Embarking on... A New Journey

On a late autumn afternoon, beneath Haizhou's still-dazzling sunlight, the heat was sweltering. Outside Quancheng, the white mist billowed as a weary line of figures slowly emerged, wearing gas masks and clad in specialized protective suits splattered with blood. The trailblazer walking at the very front still held his posture straight as a ramrod, propping up a furled banner to shatter every obstacle in their path. Behind him, nearly everyone bore wounds as if they had just survived a brutal battle, and a few were being carried on stretchers. Bringing up the rear was a hulking giant dragging a flatbed truck bed salvaged from a wreck. It was piled high with a tangled heap of massive carcasses, several dismantled altars, and a few mangled corpses beyond all recognition. "It's already this late, huh?" The person behind the captain glanced up at the twilight creeping into the sky, pulled off her mask, and let her long hair cascade down her back like flowing water. "It's so murky in there, and time is a total mess," Ji Xue sighed. "I was hoping to make it back in time for lunch. I'm starving to death." "Well, dinner isn't bad either." Her twin brother, Ji Liu, yawned behind her. "That massive thing blew up right in my face and sprayed all over me—it's so sticky it's driving me crazy. All I want is a shower. Captain, want to join?" "You guys go ahead," Tong Shan, who was leading the way with the banner, pulled off his mask and said calmly, "Everyone make good use of the time to get some proper rest. Once our supplies and equipment are replenished, we'll push to finish exploring the rest of that zone." "Down into the catacombs again?" Ji Liu asked in shock. "Bro, we've only been in this godforsaken place for half a month, and you've gone down four times already. Don't you ever rest?" The moment the question left his mouth, he regretted it. Just as he expected, Tong Shan replied placidly, "I do rest." If the squad members could still unwind in the lulls between entering the catacombs, Captain Tong Shan was left with an average of less than five hours of sleep a day and a measly ten-odd minutes of downtime snatched between duties... In a normal workplace, people would call someone like this a deranged overachiever. Yet anyone who had ever worked with Tong Shan found it impossible to say a bad word about him. He looked after his squad in every detail, put collective honor above his own, charged at the very front in battle, took into account everyone's physical cycles and emotional mood swings, and would even brew ginger tea while taking time out of his day to listen to you cuss out your ex-boyfriend. Seriously, no one could bring themselves to badmouth him. And if anyone did, their coworkers would probably throw a sack over their head and beat them with a club. He was a genuine team dad! "You and your fucking big mouth." Ji Xue kicked her brother in the rear, sending him staggering, and immediately leaned close to Tong Shan with a sweet smile. "Captain Tong, are you free tonight? A friend brought me a set of cookware. How about I simmer some broth?" "Sister Xue, I want broth too!" the half-dead casualty on the stretcher grinned, chiming in to tease her. "I'm malnourished! Give it to me first, will ya?" His answer was an unhesitating middle finger. "Fuck off!" Laughter erupted through the squad. Soon, however, the atmosphere turned serious. Right at the entrance to the outpost, someone had already been waiting for quite some time. "Director?" Tong Shan paused in his tracks. "What brings you out here?" "The work assignments are mostly settled, and I was worried about you all. I came out to see if there were any distress signals. Though the others will probably accuse me of slacking off." Beneath a parasol, Lyu Yingyue offered a faint smile. She did not look particularly aged, bearing the appearance of someone in middle age with a warm, gentle smile, save for a few streaks of gray hair faintly visible beneath her hairpin. Now, seeing everyone return safely, her smile grew even warmer. "How was the haul?" "Hard to say." Tong Shan sighed, gesturing toward the flatbed the giant was hauling behind them. "There are a few big ones that can be salvaged, and we followed the trail to bust several hideouts. But we only caught four or five brainwashed idiots from the Evil Transmutation Cult. Completely useless. "Pretty much a wasted trip." "Coming back safe is what matters." Lyu Yingyue patted his shoulder, then noticed Ji Xue looking on expectantly and patted hers as well in encouragement. The grinning young woman whistled and scampered off. She lacked decorum and disregarded the occasion, but Lyu Yingyue didn't mind. "The Evil Transmutation Cult's infiltration of Quancheng isn't something that happened overnight. Over this period, manpower has been gathered from all across Haizhou. Once the blockade is thoroughly broken, we'll naturally sweep them clean. "For the initial exploration, just do your best to get a clear picture of the situation. Don't push yourself too hard." Lyu Yingyue paused briefly, then advised, "And don't bring personal feelings into your work." "I know, Director. Don't worry," Tong Shan nodded calmly. "I just want to finish exploring our current sector as soon as possible. Not much was left this time; next time, we should be able to wrap it up in one push." "That's where the bad news comes in," Lyu Yingyue shook her head slightly. "The Ring of Taiyi has proposed a new plan, but the resource deficit is significant. "Right now, all the artisans' time and resources are completely tied up. Equipment repairs and consumable replenishment will probably have to wait for a while. "You aren't planning to march into the catacombs bare-handed, are you? Or do you intend to pay out of pocket to hire someone for an expedited job? With the rates those artisans charge, every single one of them will fleece you to the moon." Tong Shan was visibly taken aback. Soon, however, a rare smile appeared on his face, looking almost amused. "That won't be a problem. I happen to know a pretty good artisan." With that, he pulled out his phone and checked the messages that had piled up over several days. "I heard he caused quite a ruckus..." He sighed with feeling. "I hope nothing went wrong." Something had definitely gone wrong. Ever since several days ago, the beasts of burden dispatched to work in the Recycling and Disposal Department had sensed that something was off... Or to put it more accurately, it was like they had seen a ghost! Originally, when word got out that a young master from a major workshop had been kicked into this wretched pit for brawling, everyone's hearts had sunk, and their asses had clenched in dread. Working day and night picking through scrap and doing brutal manual labor was hard enough. If some do-nothing young lord was placed over their heads to boss them around and lord it over them, who the hell could take it? Yet even if they couldn't take it, they would have had to endure it, just like how few powerless apprentices forced into manual labor these days could afford any pride. Money was hard to earn and misery was hard to swallow, but if this work had been even slightly desirable, it never would have fallen to disposable tools mass-produced through higher-up conscription. Solid merits and contributions were things they couldn't dream of getting on normal days; they weren't about to pass them up just because the working conditions were miserable. Everyone had braced themselves for a pampered young master lounging in a chair and breathing down their necks, but not a single soul could have imagined that the bastard who showed up was an overachieving maniac even crazier than them! From the moment he walked through the door, he had thrown his head back in uncontrollable laughter. He didn't put on airs before the manual laborers either; after asking about the key priorities of the job, he threw himself into the workroom like a man possessed. From day to night, and from night to day. He didn't even bother changing his hazard suit. The supervisor had almost burst into tears—*Bro, if you want to die, do it somewhere else! If you fucking die in here, they won't even leave my ashes behind, alright?!* Only after burning through six sets of tools did he yawn and head back to sleep. Yet a few hours later, he popped right back up in the workshop, once again devouring scrap equipment like a hurricane at a speed and efficiency none of the others could hope to match. In just four or five days, he alone had nearly cleared out two batches comprising hundreds of recycled items. And far from satisfied, he even took over everyone else's workload. It moved the overworked grunts to tears, to the point where they almost erected a longevity tablet in his honor. With such a godsend of a heavyweight and living saint absorbing the pressure in front of them, the laborers of the Recycling and Disposal Department actually enjoyed a few rare days of peace. At the very least, they had more time to purge the corruption pollution from their spiritus. Completely contrary to the infamous reputation spread among the young masters and mistresses—branding him a lunatic, a madman, and a monster—the low-level grunts had only four words to describe Mr. Ji Jue: *A second father!* As for the lackey who had arrived behind him, he seemed to be from some workshop too? Nobody knew for sure. From the looks of it, he was probably an assistant. *"We're the stars of the mountain hamlet~ All out of love~ You say staying together means getting fortunes read~"* The afternoon was prime time for work. At that moment, Ji Jue—who had monopolized an entire processing chamber all to himself—was suspended in midair. He didn't even wear a mask, completely exposed to the spiritus environment saturated with high-density corruption, deftly dismantling and prying apart a massive metal pillar over two meters tall. Under the art of Masterwork Nature, the seemingly seamless giant pillar rained parts that had been fitted together so tightly their seams were practically invisible. He tossed them into the furnace for Purification. Meanwhile, the core structures housing the spiritus circuits and numerous Sovereign Virtue insignias were shattered beneath the Dissociation Art, disintegrating one after another into ash. All that remained was a fluttering shower of metal dust drifting down like falling snow onto Lou Feng's numb face. It felt just like shovelfuls of dirt being tossed onto a coffin. *"Yet snow~ drifts into my eyes~"* "Stop singing!" Lou Feng wailed, thrashing his head in an effort to shake the dust pollution off his body—and the mental pollution out of his brain. He was practically begging: "Master Ji, I'm begging you, stop singing!!!" If Ji Jue had even a shred of taste, Lou Feng wouldn't be this physically and mentally exhausted. If Ji Jue possessed even an ounce of vocal technique, he wouldn't be missing his therapist this much! There was no technique whatsoever, just pure, unadulterated emotion! Whoever the bastard named Lu Feng was, every single song Ji Jue had copied from him was some booming, tacky DJ remix or high-octane folk song... It had gotten to the point where, if Ji Jue merely hummed the opening bars, Lou Feng could practically sing the entire track in his sleep. It had only been a few days! If this kept up, he felt that by the time he returned home, he would probably be sporting bleached blonde hair. When he tossed his car keys to the butler, he might even casually add, *Careful with it, don't scratch my new moped.* The thought of such a horrifying future gave him an overwhelming urge to ram his head into a wall and end it all. Life had lost all meaning. "Probe, probe!" Hanging in midair, Ji Jue waved his hand and shouted without even looking down, "Old Lou, don't zone out! Hand me Probe Number Eight!" "Oh." Almost out of pure muscle memory, Lou Feng had already handed the tool over before he even realized what he was doing. By the time his senses returned, he found himself holding a thermos, topping off Ji Jue's water bottle. Tears welled in his eyes. It was over. He had practically devolved into generic Minion A! How was he supposed to survive this?! A few days ago, as an eyewitness to the "Great Apprentice Massacre of the Association," Lou Feng hadn't even had the chance to go home and sleep off his wounded pride before his own master booted him straight into this hellhole right after Ji Jue! *"Why?!"* At the time, Lou Feng had been appalled. *"Don't we have bad blood with the Tide Sound Workshop? Why should we care about him?"* *"I've never gotten along with that Ye woman, but did I raise a single objection during the meeting when she spoke?"* Kong Qingyan had retorted without even lifting her eyelids. *"If you seek a challenge, you naturally challenge the strong. If you hang around with garbage, you'll become garbage sooner or later. *"The same goes for choosing teammates. *"Your talent can be considered first-rate. Given time and polish, it's not impossible that you might earn the title of master in the future. But if you keep fooling around with a bunch of idiots, I doubt I can count on you to support me in my old age; I'll be lucky if I don't end up burying you myself. *"Consider this an opportunity to broaden your horizons and see how other people live." She had said, *"Even if you can never shed the label of the Lou family for the rest of your life, you cannot live solely for the Lou family. Once you learn to stop treating those halos people placed on your head as anything special, then as your teacher, I can finally start looking forward to your future."* *"A strong person?"* Lou Feng had been furious and appalled. *"What kind of strong person is Ji Jue—"* *"He beat you," Master Kong had cut him off cleanly, stating, *"Twice."* Perhaps even more than twice. Yet Lou Feng... Kong Qingyan had looked at her student and asked the very question that had kept him awake at night ever since: *"...Do you want to keep losing?"* And so, dejected, utterly helpless, thoroughly reluctant yet grinding his teeth, Young Master Lou had hoisted his pack and followed behind Ji Jue. Embarking on a new journey down the path of a beast of burden.