Chapter 223: Sharing the Good Fortune

Silence settled over their little corner.

Sun Ci[1]’s gaze sharpened, as though it could pierce straight through Ji Jue’s ruined face. “Go on.”

“My teacher taught me a few techniques. I’ll need some spirit matter supplements, purified mercury, and a few materials.” Ji Jue smiled bitterly. “Provided everything goes smoothly, I should be able to raise our efficiency considerably.”

“By how much?” Sun Ci pressed.

Ji Jue paused. In truth, he was calculating just how much he could increase the team’s output without overdoing it and making himself look like a monster. “If I’m lucky... I can probably dismantle and process seventy pieces by myself.”

That was nearly half the team’s quota.

Sun Ci gasped in shock, almost overcome with delight. He quickly forced himself to calm down and asked bluntly, “Why help me? If you’re really capable of that, wouldn’t it be better to cozy up to the new manager instead?”

Ji Jue laughed. Blood seeped from the scars covering his face. “Once someone who slept his way into the position becomes a manager, what else would he do but exploit everyone under him to get ahead?”

He lowered his eyes. “I’m just a cripple. Shouldn’t I place my hopes in a team leader who might look after me a little, rather than someone like that?”

Sun Ci didn’t speak for a long time. “What do you want in return?”

“I only ask one thing.” Ji Jue patted the pair of crutches supporting him, his voice brimming with bitterness. “I only hope that, should you ever get the chance to leave this place, you’ll take me with you or put in a good word for me. I’m afraid I don’t have much time left.”

Sun Ci wasn’t sure what to say. Looking at Ji Jue, he felt as though he were staring at an even more miserable version of himself.

At last, he made up his mind. “If this fails, they’ll probably strip me of my position tomorrow. I might end up worse off than you.”

“I know.”

“But even if they sack me tomorrow, today I’m still your manager.” Sun Ci looked him in the eye. “You know what I mean, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

If I go down, I’ll drag you down with me. So you’d better have a real solution.

“As long as you can help me, we can work everything else out.” Sun Ci held out his hand. “From this day forward, we’ll share in each other’s good fortune.”

Ji Jue smiled. Blood continued to seep from the scars on his face as he clasped Sun Ci’s hand. “And we’ll share each other’s hardships.”

***

With his second lifeline firmly in hand, Sun Ci wasted no time.

As a manager, he still received a few privileges that ordinary drudges didn’t. Before long, the purified spirit matter supplements, mercury, and various materials Ji Jue had requested were delivered to him.

Most of them were nothing more than common consumables and ordinary materials. They weren’t difficult to obtain, but apprentices simply had no access to them. Sun Ci had pestered an old friend on one of the upper levels, pleading with him tearfully and cashing in every favor he was owed before finally gathering everything.

Now it was up to Ji Jue, and Sun Ci wasn’t the only one watching.

Everyone in the team was stealing glances in Ji Jue’s direction. They all wanted to see whether the newcomer who had so boldly claimed he could handle half the workload actually had the ability to back it up.

Ji Jue, on the other hand, was in no hurry. He picked up a bottle of supplements and expertly struck its neck against the corner of the table. After knocking the top off, he poured it into his mouth as though it were a vial of glucose, downing five or six bottles in one go. After suffering severe injuries, his nearly depleted spirit matter was finally restored.

In reality, it was all for show. With Mr. Watch inside him, he hadn’t touched his own spirit matter reserves at all. This little performance was simply to convince everyone that his technique consumed an enormous amount of spirit matter.

Only then did he pick up the tools on the workbench. With practiced ease, he refined the prepared materials. Before long, an iron armature wrapped in sinew and muscle lay on the table before him. He picked it up and plunged it into a bucket of mercury. When he pulled it back out, it had become a fully formed arm.

He then instructed Sun Ci to cut a deep gash across his back, though the wound was, in truth, completely unnecessary.

Amid Ji Jue’s “agonized screams” and “painful convulsions,” he “forcibly” grafted the highly toxic arm onto his body. Then he grafted another arm, and another. Before long, four additional arms extended from his back.

The more bizarre Ji Jue’s method appeared, the brighter Sun Ci’s eyes became.

Everyone knew that practitioners of the Ember Path feared no forbidden techniques. In fact, the more wicked and unorthodox a technique looked, the more powerful it usually was. Seeing the terrible price Ji Jue seemed to be paying, and how naturally those four extra arms moved, Sun Ci let out a long breath. The knot in his stomach came undone at last.

Then, a storm overtook the entire workbench in the most literal sense. At that point, Sun Ci could no longer restrain himself and burst into wild laughter. With six arms moving in perfect coordination, Ji Jue’s efficiency had more than tripled.

The objects now arriving in an endless stream were nails of the Foolish Abominations sent back from the front lines. Each iron stake stood as tall as a grown man. Once driven into the earth’s ley lines, it forcibly stimulated every trace of Foolish Abomination contamination nearby, spreading virulent poison throughout the area.

The residual contamination within them spoke for itself. Over the past several days, countless apprentices had been sacrificed just processing these discarded spikes. The apprentice who had occupied Ji Jue’s workstation before him had ultimately taken his own life, unable to bear the overwhelming strain of handling them.

Yet in Ji Jue’s hands, these immensely complicated constructs seemed no more difficult than children’s toys. Ji Jue dismantled, cleaned, repaired, and maintained them with effortless ease. Every movement flowed seamlessly into the next, making the entire process strangely satisfying to watch.

His wastage rate was astonishingly low as well. Most of the spikes only needed a quick trip through the furnace and a replacement core before they were ready for use again.

As expected of an apprentice personally trained by a master craftsman. Neither his skill nor his experience was something self-taught apprentices like them could ever hope to match.

Of course, such craftsmanship surely came at a tremendous cost. Ji Jue’s face twitched constantly in apparent agony, as though he were enduring unimaginable torment. In reality, he was on the verge of throwing up. Eating shit would have been more enjoyable than this.

It felt as if he had grown accustomed to delicacies and, at worst, decent street food, only for someone to suddenly shove a mouthful of curry that tasted like dog shit between his lips. Even Deus Ex Machina seemed ready to go on strike.

What the hell kind of useless trash had made these things?

The foundations were a complete mess, with spirit matter used to compensate for every flaw. The structures conflicted with one another, yet were forcibly held together through aberrant mutations, producing one malformed creation after another. No wonder the rejection rate was so high! Master Jian Yuan was certainly exhausted from keeping so many incompetent idiots around him.

Still, worthless as most of them were, some of the Depths’ secret aberration-based crafting techniques were not entirely without merit. At the very least, quite a few of those methods could be adapted for use on Horsey.

If I can use this to draw out the power hidden within the dragon’s blood, I might even be able to add a fire-breathing function.

As the dismantling work became so effortless that it required almost no attention, Ji Jue began conducting his own research.

***

After watching for a while, Sun Ci turned and walked away.

The smile disappeared from his face, replaced by cold authority. He barked at the apprentices who had been slacking off, ordering them to pick up the pace.

Ji Jue hadn’t exaggerated when he said he could handle seventy units. But if everyone else fell behind, Sun Ci still wasn’t going to survive this ordeal.

With promises of rewards before them and the occasional crack of the whip behind them, the drudges once again threw themselves into turning the mill, no longer daring to slack off.

Minute by minute, time slipped away. The astonishing pace of production soon drew the attention of the entire underground workshop. Nearly every team looked up curiously in their direction.

One dismantled component after another was packed into crates until they formed a small mountain. In the end, everything was delivered to the office and placed before the supervisor. The total came to one hundred and fifty-nine, nine over the quota.

A long silence followed.

The supervisor’s expression kept shifting between gloomy and icy until at last he forced a smile. “Excellent. Truly excellent! This calls for celebration!”

He reached out and slapped Sun Ci heavily on the shoulder before turning his gaze to the figure behind him. Ji Jue stood there looking utterly “drained,” his body seemingly at its limit. The supervisor nodded slowly.

“As expected of an apprentice personally trained by a craftsman. Your efficiency really is something else. Keep it up, Mr. Sun.” The supervisor glanced at Sun Ci and pointedly added, “You wouldn’t want one of your subordinates overtaking you. The new generation always surpasses the old.”

Sun Ci’s smile never wavered. He wasn’t about to fall for such an obvious attempt to sow discord. Starting a feud with his greatest asset at a time like this would only make that bastard of a supervisor beside him smile with delight.

Not giving the man a chance to change the subject or wriggle out of it, Sun Ci got straight to the point. “Please have a look. Everything’s here. Once you’ve approved it all, I’d appreciate it if you’d sign off on it. Then I’ll be on my way.”

The supervisor paused, giving Sun Ci a long, searching look. He roughly snatched the clipboard, signed his name on the inspection form, and tossed it back before turning away.

Nearby, workers busily loaded the refurbished components, sorting them by category before preparing them for transport. The moment the supervisor returned to his office and shut the door behind him, the smile vanished from his face. In its place appeared a dark, vicious scowl.

He stood before the window, looking toward the distant furnace and the mountain of neatly stacked components. His expression gradually calmed, leaving only a trace of cold menace.

“The cripple they brought in really is a problem,” he muttered to himself. “Fortunately, troublemakers never live very long.”

His hands, clasped behind his back, slowly curled into fists as he made up his mind.

It’s been far too long since we’ve had a workplace accident. When you work in a place like this, a few deaths are inevitable...

Just then, he thought he saw something wriggle atop the pile of components. It was something small, like a bug. He narrowed his eyes and looked more closely, but there was nothing there. Then, he could no longer see anything at all.

BOOM!!!

The deafening explosion shook the entire underground workshop, and flames erupted in every direction. Thick black smoke billowed through the cavern as a violent shockwave swept across the floor, spraying burning fuel like a rain of fire.

Screams and cries echoed all around. Everyone saw that right beside the supervisor’s office, the massive furnace connected to every workbench had exploded.

“Sir! Sir!!!”

The handsome young apprentice instinctively rushed toward the office, looking as though his whole world had ended. Braving the flames, he frantically searched for the supervisor.

His face went deathly pale. He spun around, trying to flee, but it was too late.

Amid the raging flames, the mangled corpse covered in thick, black sludge suddenly twitched. A hungry smile spread across its charred face, and a gigantic, bloodshot eye snapped open in the center of its chest.

Jet-black tendrils burst from the split flesh, wrapping themselves around nearby metal, dragging it closer. The pieces assembled and fused together of their own accord, using the shattered flesh as a binding agent.

In a flash, they had aggregated into a towering monstrosity several meters tall. It lunged, seized the apprentice, and crushed him to a pulp before ravenously devouring him.

A shrill alarm blared, growing louder by the second. Every face in the workshop turned pale.

This wasn’t the fire alarm. It was the emergency signal reserved for something far worse: contamination leakage and aberrant aggregation. This was the Ember’s corruption!

Despite it all, Ji Jue calmly lifted a rust-covered tin cup, took an unhurried sip of water, and softly hummed a tune. One day, an otherwise peaceful workshop was suddenly attacked by an unidentified parasitic lifeform, and just like that, everything became much livelier.

1. 孙 is the third name listed in the Song dynasty classic text Hundred Family Surnames. It is a common Chinese surname meaning “grandson” or “descendant”, while 赐 means “to bestow,” “to grant,” or something that has been “given as a favor or blessing.” To me, it gives a slightly formal and traditional impression rather than a modern or casual one. In this case, the auspicious meaning also creates a subtle irony. Despite having a name associated with blessings and favor, Sun Ci was trapped in a miserable position and clinging desperately to his last chance of survival. ☜