On the third day after the trial announcement, Skycast City slid into a strange kind of "quiet."
Not that no one talked—but everyone talked lower.
The hawkers on Rust Street weren't so shrill. The hammers in the mid-tier workshops struck a little softer. Even the occasional music drifting out of noble towers on the upper tier sounded like someone had reached in and twisted the volume down halfway.
Everyone was waiting for the same thing—
The Covenant Council's official announcement chain.
That was the version that really counted.
Before the Night Bell, the first chain dropped from the temple dome.
Like the usual readings of festival covenants and tax covenants, light poured down from the upper tier, slipped past the mid-tier workshops, and spilled into the deepest cracks of Rust Street.
Only this time, the light wasn't a gentle gold. It was a cold, clean white—
Like it meant to drag out every name that thought it could hide in the shadows.
On Rust Street, the little church was packed.
On days like this, it was usually just old folks and kids coming to mooch purification water. Today, even the black market stall owners who cursed the gods the loudest were jammed shoulder to shoulder at the door, craning up at the ceiling.
Overhead, the prayer-chain gave a small, brittle crack. A light panel slowly unfurled.
Heavy characters dropped down across the top:
[Skycast City Covenant Council · Public Trial Announcement]
[Defendant: Qi Luo.]
[Roster annotation: Resident of Rust Street; formerly registered as a Covenant Department apprentice at Star-Signet Academy; roster status briefly "deceased," later confirmed "anomalous."]
Below that, line after line of his "clause crimes" from the past few years.
[Unauthorized interference in academy trial clauses, resulting in partial backlash of "Obey Orders" clause.]
[Unauthorized modification of plague contingency execution targets, disrupting a chief-god-level Catastrophe Contingency.]
[Unauthorized coercion of high-ranking gods into signing "human clauses" in public, destabilizing divine authority structures.]
[Unauthorized operation of an unregistered covenant firm, rewriting covenants for gods while remaining a mortal.]
Every line started with "unauthorized."
Someone in the church listened and listened, then couldn't help muttering under his breath, "Unauthorized, my ass."
He was yanked hard by the person next to him. "You got a death wish?"
The light panel kept unrolling.
[…In sum, the Council finds that his actions have severely disrupted world order, are suspected to be connected to the sigil-lines of the World Rollback Covenant, and constitute rebellion against the World Base-Covenant.]
[Seven days hence, a public trial will be held at the temple square.]
[All gods and mortals who have had major covenant dealings with him will be listed as potential accomplices and investigated separately as needed.]
The moment that line appeared, half the low buzz of chatter in the church cut off like a blade.
—"All who have had major covenant dealings with him."
The words dropped into everyone's chest like a rock.
Someone instinctively edged toward the door, as if stepping away from the light panel could somehow dodge the contracts they'd signed over the past few years.
The priest's face went white.
He wasn't afraid for himself—
He was afraid of the little glowing stone slab on the wall.
That slab was the "subsidy clause" contract between the Covenant Council and this lower-tier church. Carved on it, clear as day, was the note:
On a certain year, month, and day, a boy named Qi Luo had come here and helped him amend several debt and confession clauses.
After that day, the church took in far less income from "mandatory donations," and a few real copper coins from people who wanted to give.
Now that line on the slab felt like a brand straight out of the furnace.
"Father…" someone whispered, testing the waters. "Does that mean… we're…"
Before he could finish, the prayer-chain in the ceiling snapped tight. A fresh line flickered across the light panel:
[Special Notice:]
[All gods and mortals who have ever accepted Qi Luo's unauthorized amendments to debts, reduction of obligations, changes to confession clauses, or rewrites of divine offices are hereby entered into a 'to-be-reviewed list.']
[This date of announcement shall be considered the starting point for self-report.]
[During the self-report period, any who voluntarily disclose their dealings with him may have portions of their liability reduced.]
Self-report, huh.
The church went dead quiet.
Someone felt cold sweat trickle down his back as he gritted his teeth and started doing the math: was that one amended loan worth it? Was the bit of debt relief he'd gotten worth having his whole family pulled into this now?
Others already had their heads down, hands sneaking into their clothes toward the rag bundles where they kept covenant copies—
They were thinking: Should I burn it?
Before fear could fully flood the little church, a very thin chain slid out from a corner.
This chain didn't drop from the ceiling. It slipped quietly up through a crack in the floorboards—
Its metal dim and ashy, like iron smoked over coal.
A nail-sized plate hung off the end.
Only a few very small characters were etched on it:
[If you believe "Qi Luo's amendments" once protected your basic survival and dignity, you may anonymously sign a clause here: "willing to testify on his behalf."]
[This clause does not directly expose the signer's identity. It records only the total number of testimonies.]
The explanation was written with obvious care, like it was trying to calm a roomful of spooked animals.
"Where'd that chain come from?" someone whispered, suspicious. "Temple?"
"As if the temple would let you testify for a 'traitor,'" a woman snorted. "You'd have to have your brain rusted through to believe that."
The priest froze for a moment, then quickly realized—this chain's structure wasn't anything like the temple's stiff, standard format.
The wording was too grounded, even carrying a hint of that patience Qi Luo always showed when he was afraid people wouldn't understand the clauses.
"Must be…" He swallowed. "Must be… that kid's work."
"Qi Luo?" someone hissed. "He dares slip something into the chains on temple announcement day?"
"This is exactly what he does," another person snorted. "You only figuring that out now?"
The chain hung quietly in the air, not pushing anyone.
It just waited.
The first to sign was an old man so thin he was all skin and bone.
He squeezed through the crowd, reached out a shaking finger, and paused in front of the tiny plate.
"Old Zhang, what are you doing?!" someone panicked. "You can barely write your own name—do you even know what you're signing?"
"I know," Old Zhang said.
His voice gurgled up through his sick lungs, but it was clear.
"That year… I owed the uptown grain shop a mountain of debt." He stared at the tiny plate. "The clause said I had to hand my granddaughter over as an apprentice, to one of those factories you never come back out of."
"I came here to beg the Father." Old Zhang gave a smile uglier than crying. "He said 'It's written. Even gods can't change it.'"
"Then this skinny kid stood up in the back row and said, 'Covenants are written by people. Gods just use them.'"
A lot of people in the church remembered that day.
The scrawny apprentice in a washed-out robe, quietly pulling the debt covenant from the pile and spotting a line where the rolling interest terms weren't fully written out.
"He wrote that line properly for me," Old Zhang said. "Once it was clear, they couldn't double the interest every day."
"The grain shop cursed a blue streak, but they accepted it in the end."
"My granddaughter stayed home. Didn't get sent off to be another cog."
Old Zhang lifted his hand and scratched a crooked "Zhang" across the tiny plate.
The chain gave a faint shiver.
[Anonymous testimony +1]
From every angle, it was anonymous—
No "Old Zhang," no alley name, no address. Even if Qi Luo himself wanted to trace it, he'd have to go around in circles.
"How's this 'accomplice' then?" Old Zhang coughed twice, jaw set. "If it counts, then it counts."
"If Qi Luo's a traitor, then so am I."
His one signature was like a stone tossed into still water.
The second to sign was a woman.
Her face was darkened by years and smoke. A coughing child clung to her chest.
"Last year, plague night," she said, "my boy was burning up and out of his mind. Temple said they were going to 'purify' the whole street."
"It was that madman who kept running to the wind-tower without sleeping, dragging the plague onto those rusted metal stacks."
"I saw him run past the street." Her voice shook. "His face was all ash, and his eyes were still bright."
"Now they call him 'World Traitor.'" Her teeth clicked together. "Fine."
"I admit I was saved by a traitor."
She drew a circle on the little plate—she couldn't write, so that was all she had.
The chain didn't mind.
[Anonymous testimony +1] jumped again.
More people raised their heads to look at that plain little chain.
Some hesitated. Some gritted their teeth.
In the end, one hand after another reached out.
Most of them couldn't write full names—so they drew symbols, circles, the marks they used at work.
The chain accepted them all.
Every mark was converted into one untraceable "willing to testify."
[Anonymous testimony +7]
[+13]
[+29]
The numbers quietly stacked up at the edge of the light panel.
At the same time, in a higher layer no one could see, each "+1" was being copied into a small corner of the World Base-Covenant.
[Number of mortal willingness-to-testify signatures for 'World Traitor': …]
To the temple, that number was just noise.
To certain modules monitoring symbol-nodes, it was a metric.
It wasn't just Rust Street.
In a narrow workshop alley on the mid-tier, inside an unremarkable little prayer booth, a few craftsmen traded looks under a hovering light panel.
They were masters from workshops affiliated with Star-Signet Academy—men who'd, one winter night, quietly sought out that "clause-tampering" apprentice—
To tweak the labor contracts that were grinding their apprentices to death.
"What was it he said back then?" one master tried to remember. "Something like, 'Work isn't a sacrifice. It's an exchange.'"
"He said those words 'labor may be allocated' could add 'provided basic health is not harmed,'" another chimed in. "The boss nearly popped a vein."
They'd been scared half to death then, and exhilarated all the same.
"Now look at us," someone gave a bitter laugh. "Those lines get tallied under you and me?"
In the corner of the prayer booth, the same fine chain reached out.
The explanation was stripped down to just a few words:
[Willing to testify—yes/no.]
[Anonymous—yes.]
The masters looked at each other.
"We're all walking scrap metal by now anyway," the oldest said, baring his teeth. "He helped those kids. My last stroke in this world can go on this."
He signed with a tiny craftsmen's mark.
[Anonymous testimony +1]
The chain trembled again, then hung, waiting for the next.
Higher up, a few beings who shouldn't have been anywhere near a mortal prayer booth were watching too.
At an old altar down in the lower tier, the disease-reminder god whose office had been rewritten—Lihen—leaned against a broken statue, staring at the announcement chain floating overhead.
[All gods who have had major covenant dealings with Qi Luo… shall be listed as potential accomplices.]
"Accomplices," Lihen snorted, teeth aching with the sound.
It remembered clearly. When the chief gods had nearly rewritten it into a tool for "culling surplus population," that Rust Street brat had twisted "purification" on the clause into "corroding noble abuse of power" instead.
"You changed me from 'killing the poor' to 'biting the nobles,'" Lihen said in its heart. "Now we're both traitors."
"Good."
Its divine form blurred along the altar's edge, dissolving into an almost invisible wisp.
In the higher clause-space, a minor-god chain brushed against the anonymous testimony chain.
A god's signature wasn't written in characters, but stamped as an office sigil.
[Disease office · Lihen: willing to testify to Qi Luo's 'covenant amendments,' confirming that he once prevented indiscriminate purification of lower-tier mortals.]
In the smallest of script, it added:
[—Accomplice? Fine.]
[Anonymous testimony +1 (god-marked)]
The World Base-Covenant rippled faintly.
[Record: A god has voluntarily testified in favor of 'World Traitor.']
[Record: Said testimony points to 'protection of mortals.']
These entries wouldn't break the surface right away, but in the deep layers they were knitting into a thin line.
Someone was watching from the other end of that line.
In the Covenant Hunters' outpost chain-room, Ruan Ji stood before an observation stone, following the announcement chains as they ran downward.
She saw the gray chain poking up from the floorboards in the Rust Street church, and the "anonymous testimony +1" flickering in corners all over the city.
"You really dare," she whispered.
This was a "testimony chain" Qi Luo had secretly hung in place—
Exploiting a loophole in the self-report clause: if mortals had an obligation to "report their dealings with the traitor," then they also had the right to "report their stance on that dealing."
The temple announcement had only written half the story.
Qi Luo had supplied the world with the missing line.
"Mortals have the right to witness," she read from the announcement. "But you don't get to decide alone what they witness."
Inside the Hunter Covenant, the hidden "human priority" glowed softly.
She reached out and wrote a line beside her private notes:
[Observation: Number of anonymous testimonies is increasing.]
[Inference: A new symbolic structure, using 'traitor' as a node, is forming.]
"Contract-smith," she thought, "you're hanging your 'reputation clauses' right on the world's trial announcement."
"You know this is only going to make them want you dead more, don't you?"
The chains didn't answer.
On a sheet only she and the key-mark could see, she added another line, in tiny script:
[—If testimony is allowed during trial, Hunters shall assist in preserving the integrity of the testimony chain.]
It was a self-imposed clause.
She was no longer a blade that only executed.
In the Nameless Firm, the oil lamps were lit earlier than usual.
Qi Luo sat at the table, half his sight in reality, half in the Chains.
In reality, Luo Xiu was draped over the table, counting how many drops of oil were left in that dying lamp. Sanya leaned on the doorframe, hand on her knife, looking casual on the surface, while her ears were pricked like a cat's.
Garth stood by the iron panel, staring at the fragments. Every so often, he glanced back at Qi Luo.
"They dug up your whole record and read it out loud," Luo Xiu said around a piece of rock-hard flatbread. "Didn't even let the time you fiddled with the church donation clauses slide."
"Means they've got nothing better to read," Qi Luo said.
In the Chains, he watched a whole column of "associated clauses" light up next to his name.
[Associations:]
[Rust Street church debt rewrite × several.]
[Plague Night Catastrophe Contingency interference ×1.]
[Certain workshop labor clauses adjusted ×3.]
[Disease-reminder god office rewritten ×1.]
[…]
Every line was marked with a little red "to-be-reviewed" dot.
"They want every stroke you ever made dragged out into the sun," Garth said.
"For the whole city to see," Sanya added. "So everyone knows—get linked to you, and you might go down together."
Qi Luo gave a soft "mm."
He watched as a second column of tiny green numbers appeared next to the red dots.
[Anonymous testimony: +1]
[+3]
[+17]
"…They're signing," he said quietly.
"Who?" Luo Xiu asked.
"Everyone who's ever…" Qi Luo paused. "Had their life yanked back by one of my 'reckless clause edits.' A couple gods too."
"And a pile of stubborn old Rust Street bastards," Garth added.
Sanya watched the slowly climbing figures, something easing in her hard expression.
"So all these years weren't for nothing," she said. "Lift a fingertip and that many hands lift back for you."
Qi Luo didn't smile.
He knew every "+1" probably belonged to a real person who could end up in real trouble—
Even if the clause said "anonymous," if the world really wanted to hunt, it had ways.
"I've been in debt for a long time," he murmured. "They're just starting to tally it."
"You gonna shield them?" Garth asked.
Qi Luo was silent for a moment.
"I can blunt some of it," he said. "Not all."
He raised his hand and wrote a line along the edge of the anonymous testimony chain:
[Supplemental clause: testimonies shall be recorded only as quantity and direction, and may not serve as sole basis for conviction.]
The line was tucked away carefully, disguised inside the "implementation details." At a glance, it looked like a technical note.
The World Base-Covenant hesitated.
[Detected: Supplemental note on testimony chain.]
[Content: restricts how testimonies may be used in judgment.]
[Assessment: helps prevent abuse via "testimony as sole ground for conviction."]
"'Abuse' is a word it likes," Qi Luo said softly. "So this one passes."
The chain gave a little shiver and accepted the addendum.
Which meant—
Even if the Council tried to use these testimonies to drag people in later, they'd need other clauses to back it. They couldn't slap "accomplice" on someone purely because "you said you know Qi Luo."
"You just wrote them a 'no random hat-grabbing' rule," Luo Xiu said.
"That's called procedural justice," Qi Luo said.
"Sounds fancy," Sanya commented.
The lamplight wavered across Qi Luo's face, throwing the tiredness in his eyes into sharper relief.
"You know how many anonymous testimonies there are now?" Garth asked.
Qi Luo glanced at the tally point on the chain.
The count had jumped from single digits to a dense blur you couldn't parse at a glance.
[Total anonymous testimonies: …]
The World Base-Covenant wouldn't put that number on display.
But in the "symbol-node observation" column, it made a quiet note:
[Contract-smith Qi Luo: as symbol of "traitor," the number of spontaneous positive testimonies has already surpassed the worship count of certain minor gods.]
[Trend: brightness of his name in the Rules Layer continues to rise.]
Qi Luo knew what that meant.
—It meant he wasn't being isolated as some lone "sinner."
—He was starting to become a symbol of "those who oppose the old covenants."
"Traitor," he said under his breath.
He suddenly felt like laughing.
"They use the word to scare people," he said. "Never occurred to them some folks have stopped being scared of 'betrayal' for a long time."
"If they hadn't, there'd be no Fallen Knights, no little gods, no Rust Street."
He lifted his eyes to the half-finished World Rollback Covenant on the iron panel.
"Old covenants biting back," he thought. "From today on, they're not just biting me."
"They're going to bite everyone who ever wrote this world into a dead-end."
The oil lamp jumped; the flame flared a touch higher.
Outside, the temple's announcement chains still hung tall over every street, their lines packed with threat and grandeur.
Under those gleaming panels, thin gray chains were creeping out of the shadows—
Some from cracks in church floors, some from under workshop machines, some straight out of a minor god's shadow.
They all carried the same simple line:
[—Willing to testify for Qi Luo.]
The names were hidden. The marks scattered. Only the will was kept.
Deep where the world couldn't see, a new covenant-line was taking shape.
It didn't have a name yet.
If it had to have one, maybe it would be:
[Alliance of Defectors.]
Or maybe—
It was just a lot of people, before the old covenants came crashing down, reaching out to trace one small stroke at the edge of the page, quietly saying:
—I'm here.
—He's not alone.