Chapter 737: The Tribunal of Shadows
by xennovel“Is this a person or a torture device?”
“Or rather, a human born solely to serve as a torture device?”
Seeing the skulking, hair-raising creature crawling out of that abyss, Lu Xin was instantly unsettled.
He had encountered all manner of mental monsters, but nothing quite so bizarre.
Other mental monsters, though grotesque, at least exhibited signs of being alive.
But these abominations symbolized nothing but death…
In a flash, however, Lu Xin understood.
It made perfect sense…
Aren’t all these things created by man, engineered specifically to combat man?
So their appearance in the mental realm is only natural…
……
……
“Midnight Tribunal… judging every sin…”
A massive voice erupted again from behind the Sword Bearer’s black building, triggering a resonance in his mental power. In an instant, his attention shifted to the towering figure. It was as if countless faces materialized on his body, crazily shouting in unison with the voice:
“Midnight Tribunal… judging every sin…”
“…”
As that voice roared, a tremendous rumble echoed across the wasteland.
Under the Sword Bearer’s penetrating gaze, everything began to warp, taking on a pale, unreal quality.
Whoosh…
Beside Lu Xin, bizarre monsters bearing his face—yet looking utterly unlike him—felt an oppressive glare…
They even showed clear signs of panic, raising their hands to shield themselves from the Sword Bearer’s piercing stare. Some of these creatures started to melt away bit by bit under this gaze, as if their ice had been scorched by raging fire…
One executioner after another, as if summoned, their normally rational and composed faces gradually contorted into frenzied expressions. Then, like a surging torrent, they converged upon Lu Xin’s position, moving faster and faster like an unstoppable flood.
Beneath the Red Moon, dark shadows roiled like towering waves across the wasteland.
Boom…
The very earth trembled as gigantic execution frames rose all around.
Some frames were rooted in the ground; others emerged from the void.
From every execution frame, countless mental entities plummeted like ripened fruit falling rapidly.
The falling entities were a threat, and the slackened ropes—whipping down like agile, vicious serpents—wound relentlessly around the necks of Lu Xin and his family…
It seemed this was the true extent of the Sword Bearer’s power.
A power so overwhelming it could even obscure the Red Moon in the sky.
When the ultimate force of contamination was unleashed, what lay ahead wasn’t merely a battle.
It was a full-blown war.
Looking at the scene, Lu Xin couldn’t help but let out a deep sigh: Thankfully, he too belonged to an army…
……
……
“A bunch of failures…”
While Lu Xin pondered these thoughts, his father’s roar was the first to break the silence:
“You worthless lot—I used to devour entire batches of you in one bite…”
Accompanied by his bellow, dark shadows surged across the wasteland like titanic waves, rising like mighty walls.
Within those shadows, the executioners he had tainted surged forward like a deluge.
A deafening crash resounded as each executioner collided with his father’s butcher brigade. Though the brigade was clearly outnumbered by the seemingly countless executioners, under his father’s command they had formed a gigantic ring, absorbing wave after wave of assault.
“He’s scared…”
Facing the execution frames that resembled a dark forest, Mom’s face broke into a smile.
“Fear makes people stir up such a ruckus…”
Smiling softly, she explained while the scissors twirled lightly around her fingers.
“Woo woo woo…”
A dull wind howled over the whirling scissors in her grasp, growing louder and more formidable. Lu Xin’s pupils constricted subtly as he sensed something terrifying—a silver blur coalescing in Mom’s palm as the air shimmered with the edge of the blades.
“Clack” “clack” “clack”
Countless scissor shadows suddenly appeared all around.
Flickering and unreal, yet the keen sharpness was undeniably real.
“Slash slash slash…”
Just like when they had first burst forth, the ropes from the execution frames—and even the mental entities tumbling from them—seemed to disintegrate midair into several pieces before even touching the ground.
The sight was horrifyingly dramatic, yet the end came with a striking ease.
Lu Xin couldn’t help but be mildly astonished. Mom’s ability was indeed terrifying…
It seemed her method of handling problems was always so plain and unexciting.
Whether it was a mere filament or a deluge of execution frames, all it took was the opening and closing of the scissors.
And that was it.
Tsk tsk.
“Don’t worry—no one will disturb you…”
Mom turned and smiled at Lu Xin.
Lu Xin nodded heavily, took a deep breath, and looked ahead.
The Sword Bearer’s gaze imposed an unprecedented pressure on every mental being in the area.
Even the ‘Malice Lu Xin’ entities seemed to falter under that scrutiny.
At the same time, countless human-shaped torture devices began to swarm like crabs crawling out of the ocean.
They crowded around him, colliding with one another in a chaotic mass.
“Clack clack”
A chain, with handcuffs resembling human hands at each end, danced over the ground, clattering as it rushed forward.
Upon making contact with the first ‘Malice Lu Xin’, the corpulent Lu Xin—armed with two thick arms known for smashing everything—raised both fists to strike. But unexpectedly, his fingers snapped off the ground like lightning, and two palms clamped down on Lu Xin’s wrists, leaving him no room to struggle.
A burly man, whose chest bristled with innumerable iron nails, would charge at any mental creature, embracing them tightly.
His robust arms squeezed his opponent relentlessly, driving the nails ever deeper as blood gushed out, every muscle trembling with excitement as he forcefully squeezed out more blood…
A grotesque electric-chair monster, its head covered with endless cables, would seize a victim and pin them against its knee.
A massive surge of electricity then coursed through, causing the ‘Malice Lu Xin’ to convulse.
And there were countless other monstrosities…
Two arms, each morphed into a headless chopper, hacked continuously in a muffled fury.
A half-body remaining creature, brandishing a chainsaw high overhead, charged into the crowd with a sinister laugh.
An eyeball-less creature with enormous, hollow sockets—its eyes replaced by two black voids—relentlessly spat out red bugs that devoured the eyes of every mental entity, leaving them as empty shells like itself…
……
……
One after another, they surged forward, seizing every ‘Malice Lu Xin’.
Transferring their own agony onto these ‘Malice Lu Xin’ beings, a series of gruesome screams rang out—intermingled with cries of exhilaration and bitter pain.
The entire area buzzed with a strangely jubilant atmosphere.
Not far away, a skinless dog huddled with other parasitic items, shivering while casting envious glances.
“Buzz buzz buzz…”
Every time a ‘Malice Lu Xin’ was corrupted or destroyed, Lu Xin’s mind was struck by excruciating pain.
It was as if countless taut strings in his head were snapping one by one.
“Is this all the power of the Tribunal?”
“Is this the true horror of the ultimate forces?”
“…”
Amid the recurring, soul-shaking pain and the overwhelming vision of this torturous realm, a clarity began to dawn in Lu Xin’s heart—clearer than ever before.
“Judgment originally aimed to distinguish right from wrong.”
“But gradually it morphed into something that exceeded mere judgment—pure torment…”
“When a torture device becomes so fearsome that it only yields the answers the executioner desires…”
“What use does judgment have then?”
“…”
“…”
“Midnight Tribunal… judging every sin…”
Across from the abyss, countless voices erupted in unison, echoing behind the Sword Bearer.
Before his eyes lay a scene of utter carnage, with all manner of agony reverberating around him.
Yet his voice remained cold and just.
“Ssssss…”
In the bloody arena, countless ‘Malice Lu Xin’ entities struggled, smashing and breaking free from one torture device after another. Overwhelmed by the sheer number of devices, for every one they broke free from, three, five, eight, even ten would restrain them. They could only be ensnared, their torment flung at the Sword Bearer across the abyss with eyes filled with defiance and hatred.
But neither the Sword Bearer’s gaze nor the surrounding execution frames could prevent their inevitable fatigue.
This was a realm of such overwhelming despair that even malice itself seemed to yield.
“Let me go!”
At this moment, Lu Xin took a deep breath and suddenly looked over to the various torture devices where his struggling self was trapped.
“Since I was chosen in the end, it’s only fitting that I face the most terrifying of them all…”
“Even if it’s something that renders malice powerless, it must be confronted by the original me.”
“Even if I am the weakest…”
“…”
Lu Xin murmured, as if talking to himself, and simultaneously communicating with his trapped selves within the devices.
On the execution frames, countless incarnations of Lu Xin turned around, their faces contorted into strange expressions as they beheld the Lu Xin below.
Some wore cunning expressions, others ferocity or cold cruelty, yet their eyes shone with equal brilliance.
The Sword Bearer’s authority had reached its zenith, his immense mental force field warping nearly the entire wasteland.
But now, it was Lu Xin, whose psychic power was the weakest, who stepped forward.
“Midnight Tribunal… judging every sin?”
Yet staring at the horrifying spectacle before him, Lu Xin gritted his teeth fiercely and spat, “I spit on that!”
As he spoke, he suddenly raised his hand, slowly pulling out the half of the Judgment Sword that had pierced his chest. In the hands of the Sword Bearer it towered at seventy or eighty meters high and spanned twenty or thirty meters wide, but in Lu Xin’s grasp it appeared a hundred times smaller.
It looked just like a short dagger.
Lu Xin clutched the half-rusted sword without a care for the terrifying scene unfolding before him.
“Sister!”
He roared, seizing his sister’s hand, gripping the half-rusted sword, and charged headlong at the Sword Bearer.
“Smack smack smack…”
His agility reached its peak as he dodged the barrage of torture devices, occasionally raising his hand to shatter one of the ‘torture monsters’. Like a tiny yet fearsome ant, he advanced inexorably toward the Sword Bearer.
His pupils shrank to a pinpoint as dark particles danced. “I’ll make you cry under the sunlight!”