The ink-like spatial rift on the floor of the grand hall snapped shut completely, leaving the obsidian ground to regain its cold, rigid mirror finish—spotless and flawless.
Hans felt no dizziness.
When the high-dimensional divine energy of the primordial deity enveloped him, the scenery warped. The surroundings stretched and locked in place within a ten-millionth of a millisecond, like a pulled spring, before solidifying once more.
In the blink of an eye, he was back in his own domain.
There was no sun, no moon, and no stars here. Only a colossal scale radiating a cold silver light stood before him, surrounded by an endless white corridor woven from pure rules.
The resilience he had built from years of bodybuilding allowed him to stabilize his body the instant his feet touched the ground, forcing his severely anemic frame to stop swaying.
His custom black suit had been thoroughly cleansed by divine energy. Even the wrinkles baked into the fabric by the intense heatwaves of the Luwu [Celestial Jailer] Purgatory were completely smoothed out. Only his left forearm, which had just had seventeen microchips violently extracted, remained immaculate. It was as smooth and clean as a piece of porcelain fresh out of the kiln.
It didn't hurt anymore.
The dull, lingering aches that had tortured him for a decade, the inflammation and throbbing caused by metal permanently fusing with his tendons—all of it had been stripped away by the deity in a manner both brutal and tender.
Yet, Hans felt no overwhelming ecstasy of being reborn.
He simply slid down onto the edge of the stone bed. Raising his right hand, he used his lightly calloused fingertips to trace his bare left arm with agonizing slowness.
"Seventeen chips..."
The corner of his mouth twitched in a self-deprecating smirk. He buried his pale face deep into the cold palms of his hands. This was the face that could provoke thousands to curse him in a courtroom, yet remain as ruthlessly rational as a execution machine.
Within this absolute silence of the void, his mind abruptly took a bizarre turn. It began to spin a manic internal monologue at a frequency highly relatable to a modern corporate worker, fueled by pure workforce spite.
Why the hell does working a job still exist in this universe? Why am I stuck pulling overtime in a godforsaken place where even the coffee machine is broken?
Overtime is one thing, but there's not even a single day of compensatory time off, let alone triple pay. Every single day, I have to sift through mountains of soul dossiers just to verify exactly which month, day, and hour some scumbag kicked a dog or poisoned a cat.
It's a 996 schedule—no, scratch that, there isn't even a night cycle in this damn place. This is infinite, back-to-back shifts. A working man really shouldn't be grinding this hard. I just want to go back to Texas, fish by the water, and crash on a blend carpet for three days and three nights straight.
Sigh... when it comes down to it, deities really don't know how to exploit labor properly. No social security, no housing fund, no annual paid leave. This is utterly meaningless.
These incredibly trivial, mundane, and somewhat rogue complaints drifted across the smooth surface of his cerebral cortex like ripples of weak radio static.
He genuinely believed he was hiding it well.
Before setting foot in this domain, he was the most feared legal demon in the international arbitration circuit. He was an expert at locking down a flawless psychological defense at the negotiation table to squeeze out the very last cent of profit.
But he had miscalculated one crucial detail.
The titanic beast resting directly in front of him was the Divine Listener. It was the primordial mythical guardian renowned for listening across the heavens, fully capable of perceiving the inner thoughts of every living soul across the three realms.
Vroom—
The steel pan of the giant scale rattled violently, emitting a grating, bone-chilling screech that sounded exactly like a blunt knife scraping against a rusted iron pot.
Across a different dimension, within the massive eyes of Diting [Divine Listener]—eyes capable of peering through thousands of years of shifting karma—there emerged for the very first time an incredibly human emotion. It was the blistering irritation of an elite academic forced to deal with a shameless door-to-door salesman.
It had heard everything.
Those garbage complaints about "no triple pay," "no annual leave," and a "trash coffee machine" were once again dancing a manic breakdance inside Its sacred, noble central nervous system like a thousand flies at once. The racket vibrated so intensely that the core of Its eternal laws, which had stood unmoved for ten thousand years, began to emit a faint, rattling groan.
Throughout the endless eons of the past, It had heard the most vicious curses, the most agonizing wails of despair, and the apocalyptic conspiracies plotted by ambitious megalomaniacs in their deepest nightmares. While those voices were filthy, they at least carried a devastating weight of cosmic consequence—they were worthy of Its divine power to analyze and judge.
But this mortal crooked lawyer standing before It... his mind was entirely clogged with useless, redundant garbage information about "wanting to eat cold pizza after work" and "the deity refusing to pay for social security."
What made the Divine Listener feel even more suffocated was that when It tried to channel Its high-dimensional mental pressure down the corridor to violently sever the mortal's line of thought, Hans's brain reacted within a tenth of a microsecond. With terrifying, practiced precision, he hid his internal grumblings away in a "professional confidentiality abyss" that even the deity could not directly breach.
This bastard was actively keeping It out.
Using a shameless method akin to exploiting a loophole in a commercial contract, he had built a psychological wall inside his own mind.
Huff—
From Its massive, snow-white maw, Diting exhaled a freezing breath that instantly turned the surrounding white mist into ice crystals.
It paced irritably through the empty space, Its massive claws scraping against the rigid floor of rules with a series of harsh, muffled thuds.
Just as the Divine Beast was about to lose Its patience and raise a front hoof to swat this garbage-minded human lawyer straight into the underworld's wheel of reincarnation, an ethereal, profound voice echoed without warning. It detonated deep within Diting's sea of consciousness, carrying a weariness that felt as though it had witnessed the turning of multiple epochs.
It was The Great One—the Beast God Herself, high upon her pitch-black throne—personally sending down a transmission.
There was no crushing weight of divine authority in Her voice. It was as peaceful as a fading breeze, yet it carried the weight of an indulgent sigh: "Pay him no mind. Let him be."
Diting's massive frame shuddered violently. The silver light within Its eyes flickered frantically, and the roaring vibration of the scale-shaped construct instantly ceased.
It lowered Its noble head, sending a respectful yet urgent mental transmission back through the psychic space: "The Great One, did this bastard say something out of line to you in the grand hall just now? Even back at the Luwu Purgatory, it was your divine grace that explicitly commanded Diting to let this scumbag leave. Why go to such lengths for him?"
Its colossal tail fin swished irritably through the air, the transmission thick with uncamouflaged confusion. Diting, the one renowned for listening to the hearts of all living things, felt genuinely... frustrated when dealing with a degenerate who kept his mind under lock and key, burying his true obsessions in a total blind spot.
This human didn't believe in gods at all. He was merely cutting a business deal with The Great One.
On the other side of the water mirror, deep within the pitch-black grand hall, the Goddess slowly lifted Her fair, clawed hand from the obsidian armrest, which was caked in the debris of shattered karma.
She looked down at a smear of dark gold divine blood on Her white robe—blood that had not yet dried, representing the backlash She endured by taking on the debts of myriad spirits. Within Her pale gold vertical pupils, there was no thunderous wrath. There was only a quiet, heartbreaking mercy.
Her voice was faint, piercing through the void to strike against Divine Listener's auditory nerves. "Had he not possessed such a channel to vent his inner ramblings... his soul would have collapsed the very first second that inferno finished burning a decade ago."
"If he did not prune his own mind to resemble a cold-blooded block of wood, how else could he have tempered himself into the sharpest 'blade'?" As the divine decree was issued, the grand hall relapsed into a chilling solitude.
Within the barrier, Diting froze completely in its tracks.
Its massive vertical pupils swept over Hans, who was still resting by the edge of the stone bed. This time, It truly understood.
The Great One had shown vulnerability after all. Even when Her spine was pierced through by the steel needles of 'mercy and tolerance' thrust upon Her by the living souls across the universe, the primordial deity still utilized Her supreme indulgence to carve out a sliver of breathing room within the shadows for a lone wolf who had shattered his own flesh and bone.
With that realization, the irritation in the depths of Diting's eyes vanished completely, dissolving into the complex sigh of a deity watching a mortal insect struggle for survival.
It slowly tucked in Its four limbs, returning to Its posture as an immovable, snow-white mountain. Yet, right in front of Its colossal front hooves, the air suddenly rippled like water, solidifying into a massive, holographic water mirror floating a meter above the ground, broadcasting real-time events across the entire Blue Planet.
The pan of the silver scale rattled slightly, and a line of floating runes burned itself into the air right before Hans's eyes, etched in an ancient, mysterious script:
[DO YOU WISH TO WATCH?]
Those words were blunt, completely devoid of unnecessary decoration.
Hans raised his head from his palms, wiping the cold sweat from his face. Looking at the brilliant, massive water mirror and the pale screen that was slowly reloading inside it, he exhaled a long, heavy breath tainted with the taste of rust.
He adjusted his crooked tie, the corners of his mouth once again twisting into that cold, arrogant smirk unique to an elite trial lawyer.
"Show me," he whispered, his gaze as dark and unyielding as an abyss. "I've pulled ten years of all-nighters. I might as well see how grand the opening act of this play is going to be."
Less than a second later, he added, "Though it doesn't have much to do with me this time. They brought this entirely upon themselves."
The grumbling had started up again. Hiding in another dimension, Diting clamped Its claws tightly over Its ears.
—This is exactly why this deity loathes being around other living beings. They are far too noisy.