Chapter 357: Judgment Hall

Honghai City High Court.

The lights in Courtroom 23 should have been turned off.

The schedule clearly stated that today's final case was a labor dispute second trial, presided over by Judge Qian Jingzhi, opening at nine and ending at eleven. It is now past eleven forty.

But no one in the courthouse has left.

It's not that they don't want to go.

It's that they can't leave.

The six-meter-tall bulletproof brass door at the courthouse's main entrance suddenly sealed itself twenty minutes ago, its lock filled with a layer of translucent grayish substance; the security chief and his team spent five minutes with hydraulic shears on it, leaving not a mark.

All side doors, fire exits, and judges' dedicated passages—at the same moment—were locked shut.

At 11:22, the surveillance screens all went black, replaced by scrolling white-ink small characters rising from the bottom, displaying excerpts of judgments.

Honghai City Intermediate People's Court (2038) Hong Criminal Final No. 1127.

Honghai City Intermediate People's Court (2039) Hong Criminal Final No. 0334.

Honghai City High Court (2040) Hong High Criminal Application No. 0019.

In every case, the presiding judge column bears the same name.

Qian Jingzhi.

At this moment, in Courtroom 23, the white-haired Qian Jingzhi is lying face down on the floor.

His robe is crumpled into a rag, his cheek pressed to the cold marble floor, both hands desperately gripping the iron rail of the first row of the gallery, his nail beds torn open, pooling blood.

Useless.

His body is pinned by an invisible immense force, the pressure evenly distributed over every inch of his skin, precise as if a giant hand had welded him to the floor with surgical control.

Besides him, there are seven others.

Three judges, two clerks, a deputy chief prosecutor from the procuratorate, and a middle-aged man in a gray suit—this man is the defense attorney for today's defendant, and also a partner of Qian Jingzhi's brother-in-law.

The seven share Qian Jingzhi's exact posture.

Lying flat. Stuck to the ground. Unable to move.

The only difference is that two of them have stopped struggling.

Because their bodies have been twisted into a knot.

To be precise, starting at the lumbar spine, the entire upper torso has been twisted 180 degrees by a rotational force, faces toward the ceiling while chest and pelvis remain pressed to the floor, the spine completely shattered, the blood-soaked shirt clinging to the deformed torso, the outline distorted beyond human shape.

The sounds they made when they died, Qian Jingzhi will never forget.

The crackling of breaking bones mixed with the bubbling gas forced from their throats, echoing in the empty courtroom for a full four seconds.

The one who did this is now seated in the presiding judge's chair.

Yan Ming.

His pristine deep-blue three-piece suit, high-collar shirt hiding the abnormal pallor on his neck, silver cufflinks catching the light, he sits upright at the center of the judge's bench, back straight, hands folded on the table, bearing the demeanor of any senior judge presiding over a trial.

Only his eyes are wrong.

Those eyes are no longer human in color; the pupils are completely covered by a layer of icy blue light, like two glass beads soaked in liquid nitrogen—no warmth, no focus, yet precisely scrutinizing every expression on the faces of those lying on the floor.

"The seventh defendant, Deputy Chief Prosecutor Zhou Zhiyuan of the Honghai City People's Procuratorate."

Yan Ming flips open the absurdly thick dossier before him, reading aloud in a steady, clear tone—exactly the standard cadence for announcing a verdict in court.

"From 2037 to 2041, you abused your position, intentionally concealing key evidence and instructing subordinates to issue non-prosecutions in eleven criminal cases during the review-and-prosecution stage, totaling 34 million. In the 2039 Lujia Bridge illegal demolition death case, after taking bribes from developers, you downgraded an intentional homicide to negligent manslaughter; the victims' families filed three appeals, all rejected."

Zhou Zhiyuan, lying on the floor, trembles like chaff in a sieve, mumbling something incoherently.

Yan Ming pauses, lowers his gaze to him.

"Any objections from the defendant?"

Zhou Zhiyuan strains every muscle to turn his neck, face streaked with snot and tears, his voice broken: "I... I plead guilty... please... I've returned all the money... all of it..."

Yan Ming closes the dossier.

"Guilty plea."

He picks up the black gavel on the table.

"Then, based on the facts ascertained in this trial, according to—"

He pauses, a faint curve appearing at the corner of his mouth.

"According to Article 1 of the Yan Ming Code, anyone who abuses power for personal gain, recklessly endangers lives, and cannot be pursued through lawful means shall be sentenced to death."

The gavel is raised high.

"Carry it out immediately."

Zhou Zhiyuan's scream just bursts from his throat—

Boom—

That tremendous roar came from the direction of the courthouse's main door, shaking the entire building.

Yan Ming's hand, holding the gavel, halts midair.

He doesn't turn his head, but his icy blue eyes shift to the right.

The second sound.

This one is deeper and more violent than the first, carrying the metallic screech distinctive of metal deformation.

Then the third.

The several-ton bulletproof brass door finally gave way; the whole panel tore from its frame, dragging fragments of the grayish sealing material, sliding across the marble floor of the courthouse hall, smashing two whole rows of wooden gallery seats, and finally embedding itself in the opposite wall.

Dust explodes, the light tubes crackle in the vibration.

Everyone still alive in the courtroom, together with the "defendants" lying immobile on the floor, all twist their necks toward the source of the sound.

The dust has not yet settled.

A roar pierces the dust.

That voice did not belong to human vocal cords. Its low frequency was deep enough to make the chest cavity resonate, and the tail end dragged a string of wet hisses, like stuffing a beast's roar and the sound of fingernails scraping a blackboard into the same throat.

Then, from the grayish smoke and dust, something walked out.

Saying "walked" is not quite accurate.

It came crashing in.

It stood 2.3 meters tall, the right half of its body covered in dark brown keratinous carapace, while the left half's exposed muscle tissue was studded with compound eyes of various sizes, each eyeball rotating independently, scanning every vital sign in the courtroom. Its mouth split from the left ear root to the right ear root, and between the uneven rows of bony sharp teeth, transparent slime dripped downward.

Jia Shan.

Everyone's breath in the courtroom caught in their throats.

Qian Jingzhi lay on the ground, his gaze level with the pair of bare giant feet that had shattered the marble floor tiles—each toe the size of an adult's fist, the toenails translucent, with black blood vessels pulsing underneath.

His bladder gave out in that second.

Then, a second figure appeared on the collapsed door panel.

He wore a Black Combat Suit, a Suppressor Electric Blade slung horizontally at his waist, his steps unhurried, striking the copper plates with an even ding-ding sound.

Su Ming.

As he entered the court hall, his gaze first swept over the corpses and the living on the floor, lingering a few tenths of a second longer on the two bodies twisted into knots, then he lifted his head and looked toward the bench.

Yan Ming was also looking at him.

Their gazes collided at the center of the courtroom.

Yan Ming slowly lowered the gavel in his hand, setting it back on the tabletop with a muted thud.

He leaned back in his chair, sizing up Su Ming with the appraising gaze of one examining a witness.

Silence lasted about three seconds.

"Scavenger of the Federation?"

Yan Ming's voice was steady, even carrying a hint of the composure he showed during courtroom questioning. He glanced at Jia Shan's face, covered in compound eyes, showing no fear, merely lifting his chin slightly.

"You're late. These social parasites have already pleaded guilty."

Su Ming didn't take the bait.

His right hand drew the electric blade from his waist, thumb pressing the switch; blue-white arclight flickered twice along the blade, illuminating the dried, blackened bloodstain at his feet.

He thrust the blade forward, shaking off whatever blood droplet clung to its tip.

"I'm not here to save them."

Su Ming stepped onto the copper plate, then onto the marble floor, and walked two steps toward the bench.

"I'm here to judge you."

Yan Ming didn't respond. He merely looked at Su Ming for a few seconds, then the curve of his lips deepened a little.

That smile was clean, even carrying the appreciation a scholar feels when encountering a worthy opponent in a debate.

"Judge me?" Yan Ming pushed the dossier aside, interlacing his fingers on the table. "Under what law? Article 232 of the Federation's current criminal code? Intentional homicide?"

He glanced at those lying on the ground.

"Of the crimes committed by these people beneath your feet, which have been investigated? Which have been punished? While they sat up there, no one came to judge them. Now that I have judged them, you say I am guilty."

Yan Ming stood up.

In a crisp suit, spine straight, he stood on the presiding judge's seat, looking down, his deep blue eyes locked firmly on Su Ming—

"So I'm curious: you brought this monster barging in—are you here to uphold justice, or to uphold them?"

Su Ming's steps stopped.

It wasn't that he was at a loss for words.

He needed Jia Shan to be in position first.

"Jia Shan."

One word.

Behind him, the multi-eyed monster over two meters tall tensed its limbs, its carapace bursting with a rapid series of clicks as all its compound eyes locked onto the figure in the dark blue suit on the bench.

The next second, it moved.

As it pushed off, the marble floor exploded into a half-meter-deep crater; its whole body became a brown blur, carrying the momentum of a thousand jin, like a flesh-and-blood cannonball launched from a barrel, hurtling straight for the judge's seat.

The wind pressure overturned two rows of spectator chairs.

Qian Jingzhi and others on the ground were flung into a somersault by the blast, some passing out on the spot.

The monster, its body covered in compound eyes, opened its massive mouth split from ear to ear, slime drawing silver threads between its teeth, while its two thick, carapace-covered forelegs rose high, aiming to smash both person and bench into powder.

Yan Ming did not dodge.

He didn't even rise.

He simply reached out his right hand and picked up the black gavel on the table.

Then——

Knock.

An extremely soft sound.

The gavel fell onto the tabletop.

Jia Shan's massive body, hurtling at high speed through midair, seemed as if someone had pressed pause.

It hovered less than two meters from the bench, every compound eye strained to the limit, limbs locked in an attack pose, hundreds of muscle fibers trembling violently beneath the skin—

but it couldn't move an inch.

Yan Ming returned the gavel to its original place.

His azure pupils did not glance at Jia Shan, but swept past the hovering monster and landed squarely on Su Ming at the doorway.

"Contempt of court."

His voice was not loud, yet it echoed in the dead-quiet courthouse, each word clear and piercing.

The court sentences—

The Gavel is raised again.