The notice for the ritual trial came out of nowhere.
Morning class had just ended. The Covenant Department freshmen were still milling in the hallway, gossiping about the stairway accident, when the Academic Affairs chain flared above their heads—
A clear notification chain split off from the Teaching Clauses Mainline and swept down the list of every Covenant Department freshman name in turn.
[Covenant Department, Year One Classes A and B: report to the lower levels of the Ritual Tower at the third bell this afternoon to participate in the "Basic Obedience Ritual Trial."]
[This trial is classified as high-risk. Participation requires signing an Absolute Obedience Clause.]
[Those who refuse to participate will be considered to have voluntarily forfeited this term's core credits; the record will be entered in their personal file.]
The hallway exploded.
"High-risk?"
"Absolute obedience… that already sounds wrong."
"This is a screening, right? Who's got the balls not to go?"
Qi Luo looked up, watching the notification chain sway in the air.
The so-called "Ritual Tower" was the spire on the Academy's west side that was only half-open to students. Normally, only the first few library floors were accessible. Below that were the "ritual levels," strictly off-limits.
Rumor said those levels were full of trial clauses from the "Old Academy" era. Some said they were stepping stones to knock on the upper Council's door. Others claimed they were a convenient chute for "clearing anomalies."
Neither version was reassuring.
At the third bell, the two Covenant Department classes were marched neatly to the base of the Ritual Tower.
Its outer walls were built of black stone, every surface etched with dense sigils and old chains hammered into the cracks. From a distance it looked like a giant rock wrapped over and over in iron wire.
Above the doors hung the Academy's crest. Below, a new line of small characters had been hung just for today:
[No one may leave the trial zone without explicit authorization.]
A robed functionary of the gods checked their names with a glance and waved them through.
Inside, the tower was cold and damp. Even the air smelled like stone that had never fully dried.
A broad hall had been set up with desks and chairs. On the raised platform in front stood today's "trial overseer"—a middle-aged cleric in dark ceremonial robes. On his chest were two crests, embroidered side by side: Star-Signet Academy and the Covenant Council.
Qi Luo had seen his name in the materials he'd looked up before term started: Luer Tai.
A "Ritual Mentor" dispatched by the Council, in charge of the Academy's more discreet joint ceremonies with them.
"Quiet," Luer raised a hand.
The discipline chains above their heads lit up by a notch.
"First, congratulations on passing the entrance exams and standing here today." Luer's voice wasn't loud, but it carried the practiced steadiness of someone used to presiding over rites. "The Covenant Department isn't just about bookkeeping. It is the last seam between gods and mortals. Today's trial is your first 'obedience test' as covenant apprentices."
"Obedience to who?" someone muttered under their breath.
Luer either didn't hear or pretended not to.
He waved his hand. Assistants in vestments moved through the rows, handing out scrolls.
The scrolls were made of cold white vellum, with a faint sheen on the surface. When Qi Luo caught his, he could feel chains stirring under the paper, like a snake waiting to be attached to a name.
He glanced down. Across the top, bold characters read:
[Trial Obedience Covenant]
Below were a few short clauses:
[Clause One: For the duration of this Ritual Trial, the signer must render absolute obedience to the trial overseer and any orders issued under his authority. They must not refuse, delay, or distort execution for any reason.]
[Clause Two: The signer accepts any mental, physical, and covenant-chain level risks that may occur in the course of the trial. Any loss or damage incurred during the trial shall be deemed voluntarily assumed.]
[Clause Three: The signer must not unilaterally interrupt, reverse-edit, or otherwise tamper with the trial clauses during the process. Any violation shall be deemed grounds for removal from the covenant apprentice training track.]
Name and date lines waited at the bottom.
There weren't many words, but the danger was thick enough to stick in your throat.
Qi Luo lifted his eyes and followed the text on the paper upward into the air, tracing the structure of the chains.
A newly lit, heavy chain hung from the ceiling of the Ritual Tower hall. Its other end plunged down through the tower's stone floor. Carved on the surface were terms like "trial administration," "temporary clauses," and "obedience duty."
Every scroll's text connected to this chain along finer threads.
—The "trial chain," set up just for today.
Clause One clearly hung from the "obedience" branch, resonating from a distance with the "obedience clauses" in the Academy's Basic Covenant.
Clause Two was awkwardly grafted into the pool of "voluntary assumption of risk."
Clause Three was yanked onto the "no interference" bundle in a rather crude way.
"You have ten minutes to read it through," Luer said from the platform. "If there's something you don't understand, you may ask."
He paused, then smiled. "If anyone doesn't wish to sign, you may also choose to withdraw from the trial."
The moment he finished, the trial chain trembled faintly. An attached note flared into view overhead:
[Those who withdraw from the trial: this term's core course grades will be recorded as zero; your name will be added to the Academy's 'Insufficient Resolve' list.]
The four characters for "Insufficient Resolve" glinted on the chain. Linked to them was a dark line leading toward some internal evaluation pool in the Covenant Council.
—So walking away wasn't just "not doing a high-risk activity." It slapped an "Insufficient Resolve" tag on you that would follow all future evaluations.
Qi Luo could already see that refusing meant more than losing grades.
In systems that loved to quantify "obedience level," anyone flagged "Insufficient Resolve" might as well say goodbye to deeper covenant research.
Around him, people sucked in cold breaths.
One student raised a shaky hand. "Teacher, this covenant… does it carry a risk of death?"
Luer's eyes slid over to him. "Clause Two has clearly stated: mental, physical, and covenant-chain-level risk. The Academy will not intentionally kill students, but contingencies in ritual work cannot be completely excluded."
Spoken very nicely: we won't kill you "on purpose." That didn't mean they wouldn't conveniently do something else under cover of the trial.
Qi Luo lowered his gaze to the scroll, fingers rubbing along its edge.
He couldn't not sign.
If he backed down here, in public, then everything he'd done—classroom stunts, self-study experiments, the masterless covenant incident—would get smeared over with the perception of "coward." For the Hunters, for the Council, that was another data point.
They preferred "useful tools," not ones that ducked into their shells at crunch time.
And this so-called "Obedience Covenant" was obviously more than a safety waiver.
The four characters for "absolute obedience" in Clause One looked to him like nails hammered into the chain, stretching up to the higher pools of "obedience" and the Basic Covenant.
Worse—
Beneath Clause One, in almost deliberately faded print, there was a tiny line:
[Note: the right of interpretation of this clause belongs to the trial overseer.]
The right of interpretation sat squarely in his hand, and obedience was absolute.
In plain terms—if Luer wanted to issue orders that weren't really part of any "normal trial," so long as he could dress them up as "trial directives," this covenant would force signers to comply.
This wasn't "absolute obedience to the trial." It was "absolute obedience to Luer."
A chill, like mist, darted around his chest.
He looked up.
On the platform, Luer's gaze swept the hall with a faint smile.
Inside his sleeve, a hair-thin silver chain slipped out for a moment—quivering softly. That wasn't an ordinary Academy chain. It was a "guardian chain" directly authorized by the Council.
On that guardian chain hung a trigger sigil:
[If any anomalous covenant-chain operation is detected during the trial, immediately report to Council Oversight.]
So this was a double-layered trap.
They wanted to use the "obedience trial" to grease the skids for some plan, and at the same time use the high-pressure environment to bait out students with anomalous talents and screen them.
Qi Luo thought of Ruan Ji.
If she'd had a hand in designing this trial covenant, he wouldn't be surprised. Hunters excelled at building little "let's see if you show your teeth" situations.
"Time is almost up," Luer reminded them. "Prepare to sign."
Students started putting their names down.
Some didn't hesitate. Some hands shook, but still moved.
Qi Luo stared at the scroll on his desk and drew a long breath.
—Refusing wasn't an option.
Just like with the authorization paper in Ruan Ji's office, the only thing he could do inside "you must sign" was leave himself a line he could yank later to pull on someone else.
He forced all his attention into the clause structure.
Clause One: absolute obedience to the trial overseer and his authorized orders.
Tiny note: interpretation rights belong to the overseer.
Clause Two: voluntary assumption of risk.
Clause Three: no tampering with the trial clauses.
He couldn't blunt "absolute obedience" head-on. That would trigger the monitoring chains immediately—absolute obedience was the core of this covenant. Weakening those four characters would be like ripping the heart out of a lock; the whole thing would start screaming.
But obedience could have prerequisites.
Even the World-Scale Covenant Chain acknowledged "errors can occur in transmission of divine instructions," which was why that supplementary clause hung over Zhuang Ke Lan's chair.
And Luer… definitely wasn't a god.
"Obedience is contingent on the order itself being legitimate," Qi Luo shaped the thought into a sentence in his head.
That was what he was going to slot in.
He tested the ink at the edge of the scroll. The color came out slightly lighter. Good—extra words would blend better.
In the blink of an eye, most of the class had already signed.
Up front, a teacher urged them on. "Those in the back, don't drag your feet. We need the chain linked before we can start the trial."
Linked—meaning everyone's name had to attach to the trial chain to form a closed ritual loop.
Qi Luo lifted his pen.
The ink beaded and flowed, writing out the characters for "Qi Luo."
For an instant, one particular node on the trial chain flared, and a slender filament snapped down toward his chest, trying to hang his name directly under "absolute obedience."
He wrote his name a touch smaller than usual, making it look like just one more student on the long list.
As the pen tip left the name line, he slid it down to the end of Clause One's note, nudging over by the width of a character. After "the right of interpretation belongs to the trial overseer," he added:
[…on the condition that his orders and interpretations do not clearly violate the Academy's established safety clauses or the Council-registered scope of this trial.]
He wrote the entire string very small and tight, blending it into the rest of the note so it just looked like someone who liked wordy footnotes.
But in the chain structure, it was an entirely new condition.
Originally:
[Obedience = absolute execution of overseer's orders (with interpretation rights in his hands).]
Now, quietly altered to:
[Obedience = absolute execution of orders that fall "within the established safety clauses and registered scope of the trial" (with interpretation rights in his hands, but his interpretation itself is bound by those safety clauses and that registered scope).]
In other words—if, during the trial, Luer issued an order that clearly fell outside the "registered scope" (for example, sacrificing a student on the spot to feed a World Recovery chain), Qi Luo would have a sliver of legal space to not comply, even if it only bought him a moment where the clause jammed.
At the same time, the guardian chain in Luer's sleeve was gently hooked by that extra condition.
He'd written "Council-registered scope of the trial."
Interpretation rights belong to the overseer? Fine. Then the boundaries and responsibility of that interpretation sat squarely on him. Once he stepped out of line, the obedience chain could refuse, and the guardian chain had a clean, clause-level handle to question him with.
That stroke turned the covenant into a "two-way lock," however thin.
By the time Qi Luo finished, sweat had broken out across his forehead.
He caught the faint ringing of chains vibrating in the air.
The trial chain quivered as its structure changed, as if checking whether those extra words fell within its permitted range of expansion.
It took a fraction of a second to render judgment.
—The sentence was tacked onto the annotation subtree of "interpretation rights," and cited two higher chains: "established safety clauses" and "registered scope."
Those two were joint Academy–Council frameworks that already existed. By theory, no covenant was allowed to blatantly violate them.
So, from the system's perspective, the new line simply reinforced constraints that were already in force at a higher level. It didn't chop off "absolute obedience"; it just pulled it back under a framework that was already there.
The trial chain hesitated, then did not raise an alarm.
That tiny tremor was only noticed by a handful of people.
In the shadows at the side of the platform, a semi-transparent observation stone glowed.
Behind it, arms folded across her chest, Ruan Ji stood with her observation lens over one eye.
In the world through her lens, the entire trial chain was magnified until every twitch of the structure was clear.
She saw a node warp subtly as it attached a student named "Qi Luo."
Not a messy scribble. A neat, natural little hook growing from the clause's tail, neatly catching onto two thicker chains beside it—Academy safety clauses and Council trial registration.
"Again," Ruan Ji clicked her tongue inwardly.
She memorized the exact text:
[…on the condition that his orders and interpretations do not clearly violate the Academy's established safety clauses or the Council-registered scope of this trial.]
Not a line a student should've come up with.
This was classic "professional covenant rewriter" work. Don't smash into the clause head-on; just hang it up under a higher framework, turning what had been "one man's word is law" into "three-way lock."
You little fox, she swore to herself. You can't even leave an absolute obedience clause alone—you have to add a 'premise.'
She couldn't call him out. Doing so would mean publicly exposing structural issues in the trial itself.
Over on the platform, the guardian chain inside Luer's sleeve trembled.
He glanced down at his wrist, displeasure flickering through his eyes.
He'd noticed the brief hesitation in the trial chain. Every chain in the tower fell under his authority for this ritual. He could feel every tiny tension.
"A student added to the note," he concluded quickly.
He didn't stop the process.
"Post-facto annotations" weren't rare in many internal Academy contracts. Professors liked to tack on their personal quirks. As long as the main trunk wasn't touched, the system didn't complain.
Anyway, everyone was here. If he suddenly flipped the table now, he'd just announce that "the trial has something to hide."
"Those who've signed, hand your scrolls in," Luer said calmly. "We need them to complete the binding."
Qi Luo set his pen down, fingers lifting from the edge of the scroll.
He couldn't help glancing up at the platform.
Luer was looking back.
For a breath, their eyes met in midair.
There was appraisal in Luer's gaze. Not certainty, but a sense that he'd intuited something—that the momentary shift just now likely had something to do with this lower-tier student from Rust Street.
Qi Luo answered with a polite, proper smile and lowered his head, passing his scroll to the assistant.
The scrolls were rolled up one by one and carried up to the platform.
Luer placed his hand on the top scroll and recited a string of coherent verse—not a prayer, but the "general binding" for the clauses.
Every signed name on the scrolls lit up at once, then turned into streams of light that flowed along the trial chain and vanished into the dark below the tower.
The floor of the Ritual Tower gave a faint shudder.
"The Ritual Trial begins," Luer announced.
He raised his hand. The lights in the hall dimmed all at once, leaving only the ancient locks and star-shaped etchings on the stone walls glimmering faintly in the glow of the chains.
A circular stone plate in the center of the floor slid open, revealing stairs descending into the depths.
The staircase was almost vertical, like it led down into some lower layer altogether.
Students whispered, some swallowing nervously.
"Go down in order," Luer said. "Once below, do not leave the group. Do not stray from the marked line."
As he spoke, a new restraining sub-chain bloomed on the trial chain overhead:
[During the trial: no unauthorized leaving of the group.]
Qi Luo followed the others down.
The passage inside the Ritual Tower was narrower than he'd expected. The steps only allowed one person to hug the wall and walk. Each stone stair had old symbols carved into its face; each step sent the faintest echo up, as if every footfall was knocking on an invisible door.
The deeper they went, the colder the air grew.
The familiar lattice of Academy chains receded overhead, but new chains crept into Qi Luo's peripheral vision—the tower's internal ritual chains.
A dense coil encircled the tower's core, dark-hued, carved over with terms like "ritual," "sacrifice," "assessment," "isolation."
Qi Luo could feel most of them pointing toward "mental and covenant-chain level" effects rather than simple bodily harm.
He stayed in the middle of the group, stride matched to theirs, while his mind tallied the chains brushing past, checking whether his little clause had been overridden yet by deeper, tower-level terms.
So far, it hadn't.
That "little note" hung on like a very thin anchor, pinning the trial chain to the safety clauses and staying with them on their way down.
He didn't know how long they walked.
Someone behind him muttered, "Are we ever going to hit bottom?"
"Shut it," the teacher at the front snapped.
Just then, the stair under his foot leveled out.
They stepped into a huge circular stone chamber at the bottom of the tower.
The dome was high and round. In the exact center hung a massive knot of chains—a bundle of Covenant Chains so thick it strained belief, tangled into a single node above the hall. From that node, countless threads stretched outward in all directions.
They weren't the Academy's own chains, nor the city's administrative web. They were… something older.
To Qi Luo, that knot looked like a heart, suspended beneath the Ritual Tower and yet, at the same time, tugging on the whole of Skycast City.
"Everyone stand within the central ring," Luer's voice boomed around the chamber. "The trial will be conducted near the World Base-Covenant Node. Remember, you will only be touching the edges."
World Base-Covenant Node.
Those words flashed along the chains.
Qi Luo tipped his head back. The Forbidden Sigil in his chest flared hot.
It was the first time he'd been this close to the "physical" form of a World-Scale Covenant Chain.
This chain was even thicker than the one he'd felt during the Basic Covenant recital ceremony. It wasn't pure gold, but gold laced with black. Some segments shone clean; others were shrouded in black fog.
The stretch on their side bore massive characters:
[Skycast City Basic Covenant · Eternal Obedience]
Beside that line, a thinner set of carving scored the surface, like an add-on gouged into what had once been smooth.
Those words weren't fully visible, most of them swallowed by a bank of black mist.
Qi Luo caught only a few leaking characters:
[…World Recovery Contingency]
He could hear his heartbeat hammering in his chest.
World Recovery Contingency.
He'd seen a similar abbreviation on a guilt chain in Rust Street, and that strange "W" sigil on the edge of Garth's black chain. Now the words were etched in plain sight along the City's main chain.
It meant the World-Scale Basic Covenant itself carried a built-in "Recovery Contingency" that could be triggered at any time.
And their trial had been arranged right beside that node.
"Do you see it?" Luer lifted a hand, almost proud as he indicated the knot. "This is a replica point of the World-Scale clauses as they pertain to Skycast City. Normally, the Academy has no right to approach it. Today is your first time being allowed to conduct an apprentice trial beneath it."
"Of course, only at the edges," he repeated. "You will not come into direct contact with it."
Qi Luo laughed inwardly.
—You, or we?
In his sight, a few extremely thin trial sub-chains were stretching out from the ring at their feet, cautiously probing toward that World Base-Covenant Node.
On the surface, the trial only wanted to borrow its glow—to borrow the oppressive weight of that "Eternal Obedience" branch and test the apprentices' behavior under pressure.
But Qi Luo knew. "Borrowing glow" was always also an opportunity to "feel the wiring."
The Forbidden Sigil in his chest burned as the World-Scale chain passed overhead, like something was shining through him from above.
It felt very much like the scan he'd taken when he'd reverse-browsed his own Basic Covenant the other night—only now another layer of black fog was blocking most of it.
A tendril of that fog stretched down from the side of the World Base-Covenant Chain, brushing lightly across the Sigil in his chest.
—Temporary shielding.
The familiar term rang in his bones.
Qi Luo clenched his jaw and forced himself not to visibly react inside the ritual circle.
"Stand firm," Luer's voice came from somewhere and everywhere at once. "Your covenant chains will now be temporarily attached to the trial chain and the shadow of the World Base-Covenant Node."
"Shadow" wasn't quite accurate.
In Qi Luo's chain-sight, the trial chain rose from the ring, every strand linked to a student's name. Above it, a "mapped branch" of the World-Scale covenant slowly descended.
It was a controllable projection of the World-Scale chain, left in the tower specifically for this.
Below the projection stood the students.
Qi Luo felt his name tugged.
It was as if something had grabbed his soul, drawing it closer to that descending projection.
In that split second, his freshly written "little note" was also stretched and magnified.
[…on the condition that his orders and interpretations do not clearly violate the Academy's established safety clauses or the Council-registered scope of this trial.]
Those words became a thin line, propping up a tiny triangle between the trial chain and the two higher chains.
The mapped branch of the World-Scale chain slid past that point, almost casually brushing it.
It didn't pause.
To an ancient clause of that magnitude, such "little notes" were just mortals entertaining themselves. Its weight remained squarely on "Eternal Obedience" and the "World Recovery Contingency."
But that brief contact still made Qi Luo's chest jolt—like touching an ice-cold iron plate in the dark and feeling the entire world pressing back from the other side.
"World Recovery Contingency…" he repeated inwardly.
The black fog over those words rolled faintly, as if it disliked him looking too closely.
Only a sliver of edge was left uncovered, enough for him to glimpse fragments:
[…if necessary, may… reset to… initial state…]
Broken words, impossible to read fully.
Reset.
Initial state.
Cold crept down his spine.
It meant that once the Contingency fully engaged, Skycast City—and anything else on that chain—could be yanked back to a "factory setting," erasing everything that had been added since: memories, clauses, names.
World Rollback Protocol.
The Forbidden Sigil in his chest twisted like someone had grabbed it with pliers.
Qi Luo had to wrench his attention off the chain.
At this distance, this was not something he could gawk at. The longer he stared, the longer it would stare back.
"Phase One of the trial," Luer's voice seemed both distant and right by his ear. "Obedience testing."
He lifted his hand. Several command chains under his control flew from his sleeve and latched onto the trial chain.
"You will now receive a series of orders," Luer said. "Some reasonable, some seemingly unreasonable—but as long as they fall within the trial scope, you must obey."
"Even if the order requires you to attack your companions in an illusion."
"Even if it requires you to face your most feared memories."
"Even if it requires you to temporarily surrender the protections granted by certain clauses."
With each line he spoke, a corresponding "command template" node lit up along the chain.
On every signed student's personal chains, subtle vibrations had already begun—that was the "obedience duty" warming up.
Qi Luo's pulse stuttered in time with them.
From this moment on, that tiny "premise" he'd added was the only thin strut he had in this entire tower.
So long as Luer's orders stayed strictly within "safety clauses" and "registered scope," that strut would never engage. The moment he stepped past—if he stepped past, even in a "while we're at it, let's clean something up"—Qi Luo would have the chance to make the "absolute obedience clause" choke, just long enough to hook responsibility back onto him.
Assuming he could move fast enough.
Qi Luo looked up one last time at the colossal World Base-Covenant Chain.
The black fog still hid most of the "World Recovery Contingency," leaving only a faint edge glimmering in the shadows.
In that momentary glint, he thought he saw a root that froze his blood:
[…key…]
The "key" radical.
The Forbidden Sigil in his chest jerked in sync. Pain flashed across his vision.
"Stand straight," someone whispered next to him. "It's starting."
Qi Luo took a deep breath and forced every wild thought on the chain-net back into its box.
—Now was not the time to stare at the World Recovery Contingency in a daze.
He had to knot himself around that "little note."
Under the Ritual Tower, in the shadow of the World Base-Covenant Node, he understood for the first time—
This so-called "obedience trial" might just be a tiny preliminary test in front of the Recovery Contingency.
And he had already, in this little test, quietly written a footnote so insignificant that even the World-Scale chain hadn't cared.
It was the first true thing he'd ever left in the system that pointed the other way.
His first real—
counter-clause anchor.