Verthandi did not resist; instead, she closed her eyes. "You want to know... about that trial?"
"If you are willing to speak," Yu Nian said softly.
Chaos Island.
As soon as Zi Yuan stepped into the range of the black and white storm, she felt chaotic tearing forces rushing at her from all directions.
It was not a pure energy attack, but a disorder-based erosion at the level of laws, attempting to decompose her very existence into random elentary particles.
"Tide Breaker."
The long blade was unsheathed, its purple light sweeping like a crescent moon, splitting the incoming chaotic storm in two.
The blade intent condensed without dissipating, forming a stable domain of order around Zi Yuan, temporarily isolating the erosion of laws from the outside world.
"Oh? Interesting." A wild and unrestrained laugh ca from the depths of the storm.
"Soone can actually cut through my chaos with order! Who goes there?"
Zi Yuan stood with her blade and declared loudly, "Erald Sea, Zi Yuan. I have co to visit Lord Khaos, the Chaos Star Lord."
"Visit? Hahaha!" The laughter grew louder.
"No living person has set foot in this ghostly place for tens of thousands of years! You are the first to dare enter my Chaos Prison of your own accord!
Co, let see if your blade can slash through this damned fate!"
Before the words even fell, the black and white storm suddenly converged, transforming into a giant palm that blotted out the sky. A chaos vortex spun in its palm as it slamd down towards Zi Yuan!
Zi Yuan's eyes narrowed; she advanced instead of retreating, raising her long blade high.
"Tide Breaker — Thousand Wave Slash!"
Mirror Heart Island.
Leng Ningxue stepped onto the smooth, mirror-like silver ground.
Her figure was reflected beneath her feet, but there was more than one; countless Leng Ningxues appeared in the mirror surface, performing different movents with varying expressions, as if they were projections of possibilities from parallel worlds.
"Mirror refraction, information redundancy 97.3%, interference coefficient extrely high."
Data streams in her icy eyes analyzed the environnt. "Need to establish a uniqueness anchor."
She raised her hand, and an ice crystal hexagonal prism of absolute rules condensed in her palm.
The hexagonal prism rotated steadily, releasing cold energy fluctuations at a constant frequency. Using this as a baseline, the chaotic mirror images around her began to shatter and unify one by one.
Finally, all the mirror images rged into a figure exactly like her, standing a hundred ters ahead.
The figure slowly turned around, revealing a face identical to Leng Ningxue's, yet completely expressionless.
"Welco to the Mirror Heart Cage, visitor." The mirror image spoke, its voice identical to Leng Ningxue's, yet cold and hollow.
"I am Seras, or rather, the rational mirror image of Seras remaining here."
"I need to know the truth of that trial," Leng Ningxue cut straight to the point.
"The truth?" The mirror image's lips curled up slightly, like a stiff sneer.
"Truth is a variable, differing by the observer. Which version of the truth do you want to know?
The evidentiary truth recorded by the scales of judgent, the subjective truth stated by the parties involved, or the historical truth buried beneath the dust of history?"
Leng Ningxue's icy eyes were calm. "All of them."
The mirror image fell silent for a mont.
"Then, please answer one question first," it said.
"If in a trial, the evidence clearly points to guilt, but the judged firmly believes in their innocence, and their conviction is strong enough to warp the laws of reality, then should they be convicted by evidence or pardoned by conviction?"
Cinder City Island.
Bai Cheng stepped into the burning crimson flas.
The flas licked the edges of her clothes but could not penetrate the dark gold law mbrane in the slightest.
Deep within the flas, the phantom of a magnificent city lood; countless figures moved through the city, yet all were silent, like silhouettes in a shadow play.
She traversed the flas, finally reaching the plaza in the center of the city.
In the plaza, a man clad in crimson battle armor with flaming wings on his back was kneeling on one knee, his hand touching the ground, maintaining the burning of the entire city's flas.
"Lord Ignis," Bai Cheng spoke.
The man with flaming wings slowly raised his head.
His face was resolute, but his eyes burned with deep exhaustion and... a hint of imperceptible regret.
"A new judge?" His voice was hoarse.
"Or... has a successor finally co to end this endless tornt?"
"My na is Bai Cheng, Emperor of the Erald Sea." Bai Cheng walked up to him. "I didn't co here to judge, but to understand."
"Understand?" Ignis chuckled low, his laughter full of bitterness.
"Understand what? Understand how we walked step by step into that carefully laid trap?
Understand how our respective pride and suspicion eventually led to an irreversible disaster?"
He stood up, his flaming wings snapping open, as waves of crimson fire swept across the plaza.
"That trial was never just a trial for the six of us!
It was a conspiracy against the entire Old Order of the Star Sea! And we... were just the chosen sacrifices!"
Echo Island.
Bai Cheng's second stop was that island shrouded in gray mist.
Stepping into the mist, countless overlapping echoes imdiately rang in her ears.
Whispers, argunts, sighs, cries... it was as if all the thoughts that had wandered here for ten thousand years were absorbed, stored, and repeatedly played by the mist.
She followed the source of the echoes to a stone altar in the center of the island.
On the altar sat an old man in a gray robe with a blurred face.
His eyes were closed, his hands held in an empty embrace before his chest, as if listening to sothing.
"Lord Echo," Bai Cheng called out softly.
The gray-robed old man didn't open his eyes, but slowly spoke, his voice hollow and layered with echoes: "Do you hear it?
Those voices... those forgotten testimonies, distorted truths, covered-up evils... they have been {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} echoing, never stopping."
"I hear them."
Bai Cheng sat down opposite him.
"But what I hear isn't just voices, but the emotions within them—anger, fear, resentnt, confusion... and, deep regret."
Echo finally opened his eyes.
There were no eyeballs in his sockets, only two swirling masses of gray mist.
"Regret..." he murmured, "Yes, regret.
Regret why we couldn't see through that conspiracy earlier.
Regret why we only chose to join forces at the very last mont.
Regret... Judgent Star Lord, our old friend, why did he have to sacrifice himself to the Dao, trapping us all in this eternal state of being unresolved."
He raised his hand, and the gray mist condensed in his palm into a phantom of a beating heart.
It was identical to the Heart of Sin on the right tray of the scales of judgent, only its color was even more gray and dim.
"This Heart of Echoes records all the testimonies that were not accepted, all the details that were ignored, and all... possible alternative endings of that trial."
Echo pushed the phantom heart toward Bai Cheng. "Successor, are you willing... to listen to these silenced echoes?"
Of the seven-day limit, the first day has already passed.
The remaining soul fragnts of the six Star Lords each tell their version.
And Bai Cheng and her companions only now truly realized that the truth hidden behind this ancient, unresolved trial is far more intricate and darker than what is presented in the scrolls of history.
The Sea of Thunder surges, and the Scales wait.
And the exploration and decryption of the Sky Island Chapter has only just begun.
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