After Pangu left, the siblings thought about what their big brother had said: "deal with them on the spot."
Qianhui leaned against the wall and let out a long breath.
"This isn't right," Qianhui said.
Shanjue nodded. "We need to put something in front of him."
"Legal procedure," Qianhui said. "Real, fair, with safeguards. Not him deciding who to kill, but us judging first, and then the system carrying it out. There has to be a buffer in between."
"Right," Shanjue said. "That's how we stop him from abusing his power. If we design it well."
The siblings sat down along the wall of the Sanctum and laid out the system they'd just heard about, piece by piece.
They weren't trying to rebel against their big brother. It was just that the same system, seen from the angles of law and allocation, showed gaps no one had patched.
——
Wanquan sat before the Mirror of Fate, in the deepest part of Heaven.
In the mirror, a candied-chestnut vendor was packing up his stall.
Business was bad, and the rent was overdue. He wasn't planning to come back.
By the time Father walked to that corner, the stall would be long gone.
Wanquan watched for a while.
The mirror only let him see. To avoid what it showed, he had to use appointments to change what people did, and let those actions change what came after.
So he did a very small thing.
[Appointment]
[Target: Candied-chestnut vendor]
[Duty: Run a stall at this location]
——
Pangu put on a mortal body, dressed in ordinary clothes, used an ordinary name, and walked the streets of the Mortal Realm.
No one knew it was him.
At the street corner, a middle-aged man was selling candied chestnuts at a small stall.
Pangu bought a bag, peeled one, and bit into it.
Very sweet.
He peeled another.
——
Wanquan sat before the mirror, watching his father bite into the chestnuts.
He watched for a long time.
When Father went down, there would be something to buy at that corner.
——
Then he looked at other things——forces in the world that were stirring, each with plans of its own.
——
[External Program: Detected]
[Time Dormant: 1,000 years, Mortal Realm reckoning]
[Recommendation: Remove immediately]
That line had been there a long time.
So long that he no longer looked at it.
——
He knew the thing was there, yet he could never call its name.
A foreign divine artifact blocked his appointments. It destroyed any secret report that was forcibly read from outside, allowing only the holder himself to decrypt it. It recognized who was operating it, not whether that person was willing. Wanquan knew where it came from, but he couldn't get at what was inside.
For more than a thousand years, that person had done nothing but his normal duties. He had never touched the world's reserves, and left no record that could prove he committed crimes for the Creditor. Of the disasters in the world, not one could yet be tied to him.
What the mirror showed he might do in the future couldn't be treated as evidence of what he had already done. Wanquan had tried applying for a warrant to seize evidence. The rejection gave exactly that reason.
Arresting him, or revoking his permissions, would stop this person, but it wouldn't stop the Creditor. What Wanquan was waiting for was the one time the man actually reached out his hand.
So he didn't delete the alert. He just left it where it was.
——
Wanquan watched quietly.
Then he made his decision.
He would keep holding still and not alarm the spy.
From here on, he would keep arranging many seemingly unrelated things, so the other side would believe he had never been discovered, would even believe he had already won.
All the way to the very last moment.