Chapter 148 Can You Hear the Cracks?

The moonlight did not so much illuminate the rotting stage as cut a pale wound across it.

Gideon appeared soundlessly at its edge, like a figure condensed from the abyss.

He carried no weapon and had no attendants. He wore only a well-tailored black robe, its hem brushing the rubble and dust with a soft whisper like the footsteps of the dead.

He walked slowly toward center stage, every step unhurried. The pale light outlined his stern profile but could not illuminate the cold depths of his eyes, darker than the night.

Below him were hundreds of faces from around the world: reporters carrying cameras of every size, solemn scholars, Gotham citizens with varying expressions, and even a few unidentified observers hidden in the shadows.

They looked like an audience gripped by an invisible hand around their throats. Even their breathing had become cautious.

Gideon's gaze swept over them without lingering, finally settling precisely on a temporary raised platform opposite the stage.

Diana Prince, Wonder Woman, stood there.

She wore a simplified Amazon ceremonial dress instead of her divine battle gear. Like a docile pet, the golden Lasso of Truth lay coiled at one end around her wrist, while she held the other lightly in her hand.

Her beauty and divinity remained dazzling in the dimness, like a golden statue standing apart from the world.

"This is not a battle. It is a dialogue." Her amplified voice carried throughout the opera house, clear as a bell and filled with unquestionable resolve.

Gideon stopped at center stage. Only thirty meters separated them.

Suddenly, he gave a quiet, cold laugh. Like an icy chisel, it instantly shattered the solemn atmosphere.

"Yet you have already found me guilty."

That single sentence made Diana's gaze tighten.

What lay between them was not the distance across a stage, but two civilizations' entirely different definitions of order.

A composed, measured woman's voice broke the brief impasse.

Vivian Lewis, the United Nations' special observer and that evening's moderator, announced into the microphone, "The Debate of the Mirror Abyss will now begin. Our topic: must justice tolerate weakness?"

Diana spoke first as soon as the announcement ended. She stepped forward, her voice powerful and compelling. "Of course justice must be compassionate. Love, hope, and forgiveness are what prove humanity has risen above barbarism. We protect not only life, but the possibility of goodness within human nature. If we build walls from fear and use killing as our means, then we ourselves have already lost to the darkness!"

Before she had finished, thunderous applause erupted below the stage.

To most of those present, her words were undoubtedly truth embodied, the foundation of civilization.

Gideon, however, paid no attention to the applause.

Under everyone's gaze, he slowly removed his finely made black gloves, exposing his right hand.

It was long-fingered and powerful, but an ugly dark scar resembling cracked earth was branded into the center of his palm.

It was the eternal mark of the contract left when Heaven stripped away his divinity hundreds of millions of years ago.

He raised his hand to show everyone the scar. His voice was low, yet carried clearly over every other sound.

"You say weakness deserves compassion?" he murmured, as though stating something perfectly simple. "Because of that compassion, I once watched the star region entrusted to my protection be utterly consumed by sin. So tell me—" His gaze stabbed at Diana like a blade. "When millions die without a grave because of that compassion, who will weep for them?"

The applause stopped abruptly.

Everyone was shaken by the scar in his palm and the bone-chilling question.

Just then, a boy in a wheelchair in the audience thrust up his hand.

He looked no older than fifteen or sixteen. His face still held a child's softness, but his eyes carried a stubbornness beyond his years.

Vivian signaled that he could ask his question.

He drew a deep breath. Emotion made his voice shake, but it remained perfectly clear. "Mr. Gideon! If... if I had the chance to kill the bastard who ruined my little sister's life but was released for lack of evidence... should I do it?"

The room fell deathly silent.

The question was too sharp, too real. It thrust like a dagger into every grand and polished philosophical argument.

Conflict crossed Diana's beautiful face. She was about to answer with her principles of law and moral limits.

But Gideon was quicker.

Without even glancing at Diana, he looked through the crowd and fixed his gaze on the boy.

"Are you asking about the law, or your conscience?"

The boy froze, then tears welled in his eyes. Choking, he almost shouted, "I don't know! I just... want him to hurt!"

"Then go."

Gideon's answer was simple, direct, and utterly without hesitation.

He stepped forward. The force of his presence made the front-row reporters instinctively retreat.

"But remember—" His voice seemed enchanted, entering every ear. "The moment you raise a blade, you are no longer a victim. You are a judge. Carry out the justice in your heart. Make the guilty pay. But do not expect any god to forgive you for it. They never set foot in hell themselves."

The crowd instantly erupted.

"He's insane! He's inciting a crime!"

"But... what he's saying makes so much sense..."

"A judge... not a victim..."

On the enormous backstage display, the debate's AI analyst, the Mirror Eye system, generated an emotional heat map. At that moment, the curves for anger and resonance rose together in an uncanny surge.

Diana's expression changed sharply.

She could not let him keep talking.

These ideas were a poison more terrifying than any plague.

"Enough!"

She cried out sharply and jerked up the hand holding the Lasso of Truth.

Instantly, golden rings formed from ancient Greek runes erupted from beneath the opera house. They rapidly contracted around Gideon, forming a brilliant, imposing cage.

The Oracle Cage! An absolute ward designed to seal away speech and divine power.

Yet Gideon neither resisted nor evaded the sacred prison. Instead... he closed his eyes, an almost imperceptible smile touching his lips.

He let the runic rings approach as though welcoming a long-delayed coronation.

Just as the final rune was about to close and seal him in completely, something changed.

Under the crushing pressure of that sacred power, Gideon's dormant Sin Perception quietly evolved.

It was no longer limited to discerning the sins in people's hearts. Like a radar operating at full power, it detected the most unshakable obsessions, most painful memories, and darkest choices buried within every person, every soul present.

A low hum sounded.

The air shuddered violently around Gideon.

Translucent walls like broken mirrors appeared from nowhere, surrounding the entire stage and trapping both him and Diana within them.

Images began flashing wildly across every mirrored wall.

In the audience, the old judge Harding watched in horror as the slight trembling of his hand, signing a questionable death warrant twenty years earlier, was magnified without limit.

Behind Diana, her secretary, Ella Chen, saw with terror Diana's impassive profile as she ordered her to destroy damaging evidence "for the greater good."

And Malcolm, the disabled boy who had asked the question, collapsed to his knees before his own mirror. In it, the image of his little sister being dragged into a dark alley replayed again and again in despair.

This was... a labyrinth built from the wounds in everyone's hearts.

Gideon opened his eyes.

He walked slowly into the mirrored labyrinth, as though crossing the graveyard of humanity's collective consciousness.

He passed the old judge's remorse, walked between Ella Chen's loyalty and fear, and finally stopped before the largest, clearest mirror, directly facing Diana.

The scene in the mirror abruptly changed.

Against a blue sky, a World War II bomber hurtled resolutely toward a cloud of chemical weapons about to detonate, powerful enough to destroy an entire country.

Inside the cockpit, Steve Trevor turned back and gave her one last smile.

Then the explosion.

Once.

Again.

Endless falling. Endless sacrifice.

Gideon's voice sounded beside Diana's ear like a whisper from hell.

"You say you refuse to kill in order to protect humanity."

He watched the endlessly repeating descent and fire in the mirror, his tone utterly steady.

"But have you ever considered... that it is precisely because you keep sparing the real monsters that more people like Steve have no choice but to die?"

The words struck the depths of Diana's soul like a hammer from the divine realm.

Her pupils contracted sharply. The fingers gripping the Lasso of Truth turned white, every knuckle standing out.

At that moment, the supposedly indestructible world of belief she had built gave a clearly audible... cracking sound.

The mirrored walls around Gideon hummed without cease, reflecting his cold expression and Diana's bloodless face.

The sacred ring meant to imprison all speech flickered violently. In the end, it could not close.