If You Suck, Practice More

Accompanied by an impassioned shout, Ji Jue brought his raised hands down solemnly. A muffled sound echoed in the air. Like a suppressed fart. Yet the twisted longsword remained completely motionless, offering only a polite tremor and a tiny, odd squeak. *You used Dissociation Art.* *Dissociation Art failed.* *The target took your Dissociation Art head-on and sneered at you.* After brewing power for so long, not only did the strike achieve nothing, but a familiar stinging and numbness surfaced in his fingers from the clash of spiritus. Even so, Ji Jue was not discouraged by a momentary failure, because… he had long grown accustomed to failing! For three whole days, he had cast Dissociation Art at this thing, barely succeeding at all. That didn't stop him from being bullheaded and pressing on. It was just repetitive practice, far less tedious than tightening screws on an assembly line. Taking a deep breath, Ji Jue held his focus, readjusted his state, and thrust his hands toward the twisted longsword again, bellowing to psych himself up: "If you suck, practice more!" *Hum!* The longsword shuddered faintly, emitting a dim gleam. It was a glimmer triggered by the Dissociation Art finally acting upon the internal spiritus circuits, but regrettably, the sword remained intact, showing no other reaction. The faint light illuminated Ji Jue's eyes, raising his spirits slightly. In the course of endless, repetitive practice, there were always a few occasions—as if by sheer fluke or dumb luck—where the Dissociation Art manifested from his hands. An effect was there, merely too faint to observe with the naked eye. Yet even the clumsiest manifestation was still a manifestation, like the accumulation of experience points. Under the blessing of Masterwork Nature, every effect achieved through coincidence or deliberate focus stacked up as stepping stones on the path toward mastering the skill. With his proficiency rising, the success rate of Dissociation Art gradually climbed from the initial clueless one-in-ten-thousand to one or two percent. Occasionally, when inspiration flashed and his touch was just right, it would work. In fact, an instant before his hands even pressed down, he could already sense success or failure in his heart. "If you suck, practice more!" Ji Jue roared, rallying his spiritus and slamming his hands down. Seizing the lingering feel from before, he launched into a frantic loop: "I'll fucking drill! Drill! Drill! Drill! Drill!" Dull thuds and fragmented screeches of steel rang out in staggered succession. As Ji Jue waved his hands furiously in a high-frequency spiritus barrage, the longsword began to vibrate violently, unable to withstand the straws piling onto its back. Right until Ji Jue's shout reached a crescendo, a faint glow surfaced between his ten fingers, and a sudden wind swept through the quiet workshop. As both hands pressed down, a shrill friction tore through the air, and faint sparks of electricity arced from his fingertips. That was the ionization of air under massive spiritus agitation; as the balance shattered, an immense surge of static electricity discharged from his hands. In that split second, the vibration and wail of the longsword finally crested. The instant his hands made contact, an intricate spiritus matrix flared across the blade. Then, amid violent tremors, cracks emerged! Glaring and unmistakable! *Crack!* A second fissure split across the spine of the sword! In the dead silence that followed, only Ji Jue's ragged gasps remained. Thick blood dripped from his nose, spattering across the workbench in scattered dots. He staggered back a step and collapsed into a chair, staring down at his hands, which were crisscrossed with lacerations. A grin broke out on his face, impossible to suppress. A second time! Through countless futile drills and relentless loops over these past days, his Dissociation Art had worked for the second time! Even if it was just a low-tier, nerfed, cut-down monkey version that couldn't hold a candle to Professor Ye's effortless, flowing mastery, success was still success. Now, he was finally one step closer to the threshold! After panting for a long time, Ji Jue quietly waited for his spiritus to recover. Rather than casting at the longsword again, he spread his hands, reviewing the fundamental drills for beginners of the Dissociation Art. A trace of spiritus slowly welled up over his separated hands, coiling between his fingers and pooling in his palms, yet the properties between the two were completely different. In his left hand, it was as if he held a smooth crystal. With the subtle movement of his palm, it refracted faint light, reflecting the surrounding colors—serene and distant. When the fluctuation and activity of spiritus drew infinitely close to stagnation and absolute stillness, what formed was this mirror-like, colorless, phantom sheen. Yet in his right hand, what manifested was an ethereal mist. Through the haze, one could see only a blur; diverse colors flickered, appearing and vanishing in rapid shifts, until in the end, only a gray gloom remained that drained all color from existence. When the state and fluctuation of spiritus were pushed into unbridled agitation, operating at their absolute maximum, the disturbance wrought upon the air and vision blurred everything into a haze. Now, with a shift in Ji Jue's thoughts, the extreme dynamic and extreme static states in his hands instantly swapped, crisscrossing. His fingers twitched uncontrollably for a second as if cramping, unable to maintain such delicate control amid the complex operation of spiritus. Right after, another swap, and yet another transition… As the transitions accelerated, the twitching of his ten fingers grew increasingly pronounced, until finally, amid cramp-like agony, another muffled pop burst forth. The spiritus slipped out of control, scattering beyond Ji Jue's grasp. Drenched in sweat, Ji Jue collapsed limply against the chair, gasping for breath. Vibration and stillness, repulsion and fusion, fission and cohesion. Professor Ye had derived the theoretical foundation from the unique traits of Matrix Ganjiang and Moxie, allowing her own spiritus states to alternate in cycles within an unimaginably brief window. Through that unfathomably high-frequency transformation, beams of drastically shifting spiritus transformed into invisible scalpels, interfering with the target's internal structure. That was the essence of the Dissociation Art's principle. Summarizing it was so neat and simple, yet the practical application was complex beyond Ji Jue's imagination. Making spiritus alternate effortlessly between vibration and stillness was merely the most basic of basics. After crossing the threshold, there were specialized application techniques constructed for different types of targets, different Sovereign Virtue blessings, and different types of opponents. The frequency, intensity, and strength of the spiritus's operation, its diverse qualitative shifts, the bonuses granted by one's unique spiritus affinity and matrix traits… a slight variation in any single factor would produce entirely different outcomes. Adjust one's spiritus frequency, shatter the critical nodes, induce resonance within the spiritus circuits, and ramp up the intensity without ceiling until reaching the upper tolerance limit, bringing about utter collapse. The entire process took only the instant of contact, resulting in the total disintegration of the target. That was the Dissociation Art that had struck dread into countless craftsmen in years past! A skill that appeared so casual hid behind it a sea of theory, precise and swift analysis, countless drills and studies, hair-raisingly meticulous control, exquisite timing, and flashes of inspiration that only prodigies could grasp in the blink of an eye! One could only say that back when Professor Ye devised the Dissociation Art, she had never considered its universal applicability, nor its future inheritance. She had certainly never imagined that one day she would go through the trouble, as if out of her mind, to personally mentor a student. At most, she had only intended to guide Ji Jue, who barely met her standards at the time, in hopes that he might possess the competence of a workshop assistant in the future. As a result, the Dissociation Art itself had turned into a unique skill that was virtually impossible to replicate or reproduce. The prerequisite for learning it was possessing either the Moxie or Ganjiang matrix, but the only surviving examples of these two matrices—and the blueprints to craft them—were entirely in Professor Ye's possession. Without their unique effects, anyone else couldn't even scratch the surface of the Dissociation Art. The sole exception was a matrix equally adept at spiritus manipulation, surpassing both in scope and potency—Non-Offensive! It was precisely its singular nature, granting near-absolute, precise mastery over one's own spiritus, that made replicating the Dissociation Art possible. In fact, the very inspiration for the Dissociation Art traced back to the Fourth Juzi, hailed in historical fragments as the one whose 'hands and ten fingers regenerate the myriad forms'! Through years of ongoing study and refinement, purely in terms of destructive efficacy, the Dissociation Art had long surpassed historical records, becoming Professor Ye's signature art. And subsequently, it had turned into a nightmare that the inheritor of Non-Offensive had no choice but to face! Hard. It was absurdly hard. The outrageous part was that even with Non-Offensive, with Masterwork Nature, and even after lowering the difficulty by dividing the single-handed cast into two hands… After shrinking, shrinking, and shrinking the effects, compromising to the absolute limit, Ji Jue discovered that his spiritus control was still insufficient?! Seriously, weren't the requirements dialed up to a ridiculous degree? Was this really something a newbie like him was supposed to learn?! Worse still… once Professor Ye noticed that Ji Jue could skillfully engrave the Sovereign Virtue insignia and most basic spiritus circuits, she forbade him from using scrap to practice crafting, directing him to practice the Dissociation Art on it instead so he could cross the threshold as early as possible. An entire storehouse of alchemical scrap, raw experience points laid right before his eyes within arm's reach. Just catching the scent of the leaking spiritus made his abilities starve to the point of losing control. Yet for so many days, he hadn't managed to slurp down a single bite! He was like a starving monkey holding a coconut, frantic with hunger but utterly unable to crack it open. Every inch of him writhed in frustration. At the thought, Ji Jue could no longer suppress his grief and indignation, rolling up his sleeves once more. "It's been so many days. I refuse to believe I can't take you down!" He glared at the longsword before him, grinding his teeth. Ever since his advancement, his progress bar hadn't budged for days. He refused to believe he couldn't swallow this chunk of exp today! *Even Professor Ye can't save you, mark my words!* "If you suck, practice more!" A shout brimming with fighting spirit and resolve—yet sounding indescribably foolish—echoed through the workshop once again. "Drill! Drill! Drill! Drill—" Unbroken thuds and metallic clangs erupted. Amid the rushing flow and rapid expenditure of spiritus, Ji Jue felt as if something was about to manifest from his hands, surging forth, yet no matter what, it remained just a hairsbreadth away, out of reach. Only rage and frenzy climbed continuously, stacking until they could no longer be contained. Amid the screeching crackle of ionized air, Ji Jue raised both hands again, roaring hoarsely like a man driven mad: "Shatter for me!" *Crack!*