Chapter 38 — Astra's Wrath
Chapter 38 — Astra's Wrath
LinBoo · Divine Court Inner Cabinet Assembly Hall.
The air inside the hall congealed like a frozen nebula.
The seats of the Ten Great Planetary Chief Gods were arranged in a semicircle beneath the massive dome. Every Chief God exuded a sacred, oppressive aura that would make mortals tremble in awe. Suspended exactly in the center of the dome was the golden projection of the LinBoo Astrolabe. The blood-red annotation of the Null Error was exceptionally glaring within it, like an iron nail driven into the pride of the Divine Court.
"The first time." Saturn spoke slowly and coldly, his gaunt voice like a death knell from ancient times. "For the first time in the history of the Divine Court, a power has been able to cause death upon divine envoys without leaving any traceable mark of law on the astrolabe. Four divine envoys. One was a captain of the Aries Lord's personal guard, three were patrol divine officials of the 11th House Sky Sentinel. All annihilated, as if they never existed."
No one spoke to interrupt him.
"This was no accident, nor was it equipment error." Saturn's withered fingers tapped lightly on the table. "We have seen divine envoys die from sudden spatial tears at the borders of territories; we have seen divine envoys physically depleted to nothingness in high-dimensional storms; we have seen divine envoys melt away in the molten cores of underground active volcanoes. Those all left residual waves of law. Even if mortals used energy fragments dismantled from divine weapons to harm a divine envoy, it would leave a corresponding mark of law collapse—because fundamentally, that is still divine power. But what was left this time was a null value. A thorough, complete null value that cannot be explained by any known paradigm of the Divine Court."
"Everyone sitting here knows better than I what this means." Saturn's eye sockets were sunken like caves. "That power wanders outside of our system of laws."
Silence spread in the Assembly Hall for a moment, before it was broken by the God of Mars, Mars, who sat on the flank of the assembly seats.
This God of War, clad in magma-colored heavy armor, abruptly pushed himself up. His rough fist smashed heavily on the table, shaking the dome projection into ripples: "Then we must not delay! A power wandering outside the system of laws—isn't this obvious enough? There is something in the blind spot we do not understand! If we don't immediately dispatch troops to strangle it in the cradle, wait until it grows strong enough to slaughter several divine envoys at once, and only then react, what will the cost be? It will be the utter festering of the entire Aries defense line!"
"Purge." The God of Pluto, Pluto, standing beside Mars, crossed his arms, his tone decisive. "The blind spot has proven it is beyond control. A rotting root cannot be kept. If kept, the infection will spread to the whole tree. The Divine Court's order does not permit uncontrollable variables. My opinion is to immediately authorize the Aries Lord to dispatch a vanguard army to carry out a comprehensive physical purge!"
"Agree to purge!" Another voice.
"Act immediately!"
The voices of the pro-war faction surged one after another, layering like a tide surging in the Assembly Hall.
God King Jupiter remained silent the entire time, merely watching the astrolabe projection on the dome quietly. His spiral-shaped pupils were profound and showed no emotion.
He raised his eyes and shifted his gaze to the seat on his left.
Astra sat there, the broad sleeves of her golden robe hanging quietly on the armrests of her exquisite chair. Her expression was gentle and calm, a faint smile of compassion at the corners of her mouth, as if she were the least anxious person in the entire Assembly Hall.
But God King Jupiter saw the details at her fingertips: the knuckles of her hand holding the tail end of the Starlight Spindle slightly tightened, then slowly relaxed, and then tightened again.
Only this single movement betrayed her true emotions.
"Astra." God King Jupiter spoke in a low voice, his tone carrying an unquestionable certainty. "How much did you perceive of what happened in the Tartarus blind spot?"
The atmosphere in the hall imperceptibly tensed a few degrees.
All the Chief Gods knew that Astra's perception of the astrolabe's outer network was the highest in the Divine Court. If there was any disturbance in the blind spot, she might perceive it earlier than anyone else.
Astra shifted her gaze from the astrolabe projection to God King Jupiter. Her golden eyes were clear and gentle, without a trace of panic:
"I perceived the instant the divine envoys fell." She said softly, her tone calm as water. "Four sparks of law abruptly extinguished. I thought at the time... that the high-micro-particle radiation in the blind spot had caused an abnormal overload."
"Was it really just a high-micro-particle overload?" God King Jupiter's eyes narrowed slightly, a sharp glint flashing through his spiral-shaped pupils. "In the amplitude characteristics presented by the Star-network Inspection Bureau, that absolute nothingness that wiped away all information residue has a highly similar resonance, on the level of law, to the 'Law of Absolute Silence' of the Polar Night Sanctum. Astra, is the God of Darkness, Umbra, still in her secluded meditation in her deep abyss of the polar night?"
The temperature in the great hall plummeted. Several planetary Chief Gods looked at each other, their fingertips silently pressing on their respective sigils of authority.
"The dark light fluctuations of the Polar Night Sanctum are the same as always, and there are no anomalous signs of divine core resonance. Umbra remains in her long slumber and has not shown interest in the operations of the LinBoo Astrolabe." Meeting God King Jupiter's scrutiny, Astra's golden eyes still held that compassionate and gentle smile. "If it really were her making a move, what would have been erased would not just be four patrol divine envoys, but half the defense line of the Aries Star Zone. Your Majesty should be clear about her temper."
Saturn's gaunt face showed no expression, but he coldly interjected: "A high-micro-particle radiation overload wouldn't leave an area of Null Error on the Star-network, Astra."
Astra smiled and turned her head. Her gaze gently swept past Saturn without a trace of wavering.
That was the perfect shield honed through thousands of years of political clashes in the upper echelons of the Divine Court—gentle, calm, yet making all interrogations land on nothing.
But this was still only half the truth.
In the instant the Star-network alarm sounded and those four sparks of law abruptly extinguished deep in the blind spot, Astra had indeed caught another subtle, almost imperceptible fluctuation. That was the origin power she shared the source of birth with for countless epochs—even if it was hidden extremely deeply, she could instantly recognize that it was Umbra's origin divine breath.
Her younger sister had long deceived the eyes of everyone in the Divine Court and slipped alone into the physical blind spot outside the order of liberation.
In that instant, almost out of instinct, Astra mobilized the light-string laws of her stargazing platform. Using a "Light Curtain Stitch" of an extremely high dimension, she wiped away the last trace of the backtracking waveband for that exposed fluctuation of absolute silence, covering it dead in a blind spot of destiny.
Her choice to conceal it was, in fact, for the simplest of reasons—that was her biological younger sister who had accompanied her through countless epochs. Even if she had no idea what Umbra was secretly doing descending to the lower realm or what tricks she was playing, her instinct as an elder sister made her choose to protect her at the first moment. If the Inner Cabinet were allowed to learn that the Supreme God of Darkness violated the rules and laid hands on the lower realm, it would inevitably draw extremely severe legal punishment from the Divine Court upon Umbra, and might even completely shatter the fragile balance between the two sisters in the Inner Cabinet.
"Then," God King Jupiter stared at her for a long time, ultimately not pressing further without evidence. He slowly withdrew his gaze, his tone growing heavier. "Astra, the opinion of the pro-war faction has been submitted to my desk—they believe the appearance of the Null Error means there is a free variable in the blind spot not under the control of the laws. If left alone, this variable will cause irreversible erosion to the astrolabe's structure in the next epoch. They demand the immediate dispatch of the Aries Lord's vanguard army to carry out a comprehensive physical purge and sweep of the blind spot."
Purge and sweep.
These words landed on Astra's heart like a cold iron hammer.
Her knuckles tightened slightly once more.
She knew all too well the actual meaning of a "purge and sweep." This was no scalpel-like precision strike, but carpet bombing—using the Divine Court's high-dimensional law cannons to fundamentally dissociate all possible signs of life and material residue within the blind spot into high-micro-particle vapor.
There were still living mortals on that wasteland.
That soul frequency of the Orbit-breaking Anomaly was still beating in the darkness.
In her mind, the final moments before Tartarus was destroyed suddenly flashed past—the miners struggling to survive in the wasteland, the old and young huddling together to shield each other in the radiation storm, the voices using their last ounce of strength to pray to the starry sky. She had desperately injected light with her Starlight Spindle back then, believing that if she just gave them a little more time, if she just stitched one more inch of the star-track, they could survive.
But in the end, that darkness still came.
That darkness was not tyranny, it was Umbra's cold-blooded logic—perhaps a correct logic, but Astra still could not fully accept it.
"My Lords." Astra spoke softly, her voice as gentle as starlight and flowing water. "A purge and sweep is indeed the most direct way to handle this. But before execution, I have a few points I need to clarify to the Inner Cabinet."
"Please speak." God King Jupiter gestured.
"First," Astra raised her hand, and golden light waves gently rippled outward from the tip of the spindle, projecting a detailed star-track deduction map on the dome. "The blind spot is currently in a high-pressure state of multiple overlapping physical radiations. If external high-dimensional fleets rashly cut in, the frequency conflict between the high-dimensional law cannon barrels and the physical environment of that sector has a very high probability of triggering a chain explosion that will affect the jump nodes of three surrounding star zones—those are the vital commercial routes of Taurus, Scorpio, and Capricorn."
In the Assembly Hall, the expressions of several Chief Gods tied to commercial route interests flickered slightly.
"Second," Astra's star-track map continued to unfold, "After the annihilation of Tartarus, because of my forced star-track stitching, several residual nodes of law circuits were left in that blind spot. If purged rashly, the massive karmic causality accumulated in those circuit nodes will backlash in an instant—" She paused, her voice still gentle, but her phrasing exceptionally clear. "That is a lingering affliction caused by my forced stitching of Tartarus back then."
When she said this, her knuckles finally slowly released the spindle.
She thought of that night. She thought of her pouring all her strength to inject light to stitch the core of that planet; she thought of her anger when Umbra coldly told her it was "irreversible"; she thought of the sound of the entire planet and billions of living beings evaporating in an instant when that final law of darkness descended—
It wasn't a roar. It was silence. An absolute silence far harder to bear than any explosion.
Because the amputation of laws was so thorough that there wasn't even time to let out a cry for help.
"My forced stitching last time already made Tartarus die more thoroughly." Astra's voice lowered slightly, still calm, but holding a trace of bitterness even she hadn't noticed. "If we purge rashly this time, once those old karmic backlashes are triggered, the consequences will be difficult to estimate. I suggest—before a comprehensive purge, we first dispatch Investigating Divine Officials to conduct a precise physical scan of the blind spot, thoroughly figure out the current distribution of causality circuits and the state of radiation, and then make a plan."
God King Jupiter was silent for a moment.
Those spiral-shaped pupils were not gently persuaded, but he was a politician who would never publicly overthrow Astra in the Inner Cabinet—because Astra's "reputation of compassion" was an indispensable voice for maintaining the legitimacy of the entire Divine Court's rule.
"Reconnaissance first, then deliberate." God King Jupiter finally said, temporarily shelving the issue. "Lady Astra's concerns hold rationality. But I must declare—this is only shelving, not a veto. The Null Error incident must have a clear handling plan before the next epoch."
"I understand." Astra slightly bowed her head, gentle and respectful.
The agenda of the Assembly Hall continued to advance, turning to the military reports of the Aries Lord.
And Astra quietly shifted her gaze back to her palm—there, the light of the Starlight Spindle was trembling slightly.
She knew she had only bought a little time, not true safety.
The Divine Court's grand army would arrive sooner or later.
What she could do was, before then, quietly and piece by piece, move away all the stones that might crush the blind spot.
Even if this was the bitter toil of Sisyphus, even if she knew that one day the stones would press down—she still had to move them.
This was her limitation. But it was also her persistence.
After the agenda concluded, God King Jupiter remained alone in the Assembly Hall, standing for a long time in the golden light of the dome's astrolabe projection.
A Messenger Divine Envoy came forward to ask for instructions on whether to issue deployment orders to the Aries Lord.
God King Jupiter remained silent for a very long time before speaking:
"Order the Aries Lord to accelerate the preparation of the vanguard fleet and complete the tactical lockdown deployment of the blind spot's peripheral nodes before the next epoch."
The divine envoy received the order and departed.
God King Jupiter did not immediately follow up with the purge and sweep command—not because he was persuaded by Astra, but because politically, he would never use brute force to sweep flat a disputed chessboard unless he had clearly seen all the variables.
What was in the blind spot? How did the four divine envoys die? What exactly did Astra see on the stargazing platform, and what was she deliberately hiding? If these variables were not sorted out clearly, a rash purge and sweep would merely be smashing the chessboard with force, and one would never know where that behind-the-scenes chess piece truly was.
He needed the military encirclement of the Aries Lord to cut off all possible escape routes from the blind spot; he needed the reconnaissance results to thoroughly trace the source of that Null Error; he needed to wait.
The master of the universe never subdues others by force, but crushes all opponents with time and information asymmetry.
The Private Stargazing Platform of the Proxy of Light, late at night.
After the agenda concluded, Astra returned alone to that Destiny Water Mirror.
The pitch-black blind spot still hung in the mirror, quiet and profound.
She gazed for a long time, finally speaking. Her voice was extremely light, so light that only she could hear it:
"I don't know who you are. But you are still alive."
She gently twirled the Starlight Spindle between her fingers. A golden thread of light unspooled from the tip of the spindle, rippling toward the direction of the blind spot with an extremely minute amplitude, almost imperceptible to the naked eye.
That wasn't healing, nor was it interference. It was just a string of light as thin as a spider's silk, quietly hung at the edge of the darkness.
If it could block even a tiny bit of the Divine Court's sight for you...
She withdrew the Starlight Spindle and re-hid that string of light into the noise of the starry sky background.
No one could detect it.
Outside the window, the LinBoo Astrolabe rotated silently, ruthlessly weaving hundreds of billions of destiny threads toward predetermined orbits. But deep in that distant blind spot, an orbit-breaking thread as thin as a gossamer was quietly burning in the darkness, deviating from all predetermined trajectories, extending alone toward the unknown.
Astra closed her palm, gently grasping that trembling spark of light.