Chapter 285: Even Pushovers Can Snap

Gustav, who was watching the shimmering projection, let out a soft sigh. “As expected of Divine Furnace.”

As a council member of the Association, no matter how determined Gustav was to have things his own way, he still had to provide a justification that would satisfy every contestant. Why had they been eliminated? What had they lacked? Where had they fallen short? At what point had they made a fatal mistake?

More importantly, because of the position he held, everything Gustav did had to be explainable. Ideally, his intentions and arrangements needed to be clear at a glance, leaving no room for anyone to misunderstand his judgment. Every measure he took had to stem from a standard of fairness that everyone could accept, no matter how harsh that standard was.

Round after round of eliminations and head-to-head matches had been perfect for that purpose. So long as the winner was strong enough, the loser had nothing to complain about. An absolutely fair contest would naturally produce an equally definitive result. Even though everyone knew that no matter how brutal those eliminations were, they still could not compare to reality. Reality did not have to be reasonable, and neither did Divine Furnace.

There was no longer any need for long, cumbersome procedures, nor any reason to let the contestants take their time fighting one measured match after another. The heat was just right, and the materials were ready. In that case, it was time to fan the flames and let them burn, to force a true Transformation through convergence!

If the way to select geniuses was to make them compete in an environment that was fair to everyone, then the way to forge the strong was to cast them into a desperate situation that was absolutely unfair to everyone!

What need was there for fairness or reason? Was that not precisely where Ember’s cruelty lay?!

A sudden peal of lightning crossed the simulated world within the shimmering projection. And in that fleeting moment, everyone instinctively turned toward the same place, the mountain that had been completely hollowed out through its center. There stood a workshop gleaming with cold metal beneath the shattered rock walls.

More precisely, they were looking at the figure standing at the very top of that workshop, surveying his surroundings—Ji Jue!

“Fuck me!”

The corner of Ji Jue’s eye twitched again and again. He didn’t even need to think to know what kind of deadly situation he was about to find himself in.

There was an old saying that if you put a bunch of crabs in a basket, you didn’t even need a lid. Whenever a crab tried to climb to the top, the others below would naturally drag it back down.

The saying itself was nonsense, but in certain situations, it did make a certain amount of sense, like right now. When the sky fell, the tallest person had to bear the brunt of it first.

Since the exam started, Ji Jue had remained firmly at the very top, the strongest contestant in this chaotic competition, with no one able to pose any real threat to him. Naturally, that made him everyone’s first target. If they didn’t prioritize taking him out, were they supposed to fight one another until they were all half-dead, then sit around and wait for him to come clean up the survivors one by one?!

And so, in a split second, every remaining contestant reached the exact same unspoken agreement. Weapons out! Kill that bastard!

The instant Ji Jue realized what was happening, he threw himself forward and vanished from the top of the workshop, narrowly avoiding a blazing beam of light that tore past where he had just been standing. The beam punched straight through the mountain, tearing through it as easily as thin paper before bursting through the other side.

Dazzling scarlet lights flared across the sky. Beyond the heavy clouds, searing points of fire grew larger and larger. Dozens of meteors tore through the cloud cover and came crashing down straight toward Ji Jue’s workshop.

The entire mountain shook and rumbled under the bombardment. Vast sections of rock cracked away, exposing the steel structures beneath, some intact and others already broken.

He had absolutely no chance to fight back!

“Lou, stick to the plan and cover me!” Ji Jue shouted frantically from beneath the mountain. Amplified through dozens of loudspeakers, his voice echoed across the entirety of Leafway Island. “Remember, you have to buy me time!”

Inside the crystalline tower, Lou Feng had been grinning from ear to ear as he watched Ji Jue suffer. Now, however, his grin froze on his face.

What plan? Since when did we have a plan? Why the hell should I help? You motherfucker!!! Ji Jue, you son of a bitch!!!

As soon as he realized what Ji Jue was doing, Lou Feng went cold all over, especially when gazes coming from every direction turned hostile. He didn’t even have time to explain.

Not that there was any point. No one would believe him anyway.

Everyone had just seen them chatting away like old friends, even if no one knew what they had been saying! Besides, when they had stood shoulder to shoulder taking pictures in front of the Starpivot Gate, they had not exactly tried to hide it!

And now Lou Feng wanted to claim they barely knew each other and weren’t working together? Who would believe that? Who was he trying to fool?! Even if they really were not allies, so what? Lou Feng was right there. Might as well attack him while they were at it!

With the thirteen workshops arranged in a ring, some contestants were simply too far away to immediately take a swing at Ji Jue, but Lou Feng was nearby! Might as well fire at him first. The sooner he went down, the sooner it would be over!

Ji Jue had never expected anyone to actually believe his words. At most, all he had done was shatter the illusion that everyone was united against a common enemy, and that was enough. No amount of sweet talk or promises could change reality. Every contestant knew perfectly well that they had never been friends to begin with.

Before the crystalline tower housing Lou Feng could even react, a gale erupted around it, stark and ghostly white as it gathered an enormous mass of air into its vortex and created an absolute vacuum at its core. Within that vacuum, frost spread across the crystalline tower, creeping upward and seeping into every opening as it froze everything from the outside in. Even the flames of spirit matter burning in the furnace at its core seemed to slow.

Shivering fiercely from the cold, Lou Feng finally snapped. “Fuck you, Nine Seals! You’re still this pissed off just because I didn’t let you score off me last round?!”

Nine Seals Workshop was a colossal power entrenched in the northern Federation. Its core legacy was the very Nine Seals from which the workshop took its name, the nine unique configurations and blessing sequences said to encompass every possible transformation of Entropy, with mysteries beyond measure. When it came to the study and application of Entropy, few dared claim they could rival Nine Seals Workshop.

Unfortunately, people capable of mastering all Nine Seals were exceedingly rare. Even the contestant here had only scratched the surface. In terms of creations alone, he would have had difficulty posing much of a threat to Lou Feng.

But if they could move their entire workshop right up to someone’s doorstep… Well, then their opponents were in for a very bad time.

The Nine Seals’ ferocious assault was only the beginning. Before the cold could fully spread, a heaven-splitting roar occurred.

A grotesque maw of flesh stretched out from thin air. Strands of writhing flesh intertwined into a twisted face, and from the pulsing crimson, teeth as massive as boulders emerged.

Flesh Engineering: Hundred-Eyed Giant!

The enormous mouth opened wide and bit straight into the middle of the tower as though chomping into a popsicle with a deafening crack. Lou Feng’s face darkened as he felt fractures spreading rapidly across the tower.

That was not all. The gravity was skyrocketing as well. Under the imperious gaze of the Throne’s Shadow in the distance, raging gravitational forces churned the earth and raised a fierce deluge that was sweeping toward the crystalline tower.

Once everyone saw that Lou Feng was in serious trouble, the workshops that hadn’t managed to take a shot at Ji Jue started eyeing him instead. Anyone knew how to kick someone when they were down, especially when there was nothing to lose. Whatever happened next, they might as well take one competitor out while they had the chance!

At that point, Lou Feng started laughing, but not because he found it funny. He was laughing from sheer fury. His face had darkened with rage as his hoarse laughter echoed across heaven and earth. “Fine, fine! You bastards really don’t know when to quit, do you?! Then screw all of you!”

It was bad enough that Ji Jue, that bastard, had rammed him with a Manure Truck Attack outside the exam. Now he had come here to take a craftsman exam, only to get dogpiled by this bunch of assholes too? Did they really think he had learned alchemy for nothing?!

Crack!

A deep fissure appeared across the crystalline tower that stretched toward the heavens. Then came a second, and a third, and a fourth…

From the web of cracks, dazzling light burst forth. Refracted through the crystal, dreamlike radiance scattered. Red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, violet—every color of the spectrum shifted and flowed within the light as it flowed like a tide, indiscriminately engulfing everything. More than half the workshops were caught within it!

Then a sharp, crystalline chime rang out in everyone’s ears. The storm dispersed, and the mass of flesh withered. As gravity went haywire, shadows churned.

For a moment, an endless series of loud cracks filled the air, overlapping until they merged into a deafening cacophony that seemed to shake heaven and earth. It sounded like the crashing of an ocean tide.

But those were not the sounds of things breaking. They were the countless faint echoes of crystals multiplying and growing!

Throughout every area touched by the prismatic light, innumerable tiny crystals appeared in the air, in the water, across the ground, even within spirit circuits and the sequences and modules inside the workshops, as well as the ones from within blessings!

It made no distinction between the corruption of a Great Abomination and the aura of a Supreme Benevolence. Anything that was considered spirit matter rapidly crystallized beneath that strange light, becoming unusable before their very eyes!

Any spirit matter drawn from the surroundings, or any spirit matter that had left a workshop and was operating outside it, underwent a qualitative transformation under the eerie radiance and crystallized into a solid form that could no longer be readily used.

In an instant, spirit matter use across the entire area was shut down. And that was only the beginning. If countless dust-like crystals, finer than specks of dust, suddenly appeared inside the vital equipment and cores of a workshop, the consequences would be disastrous.

Every workshop caught in the attack immediately erupted in furious curses. Lou, you fucking bastard!!!

This was the ultimate technique Master Kong had personally tailored for her final disciple[1] after combining alchemy, her own specialty in the Origin, and the Lou family legacy, Spiritbane Domain! By forcing the workshop into overload, Lou Feng had turned it into an amplifier, applying the Lou family’s Spirit Morph indiscriminately throughout the entire area.

The technique did more than immediately disrupt every transformation and circulation of spirit matter and halt the operation of blessings. It also penetrated external defenses and spread inward, causing any insufficiently protected alchemical creations to shut down completely.

Lou Feng had trained this technique day and night with only one thing on his mind: countering Ji Jue’s Fluid Alchemy and getting even with that bastard. But after finally completing his workshop, before he had even gotten the chance to do anything, Ji Jue had kicked him straight into a pit. Everyone had taken him for an easy target. He was one step away from being surrounded and beaten down by the entire group!

“Die, die, die, die! Just fucking die already!!!” Lou Feng screamed.

A myriad of streams of light converged, then shot in a straight line toward the nearest workshop—Nine Seals.

Screw it. I’ll kill one of them first and worry about the rest later!

Everyone knew that Entropy-type blessings burned through enormous amounts of spirit matter. Nine Seals Workshop, which specialized in Entropy-type blessings, naturally kept enormous reserves of spirit matter on hand, which made what happened next all the more tragic.

A thunderous roar followed as the entire enormous workshop lurched upward. Numerous crystals sprouted from every crack like weeds, spreading with constant, sharp cracks. A gigantic tree of spirit matter took root within the sequences and core of Nine Seals Workshop, then rapidly grew from the ground.

Lou Feng grinned viciously and clenched his fist. Die!

A bloodcurdling scream pierced through the deafening noise. One of the contestants had been eliminated.

Unfortunately, the scream had not come from the opponent in front of Lou Feng. It had come from far away, on the other side of the island!

Less than half a minute had passed since the round started. Under the combined assault of nearly everyone present, the mountain housing Ji Jue’s workshop had been reduced to scorched earth within mere seconds, shattered beyond recognition. Floodwater flowed out as rocks collapsed and scattered everywhere.

There had been no resistance whatsoever because Ji Jue had never intended to resist in the first place. Instead, he had almost eagerly let the others strip away all the cumbersome restraints surrounding his workshop, as though shedding an old layer of scales or discarding a disguise that had never mattered in the first place.

Then, from the darkness beneath the Ninefold Earth, silver light surged into the sky. The real monster opened its eyes and roared.

1. 关门弟子 is a Chinese term meaning the master’s last/finally accepted disciple, usually implying the disciple was taken on as the master’s last student or last apprentice.