Chapter 462: Blocking the Divine Path, Death Sentence

The villa vanished.

It wasn't destroyed. It didn't collapse. The entire four‑story main building, together with its walls, garden, parking lot and the fifteen‑meter‑deep foundation, was engulfed in three seconds by a soaring crimson light column.

The light column was dozens of meters in diameter.

It pierced upward from the ground, tearing through the rainstorm's veil and burning a half‑kilometer‑wide swath of clouds into a blazing red hole. A wave of heat mixed with the scent of blood swept outward; two members of the Federation special forces in the thicket were flipped over, and the night‑vision lenses on their helmets shattered.

Su Ming's eardrums rang with high‑frequency hum.

He braced the old locust tree behind him to avoid being blown away by the gust, squinting toward the core of the light column—not with his eyes, but by "reading" it with the micro Weird analyzer on his wrist.

The reading jumped from A to A+.

Then from A+ to Quasi‑S.

Then the instrument's screen shattered.

Su Ming tossed the broken‑screen device aside, spitting out two words between his teeth: "Damned."

His mind completed all calculations in 0.3 seconds—Liu Zhen was dead. The crucial bait, which had been protected for ten minutes, hadn't even had time to make a sound before dying. The three‑step plan to lure Zhang Yuanqing into view, drain his Karma, and then surround and net him—its first step was instantly blown up.

No, that's wrong.

Su Ming slammed his hand onto the headset.

It wasn't the first step that blew up. Zhang Yuanqing never followed their rhythm at all. This madman never intended to bargain with anyone from the start; he slammed his trump card onto the table—using two hundred and thirteen mining‑grief souls, he forcibly opened a Quasi‑S‑level domain.

The edge of the crimson light column began to swell. It didn't expand uniformly; it pulsed outward like a beating heart, each "thrust" enlarging the column's coverage by another ring. Surface puddles evaporated, the asphalt cracked, and dark‑red steam rose from the fissures.

In Su Ming's view, the spot where the hillside villa once stood had been replaced by a structure that didn't belong to this dimension.

Court.

To be precise, it was a court forged from broken bones and rusted iron.

The dome was towering, so high that under the rain‑laden sky its upper edge was invisible. Densely packed ribs formed a Gothic arch, and between the bone seams were embedded minerals that emitted a faint green glow—no, they weren't minerals.

They were teeth.

Human molars.

Tens of thousands of them.

The court's outer wall kept growing, black rock pillars spewing from the ground with scorching heat, stretching upward like trees. Every pillar's surface was covered with legal inscriptions—Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, English, Latin—dense statutes etched along the shaft, the characters written in blood that continued to flow down.

When Su Ming cut into the encrypted channel, his hand was steady. His voice was steady, too.

But the words he spoke were unsteady.

"All units, listen up."

Rain hammered his face.

"The bait is down, the domain has formed, the original operation plan is void."

The channel fell silent for half a second. Liang Wen's voice was the first to break through, unusually free of teenage bravado: "My pants just got wet. This isn't from the rain, you understand."

"Shut up."

Su Ming cranked the headset volume to max.

"Now there's only one way—before this madman's domain solidifies, we charge in, pull him off the judgment platform. Once he's settled, the whole ten‑kilometer radius is finished."

He paused.

"Including Qiu Ce Yuan."

The channel fell completely silent.

Three seconds of silence was more effective than any order.

Then Jiang Yuan's voice echoed up from the underground drainage tunnel, crisp and clean: "The Underground Parking Garage entrance has been swallowed by the domain; I saved myself the breaching. Thirty‑seven Shadow Soldiers, first wave."

On the eastern ridge, Chen Shao's voice was icy: "The spatial anchor has been locked by the Eden Garden people; he can't escape."

Xu An stayed silent. But Su Ming heard, through the channel, the sound of the Red Wood Ruler striking bone—once. Twice. It was Silent One counting down for himself.

Su Ming drew the Containment Object pistol, pointing its barrel at the crimson court entrance.

"Gather the net."

The end of the underground drainage tunnel was replaced by a crimson flesh wall.

Jiang Yuan sprinted ahead. The Black Combat Suit clung to his body, the Card Bag at his waist already unlatched, Dark Playing Cards floated around him, their edges flashing with metallic cold light. His shadow stretched while he ran, then shattered into thirty‑seven independent black silhouettes—Shadow Soldiers.

They made no sound.

No breath.

Like thirty‑seven slivers of night cut out, pressed against the court's bone seams, they darted toward the core at speeds far beyond human.

Jiang Yuan himself surged forward through the main passage.

The moment he passed through the flesh wall, his body temperature plummeted to below zero. His breath turned to white mist, his nasal cavity filled with a sharp mix of iron rust and sulfur. The ground beneath his feet was hardened clotted blood, each step emitting a faint, crisp crack like breaking eggshells.

The interior of the court was far larger than it appeared from outside.

Unreasonably vast.

Though the dome measured only two hundred meters in radius, stepping inside felt like entering an underground city. Passages branched, rock pillars rose, and the green light leaking through the rib‑formed dome's gaps bathed everything in a morgue‑like hue.

There was a sound in the air.

It wasn't Zhang Yuanqing's voice.

It was crying.

Dozens, hundreds—two hundred and thirteen sources of sound. Mostly men, some old, some young. The cries were neither loud nor soft, seeping from the bone walls in all directions, like groundwater, omnipresent.

Mining‑grief workers.

Their resentment formed the foundation of this court.

Jiang Yuan stopped for a step.

Just one step.

Then he suppressed the nausea rising from his stomach and kept running forward.

The courtroom center.

Zhang Yuanqing stands on the judgment platform.

No—he's not standing. He's hovering.

His feet hover half a meter above the ground, his body tilting slightly backward, arms spread, the posture Weirdly graceful. The gray‑white shirt has long been soaked with crimson Karma, clinging to his gaunt frame, the dark veins beneath the skin visible. The law bone armor continues to crawl onto him, sprouting piece by piece from the bone seams, covering his shoulder blades, his chest cavity, and his spine.

A cluster of eerie green fire burns in his right eye socket.

It's not flame. It resembles some liquid, breathing thing, slowly rotating within the socket.

He now holds a Gavel in his hand.

Made of white bone.

The head of the hammer is a complete human skull, the jawbone removed, the crown flattened to serve as the striking face. The handle is a femur, engraved all over with law articles handwritten by Zhang Yuanqing.

Below the judgment platform.

Liu Zhen's corpse is embedded in the floor.

To be precise, it was cast into the ground together with ore, broken bones, and solidified magma. Only the upper half of the face protrudes, its expression forever frozen in a twisted extreme terror. The mouth gapes wide, filled with coal slag and gravel—the same fate as a mining accident victim suffocating.

His manner of death was meticulously arranged.

The forensic doctor's hand.

So cruel that each wound has a corresponding judgment document.

Jiang Yuan's Shadow Soldiers arrived at the courtroom perimeter a step before him. Thirty‑seven dark silhouettes surged from behind columns, bone‑wall cracks, and the rib‑like gaps of the vaulted ceiling, silently encircling the judgment platform.

At the same moment, the bone wall on the east side of the courtroom was split open by a violent telekinetic force.

Chen Shao walked in through the fissure.

The hem of his coat flutters, rainwater streaming down from his meticulously combed slicked‑back hair. His left eye is a normal black pupil; his right eye is a crimson Demon Eye—this eye now emits a telekinetic field that ripples the air within a three‑meter‑half radius.

Behind him follows Xu An.

Barefoot. Muddy water. Sewn‑up lips. Hollow eyes. He holds a Red Wood Ruler, its surface stained with some viscous black substance.

Further back are twelve Eden Garden elites.

On the south side of the courtroom, Su Ming and Liang Wen lead fourteen Federation Special Forces in a frontal charge. The Containment Object attached to Liang Wen's long blade is still dripping, dark flames coiled around the blade emit a low hum.

"I'm being serious," Liang Wen glanced at the vaulted ceiling made of human bones, swallowed a mouthful of saliva, "this décor style has the same flair as the funeral home back home, but it's more creative."

No one replies.

Encircled on all sides.

Thirty‑seven Shadow Soldiers, the Federation Special Forces' Containment Weapons, the Eden Garden elites' Weird armor, Chen Shao's telekinetic field, Xu An's Regulation domain— all forces simultaneously target the hovering Zhang Yuanqing on the judgment platform.

Zhang Yuanqing looks downward.

The green flame flickers once in his eye socket.

Then he smiles.

It's not a mad laugh, nor a reckless grin. It's the genuine, instinctive smile of a forensic doctor after dissecting a highly complex corpse on the autopsy table and confirming the final inference.

Extremely satisfied.

"Arrived in full force."

A hoarse voice reverberates between the bone walls, the cries of two hundred and thirteen resentful souls simultaneously dim— the courtroom falls silent.

Zhang Yuanqing rotates the white‑bone Gavel in his hand, the skull striking face down, and lightly taps the judgment platform.

Thud.

Just this once.

The courtroom floor suddenly brightens.

On the blood‑red floor tiles beneath everyone's feet, dense law patterns emerge simultaneously—not characters, but chains. Crimson chains, condensed from law articles, sprout from the ground, hissing, coiling around each person's ankles like living things.

Among the Federation Special Forces, two people's feet were bound; the moment the chains touched their skin, their eyeballs turned white, the seven orifices bled, and their bodies were drained of strength, collapsing.

"The guilty fall first," Zhang Yuanqing, high above, says, his voice cold enough to freeze the rain, "My courtroom has a Regulation—innocent people are untouched by the chains."

A faint glimmer of chain appears at Su Ming's ankle, but after one loop it loosens. He looks down briefly, his complexion turning extremely grim.

Zhang Yuanqing ignores him.

Those eyes burning with eerie green flame slowly sweep over everyone in the courtroom. Over Jiang Yuan. Over Liang Wen. Over Chen Shao. Over Xu An.

Finally stopping at the void directly beneath the platform's center.

He lifts the Gavel.

The bone‑made hammer head casts a massive shadow in the green light, enveloping the entire courtroom.

"Finally, those who block the divine path—"

Zhang Yuanqing's mouth corners curl to the limit.

The Gavel falls.

"—death sentence."