Chapter 142 You Make Me Kneel, I Make You Deaf

An invisible force tore the sea apart, churning up towering whirlpools.

At the heart of the storm, the sky was dark as iron.

A magnificent chariot fashioned from moonlight and mica split the thick clouds and abruptly halted in midair.

It made no sound, yet carried suffocating divine power, as though a corner of Mount Olympus had been transported directly there.

Diana Prince stood at its front, an unyielding radiance flowing over her golden armor beneath the dim sky.

She wore no helmet. Her dark hair streamed wildly in the gale, and her face, seemingly carved by a god, bore an unquestionable solemnity.

Behind her, several golden chains woven from pure divine power moved like serpents: the Shackles of Olympus, strong enough to bind Titans.

Her gaze pierced the wind and rain, fixing precisely on the end of the blue energy bridge below.

Gideon was there.

"Gideon!"

Diana's voice rang like an oracle, clearly overpowering thunder and crashing seas. "By order of Queen Hippolyta, I have come to take you back to Themyscira to face divine judgment! This is not a campaign of conquest. It is a call to confront the lie burning within you!"

An almost imperceptible complexity colored her voice: authority directed at an enemy, mixed with regret for a fallen kindred being and the desire to redeem him.

To her, Gideon's extreme philosophy was the greatest lie he had woven for himself, distorted as he was by his own power and pain.

At the end of the bridge, Gideon slowly raised his head.

The gale snapped his broad black cloak. Behind him, the afterimage of his two black wings trembled ominously in the wind.

Faced with the divine daughter's ultimatum, he showed no fear. Instead, a deeply mocking smile appeared on his face.

"A lie?" His voice was quiet, yet it pierced the storm's roar as easily as a shard of sharp ice. "Diana Prince, your gods of Olympus worship their so-called truth, yet do not dare look directly at its source. What right have you to judge me?"

As he spoke, he slowly lifted his right hand.

A fine crack glowed faintly in his palm, like a wound that could never heal.

The light was neither sacred nor evil. It was the mark of an older, more fundamental law: the keyhole left after he devoured the Garden of the End's contract of betrayal, an access point to the underlying logic of all things.

"Pretty words and deception!" Anger flashed in Diana's blue eyes. She said no more. Action was her truest language.

She snapped her wrist.

Whoosh!

A whip of pure golden light tore through the sky, bearing the majestic divine power to cleanse all falsehood. It struck at Gideon faster than lightning.

The Lasso of Truth!

Gold flashed across the sky like thunder. Before Gideon could make any move to evade it, the lasso wound unerringly around his neck.

In that instant, it was as though the entire sea had been muted.

Storm, thunder, towering waves... Every sound abruptly ceased.

Only a sizzling remained where the lasso touched Gideon's skin.

The sacred power of truth was burning his fallen essence, forcing every thought deep in his soul to reveal its truest form.

Diana held the other end of the lasso, her expression cold as a goddess administering punishment.

"Answer me, Gideon!" Her first question of judgment echoed through the absolute silence. "Do you intend to overthrow the existing order and the gods who protect humanity?"

Golden light blazed. The lasso tightened sharply, and fierce pain made Gideon's body tremble.

He closed his eyes and let the power burn his soul.

A moment later, he opened them again. His voice was hoarse, yet chillingly clear.

"Yes."

A single character.

"Because you so-called gods are yourselves the first layer of order's disguise."

Diana's gaze, unwavering for ten thousand years, suddenly sharpened, her pupils contracting.

Something was wrong!

The answer was too quick, too clear, too matter-of-fact.

There was no struggle, resistance, or pain in it. He sounded less like someone forced to reveal a concealed conspiracy than someone stating the only truth, one he had rehearsed a thousand times.

Then something stranger happened.

The glow of the golden lasso, the embodiment of absolute truth, began rising and falling rhythmically in time with Gideon's steady breathing.

Bright, then dim.

As though... it had been given a heartbeat.

"You want to hear the truth?" Gideon suddenly laughed, the sound full of pity and cruelty.

The human pupils vanished from his eyes. In their place, two flames of annihilating black fire burned quietly in the abyss. "Then I will give you the deepest truth."

He did not resist. Instead, he opened his soul of his own accord.

He stirred the memories of judgment within him, stripped away by Heaven yet rooted in his very essence. Taking a scene he himself had sealed away for hundreds of millions of years, he turned it into a torrent of pure psychic force and drove it into the Lasso of Truth connected to his soul.

Boom!

Diana's mind went blank.

A memory that was not hers, a forbidden and blasphemous scene, surged savagely through the lasso into her consciousness.

It was an age older than the birth of the Olympian gods.

Inside Heaven's dazzling temple, an archangel of judgment also named Gideon was driving the Blade of Judgment into the chest of the previous judge with his own hands.

The dying elder showed no remorse. With the last of his divine power, he challenged the being upon the throne. "Why... Why forgive angels who chose to fall, yet turn a blind eye to tyrants who commit monstrous crimes in the mortal world? Is it not our duty to judge all sin?!"

What echoed through the temple then was neither sacred repentance nor a stern admonition.

It was a sneer of utter coldness, as though formed from the ice of the cosmos.

"We do not need absolute justice."

"We need only obedient tools."

A piercing hum rang out!

The Lasso of Truth let out an agonized cry unlike any it had ever made. Its golden light began visibly blackening and decaying.

It was carrying a truth its own logic could not comprehend, one that even contradicted that logic. This betrayal from the very source of Heaven was corrupting its divinity like the most terrible virus.

"No!" Diana tried to withdraw the lasso, only to discover in horror that an immense pulling force was traveling along it, draining her will and divine power in reverse.

At the same moment, thousands of miles away, on the secluded island of Themyscira.

Deep inside the temple, countless overlapping, terrified whispers sounded out of nowhere.

"Who will judge the judges?!"

Cassandra, the blind high priestess attending the oracle's brazier, suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood. The parchment scroll in her arms, which recorded the Amazons' future, burst into flame without any fire touching it.

Among the ashes, a shocking oracle formed from blood appeared:

"When fire returns, truth shall fall silent."

Above the North Sea, Gideon seized the rare opportunity.

With a muffled grunt and an immense exertion of will, he forcibly severed from his soul the memory he had poured into the lasso.

Using his newly mastered power of law, he compressed and solidified that painful memory into a faintly glowing black crystal the size of a fingernail.

He casually pressed the crystal into the energy bridge's railing beside him.

Almost at the same instant, a new feather, more solid and blacker than before, slowly emerged from the crystal and swayed gently in the wind.

This was the first time he had voluntarily stripped away and sealed one of his own memories.

From that moment on, he was no longer a prisoner tormented by flashbacks, but a king who commanded his pain.

"Aah..."

Diana staggered half a step backward. The Lasso of Truth, once feared by countless gods and demons, now hung limply from Gideon's neck like a dead snake, its light dim.

She stared at the ring of blood burned into his neck, unable to keep her voice from shaking. "You... What did you do to it? You corrupted it!"

Gideon wiped away the trace of blood that had escaped his lips when he tore his soul apart. His cold smile grew more sinister.

"No. I did not corrupt it."

"I merely... let it hear the voice that should have been there, the one you deliberately shut out."

Far across the sea, the smuggling boat disguised as a fishing vessel quietly changed course amid the wind and waves.

Inside its cabin, Eurybia, the blacksmith responsible for forging Gideon's weapons, absently stroked an ancient drawing of shackles hidden against her chest.

She murmured to herself, understanding and fervor shining in her eyes.

"So... the way to bind gods was never in the oracles..."

"It was in the memories they are most afraid will be remembered."

Gideon no longer looked at the devastated Diana. His gaze seemed to cross a vast distance and settle on the secluded island.

Far across the ocean, deep in Themyscira's temple, the flame in a bronze cauldron burned without ceasing throughout the year, a symbol of Amazon truth and glory.

Now, without warning, that sacred flame, which had burned for thousands of years, began to flicker violently.