Chapter 272.1: The Beginning of Strife Part 1

It was all show but no substance[1]. The lousy chair looked so ridiculously pretentious that Ji Jue had assumed it had to be something impressive.

As it turned out, not only had whoever designed it given absolutely no thought to ergonomics, they had not even bothered adding a cushion. No wonder that damn thing earlier had looked so ill-tempered, glaring at everyone all the time. Maybe its ass had hurt and its hemorrhoids were acting up?

Pop.

While Ji Jue’s thoughts were wandering, he saw the spirit matter fragments scattered across the floor rapidly turn transparent, as though their color were being drained away. Like phantoms, they dissolved into nothingness before he could stop it.

It was not just the chair he was sitting on. Even the Valhalla statues sealed in blood-red metal rapidly turned into hollow shells. Everything inside them had vanished without a trace!

Ji Jue glanced around, enraged. “Wait, where are my materials?!”

Just imagine spending a fortune buying gear, finally beating the boss after all that effort, and getting ready to count your drops and see what precious loot you had scored. Then, right before your eyes—

Pop.

All that precious loot, gone, just like that.

What the fuck was even the point of playing anymore?! This garbage game was completely unplayable!

It wasn’t only the invaders’ remains that had disappeared. The damage and wreckage throughout the workshop vanished as well, along with even the spirit matter Ji Jue had expended. Everything rapidly restored itself as though time were being rewound.

In the end, it was as if nothing had ever happened.

Ji Jue was left standing there, looking around in bewilderment, with no idea what the hell was going on. Without warning, everything before his eyes began to blur, fading away.

“What... the fuck?”

It was as if Ji Jue had suddenly fallen into the depths of the universe. Endless darkness surrounded him, leaving only the brilliant speckle of light that represented him, along with several distinct lights in the distance. The blurry figures within those other lights were looking around as well.

Unfortunately, aside from the lights themselves, there was no way to make out anything else.

Eighty-three!

In the blink of an eye, Ji Jue counted every single speckle. If he was not mistaken, they represented all the candidates who had not been disqualified. Including himself, there were eighty-four in total.

Streams of light swept across his vision. The scene shifted, and a recording began playing from a third-person perspective.

Amid torrential black rain, the outline of an aberrant suit of armor came into view, its power reaching the maximum amount as it advanced. This was clearly a recording taken from one of the other simulations.

The moment Ji Jue realized this, his eyes lit up. He slapped his thigh and leaned forward eagerly.

Let me see which poor bastard this is.

He saw the realm surrounding the observation center filled with countless interlocking prisms of spirit matter. At its heart stood an enormous workshop that had been completely reconstructed, as seamless and flawless as a single piece of jade.

That familiar presence...

“Fuck, it’s Lou Feng!”

Ji Jue had been so exasperated he had almost laughed it off when Mr. Lou ambushed him earlier, and now, seeing this scene, he immediately burst out laughing. He watched gleefully as the overloaded armor bulldozed through everything in its path, smashed through the outer defenses at top speed, and charged into the workshop.

“Oh, Lou Feng. You’re still too naive. Just a little too naive.”

Ji Jue pointed out all the flaws. If he had been Mr. Lou, he would have definitely buried a field of directional mines or combustible explosives there. Better yet, he would have mounted a massive spirit matter cannon right behind the door to give any intruder a mysterious little surprise.

Unfortunately, Mr. Lou was still too constrained by common sense. The door had been positioned so perfectly that it almost felt wrong not to kick it down. And the biggest problem was, the base was huge, yet it did not even have a self-destruct system?!

Seriously? What a waste of a workshop this size. How was that any different from eating hot pot in Shuzhou without the spicy red broth[2]?

It wasn’t as if there had been no defensive installations or counterattack sequences along the way. Unfortunately, against an aberrant armor that was tough as nails and armed to the teeth, none of them had mattered. With brutally straightforward offense and defense pushed to the limit, the thing simply charged straight toward the heart of the base. Whenever necessary, it used its repulsion field either to destroy obstacles or defend itself.

The translucent spirit matter servants and numerous crystalline guards could barely put up a fight. The armor plowed straight through them without slowing down, to the point that it completely disregarded every other clue along the way.

A replica was still only a replica, after all. It could never perfectly reproduce the original, and its awareness simply could not keep up. At best, it was no more than a competent imitation. Its handling occasionally became bafflingly terrible, and Ji Jue actually felt his blood pressure rising just from watching it.

The smile on his face gradually disappeared. He wanted nothing more than to drag the replica out, grab it by the throat, and demand, “What the fuck are you thinking?!”

Lou Feng had obviously altered the environment inside the workshop, using the high concentration of spirit matter to erode and disrupt the armor. Why the hell was it still charging forward with its head down at a time like this? It had two auxiliary engine sets. Detonating even one of them would have been enough to temporarily disperse the spirit matter interference and clear the resulting transmission lag.

Seriously, it couldn’t even see such an obvious trap?! Lou Feng was practically flaunting himself to lure it in!

BOOM!!!

The crystalline giant suddenly transformed, dissolving and reconstructing itself. Seizing the moment the armor slowed, it spread across the machine and solidified once more, locking down both the evil creature’s arm and the armor itself.

A faint streak of light burst through the wall before vanishing in a flash. Inside the workshop, Lou Feng, drenched in sweat, finally breathed a sigh of relief and slowly lowered his burning palm.

That tiny stream of spirit matter, so insignificant that it would never have registered as a threat, had slipped through a crack in the armor. Once inside, it twisted around several corners before piercing straight through the cockpit. Blood seeped out, and the armor went still.

Lou Feng had turned the tables with a lethal counterattack. It was like killing a giant with a single needle. Its form and power were irrelevant. The true essence lay in using that tiny sliver of power at exactly the right place and time to achieve the desired result.

“Tch...” Ji Jue sighed. “So you were hiding a trick like that?”

He had never seen Lou Feng use a technique that allowed him to manipulate his own spirit matter over such a great distance. Clearly, the man had been keeping it hidden specifically as a precaution against him.

In less than two minutes, Lou Feng had roughly deduced the internal structure of the aberrant armor, sacrificed part of his workshop to lure the intruder into a trap, identified its weakness, and killed it with a single decisive strike! Fairly speaking, even Ji Jue would have struggled to come up with a better response if he had been locked down like that and faced such an attack.

There was no helping it. Ever since Ji Jue made a name for himself, he had hardly encountered an opponent that Pacifier and Deus Ex Machina could not handle. Without Pacifier, he could not perform barehanded alchemy or carry out many of his other techniques. Naturally, that deprived him of most of the options he normally relied on to adapt to changing circumstances on the fly.

Once the armor left the workshop, it could only respond passively using its built-in weapons and preset routines. If someone saw through its strengths and weaknesses, it was only natural that they could pick it apart however they pleased. Without Ji Jue’s consciousness and direct control, the “Ji Jue” piloting the replica armor had instead become its greatest weakness.

In other words, during this kind of workshop invasion, he could not count on the operator pulling off some extraordinary play. The real priority was figuring out how to combine limited conditions with the available materials, minimize the creation’s weaknesses as much as possible, and bring its strengths to their fullest potential.

Still, it was not as though there was no way around that problem...

Ji Jue rubbed his chin in thought, only to hear exaggerated laughter coming from within the scene. After repeatedly testing the intruder with methods including, but certainly not limited to hammering it, bombarding it with spirit matter, dismantling parts of it, and poking it over and over with a wooden stick, Lou Feng finally confirmed that it was completely dead and walked around it.

He climbed atop the mech and threw his head back in roaring laughter. “Hahahahaha! Ji Jue, you’re nothing special after all!”

1. “驴粪蛋子表面光” “A ball of donkey dung is shiny on the surface” (also commonly phrased as “驴粪蛋子外面光”) is a folk saying referring to something that looks polished, impressive, or respectable on the outside, but is actually terrible and has no real substance underneath. ☜

2. “红汤” commonly refers to a traditional red-broth style associated with the Chongzhou area of Sichuan. It was a highly representative flavor base from the western Sichuan plains, best known through Chongzhou red-broth noodles. Rather than being simply fiery hot, it was characterized by a rich aroma, a bright red color without being harsh, and a chili heat that was flavorful rather than aggressively pungent. ☜