“I’m miserable... This is miserable.” In the workshop, Ji Jue opened his eyes, his face smudged with soot. He dragged himself up from the floor mat, wailing, “I’m too miserable. I’ve got it way too hard.”
Honestly, he had already prepared himself for hardship, but he never imagined it would be this brutal. Just in a single week, he felt like he had descended into hell.
Professor Ye wasn’t actually running so rigid, all-consuming boot camp. On the contrary, she emphasized the importance of balance between work and rest. Aside from having Ji Jue continue his previous practice, steadily working through the pile of scrap and leftover materials in the warehouse, she only added two fixed classes each day.
One was a one-hour foundational lecture, covering the detailed classifications and branches of the Four Elents, as well as the various fields of alchemy, from the Supre Benevolences to blessings, and the application of different runes under varying conditions.
The classes were purely theoretical, but Ji Jue had absorbed the knowledge eagerly, like a starving man at a feast.
Then ca... the practical lessons, which were nothing short of a nightmare.
Under Professor Ye’s guidance, he analyzed and practiced with the warehouse scraps and junk. She ticulously explained the creation process of each piece, the problems encountered during its making, and then assessed Ji Jue’s ability. Finally, she would assign him a task that was either at the very limit of his skill level or just slightly beyond, forcing him to execute it himself.
The engraving of spiritual circuitry, the inscription of layered runes, the integration between auxiliary Supre Benevolence emblems all had issues never covered in textbooks, yet notoriously difficult in practice or prone to going disastrously wrong!
Before long, Ji Jue plunged into a vicious cycle of failure: try, fail, try again, fail again, repeat... and even when he finally succeeded once, a new task would imdiately restart the cycle.
Excessive consumption of spirit matter was the least of his concerns. The ntal toll was relentless, never stopping. It had gotten so bad that just approaching the furnace made him involuntarily clench his hands.47\
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He was terrified. Even having this cursed furnace co to life and fight him would have been easier than this! Granted, under such pressure, his skills improved rapidly, but the process itself was pure torture.
And just when Ji Jue had finally painstakingly powered through the junk to activate all the twelve Supre Benevolence emblems, a new lesson began.
“As a craftsman, you must understand the alchemical items you work with, especially the ones you use yourself,” Professor Ye said calmly. “Generally, a devoted craftsman will not use another’s creation, not only out of trust in their own skills, but also for practical reasons.”
For one, you understood your own work better than you knew anything made by others. You knew exactly how to use it, how to push it beyond limits, when it could be overclocked, and where those limits lay.
On the other hand, other people’s creations were packed with far too many hidden dangers.
Modern-era items were still manageable. At worst, soone could have slipped in surveillance or a backdoor. Your spiritual fluctuations, condition, physical state, and the exact effects of your abilities would all be recorded, leaving you completely exposed, but even that was considered acceptable. The real problem was if, one day in the middle of a fight, soone shut the item down remotely through that backdoor. At that point, you’d just be left waiting to die.
But if you went further back to the Cataclysm era, or even earlier, then it beca a full-on showcase of how utterly rotten craftsn could be!
Before the existence of the Taiyi Ring, when the industry was a complete ss and the people in it were even worse, craftsn pushed the limits of being unscrupulous in every possible way.
Just judging from the artifacts that had been unearthed today, there were ones that drained your lifespan the more you used them, ones that suddenly mutated into aberrations mid-use, ones that cursed all your friends and family to death, ones that secretly housed a thousand-year-old ghost that would crawl out at night to slaughter your entire household, and others where that sa kind of ancient spirit would slowly erode your soul over ti, waiting for the chance to possess your body and be reborn...
It completely blew Ji Jue’s mind.
And under Professor Ye’s firm guidance, that sense of caution was practically carved into his bones. In ancient tombs, fractured realms, or temporal ruins, if he ever ca across sothing unfamiliar that seed powerful but he couldn’t understand, then the correct response was to stay the hell away from it. He should detour around it and keep his distance. No matter how tempting it was, don’t touch it. So lucky bastard could get away with ssing with it a thousand tis, but the unlucky could die without even laying a finger on it.
So for now, his top priority was to thoroughly understand the principles, materials, and effects of any alchemical item he carried on him, like the fragnt of the Emperor figurine hanging around his neck—the Mouth of the Ancient Ones.
Of course, as a sculptured pendant of the Emperor and an officially sanctioned collectible of the Eternal Empire, no craftsman would dare tamper with it. At the sa ti, to embody the Empire’s authority and the Emperor’s majesty, it had to be crafted with absolute perfection, without the slightest flaw.
And that... was where hell began.
Within a fragnt no bigger than a thumb, there were actually thousands of spirit circuits, hundreds of miniature runes, and more than nine Supre Benevolence emblems. Most of them had already been destroyed, and the various blessings once contained within those runes and emblems had all dissipated, leaving behind a single remaining blessing.
By Ji Jue’s estimate, if it were intact, its complexity would be hundreds or even thousands of tis greater than this fragnt.
An entire workshop with possibly dozens of craftsn could spend decades exhausting every resource and sparing no cost just to create such a symbolic object. The sheer extravagance and madness of the Eternal Empire was evident from this alone.
At Ji Jue’s level, never mind attempting a replication, just analyzing and deciphering the structure alone was almost enough to drive him insane.
It was no different than asking a middle schooler, who had only attended a few math classes, to parse a paper on advanced calculus. And he wasn’t even given a full paper, but just two pages of a fragnt, with which he had to figure out exactly what was written, how the calculations worked, and why they worked that way.
Ji Jue flopped over the table, moaning in despair. “Just... let die already...”
Next to him, Ye Chun, who had gone through the sa thing, watched with a smirk. “And we’ve only just begun... Back when I was a kid, I had to live like this for over a year.”
In reality, by the end of the first week, Professor Ye had already realized her niece wasn’t cut out for this, but she didn’t stop. She completely ignored Ye Chun’s cries and little tantrums.
Over the course of that year, she cramd into Ye Chun’s head everything a Chosen One needed to know, learn, and understand, such as alchemy, appraisal, general knowledge, and even the equivalent of every course from middle school through university, until she was sure Ye Chun could survive independently.
Then, Ye Chun promptly degenerated into a professional loafer. She spent every day idling, as if the only reason to exist was to snack on overpriced crayfish-flavored chips, a sight that was both enviable and utterly shaful.
Ye Chun offered a bag of chips. “Here, want so?”
Ji Jue glared in annoyance. Do I look like soone who craves your chips?
Then, almost instinctively, he obediently opened his mouth. “Yes!”
“Alright, stop whining. Auntie’s heading out today, so consider yourself on holiday.”
Having fed him half the bag, Ye Chun flopped back onto the sofa, feeling that she’d done enough work for the day. She waved a hand. “You said you were going to the Security Bureau, right? Don’t cause trouble this ti.”
“What do you an, ‘cause trouble?’ I’m the most peaceful person ever. When I sweep the floor, I try my best not to harm a single ant, and I’m so careful, I wouldn’t even let a moth touch a lampshade... I hate trouble,” Ji Jue replied solemnly.
After a quick wash in the downstairs communal bathroom, he slung his bag over his shoulder and cheerfully headed out with Horsey in tow. The sunlight was bright, and the wind was crisp.
Finally, he had freedom! If tomorrow’s lessons could be just a little easier, life would be even better!
Whistling, he sent a ssage to Wen Wen, then followed the address given. He weaved through the busy comrcial North Mount District, repeatedly checking the address.
He looked up. Ahead was only a massive shopping mall, bustling with people.
“Whoa...” Ji Jue scratched his head. “The Security Bureau is this... down-to-earth?”
“Wen said it’s better if the place is lively. Helps lighten your mood,” a voice replied from behind.
Startled, Ji Jue turned and saw a child with a cane. They had short hair just above the ears and a youthful face, exuding a fresh, innocent aura. Judging from their youthful appearance, they looked around middle-school age.
“Hello, are you Ji Jue?” the child asked.
“Huh?” Ji Jue paused, then realized that this was the child he’d seen trailing behind Wen Wen at the scene a few days ago. His expression brightened and he extended a hand. “What’s your na?”
“An Ran. ‘An’ ans ‘safe,’ while ‘Ran’ ans ‘later’. You can call Lil’ An or Lil’ Ran,” the child smiled brightly. “I just arrived, too. I’ll take you up, let’s go.”
With that, he limped ahead.
Ji Jue obediently followed, but as he glanced at the figure, he couldn’t help but wonder, Is this child a boy or a girl?
“I’m a boy,” An Ran said without turning his head.
“Huh?” Ji Jue was flabbergasted. Could he be one of those legendary mind-reading types?
“I’m not a Heart Core Chosen One, my family has been on the White Deer Path for generations,” An Ran said, turning with a cheerful smile. “But usually, when people et for the first ti, they’re curious. Maybe it’s because I can’t exercise much, my skin and health aren’t great, so it’s easy to get confused.”
No, no, no, this has nothing to do with skin or health.
Ji Jue looked up, catching his reflection alongside An Ran’s in a storefront window. And just like that, his thoughts started spiralling down a very dangerous slope. Why was his heart pounding like crazy?!
Following An Ran, he finally got a sense of the Security Bureau’s scale. Even the North Mount branch had taken over an entire floor of the mall, complete with a private elevator. According to An Ran, this was actually considered quite modest, as other locations were even more extravagant.
The South Ridge branch had gone all out, constructing a forty-plus-story building from scratch. Then, their team leader, Lu Shenzhou, blatantly used it for his own gain, opening the city’s largest, most fully equipped, and most over-the-top twenty-four-hour gym. Just thinking about it was enough to deal a ntal blow to soone like Ji Jue, who was struggling through school on loans.
In the elevator, An Ran said, “We’re here.”
Ding.
The elevator doors slowly opened. And then, a shrill scream hit them like a nightmare.
***
In the lobby, half a minute earlier...
Well, calling it a “lobby” was a bit of a stretch. It was basically the North Mount branch Security Bureau’s lounge. There were sofas, TVs, unlimited free snacks, you na it. It was more than enough for soone like Tong Hua, a true master of goofing off, to spend twenty-four hours straight without ever getting bored.
“Wooohoo, here we go! The Quote Guy himself is here!” Tong Hua hugged her phone, pumping her fists with giddy excitent. “Yay! Today I’m going to perform, live on the spot, the famous quote from the Quote Guy! My performance will definitely not disappoint the Quote Guy!”
As she turned the caras on and started the recording, her eyes shone bright with anticipation.
I, Tong Hua, am going to personally capture the glorious monts of the Quote Guy today!
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