Chapter 278: Rivers of Blood

A single number appeared in glaringly bright digits before every participant.

32.

Not only the examinees inside the time-accelerated simulated universe, but even those who had already been eliminated on the outside could not help but gasp in shock.

There had been more than eighty people left after the first elimination round, yet after the second round, the number had not merely been cut in half. Only thirty-two remained. The sheer brutality of the competition had exceeded everyone’s expectations.

In truth, there were still some examinees who, whether because of poor performance or various other factors, had failed to eliminate their opponents. Some had ended with one win and one loss, while others had simply been unable to do anything to each other.

Unfortunately, everyone had far too many vicious tricks up their sleeves. In their determination to eliminate their opponents, too many people had poured everything into offense and destruction without making any qualitative improvements to their workshops’ defenses.

The result was that once both sides unleashed everything they had, they simply blasted each other into oblivion. Some knew they probably would not last much longer and opened the match by going straight for mutual destruction, determined to drag someone down with them.

The rankings were slashed in half almost overnight, while the surviving examinees saw their points skyrocket. And as though afraid the competition was still not vicious enough, that the examinees might somehow dance around each other without anyone dying, the organizer, clearly hoping to see rivers of blood, went ahead and awarded everyone additional points based on the combined total they had accumulated over the first two rounds.

It was actually a snowball system. After defeating his opponent this round, Ji Jue’s original 362 points were combined with his opponent’s 272, bringing his total earned points to 634. And he still had more than a hundred points left unused from the previous round. That meant he had a staggering seven hundred points available to spend, more than enough to put together several truly vicious tricks!

With the way points were being awarded now, hoarding them for high-level blessings and materials later was no longer the smart choice. The organizer might as well have been screaming directly into every contestant’s ear, “If you’ve got points, spend them now! You’ll earn even more next round!”

Ji Jue still held first place on the rankings. However, the gap between him and second-place Andrei had narrowed to less than ten points. It looked like his rival had gone all out this round, too.

The top three remained unchanged. First place was Ji Jue of Tidesound Workshop, second place was Andrei of the Clock Tower, while third place was Lin Ke of Dragonheart.

What came as more of a surprise was that Young Master Lou had somehow climbed all the way to eleventh place. He looked nothing like the poor bastard Ji Jue used to beat around so easily.

Apparently, after enough encounters with a bastard like Ji Jue, Lou Feng had most likely suffered psychological trauma, but his ability to guard against underhanded tricks had also improved by leaps and bounds. He could no longer be underestimated.

The organizer’s intention to fan the flames had become even more blatant. During the post-match phenomenon review, all surviving examinees were directly given access to the complete records of everyone else’s duels. Naturally, this was so everyone could get to know one another better, join hands, move forward together, and build a brighter tomorrow.

Yeah, right. The more craftsmen understood one another, the easier and more enjoyable it became to devise counters against each other.

At this point, everyone was probably thinking about one thing and one thing only: how to drive a dump truck straight into the other guy, flatten him, then take those points and walk toward a beautiful tomorrow that belonged to themselves alone.

As the replay-review session went on, another round of collective gasping followed. As expected, you could never eliminate all the insane tricks in the world, because someone would always come up with an even more insane one.

After watching their own match replays, everyone promptly clicked on the recording of the number-one-ranked contestant, eager to see what kind of lunacy the top dog had pulled off.

What they saw left them utterly speechless. His offense had been shameless. His defense had been vicious. The sheer depths of his treachery, depravity, cunning, and lack of scruples were breathtaking in all the worst possible ways.

Why the fuck was someone doing manned spaceflight in a craftsman examination?! And how the fuck did he actually succeed?!

Bro, this stupid craftsman exam really isn’t worth all this effort. Maybe you should stop competing and just send your résumé to the Federation Space Agency instead. I know a guy who can put in a word for you.

Then they opened Andrei’s recording. By that point, everyone had gone completely numb.

Here was another guy packed from head to toe with deranged tricks. The young man looked like a taciturn old farmer, his hands covered in thick calluses and his attitude flat and quiet.

Without saying a word, he had driven his furnace and workshop straight into the earth’s ley lines. Then, just to verify the direction of the ley-line flow and the movement of aberration contamination, he blasted his way tens of thousands of meters underground and nearly blew half of Leafway Island into the sky.

Only when they got to the third-place contestant did they finally encounter someone a little more normal. All he had done was capture a bunch of evil creatures, skin them, pull out their tendons, and refine them into materials.

For a moment, everyone almost didn’t know how to react. Was this normal? Yes, this was normal. No, wait, this was what normal was supposed to look like!

As for everything that came afterward—Corpse Alchemy, spirit inscription and phase conversion, soul-smelting Slaughterblood techniques, and all sorts of other vicious tricks—well, they were a little sinister, sure, but that was just how things were on the Ember Path. Even Ji Jue felt his scalp tingle as he watched.

Young Master Lou had already rolled up his sleeves and brought out an Entropy spirit transmutation technique that combined the Lou family legacy with alchemy. Using spirit matter as a bridge, he could freely convert blessings between the Ruins and Entropy Paths, allowing matter and energy to flow back and forth without being bound to any fixed form.

Then there was the Valhalla of Northwind Workshop. It progressed from Soul-Hunting Knight to Berserker, and finally to Surtr, forged through the torment of forging countless souls into Slaughterblood. The Imperial trueblood who had yet to show her face even once had also unveiled an advanced form of Throne’s Shadow, along with an undying army that served beneath the throne.

Aside from Corpse Alchemy, an ancient alchemical tradition belonging to the same era as Fluid Alchemy, Lin Ke of Dragonheart Workshop, which ranked third, had finally revealed a signature technique of his own beyond Modern Alchemy—the Lin family’s inherited Knotbinding Hexcraft, which fused the true essence of Ember, Ascension, and Aether.

Simply put, it involved tying knots. This was one of humanity’s oldest methods of recording information, and it had been elevated to an almost unimaginable level after thousands of years of development and inheritance.

With this technique, knots became locks, and ropes became cages. Cords fashioned from the tanned hides of evil creatures could not only imprison and seal their souls, but even serve as nourishment for incubating and cultivating curses.

The sheer variety of applications left even Ji Jue staring in amazement. For the first time since the exam started, he felt as though he had met a genuine rival on the path of sinister techniques. Just looking at the knots hanging throughout the entire workshop and imagining how many curses and evil creature souls were sealed inside them was enough to make his scalp crawl.

And when Ji Jue looked at the second-place contestant close on his heels, he immediately felt a chill crawl up his back as cold sweat formed there.

Andrei ángel Gonzalo was nineteen years old, one year younger than Ji Jue. He was a member of the Empire’s legendary workshop, the Clock Tower. Rumor had it that the master of the Clock Tower had passed over his own students and personally taken Andrei, his disciple’s disciple, under his wing to train him. Trace the lineage farther back, and Andrei could even be counted among the later-generation successors of the Scavenger, one of the Three Grandmasters of the modern age.

With a pedigree like that, calling him alchemical aristocracy would hardly have been an exaggeration. But compared with a genuine scion of a great family like Young Master Lou, the two could hardly have looked more different. At best, Andrei could only be described as clean rather than scruffy. His fingers were rough, and his clothes were constantly covered in stone chips and dust. He looked exactly like a stonemason who had spent years working under the sun and wind.

From beginning to end, he showed no reaction whatsoever to the intruder’s relentless bombardment. He did not even spare it a glance.

This was no arrogance. He simply had a certain… dullness about him that was obvious at a glance. Quiet and inarticulate, he focused entirely on the work before him, as though he were permanently shut away inside his own world, indifferent to every change taking place around him.

His workshop was much the same. Built entirely from carved and stacked stone, it formed an enormous hall. Just like Andrei himself, it was plain and straightforward, without the slightest hint of sharpness or ostentation.

Only when the workshop activated and divine essence began flowing through one stone statue after another could one sense the aura within. It was an aura -astonishingly close to the very essence of the Supreme Benevolences.

In an instant, lifeless stone sculptures were endowed with almost godlike spirit consciousness. It was as though an ancient pantheon had returned to the world, transforming the workshop into a sacred temple.

If that had been all, Andrei would merely have counted as an unusually formidable opponent. What truly shocked Ji Jue was the domain formed when those sacred statues began to operate. Flowing water became still, flames froze in place, and raging winds halted.

Under the workshop’s suppression, every movement and transformation process slowed and dulled. Some could barely function at all, as though they had lost all responsiveness and spirit intelligence and fallen back into the state of lifeless objects. The suppression effect severed all intricate transformations, countering endless change with absolute constancy. It was practically Ji Jue’s natural nemesis!

Fluid Alchemy and Solid Alchemy had, in truth, originated from the same source. They had simply developed in different directions. At their core, both revolved around the interaction between spirit matter and physical matter. Fluid Alchemy used spirit matter to elevate physical matter into a more mutable state, while Solid Alchemy used physical matter to bind and contain spirit matter.

But before Andrei, that interaction between spirit matter and physical matter was severed altogether. If the two had never been joined as one in the first place, then within his sanctuary, there would be no opportunity for change to occur at all.

Fluid Alchemy would be unable to elevate physical matter and bring about transformation, while Solid Alchemy would be unable to bind what lay within and lock down spirit matter. Without any way for the two to combine and circulate, the connection between them would be completely cut off, leaving everything scattered and disjointed.

Ji Jue had a habit of changing his strategy to suit the situation. Once transformation itself was locked down, more than half of his options would disappear.

Outside the projection, Jiang Tongguang glanced at Ji Jue’s grave expression and gloated. “Starting to sweat now, buddy?”

Even he, one of the examiners, could hardly have imagined that a single examination would produce two freaks so utterly different from each other, each the kind that could appear only once in ten thousand years. One was endlessly mutable, never fixed in any form. The other remained utterly constant, unmoved by anything external.

“Hey, Gus. Who do you think would win if those two fought?” Jiang Tongguang was clearly enjoying the spectacle far too much. “How about we stoke the fire a little more… Oh! I’ve got an idea!”

His eyes lit up, and he raised a finger. “Why don’t we make the blessings in the exchange list limited in quantity? The rarer they are, the fewer there should be. Some could even have only one available. And then we could add an auction system…”

Gustav glanced at his colleague as though he wanted to say something. It was hard to tell whether he wanted to remind Jiang Tongguang to behave like a decent human being, or merely point out that an examiner was supposed to remain neutral.

Apparently, there was no need for either of them to fan the flames any further. After watching the replay of Ji Jue’s match, Andrei remained as silent and expressionless as ever. Even so, he stood there blankly for quite some time. The moment he finally came back to himself, he spent more than half of his points without hesitation and exchanged them for one of the heavyweight blessings of the Origin series—Sacred Investiture!

To receive the sacred register and bear the mandate was to act in accordance with destiny. It represented the authority bestowed by heaven itself. In other words, all others were traitors!

Sacred Investiture was undeniably powerful. It was practically the unattainable dream of every Chosen One of the Origin series, and it was also incredibly rare. Unless someone truly ruled over an established order and imposed laws of their own that others were compelled to follow, they would have little chance of obtaining it. Outside of that, it could occasionally emerge from ceremonial artifacts of authority that had been venerated by a legitimate regime for more than a century.

Its effect was to drastically strengthen the user’s suppressive authority within their domain, to the point of shutting out virtually all interference from outsiders. In Andrei’s case, it would push the already absurd suppressive power of his sanctuary all the way to its limit.

At almost the exact same time, Ji Jue emptied nearly his entire stockpile of points. All of it went into blessings.

“Oh? Finally done messing around and getting serious?” Jiang Tongguang’s eyes gleamed as he leaned closer. “Let me see… the Swarm’s Warforged Edge, Ascension’s Spirit-Source Circulation… Hmm? Ember’s Matter-Spirit Catalysis, and White Deer’s Daylight Plunder? Heh. These brats, every last one of them are Ember-types at heart.”

There was little need to explain Warforged Edge. It was a blessing specifically designed to empower weapons and increase their destructive potential. Chosen Ones of the Swarm loved it, and so did those of the Ember Path. They absolutely adored it. It was simply far too convenient for making weapons.

Granted, weapons created through it needed to be nourished by bloodshed and death in order to grow. But Leafway Island had no shortage of evil creatures, and given Ji Jue’s vicious streak, if he used an ordinary creation as a dissection knife for a couple of days, its resentment, lingering hatred, and blood curses would probably be maxed out before long.

Spirit-Source Circulation improved the quality of spirit matter, pushing it through a qualitative transformation while strengthening its spirit intelligence and capacity for circulation and change. It was practically tailor-made for resisting the suppression of Origin.

Matter-Spirit Catalysis went one step further. It intensified the conflict between physical and spirit matter, causing the two to stimulate one another and amplifying both transformation and explosive output.

As for White Deer’s Daylight Plunder, that one was plainly designed for robbing the enemy and using each battle to fuel the next.

There was no need for the judges or organizers to waste their breath saying anything. The moment a true Ember practitioner spotted another craftsman, the whetstone was already out, and the blade was being sharpened.

“Fight! Fight! Fight!”

Watching them gear up for battle, Jiang Tongguang was grinning so hard he could barely contain himself.

It was not just Ji Jue and Andrei. Under the pressure exerted by these two monster-class catfish, the entire pond had started churning. With a storm brewing, everyone gritted their teeth and started climbing again.

Jiang Tongguang’s eyes practically glowed red with excitement. Come on! Hurry it up! I want to see rivers of blood!