Within the Divine Realm, inside the Celestial Jailer's Domain.
There was no sun, no moon, no stars, nor any earthly wind—only a boundless, endless expanse of deathly white mist.
Hans, the trial lawyer, once again stood at the very center of the countless colossal obsidian iron cages. The searing hot wind blew his meticulously slicked-back hair into a chaotic mess, but the vortex of red and green resentment swirling around him was spinning faster and faster.
What on earth does this deity want? I just sat down to watch the "play."
He glanced at the golden light enveloping his body.
And... if you're going to bring someone here, couldn't you invite them nicely? Don't you know how hot it is in here?
Directly ahead of him, a thirty-foot-tall primordial Divine Beast—the Celestial Jailer—slowly turned Its cold, arrogant human face toward him.
Behind It, the nine thick tiger tails marked with black horizontal stripes swayed gently in mid-air. With every single swish, several spectral bonds woven from karmic chains—wielded by invisible entities—materialized out of thin air within the thick fog.
Clang—
The chains suddenly snapped taut.
The spirit of a mutated rat, possessing the greedy eyes of a human, was pierced straight through its shoulder blades by the chains. It let out a desperate, agonizing shriek as it was dragged alive toward the burning furnace at the edge of the horizon.
Floating above the rat's physical form was a spiritual phantom. That rat was none other than Anderson, the politician of the Bald Eagle Nation whose human status had just been violently revoked back on the Blue Planet.
This place was the deity's purgatory.
Hans squeezed his left arm tightly—the arm that had once been packed with seventeen microchips, its wounds now completely erased by divine power. His fingernails dug deep into the unblemished, porcelain skin. In this exact second, his mind went entirely blank.
It's... it's him.
In a fraction of a second, his rationality was nearly obliterated. He bogged forward, drawing closer and closer, his hands already tensing to tear into the creature himself.
That rat was one of the prime targets of his vengeance. It was the very reason he had endured the curses of thousands back on the Blue Planet, becoming a "crooked lawyer" who didn't hesitate to help a monster win a sadistic lawsuit just to infiltrate their ranks.
But a massive tiger tail swept inward, coiling around him and preventing him from advancing a single step further.
His eyes flared blood-red as he glared at the Celestial Jailer, unable to comprehend why the Divine Beast was stopping him.
Did you not bring me here specifically so I could exact my revenge firsthand?
Hans lowered his head, a violent storm raging fiercely within his mind.
After a long pause, the human lawyer straightened his spine. The corners of his mouth twisted into a cold, arrogant smirk unlike anything he had ever shown before.
He adjusted his crooked silk tie, his voice carrying an unyielding, rebellious edge: "Why did you bring me here? Surely not just to have me sit as a spectator? If I may speak bluntly, I, Hans, prefer to finish them off with my own two hands."
Hearing this, the Celestial Jailer nodded Its colossal head. Then, the Divine Beast spoke: "The Great One has recognized you as a lone wolf among humanity. Therefore, those vermin infesting the mortal world while wrapped in human skin... should be thoroughly liquidated by a lone wolf like you!"
Somewhere in the open ocean, off the coast of the Three Blue Lion Country.
A massive, one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-ton nuclear-powered luxury cruise ship was drifting aimlessly across the water, its physical constants completely disabled by the divine purge.
Inside the top-tier grand suite, there was no electricity. Only a few scattered candles flickered, casting a dim, sickly yellow glow across the room.
"Fuck! Stop screaming! The lines are dead! The satellite phones are completely fried!!"
A heavy-set white man in his early thirties was frantically smashing wine glasses against the floor. Floating above his head was an identical health bar, yet its color was a hollow grey:
[KARMIC LIABILITY: 0].
His name was Jack. He was a third-party independent contractor hired by the Chief Executive Officer of Frontier Technology's subsidiary in the Three Blue Lion Country. He had never personally participated in the torture or slaughter of animals.
Instead, he executed far dirtier commands.
Years ago, during the chemical arson attack that targeted Hans's wife and children, the man who had hidden behind the curtain to issue the final liquidation order to the mercenaries was this exact fat bastard.
"Young Master Robert turned into a dog at the mid-mountain villa... The Chairman turned into a heap of empty clothes in his office... We're done for, we're completely done for..." Beside him, his secretary was paralyzed on the floor, foaming at the mouth in sheer terror.
"Shut up! We still have this cruise ship! We still have the automated mechanical defenses here!"
Jack shrieked hysterically, drawing a specialized, pure-steel revolver driven strictly by mechanical spring-firing mechanisms from his waist. In this stagnant wasteland entirely cut off from electronic signals, this primitive mechanical firearm was his sole remaining sense of security.
However, at this exact microsecond—
From the grand suite's security door, forged from four-inch-thick specialized alloy, there came a crisp, echoing click without any warning.
The lock core automatically spun open.
The heavy alloy door slid apart toward both sides in a silent, deathly motion, revealing the long corridor outside, illuminated entirely by the pale, cold glare of the celestial canopy.
The cold ocean wind roared into the room.
A middle-aged man dressed in a sharp, custom-tailored black suit stepped through the threshold. His slicked-back hair was immaculate. Holding a jet-black legal gavel in his hand, he walked over the shattered glass on the floor, stepping forward with measured, unhurried strides. His face was completely devoid of human emotion.
Upon his forehead, a newly fused nebula symbol pulsed, radiating a ghostly, netherworld aura of absolute death.
"Hans?! It's you?! You traitor, you actually dared to hunt me down all the way here?!"
Jack let out a sharp gasp, instantly raising the revolver in his hand and aiming the black muzzle directly between Hans's brows.
"My uncle paid you tens of millions in legal fees back then! You helped us win so many of those animal slaughter lawsuits! And now you're turning around to bite us with this pack of freaks?! Where is your professional ethics?! You shameless, crooked lawyer!!"
Hans stood at the grand doorway, letting the cold wind whip the hem of his suit jacket. He did not launch into the long-winded monologues typical of villains in web novels, nor did he recite lines about justice. He merely raised his right hand slowly and used his thumb to lightly flick a speck of dust off his suit cuff.
"Jack, on that night ten years ago, when you signed the word 'clear' on the offshore bill, did you ever consider that what you were clearing away was the only warmth I had left in this world?"
"Don't give me that fucking talk about ten years ago! Die!!"
The fat on Jack's face twisted violently. With a loud roar, his index finger pulled the trigger of the revolver all the way back.
Clack.
The firing pin slammed hard into the primer. But as it did, the legal gavel emitted a jet-black barrier.
The chemical probability of gunpowder ignition had been permanently erased from reality by the universe's foundational code. There was no gunshot. There was no flash of fire. The bullet sat silently trapped inside the hot cylinder, reduced to an utterly useless piece of dead iron.
"How is this possible?! Why won't it fire?!" Jack's eyes nearly bulged out of his head in sheer terror. He frantically kept pulling the trigger, producing nothing but a rapid succession of hollow clack-clack-clack sounds.
"Because the moment I arrived, the rules changed," Hans's voice was dead flat.
Within a ten-millionth of a millisecond after the words left his mouth, the light of the gavel flashed. His entire body turned into a black blur, instantly crossing the five-meter distance to appear directly in front of Jack.
BANG!!
The black legal gavel ripped through the air with a piercing screech, smashing brutally against Jack's thick right wrist. The force behind this strike was terrifying. A sickening crunch of breaking bone echoed through the room. Within a ten-thousandth of a second, Jack's entire right wrist was pulverized into shards of bone, and the revolver hit the floor with a dull clatter.
"AAAAHHH—! My hand! My hand!!" The fat fixer rolled frantically on the floor, clutching his broken arm.
Hans looked down at him from a height, the red and green nebula symbol on his forehead spinning at high speed, erupting with a piercing brilliance. He did not end this enemy's life with a single strike, because he wanted these demons to vomit out every single drop of their blood debt while remaining entirely conscious.
"Courtroom C, interface link established."
Hans coldly delivered those five words.
Outside the window, the roaring ocean flattened instantly. Up in the sky, upon the colossal pale media screen, Jack's trembling, blood-soaked face of pure terror was pulled directly into the absolute center of all humanity's retinas.
"Jack, today is not just your execution. Every single coordinate of the animal torture bases Frontier Technology has invested in on the dark web over the past decade... will now be brought down by me, the very person you called an insignificant 'ordinary human'..."
Hans raised his foot, stamping his leather dress shoe violently onto Jack's fat face, forcing his agonizing shrieks right back down his throat. His teeth ground together so hard they audibly clicked.
"...Official bankruptcy liquidation! And after this, I am going... to tear the bones of those black-market scum into absolute splinters!"
Inside the Divine Realm, before the Beast God, seventeen water mirrors replayed the "evidence" Hans had gathered over all these years.
The armrest of Her divine throne had long since been ground into fine powder beneath Her fingertips.
"So, it truly had to do with you."
She let out a soft laugh, though the sound carried a trace of lethal ruthlessness. "Splendid. You have likely forgotten whose master I hail from."