Chapter 267: Kid, I’m Back!

“P-p-p-packed up my bags,

And I left my home behind.

From the moment I stepped out, I knew

There was so much more to find...

If you ever see me passing by,

Don’t greet me with a heart of stone.

I may wear my feelings on my sleeve,

But I’m wild and free, wherever I roam...[1]?”

Inside the once-silent workshop, rows of mercury hands that somehow looked thoroughly fed up with life waved drumsticks around, pounding away at iron barrels. Amid the exuberant beat, the craftsman bobbed his head and sang at the top of his lungs. Then he picked up the chainsaw, and a delightful buzzing filled the air.

Sparks flew, and the evil creature’s single eye spasmed in terror on the operating table, the compound structures within its gaze dilating and contracting wildly. And yet, it could not make a sound.

With a violent convulsion, a piercing screech cut through the air as the chainsaw ground against its carapace. Blood sprayed everywhere, while mercury hands descended and expertly sliced open the abdomen. Its organs were removed, and its bones were separated.

Scarlet blood splattered across the room, only to vanish beneath sweeping currents of mercury. The workshop remained spotless, as even the tiniest scraps were collected into barrels.

Ji Jue’s guiding principle was simple: waste nothing, save wherever he could, and squeeze every bit of value out of it. Seeing how dearly every part of it was being treasured, even the evil creature’s muffled wails and screams seemed to grow almost blissful.

“Don’t be afraid. Soon, you’ll be dedicating the rest of your life to the advancement of great alchemy,” Ji Jue comforted it. “It may be one small step for you, but it’s one giant leap for me. And if you round that up, doesn’t that mean Modern Alchemy itself is advancing? You’re practically a pillar of the Association!”

The evil creature’s garbled howls grew even louder. It sounded like it was swearing rather viciously.

Ji Jue shook his head helplessly. This kid was just like Lou Feng, always swearing whenever he got excited. But that didn’t matter. The smooth, practiced dissection continued without pause.

He used a drill to gently pry open its skull so he could admire its extraordinarily fascinating soul up close. Like breaking through a maiden’s guarded heart, he carefully lifted out its three mutated hearts. Then, the same way he would nervously reach for someone’s hand in the darkness of a movie theater, he shyly removed its arms and set them aside as keepsakes.

Finally, from within its pitch-black spine, a strange presence emerged amid the aberration contamination.

Ji Jue leaned closer, his eyes sparkling. “Oh, jackpot. It actually has a blessing!”

Judging from the way the spirit matter manifested, it should be the rare blessing of Origin—Repulsion Foundation. Even after undergoing severe corruption, its core had remained intact without collapsing. The corruption had caused it to mutate, stripping away its original stability and making it far more volatile.

Simply put, the repulsion field had become less stable, but its explosive power had increased dramatically, shifting from defense to offense.

“Sweetheart, if you’d told me you were this loaded, I would’ve been a lot gentler with you.” Ji Jue’s touch grew increasingly tender as he stroked the precious material before him.

Unfortunately, the evil creature was down to its last breath and could no longer speak. Only thick, bloody tears trickled from its empty eye socket. It looked just like some innocent girl whose scumbag boyfriend had finally come back to her.

Sadly, even while his hands were caressing the precious specimen in front of him, Ji Jue’s thoughts had already wandered to its friends.

“Got any good friends like you that you could introduce me to? Don’t get the wrong idea. I just want to get to know the people in your life. Look at how close we are already. Your friends are my friends too, right? If they came over, of course I’d have to give them a warm welcome. Besides, this place is huge. Wouldn’t you get lonely living here all by yourself? I’m only trying to find you some company, aren’t I? You’ve completely misunderstood me.”

That was what he said, but his hands never once stopped squeezing every last bit of value out of its bones and marrow. It was just a shame that evil creatures did not have identification cards. Otherwise, he would have taken out a few online loans in its name while he was at it. They were family now. If they were going to live together from here on out, then they should share the hardships and burdens of life together!

Still, his confusion deepened. How did an evil creature end up with a Supreme Benevolence blessing? If it had once been a Chosen One who had undergone corruption and mutation, then why had the blessing remained so complete afterward?

It wasn’t just this creature. Many of the followers of the Great Abominations he had encountered back in Spring City had also possessed the power of blessings. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have made such excellent material either. Could it be that the Great Abominations were using the same kind of blessings as the Supreme Benevolences?

Similar questions and conjectures had crossed Ji Jue’s mind more than once. Unfortunately, when he had asked his teacher about it, Ye Xian had refused to answer. She had merely told him that some questions were better kept unspoken.

Ji Jue didn’t give a damn about that. Ye Xian told him to figure it out himself, so he’d figure it out himself. If he couldn’t understand it now, he could think about it later.

After all, whether a blessing came from a Supreme Benevolence or a Great Abomination, he could use it just the same!

Years of repairing cars had taught Ji Jue one simple lesson: if a part or a piece of equipment worked, that was all that mattered. Who cared what brand it was? The only thing that mattered was whether it did the job. Aftermarket brake pads were still brake pads, weren’t they? They were cheaper, too!

And so, after reluctantly bidding farewell to the evil creature and carefully sorting away all the precious gifts it had left him, Ji Jue devoted himself entirely to crafting a Blessed Creation. The alarms went off again and again, but he ignored every one of them.

Only after reaching a good stopping point did he remove the heavy metal coat he was wearing, pick up his cup, and gulp down the water before heading off to take a shower.

That was when he finally noticed the log displayed across the fluid mercury on the wall.

The whole system had been thrown together in a hurry, so naturally there had been no time to design a proper UI or interface. Many commands didn’t even have buttons; Ji Jue simply wrote them on the spot whenever he needed them.

His footsteps paused. “It went up again?”

Unfortunately, he wasn’t referring to some stock Lu Feng had secretly invested in. He was referring to the aberration contamination level inside the simulation. Overnight, it had risen three times in a row. In just five hours, it had climbed from light contamination to moderate contamination, and it was still rising.

When Ji Jue linked himself to the furnace and extended his perception throughout the workshop once more, he finally heard what was happening aboveground.

Thunder boomed overhead, shaking the ground. Towering waves battered the shore, while raging torrents swept across the land. Pitch-black rain poured from the sky, engulfing everything.

Under the shroud of that black downpour, the environment across all of Leafway Island underwent yet another wave of mutation, spurred on by the rising contamination. Strange shadows drifted in and out of sight through the curtain of black rain, while the wind sounded almost like wailing.

Then, amid the churning mud, a bizarre footprint appeared out of nowhere. Other footprints followed, staggering into the distance before gradually vanishing beneath the relentless rain.

More unsettling still were the sinister presences that emerged across the island under the downpour. After repeated rounds of catalysis, the number of evil creatures began rising once more. Some even started devouring one another and evolving again.

Ji Jue felt his scalp crawl as he watched. The aberration contamination was rising like a goddamn sewer backing up.

“Did you guys at the Association blow up the Maelstrom’s toilet or something?!”

No one answered. Only faint groans could be heard from outside the workshop.

A flash of purple lightning tore through the downpour, illuminating the staggering, distorted silhouettes. No one knew where those figures had come from, but under the nourishing rain of aberration, their old appearances peeled away, revealing entirely new forms beneath.

What made Ji Jue’s scalp crawl even more were their empty, pitch-black eyes. It was as though they could see exactly where he was. Through the thick layers of earth, they stared right in his direction, seemingly utterly ravenous.

And the moment Ji Jue noticed them, it was as though some invisible command had been issued. Dozens, or perhaps hundreds of figures broke into a mad sprint toward him.

It was like they were cheating, with every single one of them equipped with wall hacks. They rushed straight toward the entrances Ji Jue had left on the surface, racing for the workshop.

Wait, the cheats were definitely fucking on! The cheat had never even been turned off, and they were coming specifically for him!

Their aggro was completely locked onto him. Even when they passed other aberrants and evil creatures along the way, neither side paid the slightest attention to the other, as though the other simply did not exist. They ignored everything else and headed straight for the workshop. The fastest among them was already about to slam into the underground base’s main entrance.

Ji Jue sneered but remained seated in his chair, unmoving.

To keep aberrants and evil creatures from breaking into the base, he had made the main entrance out of granite more than a meter thick. Every time he went in or out, he had to personally manipulate mercury to serve as both guide rails and lubricant, activate the hydraulic pumps behind the door to pull it open, then immediately push it shut again afterward.

If anything could fucking break through? that, then he would—

BOOM!

The door shattered.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me...”

Ji Jue’s smile froze on his face. He was caught completely off guard.

The door had exploded, but that wasn’t the important part. The important part was that the bizarre, corrupted figure at the very front had merely reached out and placed a hand against the granite door.

Intricate spirit circuits intertwined, forming a catalytic sigil out of thin air. It disrupted the internal stress balance of the granite and catalyzed its physical properties, causing the entire door to collapse without so much as a direct attack.

Even Ji Jue had to admit that was impressive. There was just one problem: this was fucking alchemy, and it was definitely some workshop’s closely guarded secret technique.

Normally, if an ordinary craftsman wanted to inscribe a sigil that acted directly on physical matter like this, they would need tools and expend materials just to activate it, but this guy had done it with a casual touch.

Just look at those solid fundamentals and that smooth, effortless execution. That’s already close to—if not outright at—the level of a full-fledged craftsman! Wait!

The frozen smile on Ji Jue’s face twitched. He stared at the figures reflected in the mercury, some mutilated, others grotesquely mutated, yet still retaining faint traces of their former human appearance.

What the fuck? Could these actually be the other examinees who had already been eliminated?!

Ji Jue was stunned speechless. He could almost hear a bizarre “Man[2]!” ringing in his ears.

Oh, shit. They actually won the revival round...

Kids, I’m back[3]!

One thing was obvious, though. These definitely were not the original examinees anymore.

The simulation had most likely collected data from the examinees, recreated what those who had failed would look like after succumbing to aberration, preserved their skills and instincts, and then thrown those replicas straight back into the examination grounds. With this, they could bring a brand-new surprise to all the apprentices still desperately clinging to survival.

Now that their pleasant little break was over, it was time for the Ember Path’s favorite kind of entertainment—mutual slaughter among their own kind.

And so, the bloodbath began!

***

“It’s been ages since I’ve seen anything this entertaining!”

Outside the simulation, Jiang Tongguang stood before the floating screens with his arms folded, gleefully taking in the carnage unfolding across the countless displays. Piercing alarms rang without end. Notifications that had been silent for quite some time were now going off again like a torrential downpour. In less than a minute, fewer than three hundred examinees remained. And once this wave was over, there would undoubtedly be even fewer.

As for the apprentices who had failed to make full use of the initial grace period to strengthen themselves and maintain their workshops, their fate hardly needed explaining. Within mere minutes, they were wiped out in the very first wave of attacks. The rest were barely managing to hold on, scrambling desperately from one crisis to another. Every one of them was in a miserable state.

Well done, Gustav. Really well done!

Why had Jiang Tongguang helped keep this from Delon and shared the burden of the Association’s pressure with Gustav? Was it because of friendship? Of course not! It was all for the sake of enjoying a glorious spectacle like this.

I want to see rivers of blood!!!

“I was wondering why you suddenly decided to add a preliminary scoring round,” Jiang Tongguang remarked with a click of his tongue. “So the score was actually used to determine how many enemies each person gets?”

Gustav replied calmly, “Without pressure, how are you supposed to tell worthless stone from uncut jade?”

The rule was simple: one point meant one enemy. A score of ninety-nine meant ninety-nine enemies. The better someone had performed—or the more recklessly they had shown off during the preliminary stage—the greater the pressure and the harsher the test they would now face. Aside from the ninety-odd examinees who received special treatment, every surviving apprentice who hadn’t earned a passing score was assigned thirty enemies as well.

They were all apprentices, after all. They had a workshop to shelter them, plenty of time to enhance themselves, and ample opportunity to upgrade their equipment. If they still could not deal with thirty-odd opponents who had been eliminated in the very first round, without equipment or any outside support, then they might as well give up and go home.

If you can’t even defend your own workshop, you have no business calling yourself a craftsman. Besides...

Gustav lowered his gaze toward one particular display, whose contents were so absurd that he had relegated it to a corner. “Someone seems to be having an easy time.”

1. This is the song he’s singing. ☜

2. I think this is referring to "What can I say, Mamba out," the final words Kobe Bryant spoke to the crowd at the Staples Center after scoring 60 points in his retirement game on April 14, 2016. ☜

3. I think this is referring to the meme “Kids, I’m back” that originated from online dark humor and parody surrounding the late basketball star Kobe Bryant.

After Kobe’s death, some internet trolls and shitposters changed their social-media profile pictures and usernames to Kobe-related ones and began posting comments in an intentionally odd, translated-sounding style. Common lines included “Kids, I’m back” and “Kids, this isn’t funny.” Over time, the imitation spread beyond its original context and became a meme format of its own. ☜