Chapter 243.1: Sweet Dreams and Illusory Light Part 1

As the trigger was pulled, the bullet went flying.

Like a thunderbolt splitting the heavens, a streak of crimson crossed the sky. With a loud blast, traces of red dripped from its straight trail of afterlight and fanned out to either side. It looked like a wound carved through the sky by a blade. Endless hatred ignited as blood rained down in torrents.

The instant the bullet was fired, the enormous handgun fulfilled its purpose. As the giant hand faded away, the weapon crumbled into ash, but that red-hot streak spewed forth from hell continued onward, extending in a perfectly straight line. In an instant, it tore through the many waves of rainbow light, accompanied by an unceasing series of shattering cracks.

The glassy bullet spun through the air. Time seemed to slow countless times over as it advanced. Wherever it passed, it left widening cracks across the invisible barriers in its path.

The Great Abomination Incarnation that held up the sky glanced over indifferently. At last, he raised one hand and placed it directly in the bullet’s path. With effortless ease, he blocked that boundless hatred outside.

Just then, from Spring City, the brilliant stream of light that had long since dimmed suddenly surged upward, churning into motion. It was the temporal anchor formed from what remained of Mr. Tao! It was as if that broad-minded, wise old man from the past had reached out once more.

Compared to the Great Abomination Incarnation, the last remnant of his power was pitifully weak. Yet with the slightest adjustment, made almost casually, it slipped into a critical opening and severed one vital connection at precisely the right point. For a single second, the Great Abomination Incarnation’s supply of spirit matter fluctuated.

Changsheng’s three eyes widened in disbelief.

A thunderous impact followed. The containment shattered, and cracks spread.

A bloody hole had been punched straight through the enormous palm blocking the bullet. Splintered bone and mangled flesh were clearly visible as blood poured down like rain.

A deep bullet mark had appeared on Changsheng’s stunned face. Endless hatred, venom, and bitter anguish spread from the cracks, rising and burning like flames. It looked like, right next to his three eyes, a fourth had opened.

BOOM!!!

With a deafening crash that shook heaven and earth, the towering workshop that had once pierced the clouds like a Celestial Pillar lurched violently. As unstoppable destruction spread throughout Spring City, connections that had held until now snapped at once. The darkness dispersed, revealing the horrific state of the very top of the workshop.

Spirit circuits appeared before fading away. Flecks of Supreme Benevolence’s essence and the divine essence of the Depths rose and sprayed from the workshop like blood, only to dissolve into nothingness.

Jian Yuan took a step back. Before him, Ye Xian remained expressionless. Her bloodstained face was covered in jagged wounds, and her right hand had been severed at the wrist. At her feet, fragments of broken blades and swords had piled up almost into a small mountain. Every last one of them had been Jian Yuan’s work.

At last, Jian Yuan looked down at his chest, at the gaping hole that had pierced straight through him. He stared at his soul, already pushed to its limit and teetering on the brink of collapse, and sighed soundlessly.

Honor and morality had never belonged in Ember’s dictionary. It was quite the opposite. Its creed was to hit the blind, curse the mute, and kick a cripple squarely in their good leg. A widow’s door was the easiest to kick down, and the easiest grave to rob was one with no descendants left to defend it.

So while Ji Jue relied on Skyrail to unleash Deus Ex Machina all across Spring City and viciously stabbed the “weightlifting champion” Changsheng in the back, Ye Xian seized the opportunity to attack without the slightest hesitation.

From outside came the Taiyi Association’s invasion and struggle for control; while close at hand, Ye Xian had broken in and launched her assault. On top of that, Jian Yuan had to devote an enormous amount of attention to keeping Spring City stable and maintaining the artificial Skyrail. Attacked from both flanks, Jian Yuan’s weaknesses had never been so thoroughly exploited before.

Finally, one moment of carelessness was all it took. When the gunshot rang out, the Mo Ye sword in Ye Xian’s right hand shattered abruptly. If it had to perish, then it would take down everything around it as well!

Even Jian Yuan had never expected Ye Xian to be so decisive. She was holding a sacred artifact matrix that had already reached the Celestial Being Realm, yet she destroyed it without a second thought. She had treated a Divine Creation worthy of being passed down for generations as a disposable item and used it against Jian Yuan’s workshop.

After using the Dissociation Technique to destroy countless works created by others, Ye Xian had naturally accumulated plenty of experience. She had even come to regard the dissociation of her own creations as yet another means of destruction. Even Jian Yuan had failed to anticipate that.

The Master Craftsman of the Depths sighed regretfully and shook his head. “What a waste.”

Ye Xian remained impassive as she casually tossed aside the sword hilt. “It was only a tool. If it’s destroyed, I can simply make another. When something needs to be cut away, just go ahead and do it already. When something needs to be abandoned, abandon it. That was one of the lessons I learned when I left my school. You’ve fought that man for so long, Master Craftsman. Why are you still hesitating now?”

Jian Yuan didn’t reply. After a long while, he waved a hand.

A pile of miscellaneous items flew out from the shattered wall of the workshop and landed on the ground. Among them, two pieces of mercury stood out in particular. One was as hard as iron, the other as supple as silk.

“Give these back to him,” he said flatly, “Accursed things. They’re an eyesore just sitting around here.”

Ye Xian looked puzzled. “You’re leaving, Master Craftsman?”

“What else can I do? We’ve fallen short at the very last step after coming this far. Changsheng can’t hold on anymore. Am I supposed to stay here and go down with him?” Jian Yuan asked impassively. “I lost a round to a brat, then I lost another to his teacher. I’ve embarrassed myself enough for one day.”

Ye Xian shook her head, expression cold. “If you weren’t so obsessed with having everything, Master Craftsman, and if you were willing to give up one thing or two, you wouldn’t have ended up in such a sorry state today.”

Just as she had said from the very beginning, there would always be choices to make. Sometimes, if one insisted on having the best of both worlds, all that futile effort would only leave one with neither. To possess everything, to have it all, to know all and be capable of all was nothing more than a dream.

Back then, it had been Jian Yuan’s obsession with the Whole[1] that drove him to madness and led him to throw himself into Putrefaction. Now, it was once again his obsession with the Whole, his refusal to let anything go, that had cost him this exchange against Ye Xian.

In a sense, even without ever being afflicted by an Abomination, Jian Yuan’s arrogance alone had destined him for Putrefaction.

At the same time, he had been maintaining both the artificial Skyrail and the network of the Depths running throughout Spring City, resisting the Association’s counterattack and encroachment, and still dividing his attention to fend off Ye Xian’s intrusion and attacks. Any one of those tasks would have been enough to exhaust an ordinary craftsman.

Yet until the entire situation began to collapse, he had not fallen behind in any of the three. He had even managed, with apparent ease, to keep the ferocious assault of his junior firmly suppressed.

That had lasted until Changsheng became trapped beneath the weight of the mortal world, the Security Bureau launched a full-scale counterattack, and then that damned bastard Ji Jue came along and dumped another hundred thousand straws onto the camel’s back.

Using Skyrail, Ji Jue had essentially launched a Deus Ex Machina DDoS attack, piling on an overwhelming amount of pressure from every conceivable direction. So once one part failed, everything failed with it.

How had things come to this?

At Ye Xian’s words, Jian Yuan let out a contemptuous scoff. “As expected of that man’s student. Even the way you talk is exactly like that lofty teacher of yours. All my life, I have pursued the Whole. I’ve risen and fallen to reach this point, but how do any of you know that I cannot attain it? If I backed down the moment things became difficult, how would I be any different from that man?!”

“Who knows?” Ye Xian shook her head, utterly unconcerned. “If you care so much about who the rightful successor of orthodoxy is, go argue with him. I’m a renegade who broke away and founded my own school. My name has even been struck from the register. Could you please stop dragging me into all this?”

“And yet it’s precisely at times like this that you resemble that man the most,” Jian Yuan said in a mocking manner, though it was impossible to tell whether he was mocking Ye Xian, her teacher, or himself. When he raised his head, his gaze was inevitably drawn toward that speck of illusory light hanging high above. “What’s his name?”

“Ji Jue,” Ye Xian replied. “My student’s name is Ji Jue.”

Jian Yuan nodded in understanding. At last, he looked back at the opponent before him and couldn’t help but feel like laughing.

He and that guy had fought their entire lives over who represented the true orthodoxy, yet the student that guy cherished most had broken away from his school and discarded that very orthodoxy like a worn-out shoe.

A teacher who looked down upon the Putrefaction Path of the Depths had somehow gone on to teach a thoroughly unorthodox student who walked the line between Supreme Benevolence and Great Abomination.

And then there were people who clearly pursued death and Destruction, yet immersed themselves in radiant dreams of Supreme Benevolence. Somehow, he, a Master Craftsman of the Depths, actually found himself regretting his past decisions. Fate had always been strange.

No, perhaps this was simply what it meant to be a craftsman. Even after casting aside morality and conscience, they could never let go of the one obsession rooted in their hearts, and clung to it until death.

Jian Yuan sighed softly and waved a hand. “Craftsmen...”

Shadows rose in waves, swallowing both him and the workshop before fading away. Just like that, he was gone.

As the rain of corruption became thinner, Ye Xian looked up at the collapsing, shaking Spring City, at everything that seemed to be sinking into hell. At last, her gaze settled on that speck of light in the heavens, shining like a distant star.

There was none of the joy or satisfaction one could expect from gaining the upper hand against a Master Craftsman of the Depths. Instead, she merely shook her head and sighed.

Having a student like this really was eight lifetimes’ worth of bad luck. Maybe she should find an opportunity to kick him out. That way, when he inevitably caused some earth-shattering catastrophe in the future, at least his innocent teacher wouldn’t get dragged down with him.

1. Here 全 (quán) is literally “all / entirety / completeness / the whole.” I think it refers to his desire to leave nothing out, lose nothing, sacrifice nothing, and achieve everything simultaneously. ☜