Chapter 234.1: The Old Geezer’s Kindness Could Never Be Repaid Part 1

Slumped in his wheelchair, Ji Jue couldn’t stop complaining. “How many days has it been now? Why hasn’t the Security Bureau made a move yet? Come on, there should’ve been some big news by now...”

Surely they weren’t actually going to leave him here to join the aberrants?

A gaunt, haggard face stared back at him from the polished surface of the mirror. His skin was paper-white, as though he had not seen sunlight in years. He was so thin that he was practically skin and bones, and his breathing was so slow that no one would have found it strange to see him lying in an intensive care unit.

And yet, amid the strands of hair that had turned white, an eerie light flickered deep within his increasingly dark eyes. Whenever his gaze swept past something or lowered in thought, that light smoldered. He looked like some ghostly demon inhabiting a corpse, radiating a chilling, deathly presence. Even if Mr. No-Fun stood right in front of him, he probably wouldn’t have recognized Ji Jue.

How long had it been? Ji Jue had no idea. It seemed as though only a few short days had passed, yet to him, it had felt more like a month or two. Every day, he was trapped in the same relentless cycle of cramming and crafting, without a moment to catch his breath.

Even sleep offered no escape. Amid countless jumbled theories and Transformation formulas, every nightmare and painful memory from his life surfaced in turn. Those fragmented, disjointed dreams alternated endlessly with a reality so hectic it nearly made him cough up blood.

By now, Ji Jue had completely lost any real sense of time. Perhaps this had been one of Jian Yuan’s goals all along, or perhaps time inside the workshop didn’t flow at the same rate as it did outside.

The theories and techniques of the Depths were nothing like the dry, straightforward tedium of advanced mathematics. Quite the opposite. It was full of cheap, practical methods that were utterly inhumane, including ways to obtain and process materials through blood rites, sacrifice, and torture. Worse still, many of its teachings carried subtler forms of corruption that seeped in unnoticed.

Even a compulsive workaholic like Ji Jue had been left physically and mentally exhausted by such brutal cramming. All he could think about was taking a break. And if a break was out of the question, dying would do too.

Just kill me and get it over with!

The only good thing about this miserable life was that he had an unlimited supply of materials, and no one cared how much he wasted. Even when Ji Jue used Jian Yuan’s supplies for practicing on his own, the old geezer did not seem to care.

With materials no longer an issue, his previously lagging Transformation skills improved by leaps and bounds. As for the various Putrefaction techniques and the methods of Aberrant Alchemy, Ji Jue was almost ashamed to admit that he had already gotten the hang of them.

Not only had he gotten the hang of them, his progress had been astonishing. He had already built a foundation from the matrix fragments and scattered techniques left behind by Dalton Meyer and Mr. Lian. With the old geezer Jian Yuan teaching him everything he knew and building on Ji Jue’s existing foundation, his progress skyrocketed. After only a few rounds of practice, he had already mastered the introductory principles and their more advanced applications.

He was even ready to begin crafting Blessed Creations.

Mr. Ember, don’t be upset. That old geezer forced me into this. I never wanted any of it. You’re the only one in my heart, you have to believe me. I merely made the same mistake any craftsman would have made[1]!

Besides, Ember had never explicitly forbidden it, so Ji Jue decided that counted as tacit approval.

How had a promising young craftsman of the Ember Path somehow ended up becoming one of the Depths’ rising stars? If word got out, surely his teacher wouldn’t come after him with a blade and personally purge him from the school, right?

Wait. Could this have been Jian Yuan’s plan all along?!

Perhaps one day, after Ji Jue became a craftsman, a master craftsman, or even a grandmaster, he would meet Jian Yuan again. The old bastard would chuckle darkly, pull a stack of photographs from his pocket, and say, “Ji Jue, you wouldn’t want anyone else to find out about this, would you?”

Ji Jue sucked in a sharp breath. He desperately wanted to stomp his foot and curse a few times. Unfortunately, he was rapidly losing even the freedom to do that. Chain-like black marks had appeared across his left arm, right shoulder, heart, and right leg. Even the slightest movement brought excruciating pain. They were all the result of Ji Jue’s reckless attempts to resist or test his limits over the past few days.

Boom!

A thick, blood-red mass burst from the furnace and flowed out in a raging wave, nearly engulfing the gaunt figure standing before it. Despite this, Ji Jue remained expressionless. Still distracted and lost in thought, he casually raised a hand toward the writhing scarlet mass and reached into it, curling his fingers shut.

“That’s enough,” he said.

The flowing blood vanished. The squirming crimson mass rapidly shrank back, and the screams filling the furnace stopped, as though he had seized a monster by its vital point.

The creation that had broken free from the furnace continued to thrash frantically between Ji Jue’s fingers. Its intense heat quickly faded, revealing the cold sheen of steel. Threads of crimson coursed beneath its metallic surface, occasionally giving it the texture of living flesh.

The moment it landed in Ji Jue’s hand, it ravenously tried to devour his blood and spirit matter. Unfortunately for it, Pacifier suppressed it with ease. Like some insignificant small fry that had badly overestimated itself, it quickly gave up the struggle and became as docile as a chick.

“Aberrant Alchemy? That’s it? That’s all you’ve got?” Ji Jue scoffed, casually tossing the creation into a box welded beside his wheelchair. “It’s nothing special.”

After several days of experimentation and practice, he had identified the greatest difference between modern alchemy and the Aberrant Alchemy Jian Yuan had developed.

Modern alchemy used the four disciplines of Elevation, Transformation, Purification, and Integration to grant a soul to an inanimate object. Jian Yuan’s Aberrant Alchemy, however, drew upon many schools before forging them into a system of its own. It created malevolent spirits directly.

Compared with a newborn rabbit, a starving lion or tiger was obviously fiercer and more imposing. It would naturally be far more satisfying to use as well, even if the price was steep.

At its core, Aberrant Alchemy was about deliberately triggering corruption and inducing mutation. As far as Ji Jue was concerned, it was no different from setting off firecrackers on top of a manhole cover. The explosion would certainly be louder than usual, and when the time came, you would depart this world far more swiftly and peacefully than normal.

A moment’s carelessness could send the entire process spiraling out of control. Another lapse, and some ungodly monstrosity could leap out of the furnace, at which point the craftsman would no longer have any say in what happened.

Once the relevant techniques and theories had been mastered, a craftsman could indeed transcend their realm and limitations to create something that surpassed the boundaries of their abilities. The problem was that the process was almost completely uncontrollable. The method worked wonderfully, all things considered. It was just rather hard on the craftsman.

Attempting it without any preparation was like racing along an overpass in the middle of a stormy night with the accelerator pressed all the way down. There was no point asking where the ride was headed. Once you floored it, you were committed. Crying wouldn’t help; worst case, you would take someone else down with you.

That was precisely why it demanded even greater control, adaptability, and talent from a craftsman. The incompetent and useless would all die before even passing the introductory stage, but anyone who successfully crossed the threshold would see their growth skyrocket at a terrifying rate.

And that was exactly why the more Ji Jue learned, the more fucking wrong everything felt. He had never seen these theories or techniques used by anyone else. Dalton was a hopeless blockhead, so it was understandable that he knew nothing, but Lian Yun was supposed to be Jian Yuan’s apprentice. How could he not know even the slightest bit of this?

Don’t tell me this entire set of materials I’ve been studying was something you made up on a whim, old geezer!

Something was wrong, extremely wrong.

1. The line is a parody of a famous Chinese celebrity quote associated with Jackie Chan. During a 1999 press conference concerning his extramarital affair, he described his actions as a mistake that many men would make. The wording later became widely repeated as “I made the mistake that every man in the world would make.” In Chinese popular culture, that line became a meme because it sounded like an attempt to excuse infidelity by presenting it as a universal male weakness. ☜