Chapter 105: If I’m Bad, Then I’ll Just Practice More |
Along with his impassioned shout, Ji Jue brought his palms down solemnly. A muffled sound echoed through the air, like a dull fart.
The twisted longsword showed no real reaction, only vibrating politely for a moment before emitting a faint, strange noise.
You used Dissociation Technique. The Dissociation Technique failed. The target object tanked your Dissociation Technique and even seemed to mock you.
The carefully prepared strike not only failed to produce any effect, but the backlash from spirit matter conflict caused a familiar numb, stabbing pain in his fingers.
Ji Jue didn’t feel discouraged at all because he was already used to failing! For three whole days, he had been casting Dissociation Technique on this thing, and it had barely ever succeeded.
But that didn’t stop him from being stubborn and continuing. It was just repetitive practice, anyway. It was nothing more troublesome than working on an assembly line in a factory.
Taking a deep breath, Ji Jue calmed his mind again, gathered himself, and pressed both hands down toward the warped longsword once more, shouting to improve his morale. “If I’m bad at it, then I’ll just practice more!”
Buzz!
The longsword trembled slightly, emitting a faint glow. This was the dim light produced when the Dissociation Technique finally took effect on the internal spirit matter circuits. Unfortunately, the sword still showed no real change.
In repeated practice, there were always a few moments that felt like coincidence or sheer luck, where the Dissociation Technique actually worked in Ji Jue’s hands. The effect was there, just far too weak to be seen clearly with the naked eye.
But even a clumsy success was still success, like accumulating experience points.
With the blessing of the Flawless Craft gift, every accidental breakthrough or deliberate, focused attempt would accumulate into stepping stones on the path toward true mastery of the technique.
As his proficiency increased, the success rate of Dissociation Technique gradually improved from something like one in ten thousand to about one or two in a hundred. He was no longer as clueless. Occasionally, when inspiration struck or he had a good feeling, he could actually pull it off. Sometimes, even before his hands had fully landed, he could already sense whether it would succeed or fail.
“If I’m bad at it, then I’ll just practice more!” Ji Jue shouted, increasing his spirit matter as he slammed his hands down again. Riding the lingering momentum of his earlier good vibes, he fell into a frenzied loop. “I’ll practice! Practice! Practice! Practice! Practice!!!!”
Muffled impacts and faint metallic shrieks rang out in scattered bursts. With Ji Jue’s hands moving wildly at high frequency, the repeated spirit matter shocks caused the longsword to tremble more and more violently, no longer able to withstand the accumulating pressure, like a straw being slowly crushed under weight.
Ji Jue shouted once more. This time, a faint glow actually appeared between his fingers, and a gust of wind suddenly rose inside the silent workshop.
As his hands came down, the air produced a sharp tearing sound. Tiny arcs of electricity flickered from his fingertips. That was ionization in the air caused by massive spirit matter disturbance. Static electricity, unleashed as the balance was broken, burst from his hands.
The sword’s vibration and resonance finally reached its peak.
The moment Ji Jue’s palms made contact, a complex spirit matter matrix emerged along the blade. Then, under self-induced resonance, clear, unmistakable cracks appeared.
A second fracture appeared along the spine of the sword.
In the heavy silence, only Ji Jue’s heavy breathing remained. Thick streaks of blood slid down his chin from his nostrils, dripping onto the workbench in scattered blotches. Ji Jue staggered back a step, slumping into the chair as he stared at his hands covered in fine cracks and strain marks.
A smile finally broke out on his face. This was the second time. In all those days of futile practice and repetitive cycles, his Dissociation Technique had succeeded twice. Although it was only a low-end, nerfed, stripped-down monkey version[1], completely incomparable to Professor Ye’s effortless, fluid execution, success was still success.
Now, he had finally taken one step closer to the threshold of being a beginner.
After taking his time to catch his breath, Ji Jue waited for his spirit matter to recover. He did not continue working on the longsword. Instead, he stretched out his hands, revisiting the basic exercises of Dissociation Technique’s foundational techniques.
Faint traces of spirit matter slowly emerged above his parted hands, winding around his fingers and gathering in his palms. The nature of what formed in each hand was completely different.
In his left hand, it was as if he was holding some smooth crystal. With the movement of his palm, it occasionally refracted a faint glow, reflecting the surrounding colors.
When the spirit matter’s fluctuations slowed to the point of near stillness, the result was this mirror-like, colorless illusory light.
In his right hand, however, what appeared was a kind of mist. Through it, only blurred shapes could be seen. Colors flickered in constant change, appearing and vanishing, until all that remained was a dull gray that drained everything of color.
When spirit matter was pushed into a state of extreme activity and maximum circulation, it disrupted both air and vision, making everything appear hazy and unstable. Now, with Ji Jue’s will shifting, the states in both hands, extreme motion and extreme stillness, immediately started alternating, overlapping and switching.
His fingers trembled uncontrollably for a moment, like they were cramping, as he was unable to maintain such fine control within such complex spirit matter circulation. But immediately after that, the state of the spirit matter switched again, and it transformed once more.
As the frequency of switching became faster and faster, the trembling in his fingers became more and more severe. Until finally, in a spasm-like wave of pain, a dull sound echoed once more.
The spirit matter went out of control and dispersed, slipping out of Ji Jue’s grasp. By then, he was drenched in sweat. He collapsed back into the chair, gasping heavily.
Vibration and stillness, repulsion and fusion, division and combination.
Professor Ye, drawing from the unique properties of the matrices Gan Jiang and Mo Ye, used them as theoretical foundation to force her own spirit matter state into a rapidly alternating cycle of two opposing modes within an extremely short span of time.
In an unimaginably high-frequency sequence of transformations, streams of violently shifting spirit matter turned into invisible surgical blades, interfering directly with the internal structure of the target.
This was the fundamental principle of Dissociation Technique. Stated simply, it sounded easy and straightforward, but in actual application, it was far more complex than Ji Jue could have ever imagined.
The ability to freely switch spirit matter between vibration and stillness was only the most basic foundation. After the entry-level mastery, there were already application techniques built for different types of targets, different kinds of Blessings of Supreme Benevolence, and different categories of opponents.
The frequency, intensity, strength of spirit matter operation, different qualitative transformations of spirit matter, one’s own unique spirit matter attributes, and the bonuses brought by matrix characteristics—even the slightest variation in any single factor would lead to completely different outcomes.
Adjusting spirit matter frequency, disrupting key nodes, triggering resonance within spirit matter circuits, infinitely amplifying its intensity until it reached the limit of tolerance, forcing total collapse; the entire process took place in the moment of contact, yet that single moment was enough to completely disintegrate the target.
This was the Dissociation Technique that had once struck fear into countless craftsmen!
The technique looked deceptively simple on the surface but was backed by a vast ocean of theory, precise and lightning-fast analysis and judgment, countless cycles of training and refinement, control so exacting it bordered on pathological, timing so perfect it bordered on artistry, and flashes of inspiration that only true prodigies could grasp in an instant.
From the very day Dissociation Technique was created, Professor Ye had never considered its universality, nor its legacy in the future. She had never even imagined that one day she would go out of her way, as if something had gone wrong in her head, to personally take on and teach a student.
At most, she had only intended to guide Ji Jue, who at the time was barely acceptable, hoping he would at least develop the basic competence of a workshop assistant.
As a result, Dissociation Technique became a highly specialized technique that was nearly impossible to replicate or reproduce. Its prerequisite was the possession of either the Mo Ye or Gan Jiang matrix, yet both of those matrices, as well as their construction methods, were entirely under Professor Ye’s control at the moment.
Without the unique effects of those two, no one else could even come close to touching the edge of Dissociation Technique. The only exception was the Pacifier matrix, which was equally adept at spirit matter manipulation, and even surpassed the two in both range and effect.
Because of its one-of-a-kind nature, its absolute precision control over one’s own spirit matter, it became possible to replicate the Dissociation Technique at all. In fact, the very inspiration for Dissociation Technique originated from an ancient fragment of history describing the Fourth Titan, who “could generate ten thousand phenomena with ten fingers.”
Over years of continuous exploration and refinement, Dissociation Technique had already surpassed what was recorded in history purely in terms of destructive power, becoming one of Professor Ye’s signature techniques. And then, it turned into a nightmare that every inheritor of Pacifier had to face. It was hard, way too damn hard.
The absurd part was that even after obtaining Pacifier and Flawless Craft, and even after further lowering the difficulty by splitting Dissociation Technique from one hand into two, after reducing it again, and again, and again, pushing concessions to the absolute limit, Ji Jue still discovered that his control over spirit matter was not enough.
Wait, wasn’t this requirement a bit too ridiculous? Was this really something a beginner like him was supposed to learn?!
Even worse than that, after noticing that Ji Jue had already become proficient in engraving Supreme Benevolence emblems and most basic spirit matter circuits, Professor Ye forbade him from using scrap materials for practice anymore. Instead, she made him use Dissociation Technique on them to train and reach entry-level mastery as quickly as possible.
A whole warehouse of alchemical scrap, right there in front of him, practically glowing with experience points. Just by smelling the leaking spirit matter, his abilities were already getting so hungry they were about to spiral out of control.
But throughout all these days, he hadn’t managed to take even a single bite, like a monkey starving in front of a coconut it simply couldn’t crack open. Every bit of him was screaming in frustration.
At that thought, Ji Jue could no longer hold back his resentment. He rolled up his sleeves again.
“It’s been so many days, I refuse to believe I still can’t handle you.” He stared at the longsword in front of him, grinding his teeth. Ever since his advancement, the progress bar hadn’t moved in days. He couldn’t believe he still couldn’t finally devour this EXP pack today.
Even Professor Ye can’t save you anymore, trust me!
“If I’m bad at it, then I’ll just practice more!!!”
A shout full of determination and fighting spirit, yet somehow sounding absurdly stupid, echoed once again through the workshop.
“Practice! Practice! Practice! Practice—”
Successive dull blasts and metallic resonances erupted. Amid the surging spirit matter and rapid consumption, Ji Jue suddenly felt as if something was about to emerge from his hands, about to burst forth.
But no matter what he did, it was always just one step away, unreachable. Only his anger and agitation kept rising, stacking higher and higher, until they could no longer be contained.
In the piercing noise of air ionizing, Ji Jue raised both hands again, like he was on the verge of losing his mind, and let out a hoarse scream. “Break… Damn it!!!”
Smack!
1. “Monkey version” refers to a distinction in weapons produced during the Soviet era, where most designs had two versions: a “human version” and a “monkey version.”
The “human version” refers to the original, full-spec model, with complex craftsmanship, difficult production, and high cost.
The “monkey version” refers to a simplified version, with some complex features removed, making it easier to manufacture and cheaper to produce.
