Chapter 294: The Lock

Imagine this.

One day, you suddenly gained access to Creative Mode. You could rewind or fast-forward time, and none of it cost you anything. All you had to do was tap the system panel, clap your hands, and whatever you wanted would appear!

So, what would you do?

A: Get straight to work saving the world.

B: Make every second count and get down to some honest hard work.

C: Screw all that, let’s get something awesome and have some damn fun first!

Ji Jue’s answer was C, C, C, C! He was going to mash C until the button broke!

Of course, as a craftsman of the Ember Path, Ji Jue had long since risen above such ordinary, lowbrow pleasures as top-of-the-line graphics cards, fishing rods, supercars, carbon-fiber bicycles, and the like.

He wanted to play with something more sophisticated.

For example, there was the colossal ley-line spirit matter transmission array, of which supposedly only eleven existed in the entire world. It could directly convert the earth’s ley lines into spirit pathways, allowing spirit matter to be transmitted across immense distances without any loss whatsoever. It could transmit spirit matter from the Federation to the Empire through the Central Lands in under half a second.

Then there was the Federation’s Sun-Chaser aerospace hub, a city said to fly above the stratosphere. It could carry more than a thousand fighter aircraft and dozens of colossal airships, along with over six rapid-response powered-armor legions. Within fifteen minutes, it could deploy an entire fully equipped heavy corps directly onto a battlefield.

Then there was the Empire’s Atlas, a colossal crawler fortress that advanced across the land like a moving mountain. It was a mechanical marvel in its own right.

And the list went on.

There were far too many things Ji Jue wanted to recreate, and far too many components he would have to build by hand. So rather than starting with those prohibitively expensive workshop installations, he decided to whet his appetite with something simple and modest, something like the strategic deterrent weapon unveiled by both the Empire and the Federation decades ago, the ultimate expression of Entropy’s raging destruction in the mortal world—a fusion bomb!

BOOM!!!!

An enormous mushroom cloud appeared in the distance, stretching from earth to sky, while a blinding wave of light swept outward. Ji Jue was so moved he almost cried. No, he actually did cry.

Then, before the blast could completely blind him, the shockwave and searing light burned him into scattered pieces of character shards.

Pop!

The destruction reversed, and time rewound. Ji Jue was left writhing and screaming on the ground, clawing frantically at himself, unable to shake the phantom agony of being burned alive.

The Examiner leisurely stated, “Ah, I forgot to mention something. Even though everything here is simulated and fictional, and you can rewind time whenever you want, Myriad Transformations builds its simulations on reality. They’re 99.99 percent accurate. So even if you won’t actually die, when something should hurt, it’ll still hurt.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me something this important earlier?!”

“I was going to,” the Examiner said with a helpless sigh. “But since you were so eager to start with nothing and figure out everything yourself, I figured you wouldn’t need such trivial little reminders.”

“No, no! Bro, I take that back!” Ji Jue raised both hands in surrender. “Is there anything else you forgot to mention? Could you please just tell me everything at once?”

“That should be everything... probably? I think.” The Examiner flashed an unconcerned smile. “Don’t worry. If I remember anything else, I’ll let you know right away.”

Ji Jue slowly raised a trembling hand. In the end, he clenched it into a fist and resisted making any particular gesture. Instead, he slammed it into the sand, leaving behind a small, utterly pointless dent.

***

After learning his lesson, Ji Jue was much more cautious, meaning that, out of sheer spite, he set off several more fusion bombs from a safe distance and treated them like fireworks!

Then, after pairing them with some long-range missiles he had built himself, he completely flattened what few islands remained scattered across the southern Endless Sea.

Once he’d had enough fun with that, he moved on to something else.

Along the way, he also got his hands on all sorts of materials and blessings he had never even heard of before, let alone seen. Only after spending several days thoroughly satisfying his curiosity did Ji Jue leisurely turn his attention to the main quest.

The Nethersea Worm? I’ve got fucking Creative Mode turned on. You think I can’t beat it? It’s just a beast of doom.

He would make damn sure it never came back!

Apparently, there was a popular kind of game where you built and managed entire production systems. Some were about magic, some about science fiction, some about running companies. Whatever the theme, they all basically started you off in a randomly generated sandbox world, then had you mine resources, build production lines, advance through a tech tree, and eventually link countless production chains into one vast, intricately interconnected system.

Games like that were fairly popular at Tianmen University. People talked about them all the time, and quite a few of Ji Jue’s classmates had played them.

Ji Jue, however, had never had the chance. For one thing, while his classmates were busy playing games, he had been secretly using that time to outstudy them. For another, that legendary Frankenputer at Mrs. Lu’s place had basically given up on gaming altogether. Getting the thing to turn on at all was already a miracle.

The only remotely entertainment-related thing it could do was serve as a disc player. They could hook it up to the television to watch all the horror movies Lu Feng loved, or connect it to a huge speaker and blast obnoxiously loud DJ tracks that had absolutely nothing to do with refined taste.

Never mind the horror movies. Whenever they were fixing cars with those pounding DJ beats blasting in the background, Ji Jue and Lu Feng would be lying under the chassis, bobbing their heads and wriggling their bodies so much they practically moved like snakes. At that point, it practically counted as a productivity buff.

Now that Ji Jue finally had the chance to experience a real-life version of that kind of simulation, there was no way he wasn’t going to make the most of it. Otherwise, he would probably regret it so badly after returning to reality that he would want to hang himself outside the workshop in apology.

So he decided to keep things practical. The flashy stuff was fun for a while, but that was all it was. What mattered was gaining experience he could actually use once he returned to reality.

He spent several months experimenting with different equipment and methods to build workshops from scratch. After successfully reproducing every structure he had encountered before, he moved on to experimenting with the various blessings and materials he could realistically get his hands on outside the simulation.

Then he threw himself into researching the Dissociation Technique. After he had practiced handling all the basic blessings and materials until the process became second nature, he finally, almost as an afterthought, turned his attention to the main quest.

First, he’d milk this opportunity for all it was worth. Everything else could wait. Besides, Ji Jue had never expected himself to be such a genius that he could take down the Nethersea Worm on his first attempt.

Beasts of doom were classified into five classes: Disaster-Class, Hazard-Class, Annihilation-Class, Extinction-Class, and End-Class. The Nethersea Worm was an End-Class beast of doom, and it was a genuine calamity upon the mortal world. Even with Creative Mode enabled, Ji Jue still lacked the theory he needed, and his abilities remained limited.

The only thing he could truly rely on was the Fluid Alchemy he already knew. And even then, he had only learned the fundamentals and advanced techniques. As for the final part, the Seer hadn’t even gotten the chance to teach him yet. So Ji Jue could only figure it out as he went, experimenting through trial and error.

Fortunately, the acceleration function of the Myriad Transformations Tower was ridiculously useful. It did more than simply accelerate time; it also had a replication function. Once Ji Jue assembled a production line and successfully ran it through a complete cycle, the system could take over from there, keeping it running smoothly and maintaining production automatically.

And as he continued experimenting, he discovered even more functions.

From Ji Jue’s perspective, less than a week had passed. In that time, he had already produced entire mountainsides covered in armored forces, countless artillery pieces and warships, and had even cobbled together a simplified version of the Sun-Chaser aerospace command hub.

Inside the simulation, however, more than thirty years had passed.

Sitting atop the aerospace command hub and looking down at the endless mechanical tide below, Ji Jue burst into wild laughter. “Ha! Behold the unmatched productivity of mechanical engineering! Come on, Worm! Show me what you’ve got!”

He pressed the button, causing sixteen fusion bombs to burst in pillars of fire.

The powerful blasts tore straight through the Nethersea Worm’s vast circulation network. Struck by pain unlike anything it had ever experienced before, the darkness blanketing the world churned and surged, converging toward a single point.

In the end, the darkness gathered between sea and sky, taking shape as a colossal creature that seemed to fill the entire world. It resembled the evil dragons of legend, but its enormous body was riddled with cracks and missing chunks, exposing masses of writhing flesh and horribly deformed organs beneath.

Under its scales, flesh grew at a terrifying rate, multiplying over and over again. Within mere seconds, it had spread across the entire world. It even broke through the atmosphere, its grotesque head extending all the way into outer space.

The creature convulsed before letting out a soundless scream that sent gray-black waves around, spreading like a tide of extinction. Everything in their path was reduced to dust under the relentless corrosion, the armored forces crumbling like sandcastles beneath the surf. Even the Devastator Variant of the Assault Horsey, which Ji Jue had placed so much hope in, could barely move under the overwhelming aberration contamination and corrosion.

High in the sky, inside the aerospace hub that was already on the verge of collapse, Ji Jue stared in stunned disbelief. The rest he could understand, but the Devastator Variant of the Assault Horsey had been built using Jian Yuan’s Aberrant Alchemy at considerable cost. And yet a single scream had nearly reduced it to scrap.

The colossal calamity of the mortal world slowly turned in place. One of its tendrils twitched, slowly rose into the air, and then slammed down. Just like that, the armored armies stretching in every direction were reduced to dust.

The Nethersea Worm did not seem to regard such insignificant opponents as worthy of its attention. Its many compound eyes turned toward the aerospace hub above, and all layers of blessings, protections, and defenses collapsed entirely. Across the sky, the many aircrafts and the aerospace command hub itself dissolved in an instant, raining molten metal from above.

Then tens of thousands of massive cannons built across the seabed opened fire. The tremendous barrage, powerful enough to erase any island with ease, fell upon its scales, but they slid right off the Worm like raindrops. Not even a mark or scratch was left behind. The Worm simply ignored it all.

Finally, thousands of annihilation bombs dropped from Ji Jue’s knockoff satellites. Yet amid the ensuing storm of fire, the Nethersea Worm actually seemed to be enjoying the shower. At most, a few scales fell away. It was nothing worth mentioning.

Its aberrant flesh rapidly regenerated as it continued forward without a care. With every cry it let out, all attacks and defenses simply fell apart before it, as if that were only natural.

At last, one of its countless eyes turned toward Ji Jue. At that, everything came to an abrupt end.

As time rewound, the Examiner spoke, making no attempt to hide his mockery. “You died. I’m pretty sure I already told you. Its ‘quality’ may be lacking, but in terms of sheer ‘quantity,’ it operates on a scale far beyond anything ordinary. If you want to overwhelm it with sheer firepower, you’d need the combined firepower of an entire realm hitting it all at once. You’ve still got a long way to go.”

“Something’s wrong.” It took Ji Jue a long while to recover from the excruciating pain of his soul splitting and undergoing aberration. He carefully replayed every detail of what had just happened in his mind, then widened his eyes. “You bastard! You definitely messed with the stats!”

The Examiner remained indifferent, completely unfazed by the personal attack. “I didn’t.”

“Impossible!” Ji Jue shot back, outraged. “I did the math! Fusion bombs with that kind of yield should be enough to blow this entire Nethersea right out of the mortal world, never mind the Worm! How could they have done nothing?!”

The Examiner smiled, clearly enjoying Ji Jue’s frustration. “Remember what I told you? Myriad Transformations bases its simulations on reality, with 99.99 percent accuracy. In other words, if something exists in the mortal world, the same rules apply here.

“The mortal world has limits to what it can withstand. Think of it like a ship: it can only carry so much weight. Go past that limit, and either the excess falls overboard or the entire ship capsizes. The destructive power of fusion bombs has a limit as well. Not a theoretical limit, but a limit on how much of that power can actually be brought to bear. Otherwise, why aren’t the Federation and Empire stockpiling fusion bombs by the thousands and using them to threaten each other?

“One or two is fine. But once more than twenty are detonated at the same time, the ‘lock’ kicks in and suppresses them. At that point, they simply can’t release their full power.”

Ji Jue stared at him blankly. He had never heard of anything like this before. It was almost impossible to believe.

“Wait. This ‘lock’ you’re talking about, what is it?”

The Examiner merely chuckled. “You should keep going, Ji Jue. Try another way.”