The aftershock of that black chain's tremor was still echoing through the hall.
Every floating scroll gave a faint shake. Clause-characters seeped a fraction out past their borders before being forced back in, like someone had knocked on the door from outside and all the people inside scrambled to slam the windows shut.
The stone slab before the chief recorder shuddered once, then went still.
He lifted his head and glanced at Qi Luo. Whatever had been stirred in his gaze was instantly buried under a cold gleam.
"Qi Luo," he said, his voice returning to procedural chill. "Your tongue may be sharp enough to prod the world into self-checking."
"But today's trial is not about what the world once wrote wrong."
"It is about you—this 'Key'—and what you have done over these decades."
He stretched out a thin hand and slowly traced across the slab.
All around the hall, the scrolls flared with a ring of light.
"—Clause adjudication ritual, begin,"
a certain elder phantom on the high seats intoned.
In an instant, every Chain in the dome drew taut under some invisible pull.
The array under Qi Luo's feet gave a fine, brittle crackle.
Along the edge of the formation, small covenant stones rose from the floor one by one, forming a circle, each stone corresponding to some node in his life.
[Adjudication target: Qi Luo.]
[Scan range: From the moment his name was first inscribed into the Basic Covenant, to present.]
[Scan contents:]
[I. Basic Covenant clause-change log.]
[II. Public, lawful covenant actions.]
[III. Unauthorized clause-interference actions.]
The last line trailed a long string of parentheses behind it like a chain of sins waiting to unfold.
Qi Luo felt as if a dozen rough hands had dug their fingers into the edge of his name in the roster and flipped it out.
The Key-Sigil in his chest was dragged with that force, heat rushing up his bones.
—They were going to flip through his entire life.
—Starting from the moment his name was carved.
The first light-screen rose over the array.
[Record One: Basic Covenant · Name Entry]
The image showed a cold inner chamber of the Temple.
A stone dais. Runes. Mist from the abyssal pipes faintly rising through cracks in the floor.
A newborn baby lay in the center, chest being carved with its first sigil—the crude tool scraped across skin, blood welling out in a line that was quickly swallowed back by rune-light.
Qi Luo recognized himself.
—He'd heard that blurred crying in his dreams a thousand times.
Several clergy stood around the dais, chanting dry covenant text:
[Carrier ID ×××, added to the Basic Covenant.]
[Note: Candidate container for Rollback Contingency; partial stripes hidden.]
The image suddenly jolted.
The text that should have continued on was smothered by a burst of black mist.
The mist rolled across the screen, blotting out the next few lines.
In the seats, some of the minor gods leaned forward.
"What is that…?" one frowned.
Qi Luo's chest tightened.
He knew that black mist.
He'd seen the same shroud on his own name in the roster during a Chapter Five reading of the Basic Covenant; that same mist had bitten him when he reverse-browsed his own clauses that night.
—Obscuration clause.
[Detected: Obscuration clause active.]
[Obscured object: Portions of carrier's Basic Covenant fields.]
[Obscuration level: Higher than Covenant Council audit permissions.]
These few lines of ice-cold technical text flickered in the World Base-Covenant's sight.
The chief recorder's eyes narrowed.
"Raise permissions," he said coldly to the hall. "In the name of the world's narrative authority, petition to lift the obscuration."
The black chain on the dome did not move.
The self-check module's reply crawled out, slow and unhurried:
[Request denied.]
[Reason: Obscuration clause was written by "unknown higher-level." Current adjudication authority insufficient.]
[Suggestion: Maintain obscuration to avoid triggering unknown contingency.]
These lines were not projected for everyone—only certain high seats and internal Hunter chains flashed with them for a heartbeat.
Ruan Ji saw.
Qi Luo saw.
The phantoms on the high seats traded looks; the air between them visibly split down the middle.
"'Unknown higher-level'," one god said coldly. "There is someone above us?"
"The world," another phantom said quietly.
"Or—the abyss."
Qi Luo stood in the center of the array, looking up at the black chain on the dome.
It trembled faintly, as if wordlessly saying: "This part is not yours to command."
The screen cut over.
[Record Two: Rust Street Childhood · Minor Covenant Actions]
Now the image was an alley in Rust Street. A child skinny as a stray cat lay sprawled at a stall, bright eyes fixed on a crumpled debt stone.
"—If 'daily double penalty on overdue' doesn't clearly say when the count starts, can't we treat it as starting next year?" the child-version of Qi Luo muttered to the air.
The stall owner beside him looked panicked. "Kid, don't talk nonsense. If the ones upstairs hear—"
He didn't finish.
A line popped up at the top of the screen:
[Unauthorized clause-interpretation ×1]
[Result: Reduced one stall owner's debt pressure.]
There was a smothered chuckle from the witness stands.
"This counts as a crime too?" one of the Rust Street witnesses couldn't help grumbling under his breath.
"If that counts," the person next to him added, "what about your Temple's little gods scribbling rubbish into clauses every day?"
The screen kept turning.
[Record Three: Star-Signet Academy Entrance Exam · Wager Clause]
[Record Four: Classroom obedience case · Professor's extra clause backfire]
[Record Five: Trial · Added restriction on 'duties of the trial overseer'…]
One scene after another rose: every clause Qi Luo had ever laid a hand on was hauled out into the light.
Every time he inserted a thin line of text at the signature line. Every time he tweaked some limiting condition where others couldn't see. Every time he nudged a clause an inch toward something just slightly fairer for mortals.
On every frame, the top of the screen flashed cold red script:
[Unauthorized clause-interference ×1]
[Unauthorized insertion of restriction clause ×1]
[Disruption of deity contingency ×1]
The count started stacking up.
[Total unauthorized interferences: 47… 103…]
The number kept climbing. Chains all through the hall began chiming softly as they tallied.
On the upper-tier noble's seats, someone pressed a hand to their chest, face growing darker with each tick—they were suddenly aware that all those "rights backed by the gods" they'd enjoyed for years were being shaved away bit by bit in this boy's hands.
In the little Rust Street church, eyes were red in the image.
"He did help us, that's not fake," Old Zhang said, clutching his covenant book so hard his knuckles turned white. "You see those numbers as charges; we see them as living people."
In a middle-tier workshop street prayer pavilion, one master elbowed the man beside him. "Look, that's the time! When he helped us add 'without harming basic health' to the work hours!"
In the world of Chains, the self-check module was quietly running a different set of stats.
[Change in "mortal death rate" after Qi Luo's interferences: partial regional decrease.]
[Change in "deity breach-of-covenant rate" after Qi Luo's interferences: slight decrease.]
[Note: Though unauthorized, certain interferences reduce system load on some indicators.]
Those dispassionate conclusions were visible to only a handful of people—Ruan Ji, a few backend record-keeping gods, and the Key-Sigil in Qi Luo's chest.
He felt the sigil tremble lightly, as if some module of the world were telling him: "By the numbers, you are not entirely a bad patch."
But the narrative on the main screen was flowing in a completely different direction.
The chief recorder cleared his throat. "As everyone can see—the accused carried out a large volume of unauthorized clause-interventions in a remarkably short time. His behavioral pattern has long since exceeded 'simple survival'."
"He is actively rewriting order."
"He is attempting to overwrite the covenants between gods and men with his own understanding."
"This is the textbook profile of a 'World Traitor'."
As his words fell, one of the covenant stones at the edge of the array suddenly flared blindingly bright.
That stone was labeled "Basic Covenant · Self-Check." Just as its image was about to unfold, a denser, thicker mass of black mist surged out.
The entire screen was swallowed.
Even the ordinary spectators could see it this time—
The picture simply went black, as if someone had slapped a smear of ink across it.
"What's going on?" one noble frowned.
"Maybe the world doesn't feel like watching either?" someone from Rust Street muttered with a low laugh, only to get pinched hard by the person next to them.
Above the hall, the black chain quivered.
The self-check module spat out an alert:
[Obscuration clause trigger frequency rising abnormally.]
[Obscured content may relate to core secrets of the Rollback Contingency.]
[Suggestion: Maintain obscuration to avoid premature contingency activation.]
This time, the gods on the high seats not only saw "Suggestion," they also saw the words "premature activation" tagged after it.
"Rollback Contingency…" one ancient god murmured.
"It's still alive."
The air in the hall cooled a visible degree.
The chief recorder's face finally changed.
He looked toward the second throne on the left—a phantom of the oldest elder of the Covenant Council, who rarely spoke and whose name, in Qi Luo's memory, never rose beyond the vague level of "some elder."
Now, that phantom slowly stood.
"The obscuration clause," the elder rasped, voice harsh but edged with iron, "was a 'deep-layer secrecy clause' appended when the Rollback Contingency passed."
"To prevent certain contents from being abused."
His gaze moved back and forth between the black chain on the dome and Qi Luo's chest.
"Unfortunately," he said slowly, "today's trial happens to fall right on that seam."
"If we allow the obscuration to remain, much of the accused's behavior cannot be properly examined."
"The masses will say—the Covenant Council is deliberately shielding or blurring the truth."
"Then admit it," Qi Luo said. "Admit that a part of the world is invisible even to you."
"Maybe the worst mistakes are written in those lines you can't see."
"Silence," a god-phantom snapped.
"This is not a place for mortals to challenge the world."
Qi Luo shrugged, wearing an easy smile, fingers quietly brushing the back of his Hunter badge.
—The clause cross-check request was right under his fingertip.
—He could trigger a "read it yourself, world" at any time.
The elder ignored his provocation. He simply lifted a hand.
A long, weighty chain drooped down behind him, its end bearing a scroll sealed tight.
Seven locks bound that scroll. Each lock had a different shape—one like a simple iron padlock, one like an abstract symbol, and one was even a miniature beast.
[Forbidden-Seal Covenant Scroll]
The four characters surfaced slowly in the chain-vision.
Ruan Ji's heart sank.
She knew what that was.
—That was the Council's last-resort tool, kept for "suppressing or engaging certain deep-layer clauses."
Not for mortals. Not for minor gods. Not even for ordinary chief gods.
It was a crowbar meant for those parts of the World Base-Covenant you never want to touch—until you absolutely have to pry them open.
"Elder," the chief recorder said quietly, "you intend to—"
"We do not yet know where this obscuration comes from," the elder said. "But we can confirm one thing—"
He looked straight at Qi Luo.
"—The Key-Sigil on this mortal is directly connected to the source of the obscuration."
"If we do not open it, we will never know what exactly he is entangled with."
"Today we are not only judging a clause-smith," he said, hand closing around the scroll's chain. "We are also judging that thing hiding in the black mist over the dome."
The pressure in the hall spiked at once.
The gods' phantoms went taut. Some held a flicker of excitement in their eyes—like hunters scenting rare prey; others looked uneasy, like soldiers hearing someone suggest ripping away their only shield in the middle of a battlefield.
Pain knifed through Qi Luo's chest.
Not the usual heat, but a ripping, being-torn-open agony.
The Key-Sigil thrashed under his skin; the black chain on the dome gave a low, almost inaudible groan.
The self-check module fired a string of red text:
[Warning: Forbidden-Seal Scroll unseal request overlaps core fields of Rollback Contingency.]
[Risk: May trigger pre-emptive contingency validation, or partial execution.]
[Suggestion: Proceed with extreme caution.]
This time, there was another line, tiny, shoved down to the lowest priority:
[If unsealing regardless, suggestion: At least one hunter with co-hunter permissions should be present to record the outcome for New Covenant evaluation.]
Ruan Ji saw it.
Qi Luo saw it.
The elder's hand was already resting on the scroll.
The first lock—the "Sigh Lock"—snapped on its own, dissolving into smoke.
The second "Memory Lock" gave a sharp, clear ping and vanished into the chain.
The air in the Great Hall of the Covenant Council felt as if someone had pried a crack down the middle; cold mist seeped out of it.
"—To clarify the obscuration clause, to prove to the world that the world itself is impartial," the elder said, voice cutting through everything, "today, in my capacity as a Covenant Council elder, I unseal the Forbidden Scroll."
He lifted the scroll.
The final beast-shaped lock on the seal opened its eyes, two points of ancient, dangerous light flaring.
That light flicked once and was gone, like some being that had been sealed for too long was glancing around.
"What are you doing…"
The voice was very faint. Only the Key-Sigil in Qi Luo's chest heard it. Only the black chain on the dome heard it.
"You mean to rip away the obscuration before you even press the rollback key?"
"Very well."
Qi Luo felt a cold will slide down along the black chain, touch his Key-Sigil, then slip through his Hunter badge, through the co-hunter permission chains, and seep into the clause structure of the entire hall.
—The Forbidden-Seal Scroll was about to open.
—The words behind the obscuration were about to reappear.
Qi Luo lifted his head. In that instant, his eyes caught the light glinting off the scroll in the elder phantom's hand.
Ruan Ji's fingers were bone-white on her hilt; her Hunter badge was nearly hot enough to burn.
A world-level crowbar had just been set against the wound of the World Rollback Covenant.
In the next moment, the hall would no longer be just a place to judge a "World Traitor."
It would become—
The operating table where the world's black box was pried open.