Chapter 137 Who Gave You the Right to Judge Me

The instant his words ended, a capture operation rehearsed countless times erupted with a shattering sonic boom!

The first to move was a flash of red lightning cutting across the battlefield.

Barry Allen gave no one time to react. Moving faster than light, he ran a full circuit around the ruins of Liberty Island.

Behind him, the Speed Force stretched to its limit, forming a barrier of energy that was visible to the naked eye yet impossible to cross.

Space and time warped at its edge. Cause and effect closed into a perfect loop within it.

It was an absolute cage, cut off from all outside interference. Not even a distress signal could escape.

From the beginning, this "trial" had been an execution without an audience.

Almost as soon as the barrier formed, a piercing whistle came from high above.

Artemis, the Amazon warrior who had taken Diana's place, plunged like a powerful falcon. Her bronze wings, woven from Nth metal, glittered with cold murderous intent in the moonlight.

She had not come to negotiate. Every breath held contempt for her enemy and the determination to kill him.

Thwck!

The sound of a blade piercing flesh was dull and unmistakable.

A bronze feather-blade gleaming with sacred runes drove cleanly through Gideon's left shoulder. Its tremendous force pinned him to the broken base of the Statue of Liberty's torch behind him!

Blood spurted along the blade's grooves, only to be annihilated by an invisible black energy the instant it touched his skin.

Agony struck, yet Gideon did not even furrow his brow.

"In the name of the Green Lantern Corps..."

The voice was solemn and steady. Green Lantern John Stewart hovered in midair as the power of his will took shape.

An enormous cage of pure energy descended from the sky, enclosing Gideon and the broken column beneath him.

Then the ground shook with a roar. Six metal pillars shot up from the ruins around the cage. A kryptonite crystal radiating an ominous green light was embedded at the top of each one!

Concentrated kryptonite radiation spread instantly. Even though the target was not Kryptonian, radiation from one of the universe's most extreme environments was enough to severely suppress and weaken any extraordinary life-form.

Three layers of containment, interlocked without a gap.

Superman slowly descended outside the cage. His blue eyes held a tangle of emotions, deep sorrow among them, and a trace of wavering he had not even recognized in himself.

He looked at the figure pinned to the stone column within the energy cage and kryptonite field. His voice was heavy as a mountain.

"Gideon, we don't want to kill you. All you have to do is lay down your weapons, stop resisting, and submit to the judgment of the cosmic tribunal."

"Heh..."

Gideon coughed up blood-flecked foam laced with threads of black fire. His low, cold laugh echoed through the cage, steeped in contempt.

He slowly raised his head. His deep eyes pierced the energy barrier and met those of the strongest man on Earth.

"You don't even have the courage to let me finish a sentence. What right do you have... to talk about what you 'don't want'?"

A dazzling golden light answered him.

Wonder Woman, Diana Prince, strode forward with the Lasso of Truth in her hand.

Hestia's sacred radiance flowed along it. It embodied absolute truth; no lie could hide before it.

"Then let us hear your 'truth.'" Diana's voice was cool and firm. With a flick of her wrist, the golden lasso shot like a serpent toward Gideon's pinned wrist.

Faced with an artifact powerful enough to bind gods, Gideon made no attempt to dodge. Just before the lasso reached him, he moved toward it, allowing the searing golden light to wind tightly around his right hand!

Ssszzzt!

Sacred power collided with fallen divinity. The intense burning blackened the skin of his wrist in an instant, but he seemed not to feel the pain.

Instead, he used the lasso's connection to lock his gaze on Diana's eyes, so full of conviction.

"Ask, Diana Prince." His voice sounded as though it came from the depths of the underworld, cold and clear. "Do you really believe your 'forgiveness' can stop the next Lex Luthor from slaughtering a Gotham orphanage? Do you really believe the remorse of the criminals you release can bring even a trace of warmth back to the families they tortured and murdered?"

Diana's pupils contracted sharply!

From the other end of the lasso, she felt an unprecedented, utterly pure "truth."

These were not a madman's ravings, but an ice-cold logic built on countless bloody facts!

The lasso shook violently in her hand, its golden light brightening and dimming as though it bore a cruel truth far beyond its capacity.

Snap!

A crisp, almost impossible sound of something breaking rang out.

Before Diana's horrified eyes, the Lasso of Truth—forged by the fire god Hephaestus himself, a bond even she could not escape—collided with Gideon's will and... snapped on its own!

"You..." For the first time, an enemy's words forced her back half a step, beyond her control. A shock that overturned everything she knew filled her eyes. "You're... not mad."

Just then, a hard light flashed in Green Lantern John Stewart's eyes.

He could not allow his comrade's faith to be shaken!

His will erupted again. An enormous energy hammer blotted out the sky above him, then crashed down with crushing force at the ground beneath Gideon's feet!

Boom!

The whole of Liberty Island shook violently. Cracks spread like a spiderweb for hundreds of meters, with Gideon at their center.

Using the terrible impact, Gideon forcibly snapped the bronze feather-blade pinning his shoulder blade and rolled clear of the center of the attack.

But as soon as he steadied himself, a red afterimage appeared before him like a ghost.

The Flash.

A high-speed knee strike charged with the Speed Force slammed squarely into Gideon's ribs.

Crack! Crack!

Two sharp sounds of breaking bone carried clearly even through the howling wind.

Gideon flew sideways like a kite with its string cut, struck the inner wall of the energy cage, and slid helplessly to the ground.

He knelt on one knee, gasping. His vision began to blur. All he could hear was his own pounding heartbeat and the hum of blood draining away.

Just as his will was about to fade, a shout pierced the din and drove into his mind like a red-hot steel needle!

"He isn't wrong! He's carrying everyone's sins alone! You hypocrites!"

With difficulty, Gideon raised his head and looked through the blurred energy field toward the crowd beyond the distant cordon.

A boy in a wheelchair held his phone aloft with all his strength, shouting wildly at the screen.

Ricky.

The boy he had saved from the brink of death, who had then witnessed him pass judgment on evil.

That cry was a handful of embers, rekindling the fire of anger that had almost died within him.

High above, Artemis slowly drew her divine bow.

An arrow of Olympian divine fire formed on the string. Its heat was so fierce that even the surrounding air began to warp.

Gideon looked up at the arrow aimed between his brows, an arrow powerful enough to judge a god.

Suddenly, he smiled, bleak and defiantly proud.

"This arrow you're giving me—is it a warning? Or... a mark of respect?"

Before he had finished speaking, he bit through the tip of his tongue and sprayed a mouthful of hot blood, imbued with his fallen essence, over the enormous scar crossing his chest from left shoulder to right abdomen!

The Brand of Exile, left by Michael's own hand!

The instant his blood touched Heaven's brand, everything changed!

Hummm!

Behind Gideon, the shattered ruins gave way to countless overlapping images of light and shadow.

They were scenes of death spanning hundreds of millions of years: dismemberment by countless gods amid the stars, burning at a stake at the hands of ignorant mortals, complete erasure and oblivion in the river of time... Each image showed a Gideon once called the Blade of Judgment at the moment he fell, after carrying out what he believed to be justice!

Every corpse cried out in silence!

"Raaagh!"

An inhuman roar burst from Gideon's throat. The dark thread of Silent Flame in his palm shot a thousand zhang into the sky!

It was no longer fire, but a translucent domain woven from hundreds of millions of years of memory, anger, death, and judgment. With Gideon at its center, it slowly expanded!

The Garden of the End.

Wherever the domain reached, time slowed drastically.

The wind of Superman's punch, the lightning of the Flash's running, the energy Green Lantern gathered—everything grew sluggish and slow, as though trapped in thick amber.

Every hero within the Garden heard cold, clear voices speaking at the same time.

These were the cries for help they had ignored for the sake of "the greater good."

The choices they had let slip away in the name of "due process."

The bloody rolls of the dead, killed on another day, in another place, by the murderers their "mercy" had set free!

"You judge me?"

Still on one knee, drenched in blood, Gideon slowly raised his right hand, its skin riddled with black fissures, and pointed toward the seven heroes in the sky. His voice was thunder from the depths of time.

"But have you ever listened to these voices?!"

At the very center of the domain, just above his bowed head, a feather purer than the void and quieter than the night slowly emerged from nothingness.

It had no weight, no physical substance. Yet it hovered in silence with an indescribable majesty and sense of finality.

Like a black crown, it was bestowing upon its master a coronation hundreds of millions of years overdue.