Chapter 250: Second Qualitative Transformation

After hurriedly washing his face, Ji Jue headed out for Professor Ye’s workshop. It was such a short distance that Horsey barely had time to rev its engine before Ji Jue hit the brakes again. Its two headlights stared at him resentfully.

Lately, he didn’t even call it his little darling or precious baby anymore. Every day, he holed himself up in the basement, and whenever he came back out, he seemed to carry the scent of other vehicles on him. Now that he had finally taken it out for a drive, the trip was over before it had even properly begun. He was obviously just going through the motions.

So love really did fade, didn’t it?

Ji Jue slapped its hood, telling it to cut the drama. He had just upgraded its suspension the day before yesterday, and now it was already eyeing some new nitrous lights?

God knew what the hell it spent all day looking at online. If he didn’t keep an eye on it, it could start running off after ride-hailing cars! He was cutting the garage’s internet connection the moment he got back.

Ji Jue climbed the steps and pushed open the door. Inside, he found a bleary-eyed Ye Chun sitting lazily in the kitchen, sipping milk tea and basking in the sunlight like some free-range exhibit animal. She always looked like this after half-assing her way through another paper.

Ji Jue shot her a look. What’s going on?

Ye Chun shot one right back, irritated. You’re in deep trouble! Hurry up and hand over those rice rolls you’re carrying, then I’ll put in a good word with Auntie and save your sorry ass!

Unfortunately, aside from putting each other down as second authors on papers, the two of them possessed absolutely no telepathic connection whatsoever. They stared at each other for ages without understanding a thing.

Finally, a helpless sigh came from the direction of the study. “Are you two done glaring at each other yet?”

Footsteps sounded from inside, and the visitor was escorted out of the study. She appeared to be getting on in years, yet showed little sign of age. Her warm smile gave her the approachable air of a kind elder.

“Ji Jue?” she asked curiously, looking over at him.

Ji Jue immediately forgot all about his childish staring contest with Ye Chun. Whoever looked away first lost, but that no longer mattered. He straightened up and nodded solemnly. “Hello.”

“We’ve known ‌about each other for so long, yet this is the first time we’ve actually met.” The visitor smiled and extended a hand in introduction. “I’m Lü Yingyue.”

“Uh...” Ji Jue froze. He had not expected a Security Bureau director to suddenly spawn inside his teacher’s study. More importantly, she was the acting governor overseeing all anomalous affairs throughout Haizhou. He hurriedly reached out to shake her hand. “Greetings, Governor.”

“I’m only filling in for now.” Lü Yingyue smiled and shook her head. She looked him over a couple of times, then nodded. “You really are quite the fine young man. Mr. Tong and Wen Wen were being rather conservative when describing you.”

“You flatter me.” Ji Jue lowered his head with the reserved smile of a junior receiving praise, while discreetly watching his teacher’s reaction. He truly could not figure out what someone of Lü Yingyue’s stature was doing here.

“Well then, I won’t impose any longer.” She turned back to say goodbye.

Unfortunately, she did not get the usual polite send-off of “Take care.” Professor Ye still wore the same cold expression she always did. “You shouldn’t have come to bother me in the first place.”

Lü Yingyue laughed. “That won’t do. When you’re away from home, you have to rely on your friends. And with a friend like you, I’d be foolish not to lean on you a little more.”

With that, she gave one final nod, then pushed open the door and left.

“What was that about?” Ji Jue asked.

“Just a bunch of troublesome nonsense. Though some of it does have to do with you.” Professor Ye gave him a long look, clearly resigned to the fact that he was a disaster magnet. She had only taken her eyes off him for one day, and he was still limping, for heaven’s sake. And somehow he had managed to stir up yet another mess.

“Me?” Ji Jue looked baffled. He thought back for a moment, then realization dawned on him. “Yesterday’s—”

Professor Ye raised a hand, cutting him off. Better not mention any of that nonsense in front of Ye Chun. “Mr. Tao is gone, and things in Spring City have settled down, but Haizhou’s problems are only piling up. Lü Yingyue is holding on to the Acting Governor position, so Cliff City won’t be able to stay out of whatever comes next.”

With her hands behind her back, she turned and walked into the study. “If the Security Bureau has already caught wind of it, then someone is probably stirring things up behind the scenes. Whether they find anything or not, it’ll still be trouble. You handled this well. At a time like this, the fewer problems we have, the better. If nothing else, Lü Yingyue owes me another favor now.”

Ji Jue lowered his head. Realizing that he had not actually caused any trouble this time, he immediately relaxed.

He bowed his head and offered a flattering smile. “It’s all thanks to your excellent teaching, Professor.”

Ye Xian looked at him, her face settling into an expression of weary resignation. Was this really something she had taught him?! Just imagining what having a student like Ji Jue would do to her reputation in academia was enough to make her stomach hurt. For Ember to go out of its way to recruit a rare specimen like him, it must have thought life had been far too peaceful lately.

There was no point wasting time bantering with this brat. It would only get on her nerves. So she skipped the preamble and asked directly, “How’s your condition?”

“Mm, I’m mostly recovered. The aftereffects are still a little troublesome, though. I still can’t put much power into my stride when I run.”

He had pushed himself far too hard in Spring City. On top of that, he had advanced through both the Resonance and Metamorphosis Realms, so his body was still undergoing constant changes. The damage caused by his injuries had acted as an additional stimulus, accelerating the entire process. As a result, even now, he still could not be considered fully recovered.

The Resonance Realm focused on refining and strengthening one’s abilities. Once a Chosen One entered the Metamorphosis Realm, however, both soul and body began another stage of evolution, bringing them one step closer to the Supreme Benevolences. The process differed from person to person, and the various changes to body and soul did not necessarily occur in the same order.

Pacifier was clearly more inclined toward strengthening the soul. As Ji Jue’s soul underwent Metamorphosis and grew stronger, it absorbed so much spirit matter and essence that his body had actually weakened somewhat.

But that did not affect Ji Jue much. With Fluid Alchemy and mercury assisting him, he could now keep himself supported by a powered exoskeleton almost twenty-four hours a day. Even running an entire marathon wouldn’t feel too different from sitting on a sofa.

Once he got used to it, it was actually pretty damn comfortable. The heavy physical work that had once troubled him because of his limited stamina was now hardly worth mentioning with mercury’s assistance.

Even the cane he carried was far more than a mere prop. It was formed from mercury bearing two entirely different blessings: Iron Essence and Ultimate Resilience. With those in hand, he barely even needed a toolbox anymore.

With a single glance, Ye Xian could now sense the subtle fluctuations of spirit matter concealed around Ji Jue’s body. Fine threads of mercury coursed beneath his jacket and clothes. Those intricate structures could transform at any moment into a powered exoskeleton for assistance, or into any number of other tools. Two completely different blessings had been seamlessly integrated under a single will.

By all rights, they were two incomplete creations that should have been incredibly difficult to control. Yet in Ji Jue’s hands, they shifted and transformed at will, almost like a miracle.

“Axis of Dominion?” Understanding dawned on Ye Xian. “You’ve gotten the hang of it already?”

“For now, I’ve only just begun to grasp it. There’s still a lot more I can do with it.”

Even now, Ji Jue would not dare claim that he had fully mastered this blessing. Just like Flawless Craft and Spirit Primacy, all it gave him was a completely new direction and a new set of possibilities. How he actually used them depended entirely on him. Its ceiling was as high as its floor was low.

For any Chosen One, a blessing like this was an absolutely crucial hub and turning point. Like Ji Jue’s previous two blessings, it provided no offensive or defensive ability whatsoever, yet it was precisely because of its unique nature that Ji Jue had now undergone a complete qualitative transformation.

The effect of Axis of Dominion was actually very simple. Just as its name suggested, it turned the user into the central axis of everything within their domain of control, enhancing all forms of control over anything that belonged to them, including their body.

The scope of that enhancement was still limited, however. It was nowhere near the terrifying level of control granted by Origin blessings such as Ironclad Law, Sovereign Judgment, or Scheming Hand, nor could it interfere with anything that did not belong to the user.

The only things it could affect were those within the bounds of what was the user’s. What it emphasized was not ‘dominion,’ but the ‘axis.’ Its effect was simple: it bound Ji Jue and everything that belonged to him tightly together, treating them as a single inseparable whole. And within that whole, spirit matter, blessings, and even matrix effects could be transferred freely from one part to another. It did not matter whether the target was living or dead, whole or damaged.

In other words, Ji Jue could freely manifest any of his passive effects on any creation under his control. That included Pacifier’s barehanded alchemy, the precise control granted by Flawless Craft, and even the enhanced spirit intelligence provided by Spirit Primacy.

Just like now. Ji Jue raised a hand and pointed toward the old grandfather clock in the corner. Deus Ex Machina activated.

A series of clicks and scrapes rang out from inside the clock. Gears turned against one another, levers shifted into motion, and the outer casing split apart before reassembling itself.

The tall clock suddenly folded in half. Before it could strike the floor, two beastlike limbs extended from within its divided casing and braced against the ground.

Its metal shell collapsed inward, reshaped itself, and wrapped around an intricate skeletal frame. The heavy pendulum stretched out behind it like a long, winding tail. Meanwhile, the carefully fired stained-glass mosaic became elaborate markings spread across its body.

The brass beast raised its head. Its jaws opened, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth.

In the span of a heartbeat, the heavy clock had transformed into a brass cheetah prowling through the room with lifelike grace. It padded over and sat beside Ji Jue, narrowing its eyes contentedly as it enjoyed his touch. Its gemstone eyes reflected the sunlight beyond the window, refracting it into brilliant rays.

What had once been an inanimate object had come alive under Ji Jue’s hands. This was the second qualitative transformation that Deus Ex Machina had undergone after gaining its three blessings during the Resonance Realm. He no longer needed to rely on the Emergency Survival Protocol. With nothing but his own abilities and alchemy, he was already capable of accomplishing all this, and the amount of spirit matter it consumed was only a tiny bit more than before!

Even though Ye Xian had expected something like this, seeing it happen before her eyes once again rendered her speechless. She removed her glasses and let out a quiet sigh. As his teacher, how could she possibly fail to understand what had happened? If anything, she understood it even better than Ji Jue did.

Blessings could interfere with and influence one another. There were certainly combinations that were fundamentally incompatible, such as Spirit Primacy and Physical Primacy, or Iron Essence and Ultimate Resilience. But there were also special combinations that complemented one another, sometimes even producing a qualitative transformation when used together.

Take the Swarm’s three-blessing combination—Blood Drinking, Battle Frenzy, and Fortress Breaker—for example. When all three blessings were combined, the lower the user’s health dropped, the greater their destructive power became. And the more damage they dealt, the more health they drained back.

Everyone who had used the combination swore by it, while everyone who had been on the receiving end hated it.

Add a few more blessings on top of that, and the combination could develop into the chain reaction known as Wild Hunt, letting the user fight on at the brink of death without going down. Running into even one of those users was enough to make anyone’s scalp crawl. Human or monster, no one escaped without taking a beating.

The quality of a matrix was judged by the types of blessings it targeted and linked together, as well as how many blessing chains it could form.

Take Ye Xian’s Mo Ye, for example. It possessed only two blessing chains, both of which maximized the effects of separation and repulsion. By itself, it could only be considered mid-tier.

Gan Jiang was much the same. Yes, it was perfectly ordinary, as long as you kept thinking of the two separately, that was.