Chapter 99: Mo Ye |
It is said that in ancient times, there was a sixty-nine-year-old Entropy Path Chosen One who wielded ion lightning whips and was undefeated across the world. He once summarized the essence of combat and killing in a simple, vivid phrase: “Deceive, and then ambush.”
It wasn’t that Ji Jue lacked martial ethics, nor that he was ignorant of hierarchy or respect for elders. On the contrary, it was precisely because he could clearly feel the terrifying gap between himself and Professor Ye that he understood just how slim his chances of victory were.
No, forget about winning. If he could last ten exchanges, it would already mean Professor Ye was being patient and deliberately holding back to give him a chance to perform. Since that was the case, he had even more reason to go all out.
He had to seize every opportunity, use every condition available, and strike before Professor Ye fully understood the properties of Fluid Alchemy, the enhancement provided by Pacifier, and the yet-unrevealed new blessing hidden as his final trump card.
Without any buildup, without any warning, the White Deer emblem manifested along his legs under the amplification of Fluid Alchemy, and he seemed to accelerate.
But he didn’t just accelerate; the emblem of the Ruins had already manifested on his chest. While enhancing his physical constitution and endurance, a Swarm emblem formation had also completed itself across both palms, and blood-red light burst upward, pushing his spirit matter’s corrosiveness and destructive power to the absolute limit.
Under the spirit manipulation properties of Pacifier, as long as this strike landed, no, even if in the follow-up change he could so much as graze Professor Ye, there would still be a chance to fight back!
The sudden burst of offense seemed to catch Professor Ye off guard. Even at such close range, she had not yet reacted.
Ji Jue’s eyes lit up.
And then—
Snap!
His mind went blank for a single moment. He remembered nothing, and his vision blurred. When he came back to his senses, there was a chaotic ringing in his ears, a spinning ceiling in his vision, and unbearable pain in his back. He lay spread-eagle on the ground, and he couldn’t breathe properly.
If not for the body reinforcement from the Ember Path’s physical interference properties, and the additional shielding from the Ruins emblem, he would have probably ended up in the ICU on the spot.
Ji Jue widened his eyes in utter confusion. What… just happened?!
The answer was: a flawless, flowing, and impossibly fast shoulder throw, executed with such pure perfection it defied belief, so precise it felt as if Ji Jue had voluntarily delivered himself into it.
In the instant he closed in, Professor Ye merely shifted slightly. Ji Jue’s punch brushed past her shoulder, not even touching a single strand of clothing. Then, with a casual motion, she grabbed his wrist, turned, and lifted him as if he were nothing more than a rag. In midair, she traced a perfect, tear-inducing arc through the sky.
And then…
Bang!
She slammed him into the ground. She even paused for a split second to adjust her position, making sure the back of Ji Jue’s head wouldn’t smash directly into the ground like a rotten watermelon.
All of this was projected in front of him by the devil’s work ball floating in midair. It was played back ten times slower than the normal speed, complete with warnings of high-energy spikes and full motion breakdowns. As the saying went, “Kill the man, strike the mind[1].”
Professor Ye’s face appeared in Ji Jue’s field of vision, looking down at him as she calmly commented, “Being able to seize the initiative and control the situation is a good thing. Your strength was decent, and your mindset is commendable. It’s a pity that you have so little experience. All of Pacifier’s power lies in the hands. Creation, destruction, or transformation, all of it is enough to decide the outcome of a fight. Precisely because of that, your opponents will be extra wary of your hands.
“If you want a one-hit decisive strike, you need to hide your intent. Don’t make it so obvious that everything is written on your face. If you attack like this, even an idiot would know your hands are the problem.”
Ji Jue’s face twitched slightly. He couldn’t even laugh. His probe failed and landed him in an awful situation.
Professor Ye clearly understood Pacifier’s characteristics extremely well, but this was still within Ji Jue’s expectations. After all, if she didn’t understand it, she wouldn’t have thrown him into the rift realm to begin with.
No. He was still too naive. He had spent too much time fighting someone like Young Master Lou, so much so that his awareness and execution had degraded.
“Again!”
He exhaled, slapped his own face hard, and pushed himself up from the ground. Once steady, he lowered his stance carefully, bending forward and dropping his center of gravity to avoid another catastrophic throw.
From start to finish, Professor Ye simply watched with her hands behind her back, waiting for his next attack. She hadn’t taken a single step to seize initiative, yet there was no doubt at all that the initiative had always been in her hands.
Ji Jue narrowed his eyes and observed carefully for a long time, only to awkwardly realize he couldn’t see a damn thing.
“I suggest you speed up.” Professor Ye glanced casually toward the living room. “Otherwise, the tea I just brewed is going to get cold.”
The moment her gaze shifted, Ji Jue launched himself forward again. Without hesitation, he seized what was clearly an opening deliberately given by Professor Ye and launched another full-force attack.
This time, he abandoned the ever-changing fist techniques and instead used a knife-hand strike[2]. With his fingers held tightly together, he slashed straight at Professor Ye’s neck. Even though Ji Jue lacked the ability to form a blade sharp enough to cut hair mid-air with his hands, his fingers, strengthened and refined through the Ember Path’s unique spirit matter reinforcement, were no weaker than iron or stone.
But then, the hand chop was abruptly cut off a cun[3] before Professor Ye’s neck, and his arm went numb in an instant.
Professor Ye finally raised her right hand and blocked his attack. She did not meet his attack head-on. Instead of meeting Ji Jue’s fierce strike directly, she slipped in along the centerline and struck Ji Jue’s forearm. She braced herself and deflected his attack, and then released a burst of hidden force that snapped it away. Her movements were smooth and effortless, flowing like water.
The moment Ji Jue lost his balance, her left hand swept across in front of her, narrowly grazing past Ji Jue’s eye. Though it didn’t make contact, the wind from the fingertips jabbed his eye, making it ache as tears welled up, blurring his vision almost at once.
Luckily, it hadn’t actually hit his eye.
No, how could she possibly have missed? If she couldn’t control the battle within such a small distance, she wouldn’t be a master in the first place. She was simply restraining herself. If she had advanced even one more cun, she could have easily gouged out his eyeballs without effort.
“Tan-hand guard[4], darting fingers[5] to the eyes,” the devil’s work ball said gleefully from the side. “Wing Chun[6], kid!”
Ji Jue had no time to reply. He didn’t even have time to blink. Forcing down pain and discomfort with spirit matter reinforcement, he pushed forward again, accelerating desperately.
Compared to Ji Jue’s all-out assault, Professor Ye remained effortlessly composed. With casual movements of her hands, alternating between soft yielding and sudden firmness, she effortlessly deflected every one of his attacks. She even still had the energy to comment, “You’re still too impatient. Why so anxious? Is there something you don’t want me to find out? Or are you trying to hide some little trick?”
She stepped forward, her left hand aiming for Ji Jue’s chest.
Even with her palm open and no fist used, the spirit matter swirling around her fingers and the thunderous burst that erupted were enough for a chill to run down Ji Jue’s body. This blow would deliver the most painful lesson to an overconfident student.
Bang!!!
A dull sound exploded at the moment of contact, but it didn’t feel like hitting a target. Instead, it was as if it struck solid iron.
Beneath Ji Jue’s torn outer coat, what was revealed was an iron-like, dark red matte sheen. It was blood that had seeped out after being concealed under his coat, after his hardened T-shirt sleeve had cut into his skin. Using roughly fifteen milliliters of his own blood as material, he had fused it into the front of his shirt, applied Fluid Alchemy, and instantly hardened it. Under the dual reinforcement, the originally thin short-sleeved shirt had become a close-fitting piece of armor.
Not bad. Very good. Though in a spirit offense-and-defense class, using one’s own blood to modify external objects is a bit of a cheat, it’s still a very creative approach, Professor Ye noted.
Ji Jue’s right hand seized the opening and struck forward with a sweeping punch. He clearly caught a hint of approval in Professor Ye’s eyes, mixed with her usual mocking amusement.
Unfortunately, these were just trivial tricks to her. He had fast reactions, decent feints, and even made attempts to lure the opponent in, but had he forgotten his course syllabus?
Bang!
Pain radiated throughout Ji Jue’s body, and his eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. Beneath Professor Ye’s five fingers, the hardened blood armor collapsed completely. She hadn’t used any excessive force. She had simply, for the first time in this one-sided spar, applied spirit matter.
Even compared to Ji Jue’s own output, hers seemed minuscule, but the technique she used was something she had been wanting to teach him for who knew how long: Dissociation Technique.
Under that sudden strike, the hastily formed Fluid Alchemy construct was like nothing at all. The spirit matter circuit collapsed instantly, and the hardened effect vanished completely along with the emblem of the Ruins.
Her fingers pressed straight into Ji Jue’s chest and abdomen. A burst of hidden force detonated inward, striking his organs and triggering uncontrollable spasms of pain. Ji Jue bent over like a cooked shrimp.
Professor Ye spotted the smile on Ji Jue’s face.
In the aftermath of the Dissociation Technique, the shattered blood scattered like living things, bursting outward and merging back into his coat, flowing and gathering along his right sleeve. The worn, pale jacket sleeve tore apart. Under the guidance and reshaping of the blood threads, it coiled in reverse around Professor Ye’s left hand to bind and restrain her.
During this lightning-fast exchange, Ji Jue performed shape reconstruction, toughness enhancement, and material manipulation in an almost unbelievable triple-layer operation. He was too fast, way too fast, so fast that it completely fell outside Professor Ye’s predictive range.
Such speed, an alchemical formation so fast it was completed the instant a thought arose, and the sheer, almost outrageous precision behind it… even by Pacifier’s standards, this was excessive!
Now, even if she were to use Dissociation Technique again to destroy Ji Jue’s spirit matter, the sheer toughness of the fabric alone would be enough to bind her at this critical moment.
Only then did it finally dawn on Ye Xian. So this is the real trap.
Ji Jue’s left hand finally landed on Professor Ye’s right wrist, and he clenched down. His eyes lit up, as if reflecting a distant dawn of victory. The spirit matter manipulation exclusive to the Pacifier activated.
But then, his smile froze on his face. His spirit matter remained confined entirely within his left hand. It could not invade Professor Ye’s body at all, as if it were completely isolated.
The wrist beneath his grip, in his perception, was still shrouded in absolute darkness, as if what he was holding was nothing but emptiness. Only after that did he hear Professor Ye’s voice of approval.
“You interwove illusion and substance. Very good. Since you’ve already shown me Pacifier, I’ll let you take a look at Mo Ye’s characteristics.”
Ye Xian admired the stunned expression on Ji Jue’s face, as if he had just seen a ghost. She raised her right wrist, placing it right in front of Ji Jue to allow her student to examine the result of his “success.”
Indeed, he had grasped it. But Ji Jue’s spirit matter could not make any contact with Professor Ye’s skin, nor could it exert any control over her arm. Between them still existed an invisible line. That single line of distance, for Pacifier, was basically an unreachable chasm.
1. 杀人诛心 “Kill the man, strike the mind” means that instead of destroying someone physically, it is far more ruthless and effective to expose and condemn their motives and beliefs. The phrase traces back to the Book of the Later Han, in the biography of Huo Xu, where the line “pardon the act, punish the intent” appears. It emphasizes judging and punishing based on subjective intent rather than objective facts. In modern usage, it usually refers to breaking down a person’s psychological defenses through words or strategy, leaving them disgraced or in utter despair.
2. A knife hand strike (or shuto uchi) is a martial arts technique using the fleshy outer edge of an open hand, opposite the thumb, to strike targets like the neck, ribs, or collarbone. It requires keeping fingers tightly together and the thumb locked in, often chambering the hand at the opposite shoulder before snapping it out with hip rotation.
3. A cun, often glossed as the Chinese inch, is a traditional Chinese unit of length. Its traditional measure is the width of a person's thumb at the knuckle.
4. The tan-hand guard, also known as the “ploughing block,” is a classic offensive and defensive technique in Wing Chun. Using the elbow as a pivot, the arm rotates in a cutting motion, neutralizing attacks along the centerline while simultaneously counterattacking. It is mainly used to intercept close-range strikes such as sweeping kicks and straight punches, combining defense with offense, and is especially effective for countering front kicks or high roundhouse kicks.
5. “标指” is the third form in Wing Chun, considered an advanced set. In martial arts circles, it is often regarded as highly aggressive, with its core techniques, known as “darting fingers,” typically aimed at vulnerable targets such as the eyes and throat.
6. Wing Chun is a Southern Chinese kung fu system designed for close-quarters self-defense, prioritizing efficiency, speed, and simultaneous attack and defense. It focuses on center-line control, utilizing direct strikes, trapping, and "sticky hands" (Chi Sao) to leverage an opponent's energy, allowing smaller individuals to overcome larger, stronger opponents.
