Chapter 101 |
It felt as if the heavens were shifting and the earth was tilting. As if, in a flash, Ji Jue had become a piece of red-hot iron thrown beneath a forging hammer.
Lightning erupted with force. With rumbling booms, the ground trembled, while crackling detonations echoed without end. Ye Xian’s hands struck in rapid succession, smooth and flowing like water. From the very first moment of the duel, the outcome had already been decided.
Under the interference of the Dissociation Technique, all spirit matter reinforcement collapsed. Every form of defense was rendered completely ineffective. Like a force breaking dead branches and withered wood, the devastating destruction unfolded beneath both hands in unrestrained, exhilarating fashion.
Only after the long-lost warm-up finally came to an end did Professor Ye show a trace of mercy, shattering the Origin emblem at the center of Ji Jue’s chest.
Ji Jue collapsed backward, staring up at the ceiling. He coughed violently, gasping for breath, with no strength left to counterattack. His entire body was swelling and covered in bruises, like someone who had been stuffed into a box and spun in an Invincible Wind Fire Wheel[1] for two hours after forgetting to vote for Big D[2].
He had no strength left to move. Only now did the spasms and convulsions of his internal organs finally reach his brain, bringing unbearable pain and torment. Through his blurred vision, he seemed to see Professor Ye looking down at him.
“What kind of move is this?” she asked.
Ji Jue flashed a bitter smile. “Something… I just came up with myself. I’m just messing around.”
“Mm.” Professor Ye nodded approvingly. “Indeed, it’s a messy move.”
Ji Jue jolted upward from the dull impact, limbs twitching uncontrollably. But after taking that punch, the spasms in his internal organs and the violent trembling of his heart had actually eased in a way that seemed almost impossible.
At the very least, compared to the state of overload and collapse from before, this felt much more bearable.
In that brief moment of impact, Professor Ye had actually unified his completely chaotic internal organs, performing a kind of alchemical harmonization within his body. She reassembled everything once more into a single, coherent whole. It was truly a godlike technique.
“My proficiency in pharmacology is only passable. Go find a proper pharmacist later,” Professor Ye said.
She casually pulled a medicine bottle out of thin air, poured out something resembling a tablet, and tossed it into his mouth, instructing him to hold it there without swallowing. A thread of coolness slid down his throat and into his lungs and organs, extinguishing the burning pain.
Finally, he was almost back to normal. On his chest, the Mouth of the Ancient Ones glowed faintly, gradually repairing his body.
“Chun told me you suddenly started reading books on anatomy and surgery a while ago. You probably started thinking about this the day you began learning spirit matter offense and defense, didn’t you?”
Professor Ye had seen through Ji Jue’s trick at a glance. She shook her head in exasperation.
“Turning your own body into a machine? Heh. That’s so you.”
That was the hidden truth behind his trick. In a sense, organs, blood vessels, nerves, muscles, bones, and all the other components of the human body already constituted a complex machine, one precisely fit for survival.
What Ji Jue had done was use Fluid Alchemy to forcibly raise the upper limit of his physical body. After linking his body with his soul, and with Pacifier as support, he performed alchemical operations on himself. In the end, through the coercive execution of Deus Ex Machina, he transformed his body into a weapon.
He released its limits, broke through their restraints, and ran it like an overclocked engine. In an instant, he had obtained power and speed that did not belong to his level at all, even leaping across a major threshold into the Metamorphosis Realm.
The effect was undeniably shocking. The cost, however, was just as severe, because the human body was not a machine. Or rather, the human body’s tolerance was far too fragile compared to a machine.
The price of that power was Ji Jue’s life.
If Professor Ye had not been observing and supervising from the very beginning and intervened in time, Mrs. Lu and Ye Chun would have attended Ji Jue’s funeral in the near future.
“Heart, brain, aorta… hormonal imbalance, severe muscle strain, bone fractures, neural disorder…” Professor Ye’s fingers traced across the air, pointing out each problem one by one. “Even nonsense has its limits. Doing things like this only makes you die faster. There’s no other benefit.”
“I still need to properly develop it,” Ji Jue said with difficulty, forcing a smile. “I think there’s still a chance to make it work.”
The last thing he needed to worry about was delicate management[3] and operational precision. If others would be at a loss when faced with the complexity of the human body, then for Ji Jue, who possessed Pacifier, Flawless Craft, and Fluid Alchemy all at once, it was difficult, but not unmanageable.
The key was strengthening the cardiovascular system’s endurance, paying attention to the regulation of the nervous and lymphatic systems, and prioritizing protection of the brain.
In his mind, he was already listing out the problems and organizing his next steps and experiments.
“You still haven’t figured out where your biggest problem is.” Ye Xian casually grabbed him by the back of his collar and lifted him up, walking step by step up the stairs leading back to the living room. After tossing him onto the sofa, she asked, “Do you know what you did wrong this time?”
Ji Jue hesitated. “Uh… Guess I overdid it?”
Indeed, in every sense, he did overdo it. Some people simply don’t understand the consequences, so they don’t act recklessly because they’re afraid. But others are the type who, from the very beginning, walk straight toward death without any sense of caution. Ji Jue belonged to the latter.
Ye Xian sneered. “So you know you were wrong, but you’ll still do it next time, right?”
Ji Jue lowered his head obediently. “Next time… cough, let’s talk about next time later.”
At least this kid is honest enough. Good.
Ye Xian nodded slowly. She had always appreciated people who refused to change their stubborn nature. “From now on, the spirit matter offense and defense course will be held twice a day.”
Ji Jue’s eyes nearly bulged out of his head in shock. “Isn’t that unnecessary?”
“No. It’s necessary. Extremely necessary.” Ye Xian glanced at his hands. “At the very least, until the day you can fully control Pacifier. Or what, do you think sages roll up their sleeves and end up with two tattooed arms? It’s an eyesore.”
“Uh…”
Ji Jue opened his mouth but didn’t speak. He had a feeling that what Professor Ye disliked wasn’t just those tattoo-like marks. Pacifier didn’t seem to get much favor either. He didn’t dare ask a question that would definitely get him killed, so he quickly changed the subject.
“Do I have to learn to fight too?”
Professor Ye shook her head. “No need. It’s not like you don’t have guns. Learning a few necessary techniques is enough, just for situations where it’s inconvenient to use guns. If things ever degenerate to the point where you have to engage in close combat, you might as well just give up and wait for death.”
“But…” Ji Jue thought for a moment, then asked in confusion, “What if we run into a situation where even guns don’t work?”
After all, for high-realm Chosen Ones, tanking bullets was already pretty much standard practice. The destructive power of gunpowder weapons was limited. When facing someone like Young Master Lou, a pay-to-win player stuffed full of shields, you were bound to come up short sooner or later.
“The conflict between spear and shield has no end,” Professor Ye said meaningfully, glancing at him. “If the opponent’s defense is too strong, then either find a way to build a stronger, more powerful gun yourself, or try becoming a more academically inclined Chosen One and learn to get along with others and avoid conflict. Which one do you choose?”
“The second one, of course!” Ji Jue answered without hesitation.
Professor Ye nodded in satisfaction. “Good student.”
As expected of someone she had taught. He had made the same choice as her in this situation. As for whether he could actually build that kind of gun, that was another matter. At the very least, she no longer had to worry about him being the type to go around pretending otherwise.
“So, what’s next?” she asked casually. “When do we start classes? Besides Dissociation Technique, there’s still a whole stack of courses waiting for you, Ji Jue. Don’t assume graduate school is going to be a leisurely life.”
“Uh…”
Just a couple of days ago, he had been fighting for his life in the rift realm. Now, he was back in Cliff City and expected to return to being a workaholic student, attending classes every day. The transition was a bit too abrupt, honestly.
For Ji Jue, it was actually more than welcome. His mind was full of studying, anyway. Studying made him happy.
“Although, before that, I’ve got an idea. I’d like to ask for your guidance on it first.”
He sat there catching his breath for a long while, then weakly opened his bag, pulled out a notebook, flipped through it for quite some time, and finally found his messy notes along with a hand-drawn schematic.
Just from the handwriting alone, it was unmistakably the work of a craftsman. Whenever something came to mind, he would just scribble it down in bursts, jumping from one point to another without order. The structure was fragmented, with various technical terms and calculations scattered all over the place.
It was more chaotic than a doctor’s prescription, but at least a pharmacist could still decipher that. Messy and eye-straining as it was, Professor Ye could understand what he was trying to express.
It was a blueprint. Although some parts had not been experimentally verified yet and remained purely theoretical, in terms of feasibility alone, it wasn’t particularly difficult to implement.
“Hm?”
She tapped her knee with her finger, unconsciously lifted her teacup for a sip, and adjusted her glasses. After a brief moment of thought, she picked up a pen and began editing.
Under her pen, a complete set of ideas quickly emerged on the paper: a lightweight powered support frame, electromagnetic muscle bundles, and a shock-absorbing joint system. The many data points that normally required calculation and validation were simply bypassed, with results directly derived.
“There are no issues with the stability. It’s fairly standard. Designs like this already have plenty of mature examples. The worst thing you can do is start randomly adding features just because you feel like it. Holding back is the right choice.”
Her pen never stopped moving. Aside from mechanical design refinements, she also added references for alchemical processing. Finally, she commented, “After your trip to the rift realm, I thought you’ve started to become some naive idealist. But it seems you’re still grounded in logic and reality.”
“Ah, thank you, Ms. Ye!” Ji Jue said cheerfully, holding the notebook.
Professor Ye hadn’t drastically altered his design. Instead, she followed his original direction, making only slight additions. Those small changes had elevated the entire design’s feasibility and practicality to a completely new level, almost allowing it to skip the long trial-and-error phase and go straight into production.
She even went further, offering ideas to simplify the lightweight structure and suggesting ways for Ji Jue to replace certain modules with his own alchemical constructs.
“Overall, you’ve got some good ideas. Not many, though. Also, the design’s too rough and a bit lazy. Why is this only designed for the leg? Why not the full set?”
Ji Jue smiled. “Because it’s not necessary. The only friend who needs this has an issue with his right leg. Using crutches all the time is too inconvenient, so I thought, since I have the ability to do so, I might as well make him a tool first.”
Professor Ye said nothing. She looked at her student for a long time. Then, as if mocking herself, she let out a quiet sigh.
“Ms. Ye?” Ji Jue asked, confused.
“It’s nothing.” Slowly, she stood up. “Let’s go. The furnace happens to be empty right now, so you can use it. But don’t expect me to help you during the practical stage. What materials are you planning to use?”
“Since it’s for daily use, there’s no need for expensive materials or overly complex processing,” Ji Jue answered smoothly. “The base materials will be composite aluminum and tungsten alloy. The rest of the requirements for toughness and strength will be compensated through alchemical processing.”
“What about the joints?”
“I’ll use the planetary gear application template I gave you this morning, modify it, and miniaturize it.”
“Have you considered the braking system? It’s not included in your design.”
“I’m thinking of trying Entropy-based magnetic flux guidance as a substitute. Not sure if it’s feasible.”
“That is indeed a good idea, but for an apprentice, the difficulty is quite high. If you want to try it, I won’t stop you,” Professor Ye said with a sigh. “You’ve basically thought through everything already.”
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it whenever I had free time these past few days.”
“Then go ahead and try. Take whatever materials you need from the warehouse, but don’t think you can bring me some piece of garbage and pass your first independent design like that. If it really doesn’t work out, then go back and study the basics properly.”
Ji Jue nodded. “Okay.”
He stared at the glowing furnace before him and could no longer suppress his smile. Since becoming a craftsman apprentice, this was his first true alchemical creation.
It was finally time.
1. The “Invincible Wind Fire Wheel” is the ultimate finishing move used by the protagonist He Jinyin in the film King of Destruction. In the movie, it’s presented as the highest secret technique of ancient Chinese martial arts.
The move involves clamping the opponent’s head between both legs, tucking one’s own head into the opponent’s chest, locking the opponent’s neck with both hands, and then rolling together with them.
The idea behind the move is to use the Earth’s gravity, the universal gravitational force of the universe, and the combined momentum of both bodies to attack the opponent. It’s highly dangerous and usually requires something like stairs or a cylindrical object to help execute it.
2. Big D is probably referring to a character in Election (Chinese: Triad Election) is a Hong Kong triad film released in 2005. This is probably referring to the plot in the movie where Long Gen didn’t vote for Big D, but Long Gen cast a vote for Lok out of spite.
3. 精细化管理 “Delicate Management/Operation” is a management and business approach centered on precision, accuracy, detail, and rigor. Originating from lean production, it aims to break down complex operational goals into specific, executable micro-level actions through data-driven methods, standardized processes, and strict process control, in order to maximize resource utilization, improve efficiency, and keep quality under control.
