At this moment, staring at the unrecognizable lounge and the students rolling and wailing on the floor, everyone found themselves at a total loss for words.
Their expressions grew uglier by the second.
Only Master Kong's complexion improved slightly upon seeing that his apprentice was still in one piece, merely sporting a bit of dust on his face.
He breathed a silent sigh of relief.
A lesson learned was a lesson kept, after all.
Down on the ground, Zhou Cheng—his face already beaten beyond recognition—finally couldn't hold back any longer. Tears of blood spilled from his eyes as he wailed:
"G-Grandpa..."
Ji Jue's expression shifted drastically in mock horror. "Don't you fucking call me that! An apology is enough—why the hell are you trying to claim kin?! I don't have a grandson like you!"
In an instant, dead silence descended upon the room once more.
An excruciatingly awkward silence.
Anyone who could still draw breath looked as though they wanted to speak, yet held back.
I mean... is it at all possible...
That 'Grandpa' wasn't directed at you?
Right beside Master Kong, Master Zhou Chong—his long beard trembling, his visage dark and sullen—saw his own flesh-and-blood grandson beaten into such a state. His face flushed crimson, veins bulging in his eyes, his gaze nearly tearing at the corners.
Spiritus erupted in fury, freezing the entire room in place.
A tidal wave of pressure surged directly toward Ji Jue!
"What in the world is the meaning of this!"
Zhou Chong squeezed the words through his teeth. "How does this carry even a shred of an artisan's dignity?!"
The rampant pressure sealed off the surroundings, threatening to crush Ji Jue in an instant.
Yet right after, a crisp shattering sound rang out. The pressure dissolved without a trace, leaving behind only a gentle breeze against the face.
The late-arriving Professor Ye finally stepped into the lounge.
She asked for no reasons. She questioned no process.
With a mere wave of her hand, she dispersed Master Zhou's wrathful strike.
Zhou Chong turned his bloodshot eyes onto her and sneered. "So this is how Master Ye conducts herself? Over a few petty squabbles, your student beats someone into this condition?!
"Such outrageous behavior—I'd like to see whether the Ring of Taiyi still has any rules left!"
"Outrageous? I don't think so."
Ye Xian cast a detached glance over the carnage in the room and nodded slightly. "Looks rather restrained to me."
"This counts as restrained?! Then what on earth would it take to..."
Zhou Chong laughed out of sheer fury. Just as he was about to unleash a tirade, he saw Ji Jue reach behind his back, pull out a pistol, eject a cartridge, and casually begin tossing it around in his palm.
Zhou Chong's voice instantly choked in his throat.
His eyelids twitched uncontrollably!
What the actual fuck?!
Among those who had rushed to the scene and managed to enter the doorway, the lowest rank was that of a senior artisan. Their senses and experience were certainly not for show. Even a single glance right now was enough to perceive the horrifying aura locked within that tiny bullet...
Vicious pollution, a grotesque presence, savage and frantic bloodlust, and an insatiable hunger.
—The Poison of Frenzied Slaughter!!!
Sharp intakes of breath echoed endlessly through the room.
Every single person took a synchronized step backward, chills running down their spines.
Is your Tide Sound Workshop completely devoid of conscience?! Handing such a lethal nightmare to a student to play with?!
If his temper had flared just a fraction during the brawl, someone would have been lying in a pine box on the spot—not even their ashes would have remained!
And now, everyone's eyes drifted to the suddenly opened trunk of Little Niuma.
Taking in that heavy machine gun, the mountainous pile of phlogiston explosives, and several indescribable contraptions, cold sweat began pouring down everyone's brows in buckets.
Well... speaking purely as an impartial bystander, Student Ji really had been quite restrained.
At least everyone was still breathing, weren't they?
"Alright, don't show off something you cobbled together yourself in front of your elders." Ye Xian waved her hand impatiently, then suddenly asked, "Are you hurt?"
"Yeah, the skin on my hand broke." Ji Jue nodded obediently, holding up his hand with a heavy sigh. "Good thing you arrived early. If you'd come any later, it might have healed already."
"..."
The awkward atmosphere grew thicker by the moment. Aside from the increasingly hideous expressions of the victims' mentors, the artisans who had gathered just to watch the drama suddenly felt that the victims weren't quite so pitiable after all.
No matter what had happened, all of you ganged up on one person, and not only did you lose, you didn't even breach his defense. And far more insulting than failing to breach his defense was that all you managed to give him was a tiny scratch.
If no one knew better, they'd think a dog had nibbled on it!
Pathetic!
An utter disgrace.
Zhou Chong's face twitched violently, his white beard trembling in fury, nearly snapping his cane in his grip.
"As expected of Master Ye—what an impressive show of dominance." He glared fixedly at Ji Jue and Ye Xian. "Should I be thanking you for not unleashing such atrocities to poison your peers?"
Ye Xian ignored him. Instead, Ji Jue smacked his own forehead.
"Teacher, I just picked this up from his hand. I was almost stabbed by it... I don't know what it is, so please take a look. We wouldn't want to accidentally ruin someone else's treasure."
Saying so, he pulled an unremarkable arrowhead from his pocket and displayed it for all to see.
Silence fell over the room once again.
The gasps that had only just subsided picked right back up in full force.
The way everyone looked at Zhou Chong turned to sheer shock. While the saying went that wherever there was a crouching dragon, a fledgling phoenix was sure to follow, wasn't this taking 'there's always a bigger fish' a little too far?
There was an even bigger expert here?!
"A Heart-Poison Arrow?"
Ye Xian took it, glanced at it, and understood at once. "Quite an ancient relic. It likely dates back to the Chaotic Era before the Eternal Empire. The crafting method has long been lost, and very few specimens survive today. A rather precious item."
"Then what is it used for?" Ji Jue asked, his large, curious eyes blinking innocently—making Zhou Chong desperately want to gouge two bloody holes in them.
"It is a weapon meant for sneak attacks, a single-use consumable."
Before everyone present, Ye Xian instructed him with tireless dedication: "Once activated with one's own spiritus, it turns entirely incorporeal, lingering between existence and non-existence, possessing neither physical form nor spiritus signature. It pursues its locked target like a shadow, inescapable even to the ends of the earth.
"Upon piercing the target, it breaks down completely within their consciousness and soul. As the arrowhead dissolves, the massive quantity of malice sealed inside parasitizes the soul. Even if one does not die on the spot, they will endure endless torment in the days to come, until their soul is entirely corroded and dissolved by that malice."
Ji Jue's face drained of color in apparent shock. "Then wouldn't anyone stabbed by it suffer a miserable fate?"
"Indeed."
Ye Xian nodded. "Even if a Grandmaster intervened, it would likely be incurable. Wouldn't you say, Master Zhou?"
Zhou Chong's face was completely ashen. He looked down at Zhou Cheng on the floor. Pinned beneath that chilling gaze, Zhou Cheng tried several times to open his mouth, but couldn't squeeze out a sound.
Very quickly, struck by a sudden flash of inspiration, his eyes rolled back, and he fainted dead away.
"Teacher, Teacher!!!"
A shrill wail erupted. On the ground, the woman whose face had been sliced open scrambled up, sobbing incoherently as she clutched her mentor's hand. "Save me, save me... He was trying to kill me... I..."
Her mentor was a sallow-faced, middle-aged man. Seeing his student's tragic state, he was already trembling from head to foot in fury.
In a fluster, he applied medicine and tried to comfort her.
"I know Master Ye looks down on ordinary folks like us! I know how prestigious the Tide Sound Workshop's name is!"
Cradling his student, the artisan bellowed in rage, "Back then, you declared my thesis to be utter rubbish! You had your points, and I accepted it! But what about now? No matter what happened, beating people to this extent demands an explanation!
"At worst, we'll take this straight to the General Assembly! I'd like to see whether an artisan master can really cover the sky with one hand!"
"Exactly, this really is too much."
Among the onlookers, someone weighed the situation and began speaking up. Down on the floor, the crying grew even louder.
"My hand, my hand!!"
"Help, help me..."
"Teacher, he's a mad dog!!" The dying fat apprentice struggled, shrieking, "Over a single disagreement, he just—"
From beginning to end, Ye Xian watched with cold detachment.
Deaf to it all.
Only when everyone had finished speaking and caused enough of a scene did she turn her head placidly, casting a glance at Ji Jue. "Do you have anything to say?"
"Nope."
Ji Jue shook his head, thoroughly unbothered. "Everything that needed to be said was already said before I threw a punch."
"Good! Good! Good!"
The middle-aged artisan holding his student sneered as he stood up. "So this is Tide Sound Workshop, and this is Master Ye! Consider me enlightened today! From this day forward—"
Before he could finish, a deafening noise blasted from Little Niuma's speakers, drowning out all the clamor.
"These days, any stray dog or cat can call themselves an artisan..."
"Could it be based on that face?"
"Maybe he's someone's boy toy."
"Doesn't even look at what kind of big-tailed maggot he is!"
"That old hag Ye raised a mad dog, too!"
"A bastard child just lacks manners."
Line after line played from the recording, an edited compilation of highlights delivered loud and clear to everyone's ears without missing a single beat. The artisan who had just been holding his student in righteous fury froze stiff on the spot, his expression cycling through a kaleidoscope of colors.
It was like a television screen glitching out.
A truly dazzling display.
And when Ye Xian looked his way, he instinctively took a step back, wanting nothing more than to avert his gaze.
He looked down, glaring with murderous rage at the student in his arms.
*Stray dog or cat? Pretty face? Boy toy? Old hag? Bastard child? Lacks manners?*
The more he heard, the more cold sweat poured down his back.
*Do you have any fucking idea that twenty years ago, every single one of those phrases would have been enough to get your teacher killed without a burial plot, with your ancestral graves happily welcoming demolition and blasting?!*
Right now, the only thought racing through his mind was whether slamming this piece of trash to death on the floor right here and now could still salvage the situation.
*I swallowed my pride and laid low for so many years, but you—you've got real fucking guts, don't you?!*
*If you want to die, go right ahead!*
*Don't drag me down with you, alright?!*
In the end, what concluded the recording was an earlier exchange.
In the dialogue, the student asked: "Teacher, what if someone provokes me?"
"Endure humiliation and shoulder the burden, of course, bearing forbearance for the common good," Ye Xian had replied. "What else?"
Thus, amidst the dead silence, no one spoke another word.
There was only Ji Jue's gentle sigh.
"Teacher, I really tried my best. Sadly, no matter how reasonably I tried to talk, it was useless," he said. "Do these people look down on us?"
"Indeed."
Ye Xian nodded placidly. "Artisans and masters alike hold their heads so high their eyes are on the crowns of their heads. Whenever trouble arises, they prioritize their own interests, huddling together for warmth and twisting black into white. How could people like this ever hold Tide Sound Workshop in their eyes?
"For certain individuals, saving face is probably far more important, isn't it?"
Amidst the absolute silence, one could practically hear countless slaps ringing out, continuing nonstop from the very beginning until now!
They had lost the fight, lost the argument, lost face, and lost dignity.
Everything was fucking gone!
What a goddamn curse. If only they hadn't come today.
After the apprentice finished beating the apprentices, the master started beating the masters!
They were still running rampant, not slowing down for even a second!
The faces of the people involved shifted through a flurry of colors, rendered entirely speechless. Yet under the pleading stares of the crowd, Master Duan, who had stayed out of the fray from start to finish, couldn't help but let out a sigh:
"Ye..."
Chapter 186