Chapter 358: Absolute Court

Detain.

The sound of the Gavel hitting the table was not heavy.

It could even be said to be light; it didn't even provoke an echo.

But Jia Shan's massive 2.3‑meter body, at the very instant that light sound fell, was slapped down from mid‑air.

It wasn't a fall.

It was a slap.

Like an invisible giant hand pressing down from the ceiling, a weight of thousands of pounds slammed onto Jia Shan's back without any cushioning.

The deep brown keratin shell covering its right side burst on the spot into spider‑web cracks, fragments splintered and lodged into the backs of the surrounding gallery seats.

The marble floor collapsed in a whole slab at the point of impact, and the raised dust and debris engulfed half of the courtroom.

All of Jia Shan's Compound Eyes widened simultaneously.

It wasn't anger.

It was terror.

Its countless eyeballs spun wildly within their sockets, its four thick limbs were flattened against the ground at an impossible angle, muscle fibers stretched to the limit, and the subdermal vessels swelled as if about to burst.

It struggled.

But it couldn't even lift a single finger.

That force was too clean—no aftershock, no ripple, not even a sound. It was as if someone had directly rewritten the physical rule "Jia Shan can move" at the code level and deleted it from the root.

Su Ming's pupils contracted by half a millimeter.

—This is not telekinesis.

Telekinetic suppression has directionality and a point of force, but what Jia Shan endured had no direction. It was uniform, absolute, all‑sided.

It is a rule.

It is the same Weird world rule as in the Blood Moon game.

On the bench, Yan Ming placed the Gavel back in its original position.

His movements were slow and steady, as meticulous as placing evidence in a trial. His deep blue pupils, through the dust swirling between Su Ming and Jia Shan, locked onto the standing silhouette at the doorway.

Su Ming did not look at Jia Shan.

It wasn't indifference; it was too late.

—Because the courtroom is changing.

The marble floor beneath his feet began to fade. It wasn't cracking or collapsing, but like an oil painting splashed with turpentine.

Colors, textures, and grain dissolved at a visible speed from the edges toward the center, white, gray, and brown particles turning into countless light points that rose and were swallowed.

The walls vanished.

The ceiling vanished.

Those collapsed chairs, shattered crystal chandeliers, blood‑stained tablecloths, and the judges and chief prosecutors lying motionless on the floor—all were silently stripped from this space.

What replaced them was black.

Pure darkness containing not a single ray of light.

Su Ming lowered his head.

The floor beneath his feet turned into a mirror‑smooth black surface, reflecting his own silhouette. Looking up, in the infinitely extending darkness above, three pallid fluorescent tubes hovered in midair, their beams precisely covering the central area of the courtroom.

The bench was still there.

But it was no longer the bench of Courtroom 23 in the Honghai City High Court.

It had risen. It stood three meters tall. Above the black marble platform, an absurdly huge Balance descended from void, its left pan engraved with "Sin", the right pan with "Punishment", and the brass arms swayed slightly in the windless domain.

Yan Ming sat directly beneath the Balance.

He smoothed the crease of his suit cuff, interlaced his ten fingers, and placed them on the newly formed black bench.

"Domain activation—"

His voice was not loud, yet it emanated from all directions simultaneously. Each word carried a physical pressure that made the eardrums, tympanic membranes, and even the inner walls of the skull resonate.

"Absolute Court."

Su Ming's right hand instinctively reached for the electric blade at his waist.

His fingers touched the hilt.

Then the hilt began to shatter.

A blue‑white arc flashed briefly then vanished; the Suppressor Electric Blade started to disintegrate from the grip, its metal molecules scattering like blown apart into tiny light specks that flowed out through Su Ming's finger gaps.

Three seconds.

A Federation‑standard weapon that could fetch seven figures on the Black Market turned into nothingness in his hand.

Su Ming's fingers hovered in midair, clenching and releasing.

His palm was empty.

"Within the Absolute Court—" Yan Ming's voice continued, "All acts of violence are illegal. Carrying weapons, intentional harm, violent threats... all are stripped away."

His tone was calm, as if giving an introductory lecture to first‑year law students.

"You can understand it as: no form of combat is allowed here."

Su Ming hadn't had time to devise a countermeasure when the black mirror beneath his feet suddenly liquefied. Two invisible forces from the left and right simultaneously clasped his shoulders and waist, pulling his whole body toward the courtroom's center.

Su Ming did not struggle.

It wasn't that he didn't want to; he had tried. The Time Marrow Worm on his wrist twitched the instant he was dragged, and he instinctively tried to activate the deceleration ability—

There was no response.

The Time Marrow Worm's pulse was normal, but the temporal interference wave it emitted was instantly swallowed silently by the darkness.

It wasn't suppression.

In the underlying rules of this domain, there is simply no "combat" option.

He was dragged to the exact center of the hall.

A chair sprouted from the floor, complete with armrests, a backrest, and two Leather Binding Straps. Its shape is very familiar—a standard courtroom defendant's seat.

Su Ming was pressed into the chair.

The binding straps automatically tightened, restraining his wrists and ankles.

A beam of spotlight shone down from above, blindingly white, pinning him at the absolute center of this space.

In all directions lay endless darkness.

Above his head floated a Balance.

Directly ahead, on a three‑meter‑high judgment seat, Yan Ming looked down at him.

The two pairs of eyes met.

"Su Ming."

Yan Ming opened the dossier before him, its origin unknown.

"Federal Weird Investigation Bureau new Core Captain, codename undecided. Twenty‑seven years old, male, Master of Deception."

He read it very slowly, enunciating each word clearly.

"The above identity is your outward façade."

Yan Ming turned the page of the dossier.

"Now, this court will adjudicate your true file."

Su Ming squinted.

In the darkness above the spotlight, an image suddenly materialized.

It was not surveillance footage.

It was a memory.

His memory.

—a memory from a previous life.

In the image, a gaunt youth crouched in a corner of an apartment building, using a rusted iron pipe to shatter another survivor's kneecap, then rifled three bottles of pure water from the other's backpack.

The youth's face was projected enlarged.

It was Su Ming.

"July 19, 2042, seventh day of the Blood Moon Weird Domain." Yan Ming's voice read, "You seized fellow survivors' sustenance by force, causing the other to die of dehydration."

The scene switched.

Another scene. Su Ming rummaged for food inside a residential building; behind him someone called for help, a middle‑aged woman being held by a Mutant's leg. Su Ming glanced back.

Then he turned and walked away.

"July 21 of the same year, you ignored a dying survivor, allowing a non‑combatant to be captured and killed by a Mutant."

The image cut again.

A darker memory.

"July 24. You used other survivors as bait, diverting the Mutant's pursuit, indirectly causing three deaths."

Yan Ming closed the dossier.

The massive Balance above his head began to tilt.

The left pan—inscribed with "Sin"—slowly sank.

The right pan rose.

The Balance's arm emitted a low metallic scraping sound, unusually harsh in this dead silence.

More terrifying, as the Balance tilted, a silhouette began to coalesce in the darkness above Su Ming's head.

Giant Saw Blade.

A massive Giant Saw Blade over two meters wide, its edge glowing with a cold blue light, descending inch by inch in sync with the Balance's tilt.

Su Ming looked up at the object.

Then he lowered his head, looking toward Yan Ming on the judgment seat.

"Your courtroom—" his voice was soft, his pace even, "uses only my memories from a previous life. How did you see those things?"

Yan Ming did not answer the question.

He stood up, the hem of his robe drifting slightly in the windless space.

His deep‑blue pupils looked down from three meters up, reflecting Su Ming's reflection bound to the chair.

"This courtroom is something humanity will never possess."

Yan Ming's voice shifted tone. No longer a judge reading a verdict, but a preacher who had cultivated for twelve years and finally grasped the truth, preaching.

"Absolute fairness."

"Here, there are no connections, no background, no lawyer fees, no Presiding Judge's selfishness. Only guilt and innocence. Guilty—death penalty. Immediate execution."

He lowered his head, looking at Su Ming.

"Now it's your turn."

The Giant Saw Blade descended another inch.

"Cold‑blooded, ruthless, treating lives as weeds, sacrificing your own kind for self‑preservation. Can you deny these?"

Su Ming leaned against the chair back, remaining silent.

Yan Ming continued, his tone growing colder, bearing a kind of lofty, judge‑like compassion—

"Defend yourself."

"If you can prove that this selfish, ugly species humanity still has a right to survive, or—prove that your hands are clean."

Otherwise.

The Gavel was in their hand, slightly lifted.

Death penalty.

Su Ming's head leaned against the chair back, the spotlight's white light fell on Su Ming's face, reflecting Su Ming's deep-colored eyes as two dry wells.

The binding strap tightened around Su Ming's wrist, the Time Marrow Worm lay quietly beneath the skin. The weapon was gone, the ability sealed, and a Giant Saw Blade hovered above Su Ming's head, descending at one millimeter per second.