fair outcome. The law of the Empire was more like a 'final boundary'. Within this final boundary, every race could make their own laws according to their own morality and worldview. They could do whatever they wanted, but once they came into contact with the final boundary, the three mainframes of the Empire court would ignore your race and your thoughts. They would convert everything about you into data, and then compare it with the law of the Empire. It was like putting an unqualified screw into a standard screw hole, and anything that didn't meet the standards would be mercilessly cut away. And as a sentient intelligent being, the only function of the judge's worldview and morality in this process was to choose whether to be cut in one cut or cut in twenty pieces slowly — and the choice had nothing to do with the judge.
So, rather than saying that the Empire court was a legal department, it was more like a Schilling 'debugging' factory. In this factory, there was not much communication between the 'broken parts' being 'repaired' and the engineers in charge of 'repair'. This was the impression of the Shiring Apostles of the 'judgment'. As a special creature that was absolutely loyal and would never violate the law under normal circumstances, it was difficult for them to understand why there would be intelligent individuals who would actively violate the interests of their race and motherland. So, they regarded these criminals as' malfunctioning machines'. If the machine broke, it needed to be repaired. If it broke too much, it needed to be dismantled and thrown into the reactor. For the mainframes of the court, they could not see the difference between a general running away on the battlefield and a screw with a screw missing a thread. Both needed to be 'cut', but the former would be cut to death.
So what if something broke too much and could not be 'repaired' at all, and even thrown into the reactor might contaminate the reactor?
That was the so-called limitless punishment — District 4.
I have to say, this kind of court was completely different from the judicial organs established by the normal sentimental races. It even somewhat challenged the worldview of many people. But as mentioned earlier, it never guaranteed that its judgment would be absolutely fair to any worldview, but it guaranteed that its judgment would be 100% in accordance with the laws of the Empire. This was the unique view of law of the Shiring Apostles: Be a good part, or else be thrown into the furnace and recast. They saw everything under the name of the Empire, including the citizens, as a certain kind of part, and a part should have its own technical parameters. If it did not conform to the technical parameters, it would be a crime. As for what the part thought, when the interests of the Empire were guaranteed, no one would care about those irrelevant things.
But the ordinary races in the Empire did not have to worry about being thrown into such a court, and I also did not have to worry that such a court would cause the civilians who did not fit the iron and blood mentality of the Empire to feel uneasy. The reason was simple: the courts of the Empire did not judge family matters …
The laws made by the Shiring Apostles were very interesting. There was no civil law, no economic law, no contract law — these various types of laws confused those who had a one-track mind. Even Sandora could not understand why there was a need to make laws for these things that should be followed by all people, so that the people could understand what to do. The Schilling Code was mostly made for the Imperial Army, the survival of a race, the safety of the world, and other things that sounded ridiculous. The Shiring Apostles felt that only the survival of the universe, the continuation of the development of a race, and so on were necessary to make laws. Therefore, ordinary races had almost no chance to go to the courts of the Empire. The "final boundary" of the Empire Code was wider than you can imagine, and crimes within this boundary would still be solved by ordinary "human justice". As for those who accidentally touched the "final boundary" and went beyond the scope of human justice …
Basically, nobody would have an opinion even if they were thrown into the courts of the Empire.
To put it simply, in the territories ruled by the Empire, most ordinary races still had to abide by human justice, and the ones responsible for governing them were still human justice, and the Empire Code was a conceptual standard that mortals could not break even if they wanted to. If the Code of the Empire was seen as a "house" that was used to regulate the scope of people's activities, then the building area of this house had already reached a million square kilometers … Therefore, the mortals who looked up in awe and admiration could only randomly find a floor tile in this huge house and build their own house …
So sometimes, I couldn't help but think that perhaps the so-called dogma of the gods felt the same to mortals as well: the code of the gods was awe-inspiring and irresistible, but when you really came into contact with it, you would realize that as a mortal, it was difficult to even enter the threshold of breaking the law. The Merovans should be proud in this aspect. As a mortal race, they had almost committed several of the harshest crimes in the Empire: treason while being a servant of the Empire, murder of an officer, theft of the Empire's property, illegal genocide, and attacking the royal family of the Empire. These crimes were really not something that ordinary mortal races could commit. Sometimes, when the gap between two races' civilizations reached a certain level, all kinds of unimaginable and wonderful phenomena would really happen …
When my sister and I came to such a court, naturally, we saw a boring scene. Apart from the special seats reserved for us, there were no 'onlookers' here at all. The oval trial hall was divided into two ends. One end was where the judges sat. The three courtroom mainframes were three silver-white cylindrical machines that looked almost identical. The crystal panels embedded on their surfaces were constantly refreshing large amounts of data. These three cylindrical mainframes that were more than ten meters tall were tilted back about thirty degrees, half-buried in the silver-white alloy walls of the hall. On the seats in front of the mainframe base, the judge was displaying the name of the next criminal on the holographic projection. After a period of comparison and processing, the mainframe and the judge would jointly come to a conclusion. After that, the criminal had time to speak. During this time, the criminal could announce his or her guilt or protest.
Yes, you could express your objection to the verdict. This was a rather unexpected setting. If the person being tried was dissatisfied with the verdict and could provide more information about the case that was not known to the 'searcher', then his protest would be valid. Based on the logic of the Shiring Apostles' trial, they would add new information to the comparison process, confirm the authenticity of the information, and then fine-tune the verdict. However, this was only a theoretical process of 'reversing the verdict'. In reality, we had yet to encounter a situation where the 'searcher' of the court had missed out on information. As for the few Melroy officers who were currently being tried, there was even less room for them to get away with their crimes.
Of course, the judges noticed our arrival, but they did not stop their work. They only nodded in the direction where my sister and I were sitting. The person being sentenced now was a high-ranking Melroy officer. Apart from the 'general terms' such as treason and plundering the property of the Empire, his crimes included personally planning and carrying out the annihilation of three innocent lower civilizations — and doing so out of revenge after the three civilizations had declared their surrender.
The court's mainframe hummed slowly. The coordinating mainframe was requesting information from the database. The logic mainframe was methodically analyzing the data points that had been compared. The database mainframe was silent and did not express any opinion on the case. The three judges connected to a private network and exchanged some opinions with the judges of the other courts. When the logic mainframe compiled the analysis into a document and published it, the three judges quickly evaluated the document to determine the accuracy of the document and the accuracy of the comparison process. Then, they informed the prisoner of the verdict — another fellow to be sent to District Four. However, his crimes were lighter than the other compatriots, so he would only have to serve a few hundred years in District Four.
The Melroy officer seemed to find the verdict difficult to accept, but he did not have the conditions to protest: he did not have any more testimony that could be collected by the coordinating mainframe. So the officer became agitated in front of the stand, like an ordinary person dominated by fear — even if they had once thought of themselves as gods.
At that moment, my sister suddenly stood up.
Maybe it was because she had become a deity, or maybe it was for some other reason, but my sister, who had always been gentle, now had a faint, cold aura about her. The Melroy officers in front of the stand were stunned. They might have felt that this aura was a little familiar, and then they all looked up.
"Your … Your Majesty …"
A war criminal said in shock. If it were not for the shackles on the chair, he might have slipped to the ground.
All the originally agitated war criminals also quieted down … it was not exactly quiet, but more like they had lost the ability to move in the face of great fear. The other war criminals waiting for their trial also fell into the same state of fear. The face that reappeared in front of them had taken away everyone's courage and will to resist. They lowered their heads dejectedly, and did not even dare to continue to raise their eyes to look in this direction. After tens of thousands of years, it seemed that the oppressive feeling that the Emperor had once brought to them was still there. I could not help but look at my sister. Tens of thousands of years ago, when my sister was still a different person, what kind of ruler would she have been?
My eyes finally returned to the courtroom, searching for Barrian among the war criminals. I couldn't find him at first. I thought he wasn't on the waiting list, but I soon found him in the furthest corner. This once arrogant tyrant was hunched over, as if he was trying his best to hide in the shadows where my sister would not notice him. I suddenly lost interest in continuing to pay attention to him. Compared to Turazzo, he was really a complete failure.
"It seems that there is nothing to see here. They are already strangers to me." My sister sighed softly, and took my hand as we left the seat. "Ah Jun, let's go … I will meet with Turazzo in a few days."
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