Watching this face—once so well-maintained, now distorted by rage and hatred—Qinghong couldn't help but ask softly, "Mrs. Zhu, what is your true opinion regarding the fact that she consistently tortured and killed my kind and other small animals?"
Mrs. Zhu's face twisted even further. She glanced at the viewer count of the livestream but chose to double down: "Don't you dare slander my daughter's reputation! She would never do such a thing."
Qinghong looked her straight in the eye and asked, "Then what about Maomao? Didn't you... see it with your own eyes?"
The color instantly drained from Mrs. Zhu's face. Her voice trembled, though she tried to maintain a facade of calm. "You... how do you... I don't know what you're talking about! My daughter... my daughter, she—"
Qinghong cut her off coldly: "We are blessed by the Great Beast God. When our souls and bodies are exchanged, we inherit the memories of the other party. You... cannot lie to me. Because 'I' saw it through her eyes."
At this, Mrs. Zhu completely broke down. "What are you saying?! What have you done to my daughter? You murderer!!!"
On the other side of the screen, Qinghong was so incensed she stood up, pointing at Mrs. Zhu. "I'm a murderer? Then what was she? Do you have any idea how many innocent animals died at her hands?"
"Brutes! They were just brutes!" Mrs. Zhu shrieked, trying to use her high-and-mighty arrogance to fill the void in a heart already gnawed hollow by fear and guilt.
"The death of ten thousand brutes isn't worth my daughter's little finger!" She clawed at her scalp, her perfectly styled hair falling into a disheveled mess.
Hearing this, both Qinghong on the screen and Zhizhi, who was watching closely from afar, felt their expressions turn ice-cold.
Mrs. Zhu continued to spew filth, cursing Qinghong and belittling animals.
A single comment flickered across the screen:
—[Her language is so foul... if this livestream had a normal moderation system, it would have been banned and taken down ages ago...]
Qinghong began to recall the original owner's memories.
In those memories, Mrs. Zhu hadn't always been this way. Before the girl turned ten, life had been happy—a healthy father, a gentle mother, and doting grandparents. But everything changed after "that accident".
Looking at the woman who had abandoned all elegance, Qinghong asked, "What about the fancy rat your husband gave you? Was it the same for him?"
The question struck Mrs. Zhu like a physical blow. It wasn't that she couldn't answer; it was that the question pierced a wound in her heart that had never healed.
"Tell me," Qinghong pressed. "Why have you stopped talking?"
Zhizhi noticed Qinghong's eyes were turning red. He didn't share her memories, but he could imagine the pain she felt "seeing" her kin being slaughtered. Even he was being affected by the raw emotion radiating from her.
Mrs. Zhu opened her mouth, but not a single coherent word came out.
Qinghong closed her eyes, tears streaming down her face. "That Maomao... its last gaze before death was fixed in your direction. It struggled in that tiny iron cage, not praying for life, but praying for its only 'Goddess' to look at it one last time. It was crying: 'Mom... save... me...' And you, Wen Xuehua, you just stood there and watched it die..."
Her voice was choked with sobs, but she forced her eyes open to stare at Mrs. Zhu.
Across the Blue Planet, pet owners instinctively pulled their animals into their arms, weeping silently. Mrs. Zhu was also crying now, clutching her chest and gasping for air.
Qinghong delivered the final blow: "You are not worthy of its love and devotion."
Mrs. Zhu wailed and collapsed, kneeling on the floor. The blow had landed precisely on her deepest, darkest thought: I truly don't deserve it. Not Maomao, and not my daughter...
Qinghong watched the collapsed woman coldly. She turned to a "Grey Fruit" hanging at her eye level and pressed it. Her voice sounded like thousand-year-old ice from the bottom of a glacier.
"Mrs. Zhu, you don't deserve the title of Mother. You didn't just kill Maomao; you personally pushed your daughter into hell."
As she lowered her hand, a grey beam of light shot out toward the woman.
Mrs. Zhu let out a piercing scream as the light felt like it was etching into her very marrow. Her body convulsed in agony. When she finally lost her strength and rolled over, the entire world saw it clearly:
A twisted, grey rune was branded deep into her forehead.
Meanwhile, a criminal dossier materialized before Lawyer Hans. On it, the words were etched with crystalline clarity: Wen Xuehua— [The Morally Bankrupt: The Mother Who Abandoned Her Post].
Hans froze. He adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses, his lip twitching. "Wait... The Great Beast God, this isn't right! I haven't drafted the trial outline, the chain of evidence isn't closed, and the defense and jury aren't even seated! I'm not ready!"
Before he could finish, the Scale of Causality floating in mid-air emitted a sharp hum. Its golden light flickered frantically, like a ticking time bomb.
Hans stared for a second before deciphering the divine intent.
His shoulders slumped as he wailed, "An 'Overtime Rush'? You're asking a mortal lawyer to bridge a cross-species soul litigation by pulling an all-nighter? This is a divine livestream, not some small-firm case! I didn't even bring my heart medication!"
The Scale ignored his pleas, instead flipping through the dossier even faster. The sound of paper grating filled the silent court like a serrated blade.
Hans clutched his perfectly styled hair, completely breaking down. "Crazy... everyone is crazy! Even deities are into the '996' grind now?!"
Despite his grumbling and silent curses—which earned him a literal physical thwack from the Scale—the wheels of divine justice continued to grind.
In the Divine Realm, the brilliant studio lights felt blinding against Qinghong's pale face.
Her deer-like eyes were now bloodshot with exhaustion. Taking a deep breath, she maintained her professional "influencer" persona and forced a strained smile.
"Family... that's all for today. Though I'm tired, Qinghong feels it was all worth it."
The comment section froze for a heartbeat before exploding into a frenzy of gratitude and greed.
"Tomorrow, the 'Cash Giveaway' will continue."
She didn't look at the scrolling text. Her gaze pierced through the screen, locking onto the broken form of Wen Xuehua.
Her voice turned soft, carrying a chill that seeped into the marrow. "Mrs. Zhu, don't be in a hurry to cry, and don't be in a hurry to find peace. Tomorrow... remember to tune into 'Livestream A'. There, you will see exactly what crimes your 'precious daughter' committed. As a mother, you have the right—and the obligation—to witness it all."
With that, she pressed the "Purple Fruit", the symbol for toggling the broadcast. The rainbow light vanished, and billions were left staring at black screens in the silence of the night.
The Divine Realm returned to its usual stillness. Qinghong collapsed beside the mountain of operation manuals, her small back curled inward.
Once as the white mouse craving sunlight from a cage, she now carried the weight of the world's wealth and the darkest depths of human nature.
A soft rustle broke the silence, accompanied by a cool, floral scent. Blue Phoenix landed gracefully beside her. The haughty divine beast narrowed its golden eyes at her—a look of feigned annoyance masking a rare, hidden tenderness.
"Hey, you. Qinghong," Blue Phoenix said, its voice cold and proud. "Your hair is a mess. It's hideous. If the Great One saw Her messenger looking this pathetic, I'd be embarrassed for you."
Qinghong didn't respond, her head buried in her knees. Blue Phoenix paced awkwardly.
As a divine bird, it knew how to guard causality and deliver oracles, but it had zero experience in "comforting" anyone.
It missed the clumsy, energetic girl who usually shouted at it or snuck fruit from its territory. That noisy vitality, which it once found irritating, was now the very color it craved.
After a long hesitation, Blue Phoenix stiffly extended a wing and gave her a heavy, awkward pat on the shoulder.
"Ahem... the Divine Listener just sent me a message. That lawyer has to work even more overtime than you; he's far more miserable," it said quickly, searching for a topic. "If you start crying, don't think I'll lend you my feathers to wipe your face."
Qinghong looked up, seeing the clumsy effort of the high-and-mighty bird. She let out a small laugh despite the tears.
"Lord Blue Phoenix, I was just thinking... 'Su Qiang' and the others are so amazing. They have to face human darkness directly to deliver punishment. They're much stronger than me."
Seeing that Qinghong had seemingly recovered her spirits, Blue Phoenix let out a massive sigh of relief in its heart.
"I wonder where they are now? Have they reached the Divine Realm yet?" Qinghong muttered to herself.
Meanwhile, night had completely fallen over the world of men. With the closing of the livestream, the people who had been hyper-focused on the broadcast all day suddenly snapped back to reality.
A sense of profound absurdity hit them like a tidal wave—it was dark, and for this entire day, all of humanity had been in a state of "total shutdown".
In bustling office buildings, the "corporate slaves" who had stared at the stream for ten hours looked at the hundreds of unread emails piling up in the corners of their screens and let out wails of despair.
"It's over... I haven't filled out my KPIs..."
"The boss's proposal isn't finished; I'm a dead man at tomorrow's meeting!" Many had forgotten that only today was a day of rest.
Inside the cubicle farms, telephones began to ring incessantly as the hysterical roars of supervisors once again ruled the office space.
Humans are an incredibly resilient species; even after witnessing divine miracles, as long as they hadn't received a "Causality Transfer", they still had to bow their heads to life tomorrow for the sake of a few silver coins.
However, amidst this anxiety, there was also a strange, eerie silence. Those who had received massive deposits during the livestream were now staring at their bank balances with complex expressions.
Under the earth-shattering roars of their bosses, they did not bow and scrape as they once did. Instead, they silently opened the envelopes on their desks—resignation letters that had been written long ago but which they had never dared to submit.
"Boss, stop shouting," a middle-aged blonde man said calmly as he closed a flickering document, speaking to the manager on the other end who had always been insufferably arrogant. "I quit. This money... is enough for me to take my cat and live in a cleaner place for the rest of my life."
This "exit" was quietly happening in every corner of the globe.
At a street corner, the streetlights stretched the shadows of passersby. Several bosses who once called the shots in the business world—now trembling with fear because their names hadn't appeared on the "Good List"—stood by a trash can.
They had just finished angry phone calls demanding their employees work overtime, but the moment they turned around, their fierce, shrewd expressions collapsed. They were replaced by a look of almost humble fawning.
"Oh, Lord Cat, Ancestor Cat, please, eat slowly."
A billionaire real estate tycoon was currently crouching by a flower bed, holding up a can of expensive imported tuna, bowing and scraping toward a stray cat with half a tail.
He didn't dare not serve it. He had seen the fate of the "Ablators" with his own eyes during the day. He didn't know when he might be called into a "Connection", nor did he know which stray animal might "inherit" the dark secrets hidden in his home.
While enduring the stray cat's disdainful hissing, he smiled tremulously, his service more meticulous than if he were tending to his own father.
Under the distant night sky, the light of the Divine Realm seemed to flicker intermittently through the clouds. Wealth had been redistributed, but the long night of the mortal world had only just begun.
The human heart was being violently torn between the ecstasy of sudden riches and the terror of judgment. No one knew what kind of abyss would be revealed when Livestream A opened tomorrow.