Chapter 33 — The Cold Gaze of the 8th House

In the pitch-black, desolate ruined asteroid belt filled with high-dimensional slag and electromagnetic storm debris, the black-as-ink [Orbit-breaker One] explosion-proof warship lay low like a ghost hound dormant beneath the dark side of a behemoth, having retracted its main propulsion engines into a state of minimal-frequency inertial gliding.

The massive metal hull emitted muffled, low thrums amidst the faint collisions of asteroid debris. Inside the cabin, the air was filled with a unique, slightly bitter, and metallic scent—a mix of cooling machine oil, melted lead plates, and filtered biological life-support gases. Through the observation windows, reinforced with three full layers of electromagnetic lead glass, the entire ship's over two hundred miners and mortal warriors, who had just carved a bloody path out of the Tartarus Deadzone ruins, silently gazed up at the suffocatingly magnificent cosmic spectacle at the edge of their vision.

Ten thousand fathoms high above the [Orbit-breaker One] was the [Aries Outer Defense Line: 11th House Sky Sentinel], as massive as a cluster of golden stars stretching across the center of the starry sky.

The entire fortress was forged entirely from intertwining golden and silver holy law metals. Four massive, luminous main axes, tens of thousands of miles long, extended deep into space, radiating a gold-and-white brilliance that pierced the dark abyss. Tens of thousands of holy patrol boats cruised around the fortress like a dense swarm of locusts, drawing thousands of crisscrossing high-dimensional light tracks. The unimaginably massive polarized light beam at the center of the fortress's main axis swept a vast, unfathomable gravitational ripple into the depths of the universe every few physical seconds, forcefully dragging the trajectories of asteroids within hundreds of thousands of miles into regular elliptical arcs.

That was a mighty power not belonging to mortals; that was the high-dimensional chain with which the Divine Court gripped the throat of the Twelve Zodiac Star Zones.

"Push the polarized light masking array into extreme overload mode," veteran Caleb lowered his rough, heavy voice. The mechanical prosthetic eye violently embedded in his eye socket rapidly adjusted its focal length under the dark red halo of the console. "We are stepping right under the Aries Lord's nose now. The moment the [Orbit-breaker One]'s polarized camouflage amplitude leaks even a sliver, as long as the space-based heavy gravity main cannons on this Sky Sentinel deflect their polarized light over for a single second, we, along with this asteroid belt, will be instantly vaporized into quantum particles."

By the ventilation duct in the rear cabin, dozens of ragged miners huddled tightly together. A haggard woman shielded the young child in her arms, her teeth chattering in the faint vibrations: "Is that... the fortress of gods? Can we really escape from under the gods' noses?"

"Shut up, don't make a sound!" An old miner covered in bloodstains nearby scolded in a low voice, though his eyes remained dead-locked on the command console ahead. "Look at Captain Elias! He just chopped down a high-and-mighty divine envoy! Divine blood is red mixed with pale gold too! As long as we listen to the Captain, mortals can survive!"

Elias stood straight as a spear before the main control console in the front cabin, his long hand tightly gripping the heavy alloy cutting knife at his waist, which was still stained with Gar's pale golden divine coagulated blood. His gaze was cold and heavy as iron; his eyes held not a sliver of the cowardice and trembling a mortal would have when facing a divine fortress.

By his side, the astrologer girl Lyra was rapidly pressing complex rune elements on the miniature Orbit-breaking Astrolabe. The pale blue star-track lens refracted precise light spots in her clear, water-like pupils: "Elias, the bottom-layer black box logs of the [Golden Saint] have been completely decrypted and extracted... Look at this."

As Lyra's fingertip lightly swiped, a projection of pale purple, high-dimensional characters unfolded on the large screen before the three of them. It was a secret ledger containing orders issued directly by the Aries Lord's private guards to Advanced Divine Envoy Gar right before he descended into the Deadzone—

[Secret Order: Lockdown Tartarus Blind Spot Vein Area No. 097. The backlash from the decay of the star core's laws in this star sector has exceeded standard limits; the lower-realm mortal assets hold no further value for extraction or utilization. Initiate total high-dimensional purging protocol. Erase all traces of life. Filing this operation with the Twelve Houses of Political Affairs or the Divine Court Central Astrolabe is strictly prohibited.]

"Lower-realm assets with no further value for extraction or utilization..." Caleb stared at that line of cold, glaring high-dimensional characters, the muscles in his jaw twitching violently. A hatred as thick as blood erupted in his one good, flesh-and-blood eye. "Generations of us miners spat blood digging in the underground waste mines of Tartarus, yet in the eyes of the gods, we are worse than a pile of slag! Saying 'erase' and just erasing us, even skipping the filing with the central Divine Court!"

"This is the Divine Court's so-called supreme order." Elias's voice was bone-chillingly cold, each word like a sharp blade piercing the silence in the cabin. "In the eyes of the Aries Lord, the Divine Court's rules are nothing but tools he uses to rule his jurisdiction and bleed mortals dry. The moment it comes to his own personal interests, he can trample the laws at will. This was never any sacred justice; this is merely totalitarian exploitation and bandit logic cloaked in high-dimensional glory."

Just then, the woman standing in the shadows of the rear observation deck slowly paced closer.

She had swapped out the rough cloth refugee cloak she originally wrapped herself in, replacing it with a form-fitting dark night trench coat tailored from the fibers of Deadzone warship wreckage—a low-reflection disguise necessary for infiltrating the shadows of the Sky Sentinel. Beneath the hood, those violet eyes, usually misty, were now cold and clear as blades, lacking even a fraction of an amnesiac refugee's ignorance. She was none other than the true body of the Supreme God of Darkness, Umbra, disguised as the amnesiac refugee Vespera.

Vespera gave a faint, indifferent glance at the secret order on the projection, her voice even and without fluctuation: "The secret order is written very clearly—a high-dimensional lord designated lower-realm resources as personal property, even skipping the filing with the central Divine Court. For the Aries Lord to dare bypass the Twelve Houses and purge it privately shows he's long had nothing to fear within the Divine Court. He is nothing more than one of the many lords sucking on star veins."

Elias keenly turned his head, his pitch-black pupils locking onto Vespera's overly calm face: "You seem exceptionally well-versed in the operations of the Divine Court's Inner Cabinet, Vespera."

Vespera's eyes flickered slightly, responding with perfect naturalness: "Before being exiled to the blind spot, I once saw the preaching texts secretly passed down by the Divine Court's church. The decay and cold-bloodedness of the high-dimensional gods is far deeper than mortals can imagine."

At the exact same moment that the [Orbit-breaker One] was struggling to survive and moving stealthily under the shadow of the Sky Sentinel—

In the high-dimensional Heavenly Realm, within the deep and vast Sanctum of the [8th House (House of Disease and Death)].

Within this magnificent hall, composed entirely of pitch-black crystals and slowly revolving nebulas, there was no vitality or warmth. There were only countless life-track law-lines radiating faint purple glows, crisscrossing in the void, emitting low sounds like snapping bowstrings. This was the central hub where the Divine Court governed the death, disease, finality, and soul annihilation of all living beings in the universe.

Seated on the Pluto Black Crystal Law-Throne in the center of the Sanctum was a noble goddess draped in a dark star-gauze robe, her eyes like the abyss of the underworld.

[Lord of the 8th House (House of Disease and Death), Goddess of Magic Hecate].

Lord Hecate rested her slender, ice-white fingers lightly on the crystal armrest. In the void before her, a pale golden divine light-rune was violently struggling and gradually extinguishing. That was exactly the distress mark of the dying soul emitted when Advanced Divine Envoy Gar fell in the Tartarus Deadzone ruins!

"Advanced Divine Envoy Gar... divine rune completely extinguished." Lord Hecate spoke, her voice cold and profound, sending ripples of high-dimensional energy through the empty, deathly silent Sanctum. "Energy fluctuations in the Deadzone are abnormal. There are amplitudes indicating the dissipation of high-dimensional divine blood and the collapse of gravitational laws."

Below Hecate, several Disease and Death Star Officials clad in black robes respectfully bowed their heads and knelt, a trace of unease in their voices: "Lord, Divine Envoy Gar belongs to the Aries Lord's private guard fleet. According to Divine Court law, a lord privately mobilizing a fleet to descend upon an unfiled lower-realm waste zone, resulting in the death and fall of an advanced divine envoy, is an extremely severe violation and overstepping of authority! Should we immediately sound the high-dimensional alarm and report the entire ledger to the God King Jupiter and the Twelve Houses of Political Affairs?"

The corners of Lord Hecate's eyes lifted slightly. On that exquisitely sculpted, ice-like face, the corners of her mouth curled into an amused, sarcastic arc.

She did not order the alarm to be sounded. Instead, with a light tap of her fingertip, she called up the final energy trajectory before Gar's divine rune extinguished. Relying on the 8th House's absolute mastery over high-dimensional laws, Hecate saw through the Aries Lord's selfish plot at a glance—to cover up the scandal of his excessive mining causing the Tartarus star core's laws to become polluted, Aries overstepped his authority and sent a patrol squad to purge the mortals, never expecting them to stumble in the depths of the Deadzone.

"Sound the alarm?" Lord Hecate gave an indifferent, cold laugh, her beautiful eyes revealing the calculation of high-dimensional political chess. "Why sound the alarm? The Aries Lord has always been arrogant and conceited. Relying on his massive Aries Constellation Legion, he has contradicted the magistrates in the Twelve Houses' meetings countless times. He doesn't even put our 8th House's Disease and Death Audit in his eyes."

The black-robed Star Official froze: "What the Lord means is..."

"If Aries wants to suppress this scandal, then this Lord will grant his wish." Lord Hecate raised her slender, jade-like hand. Her long fingertips lightly swiped through the void!

A deep purple [Law of Disease and Death: Nihility Erasure] instantly covered that struggling rune of Gar's! All the soul distress signals, physical coordinates, and the bizarre ripples of him being killed by mortals that Gar emitted right before dying were instantly vaporized and erased by the 8th House's absolute authority!

On the official ledgers of the Divine Court Central Astrolabe, Divine Envoy Gar's file status was directly rewritten by Hecate to: [Encountered a high-dimensional gravity storm during patrol, naturally lost contact].

"Erase his distress mark." Lord Hecate lowered her eyelids, her tone as plain as wiping a speck of dust off a table. "Do not give the Aries Lord an excuse to immediately mobilize his main army to quell a rebellion, and do not let a Divine Court alarm disturb God King Jupiter's slumber. Let that mortal wildfire hiding in the depths of the Deadzone burn a little longer... Once those mortals smash a few of Aries's smuggling routes and make the scandal absolutely undeniable, the Twelve Houses will naturally have reason to jointly impeach Aries."

The black-robed Star Officials bowed deeply: "The Lord is wise. As you command!"

The coldness and political calculation of high-dimensional gods were displayed vividly at this moment. In Lord Hecate's eyes, the death of Divine Envoy Gar, the rebellion, and the bloodshed of mortals were nothing more than bargaining chips for internal political struggles and power struggles within the Divine Court.

However, Hecate could absolutely never have imagined that it was precisely this soul mark she erased out of self-interest that bought the newly born spark of mortals the most precious breathing room and space to grow!

Observation deck at the tail of the [Orbit-breaker One].

Vespera (Umbra), who had originally had her eyes half-closed, seemed to sense the erasure of that faint purple light on the high-dimensional astrolabe, and a trace of imperceptibly cold sarcasm appeared at the corner of her mouth.

"The high-dimensional Lord of Disease and Death... is also playing with ledgers for the sake of power?" Umbra snorted coldly deep in her heart. "This tall building of the Divine Court has long rotted from its foundation. The so-called supreme order is nothing but a spoils-sharing agreement under the table among a bunch of high-dimensional bandits."

She opened her violet eyes. Her gaze passed through the electromagnetic explosion-proof glass and landed on the resolute mortal boy at the command console ahead.

Elias was unfolding the physical terrain perspective of the 11th House Sky Sentinel, his tone decisive and firm:

"The Aries Lord thinks he can use a massive fortress to trap us in the Deadzone like bugs. But he doesn't know that the more arrogant the gods are, the larger the gaps they leave in the laws! Caleb, Lyra, notify the entire ship, prepare for the first phase of mortal armed integration!"

"This time, we will use this shadow the gods cannot see to forge the starting point for mortals to draw their swords against the sea of stars!"

The boy's loud, steady voice echoed stirringly within the sealed cabin. The sky full of dazzling, high-dimensional polarized light from the Sky Sentinel spilled onto the black warship's armor plates, pushing this epic of mortals resisting high-dimensional totalitarianism toward an unknown abyss.