Chapter 271: A Horror Story

Inside the vast hall within the Myriad Transformations Tower’s simulated world, the earlier indignant shouting and noisy complaints had all but disappeared. Only the heavy breathing of the eliminated examinees and the repeated crashes and screams coming from the floating projections could still be heard.

There was the Mountain of the Dead, built from countless corpses and bones that had been fused together and reconstructed; the Fortress of Destruction, surrounded by massive spirit matter cannons; the Slaughterblood Formation, which commanded countless blades as one; and even a void labyrinth created by combining the Eternal Gate with the true essence of Ember. Several extraordinary creations appeared within the floating projections, far surpassing people’s imagination.

Everyone had been given the same amount of time, the same starting point, and the same conditions. Some had used various methods to create seemingly limitless creations. Some had struggled from nothing and rebuilt everything atop the ruins. Others had reached the end before they had even truly begun.

Now, as various battles gradually came to an end, almost everyone’s attention converged on the largest floating projection at the center of the hall. In the suffocating silence, all they felt was a bone-deep chill and fear. It was almost like watching a horror story unfold.

The spirit-matter giant Dragonite, the Soul-Hunting Cavalry Valhalla, and the Throne’s Shadow were weapons of destruction that craftsmen would have struggled to deal with, yet they had actually been reduced to having to fight together just to protect themselves.

What was even more terrifying was that a single person was fighting all three at once without falling behind. In fact, he was doing the exact opposite. He was beating all three of them into the ground!

And from beginning to end, aside from some relatively insignificant explosives and containment measures, he had not even activated the workshop’s true core sequence.

Beneath the emblem of Tidesound Workshop was a name that none of them had ever heard before—Ji Jue.

BOOM!

When another Valhalla was shattered with a brutal stomp, many people instinctively gasped, shaken by the sheer savagery of what they were witnessing. They weren’t ignorant, nor were they incapable of accepting what they saw. It was simply that none of them had ever seen a craftsman fight in such a ferocious manner.

With nothing but a single suit of powered armor, he was taking on three alchemical creations that could be rated above Grade A even by the Association’s standards. And he was pinning the invaders down and beating them senseless.

Where the hell had this Swarm and White Deer hybrid come from?!

Someone in the crowd murmured in confusion, “Hm? He... wasn’t his surname Zhou?”

A moment of silence followed. Everyone turned to look at him as if he were an idiot. The workshop and the name were written there plain as day. Could he not read?

Someone recognized the confused apprentice. “Ah, I remember now! You’re that idi—ahem, that powerhouse who challenged this guy to a fight on the leyline board today!”

Gasps sounded all around them. Everyone instinctively shuffled away from the unfortunate examinee, leaving a glaringly obvious empty circle around him.

What if that terrifying bastard suddenly came charging out of the screen and decided he wanted to tear apart a living person for fun? Sure, the odds were low, but they were not zero. They’d better stay far away. No one wanted blood splattering on them!

The examinee who had been recognized went pale and shook his head frantically. “I didn’t! That wasn’t me! Don’t make things up! The guy I challenged was clearly surnamed Zhou! How could it possibly have been this dude?!”

Afraid that no one would believe him, he gritted his teeth and stamped his foot. “Zhou and I are mortal enemies! How could I possibly forget my own enemy’s surname?! The moment I get back, I’m going to kill him!”

At this point, even if his enemy hadn’t been surnamed Zhou, he damn well was now. His enemy’s name was Zhou Cheng! And if anyone asked whether he might have gotten it wrong and the guy had actually been Ji Jue, the very same monster on the screen...

No way. Don’t fucking joke around, man. A joke like that could cost me my life!

Thank goodness he had not given his name or workshop back then. If some murderous freak from the Swarm Path set his sights on him, how was he supposed to live after that?

Someone frowned in confusion. “Tidesound Workshop? Never heard of it. That doesn’t seem right. Is this a new workshop established in recent years?”

“No idea. I feel like I’ve seen the name somewhere before.”

“Oh, I heard something about it. Apparently, this workshop changed its name after relocating.”

“Who’s the craftsman? They’ve got to be a master at the very least, right?”

Amid the murmurs of the crowd, someone sighed, sounding as if they had lost all hope in life. “Stop asking. It’s Ye Xian.”

For a brief moment, the crowd split neatly into two groups. Half of them looked completely baffled and turned to ask the people beside them, “Who’s Ye Xian?”

The other half gasped in perfect unison and backed several steps away, trying to put other people in front of themselves, for what little sense of security that offered.

In the brief confusion, one person inhaled so sharply that he choked and coughed twice. He laughed awkwardly and said, “Well... that... that explains it...”

“A great teacher produces an outstanding student, after all!”

“Yes, yes, exactly!!!”

Under the puzzled stares of everyone else, the group forced awkward smiles and hurriedly changed the subject. Some simply left the hall altogether.

The low murmur continued until someone at last grew tired of the noise. The examinee standing closest to the floating projection widened his eyes and held his breath. “Shut up. Here it comes!”

The projection was consumed by crimson. Everything in sight was engulfed and smothered by the red mercury pouring down from above!

It was as if the shackles restraining a savage beast had finally been removed. Before people could even register the sound of something shattering, the noise was drowned out by the thunderous tumult of the surging torrent. Amid the endless crimson, two flames redder than blood flashed in the armor’s eyes.

Driven far beyond its normal limits, scorching steam blasted from every seam in the armor. Streams of light rose, converging. The evil creature’s limbs unfurled from behind the armor, turning into the shape of a hideous tree before reaching out and seizing the flowing spirit circuits.

The two had merged into one!

Deep within the workshop, the corpse furnace shook violently. Flames surged upward as it drew upon a full third of the workshop’s spirit matter reserves in the blink of an eye and sent it all rushing toward Ji Jue!

The overwhelming torrent of spirit matter far exceeded the armor’s normal capacity. It poured through the spirit circuits, passed through the connections with the evil creature arms, and flooded into the armor. Even the alloy plating turned blazing red in an instant.

It looked as if the entire place had fallen into hell. And yet, it also felt as if he had returned home.

Ji Jue drew a deep breath of the scorching air, savoring the scent of blood and sulfur within it, then let out a deeply satisfied sigh. “Finally... I can get a little serious!”

He ignored the vortex of shifting gravity, Valhalla’s phantom appearances, and the crystalline giant’s spirit matter bombardment. Once again, he reached out a hand toward everything before him.

Just like that, the rain of mercury filling the air stopped, like time itself had frozen and all things had been brought to a standstill. The shifting gravity, the ruptured space, and even the brilliant spirit matter arrows blazing through the air all froze in midair, unable to move.

At that fleeting sight, the hall outside the simulation fell eerily silent. Everyone broke out in a cold sweat. They could not even begin to tell what kind of creation could produce such a terrifying effect.

Was it the Eternal Gate’s Time Freeze? The Ruins Path’s Static Zone? Origin’s Myriad-Phenomena Stasis? White Deer’s accelerated Super-Sense? Or perhaps Entropy’s Zero Domain? Or perhaps the answer was something much simpler.

Reflected across the motionless strands of scarlet mercury suspended in the air were countless intangible outlines that the naked eye could never have perceived.

Hands!

Hands!

Hands!

Hands!

Hands!

Hands!

Hands!

Hands[1]!

Everything within sight had been seized and brought under the control of countless, formless, invisible hands!!!

“This is... Pacifier?” Gustav’s expression faltered slightly. He looked up, and for the first time since the exam started, he lost his composure. Realization dawned on him. “No. It isn’t Pacifier. It’s the workshop.”

Rather, this had originally been part of what Pacifier was meant to be. The workshop had been constructed upon the foundation of Fluid Alchemy. Every measure built into it and every transformation it enabled revolved around a single core, and that core could only have been Pacifier!

Even though Pacifier had been stripped away, Ji Jue had relied on the workshop’s immense scale and staggering consumption of spirit matter to recreate its very essence with his own two hands.

All things flourished through the work of these hands. Everything beneath heaven was wrought by ten fingers. As long as those hands and fingers remained, what could not be recreated?

“So he really is a successor to the Sage...”

Gustav let out a soft sigh. There was no need to watch any further. The moment Ji Jue activated the workshop, the outcome had already been decided.

When Ji Jue extended his hand, everything fell under his control. And now, when he released it, everything that had been frozen resumed moving and returned to its proper course, the course that he had ordained!

At the core of the workshop, the furnace shook once more. In the span of a single second, Ji Jue’s spirit matter reserves dropped by another thirty percent!

As such, the overwhelming barrage of spirit matter attacks that had been screaming at him—the saturation bombardment released by the crystalline giant at maximum output—changed direction. Like a shower of falling stars, the attacks roared toward the Throne’s Shadow instead. The raging gravitational vortex veered aside as well, plunging toward the crystalline giant.

Meanwhile, the Soul-Hunting Knight, which should have appeared out of thin air to attack Ji Jue, instead materialized directly within the outstretched right hand of his armor, as though it had delivered itself straight to him. Its neck landed neatly in Ji Jue’s grasp, where his fists closed without mercy.

Steel cracked until the knight was crushed into a solid ball of metal. Ji Jue launched it through the air like a cannonball, smashing it into another surviving Valhalla. A massive hole was torn straight through its chest. The two soulstones collided, cracked, and shattered into dust.

Thunderous explosions rang out one after another. Amid countless bursts of scattered spirit matter light, fissures spread across the Throne’s Shadow. Its shadows dispersed as its form gradually crumbled away.

The crystalline giant, meanwhile, had been thrown into its own gravitational vortex. Before it could shatter completely, it had no choice but to once again transform into spirit matter right in front of Ji Jue.

This time, Ji Jue did not even need to fully draw upon the workshop’s power like he had before. With a casual wave of his hand, the falling rain of mercury turned against gravity. Fluid Alchemy was used in reverse, and Solid Alchemy manifested once more!

The crystalline giant was torn apart, forcibly wrenched out of its spirit matter state. Its enormous body was already riddled with cracks and falling to pieces.

“The components are all right, but your technique is still nowhere near Lou Feng’s.” Ji Jue raised his foot and offered one final farewell. “Go practice some more!”

BOOM!

Under his foot, the last remaining core shattered into dust. That was the first one down!

The steel giant turned his head. The flames in his eyes swept over the few remaining Soul-Hunting Knights that continued to harass him.

“It’s so annoying to see you jumping around all over the place, getting in my way. Where did you clowns even come from? Besides, tools designed for raids and disruption were never suited for breaking through fortifications in the first place, were they?”

Countless hands reshaped everything around him. Spears rose from the ground, while innumerable blades reformed from the rain of metal. They crisscrossed through the air and pierced the knights’ armor, forming cages that restrained every attempt at resistance.

Solid Alchemy bore down upon them, freezing every last knight into a metal statue riddled with holes. That was the second one down!

Finally, the ferocious armored man, glowing as though he were ablaze, raised his head and looked toward the remaining Throne’s Shadow. Cracks covered the creation that knew neither fear nor hesitation. The light in its eyes still burned fiercely. It fixed its gaze on Ji Jue once again, and gravity shifted around him, only to dissipate immediately afterward. The scepter rose again and again, but every attempt ended in failure.

At some point, crimson mercury had seeped into the Throne’s Shadow through the cracks. Like a living thing, the mercury penetrated every tiny opening it could find, working its way deep into the core. It wrapped itself around the spirit circuits, corroding and disrupting them until every function was cut off.

The many minute interference points created through Solid Alchemy had already worked their way deep into its very structure. No matter how it mobilized its power or ran internal diagnostics to purge them, it couldn’t clear them away.

The Throne’s Shadow trembled fiercely, yet it could only watch as Ji Jue walked toward. Once he stopped in front of it, he reached out and brutally dragged the figure down from its throne.

“The times have changed, Your Majesty.” Ji Jue bent down and whispered softly in its ear, “Can you hear the people singing?”

And so, Ji Jue hummed a famous song from the Imperial Revolution centuries ago. With one foot planted on the puppet from the throne, he drew his sword once more and raised it high overhead.

“Now fuck off for good!”

A head flew into the air, tumbling across the ground until it never moved again. That was the third one down!

Before long, the statue of shadow rapidly dissipated as though exposed to blazing sunlight, crumbling into dust. All that remained was the ornate chair, forcibly sealed in place by Solid Alchemy.

“I told you, what’s wrong with letting me sit for a while?”

Ji Jue sat down without the slightest hesitation. He shifted around, causing metal to scrape sharply against the shadow. As he found a more comfortable position, crossing one leg over the other, he gazed out at the scene he had created with his own hands.

Crimson mercury flowed like a crimson river, and spirit matter crystals lay scattered everywhere. Grotesque metal statues, broken and mutilated, continued to struggle where they stood.

What a delightful sight. It was simply beautiful!

Inside the workshop and outside the simulation, no one spoke for a long time. Then came a soft sigh from the floating projection. “This chair’s no good. It digs into my back...”

1. This was exactly how the novel was written in Chinese, and while I could edit it out, I decided to keep it like this to convey the unhinged-ness of this novel. ☜