After Zhou Yao's challenge, the Black Gang leaders trying to uphold the Racial Discrimination judgment fell silent almost at once.
Their mouths hung open, their eyes darting between Zhou Yao and the Dalits fighting below, but they could not find a single word of rebuttal.
It was not anger that silenced them. Within the ritual's own logic, Zhou Yao's words had struck a contradiction it could not reconcile.
When Black people slaughtered Dalits, no one raised the banner of Racial Discrimination.
When the Dalits fought back, that banner went up.
That meant that, in the eyes of those using the ritual, Dalit lives were not even worthy of being "discriminated against."
And that judgment was itself Racial Discrimination in its purest form. The ritual's logic began to contradict itself.
High in the sky, the manifestations conjured by the Racial Discrimination Ritual began to twist out of shape.
The merciful figures of white light crumpled and collapsed like sheets of paper crushed in a fist. Dense cracks spread across the Judge's Gavel suspended overhead, and its body dissolved before their eyes.
The gavel no longer knew whom to strike.
The Dalits? They were fighting back, not discriminating.
The Black people? They had initiated the ritual, and the ritual would not judge its own masters.
But if it struck neither the Dalits nor the Black people, the judgment itself lost all meaning. With its logic broken, the ritual could only collapse.
The gang leader presiding over the ritual suffered the backlash most directly.
His body jolted, and the light in his eyes dimmed as though it had been sucked away, leaving nothing but hollow white.
"I didn't! I didn't!"
He opened his mouth to argue, only to realize, the moment he spoke, that he had no idea what he was arguing against.