Chapter 277.1: I’m Out of the Capsule and Feeling Fine (1)

The workshop was deathly silent. No one answered, yet the head in Ji Jue’s hands seemed to twitch ever so slightly, almost as if it were curious. But that was nothing more than an instinctive spasm caused by the encroaching aberration. Its eyes remained empty.

Ji Jue sat in a chair, sighing as he stroked the head in his hands. “It’s really lonely in here. I haven’t had anyone to talk to in ages. Good thing you dropped by for a visit. If this went on much longer, I might’ve had to find a volleyball, draw a face on it, and make it my friend.”

The head remained silent, as hollow in essence as the replica itself.

“What does the world look like to you?” Ji Jue asked curiously. “I don’t mean what’s right in front of you, or somewhere far away, or even Leafway Island. I mean this world.”

He raised a hand, spread his fingers, then slowly curled them into a fist.

“The sensation of touching something, the wind against your face, the smell of rain when it pours, the pauses between heartbeats, your pulse… Every last detail feels exactly the same as reality. A couple of days ago, I tried performing a minor operation on myself. Even the condition of my internal organs was indistinguishable from the real thing.

“To create something this lifelike… this must be an extraordinary Divine Creation, don’t you think? So, have you ever wondered whether this false world might not actually be all that different from the real one? I know it’s fake, of course. Everything here should just be a simulation of phenomena. There might even be invisible walls or some other kinds of barriers.” Ji Jue shrugged. “But I just can’t help myself.”

So why not give it a try? The opportunity was right there in front of him. It would be a shame to let it pass. Besides, he was already here, so might as well.

He looked around and asked softly, “After the duel ends, everything will be restored anyway, right? So while the duel is still going on, why not find out just how far I can push things?”

A vast echo rolled through the workshop like a receding tide. Mercury surged through the walls, and amid the thunderous pumping of machinery, layers of locking structures unfolded from the Ninefold Earth like the jaws of a hydraulic press.

The workshop, rooted deep within the earth’s ley lines, slowly rose, and the mountain split apart. Combustible explosives buried throughout the rock detonated in a chain reaction, blasting out wave after wave of compressed air. Fire and raging wind swept outward, vaporizing the rain.

Mud slid down the slopes like a tide. The towering mountain seemed to peel open like an orange, revealing the cold gleam of metal hidden within.

The workshop continued to operate, rotating and shifting like an enormous Rubik’s Cube. Enormous structures rose along their guide rails, unfolding layer by layer.

At the summit, a gate slowly opened, revealing darkness as deep as a bottomless well. Then mercury flowed upward against the rock and hardened, transforming in the blink of an eye into an enormous vertical shaft gleaming silver.

Once freed from the restraints of the other modules, the central furnace workroom rose as its walls and ceiling contracted around it, supported by the mercury beneath. It was like a bullet being loaded into a gun barrel. Countless hands of mercury reached in from every direction. Welding arcs flashed as they sealed Ji Jue and his “visitor” inside.

And when the final rivet was driven into the steel, a crude, primitive, and thoroughly bizarre rocket had been hauled into position on the launch platform.

Looking up from the bottom of that metallic shaft, all that could be seen was torrential rain and pitch-black clouds. The distant night sky and stars were completely hidden from view. Beyond the darkness, there was only emptiness.

“To tell you the truth, when I was little, my first dream was to become an astronaut.”

As the mantle of mercury flowed and transformed around Ji Jue, a padded acceleration suit formed over his body, wrapping him up until he looked enormously bulky. Meanwhile, his very important guest was placed inside another container.

Ji Jue kept it right beside him, chatting enthusiastically without missing a beat. “Later, after I got into Tianmen University, I actually thought that if I managed to become an engineer, I’d send my résumé to the Federation Space Agency! Even if I couldn’t become an astronaut myself, if a rocket I built could make it to the moon, that would still count as fulfilling my dream, wouldn’t it?

“What a shame. That fucking Congress actually scrapped the lunar programme so they could waste their time on some stupid space war. Fuck their space war, orbital weapons, and whatever the hell ‘extraterrestrial strikes’ are supposed to be! Who the fuck cares?!” Ji Jue slammed a fist against the container containing the head.

“How could a bunch of power-hungry bastards with nothing but corruption on their minds ever understand the beauty of technology and exploration, huh? If I have to wait for those idiots to contribute anything to space exploration someday, I might as well do it myself!”

Boom!

With a deafening crash, the mounting brackets detached and dissolved, turning into streams of mercury that flowed in all directions.

The furnace went into overdrive. Waves of scorching heat rose through the cramped cabin, and amid the violent shaking, gray-black fragments of spirit matter scattered through the air.

Inside the reaction chamber, the souls of evil creatures trapped within the batteries screamed in the furnace flames, but no sound made it out. Crushed and drained of everything they had, they shattered and turned to ash. In their place, blood-red flames erupted from the exhaust beneath the craft!

“Don’t be afraid! This may be one small step for Modern Alchemy, but it’s one giant leap for human space exploration!” Strapped into a heavily reinforced safety seat, Ji Jue patted his “roommate” on the head and added encouragingly, “With something like this on your résumé, even if you end up running for Chief at the Wasteland Assembly someday, you’ll be able to tell them that you led the gang all the way to the moon! Right?”

Explosions erupted beyond the layers of containment. The earth shook as raging flames burst forth, surging upward through the narrow metal shaft.

In an instant, a dazzling pillar of blazing light shot into the sky, punching through the rain and tearing apart the dark clouds as though, in reckless defiance, it intended to burn away all the darkness in its path.

Like the gleam of a blade, it pointed straight toward the heavens!

***

Before the shimmering projection of the Myriad Transformations Tower, Jiang Tongguang was watching the scene unfold. He couldn’t help shaking his head. “Seriously, you’re not going to stop him?”

The Myriad Transformations Tower was a Divine Creation capable of perfectly simulating an entire world. Once supplied with the necessary parameters and phenomena, it could even predict the future to a certain extent.

But such observation did not come without a cost. The more it simulated, the greater the level of detail, the more people and objects involved, and the larger the scope of the resulting scenario became, the more terrifying the consumption of spirit matter and Aether essence would be.

Jiang Tongguang and Gustav had already received plenty of warnings merely for working together to get the Council to approve the request to activate the Myriad Transformations Tower. As long as the simulation remained confined to Leafway Island, the cost was still barely within what the Association could bear.

The moment Ji Jue successfully launched into the sky, whether he ultimately succeeded or failed, reproducing the world and the wider universe within the simulation would unquestionably push the cost beyond sustainable limits.

But Gustav made no move to stop him. He simply stood by and watched.

“Has he broken any rules?” he asked. “Isn’t exploiting the mechanics part of the examination too?”

Jiang Tongguang sighed.

“I’ve got this feeling that if we just leave this guy alone, he’ll manage to launch his entire workshop into the stratosphere… Fuck, wait!” He stiffened, alarmed. “Don’t tell me that’s exactly what he’s planning?!”

“You only just realized that?” Gustav glanced at him and waved a hand, calling up another projection. “It’s not just him. Andrei, the apprentice of that old dragon from the Clock Tower, has also started preparing to wreck the earth’s ley lines, trigger a volcanic eruption, and sink the whole of Leafway Island just to test his theory…”

Jiang Tongguang fell silent. After a long while, he let out a helpless sigh. “Kids these days are terrifying. Even back then, I never went this far off the rails.”

Gustav sneered. “You say that like you didn’t want to.”

Jiang Tongguang merely shrugged, almost regretfully.

And so, they watched in silence as dazzling light flared within the projection before them.

Between the storm-lashed sea and sky, amid the endless black rain, the enormous metallic creation spewed blazing light. Like a giant awakening from slumber, it reached a hand toward the heavens. Clouds of mercury vapor spread around it, dyeing the entire sky above Leafway Island silver-white.

After shedding most of its unnecessary structures, the workshop’s core, now transformed into a rocket, rose from the deep shaft. Fighting against the pull of the earth, it climbed toward the sky!

Compared with a genuine space rocket, Ji Jue’s creation looked crude and pitifully makeshift from the inside out. Even the relevant data and mechanical calculations had only been worked out in the roughest possible fashion.

It operated under extreme overload, almost to the point of self-destruction, with alchemy making up for countless gaps in its design and control systems. The heat-resistant tiles formed from liquid mercury evaporated or shattered.

The outer hull rapidly melted and broke apart. Like layers of scales peeling away, fragments fell toward the earth below.

Another burst of fire spewed in midair. After jettisoning its rear propulsion structure, vast quantities of combustible fuel were converted into energy. The rocket erupted with blazing light and accelerated once again through the crudest possible principle.

With enough power, you can even make a brick fly[1]!

1. The phrase 力大砖飞 "with enough power, you can even make a brick fly" means that raw thrust can overcome poor aerodynamic design.