A Single Page

Sometimes, the person who knows you best might not be yourself, your wife, or even your enemy. More likely than not, it is your artisan. Abilities, matrices, blessings, preferences, styles, habits, and even weaknesses. All of these were secrets that a Celestial Chosen should never utter even in their sleep, yet to an artisan, they were completely transparent. It was like a middle-aged man plucking up the courage to sit before an old doctor, extending a wrist to have his pulse taken. When the doctor's mouth curved into a faint smile as he looked at you, you ought to have some tacit understanding. Don't wait for him to voice the unpleasant truth—just obediently take whatever prescription he writes! What else were you going to do? Clutch search results from an app and argue with him? Here's a red clown nose; care to guess who dropped it? Tong Hua's demonizing descriptions and the many introductions and accounts from Sister Wen had merely sketched an outline, plastering on a few labels at best to make him easier to grasp. Ji Jue's true understanding of Tong Shan began only when he took that banner from his hands. Ji Jue hadn't even needed to ask; a single pass with Deus Ex Machina was enough for him to grasp the intricate details of all of Tong Shan's abilities. Including the Burning Star Manifestation dissipating across the sky at this very moment... No way? Seriously? Did those two idiots... actually think the Burning Star Manifestation required that banner to be unleashed?! Hilarious! During maintenance, Ji Jue had examined the banner from top to bottom, inside and out. It held only two blessings—one Ascension and one Aether—both purely auxiliary types, having nothing whatsoever to do with unleashing the manifestation! It was just like a walking stick for mountain climbing or a tripod for taking photos: a little gadget to save effort and hassle. Having it made things a bit more convenient, but without it, the difference was practically negligible... Watching this unfold with his own eyes, Ji Jue could barely hold back his laughter. Who said the Path of Tianyuan was rigid and inflexible, or that Vegetable Tong couldn't lie? From the very start, this massive pit had been dug specifically for Yan Chong and Ling Zhi! No—judging by how natural Tong Shan made it look, this pit had probably been dug years ago. Who knew how many fools had walked into it over the years! Now, beneath the "fatal opportunity" that Yan Chong had nearly bled himself dry to create, Ling Zhi—the Tianyuan Bane, who had been lurking in the shadows and posing the greatest threat—had willingly delivered himself to the door. High in the heavens, Tong Shan's stern, indifferent expression, unbroken until now, shifted slightly. In the reflection of Yan Chong's eyes, the corner of his mouth curved into a mocking smirk. How delightful. In that instant, the Regeneration form he had concealed since the battle began finally revealed itself! The Raw Stone's twelve tiers spanned four stages: Calling, Metamorphosis, Regeneration, and Exaltation. During Calling, one obtained blessings to elevate the essence of their ability; during Metamorphosis, one chose a direction to determine their future path; during Regeneration, one shed mortal bone and flesh, no longer ordinary; during Exaltation, one established their Domain and received the divine marrow of Sovereign Virtue, eventually crossing the boundary between human and Celestial-Human to become a link in this world's splendor. Now, as the shackles of telekinesis loosened layer by layer, an extraordinary form transcending mortals and stepping toward godhood unfolded. There were no thousand hands or myriad eyes, nor any horrifying mutation. In merely a split second, Tong Shan's skin lost all color, turning into a flawless, unpolluted pure white—white as paper. And his blood transformed from crimson. Under the transmutation of matrix and blessing, its hue darkened rapidly until it turned pitch-black. At this moment, an invisible brush dipped in pitch-black blood wrote furiously across the paper-white canvas. Innumerable tiny characters linked together like chains, coiling around his skin in overlapping layers. Setting the prelude to a grand opus, inscribing the order of Tianyuan, constructing a distant and ethereal future. A longing, or perhaps, a mad dream. —An era without calamities! Haizhou was plagued by calamities, and Yacheng was rife with troubles. Ever since he was old enough to understand, enjoying glory and wealth unimaginable to ordinary people, living in luxurious splendor, Tong Shan had stood atop the mountain called family. He gazed out across a turbulent and barren world, perusing the agonizing history of the past, and more than once personally experienced what it was like when calamities ravaged the earth through the Aether records left by his elders. Yet, he had never felt any longing for the Path of Aether. The chaos of calamity beasts in Beizhou one hundred and forty years ago; the ruin of Yunzhou one hundred and ten years ago; the deluge of blood rain that ravaged more than half the Federation a century ago; the fall of Quancheng several decades ago; the barren sandstorms forty-one years ago... Right down to ten years ago, when he was sixteen, when he witnessed with his own eyes the calamity of the rampaging fire tide. It had incinerated ten thousand li, burning the Fertile Plains to ashes. Three years of famine followed, and even now grain supplies had yet to recover. The fire had surged into the sea, boiling the waters for five days; the resulting plagues and lingering toxins had not been cleansed to this day. In the aftermath, those who starved, died of thirst, or lost everything were beyond count... Why did it come to this? Why did it have to go this far? In that instant, he understood that Aether could change none of it. Man-made disasters were endless and doomed never to cease. The paths of Heart Pivot and Ascension were too small, while the Path of the Desolate Ruins was too lofty and detached; at best, they could only resolve the troubles of a single moment or a single place. If one truly wished, in a practical sense, to minimize or even eradicate natural calamities, one had to turn to Tianyuan! For this, he had not hesitated to turn his back on his mission and family heritage. To carry on the Tong family, his uncles and younger siblings were enough; why did they need him? And no matter how outsiders praised him for having the big picture in mind, knowing propriety, and keeping Yacheng in his heart, he knew that he was the truly selfish one, choosing his so-called ideal—greedily using the clan's power to climb upward, mutating and altering the ancestral heritage of Heavenly Hearing to nourish himself. In the end, guided by his grandfather's pointers, he turned himself into a fulcrum where Aether and Tianyuan intersected. The moment he regenerated under the infusion of Sovereign Virtue's divine marrow, what he achieved was this very work, with his own body as its vessel, an opening barely inscribed: the *Calamity Prevention Codex*! Perhaps one day it could gradually reach completion, transforming his Domain, transmuting time wedges, and even founding an Origin... but compared to its truly finished form, right now it barely counted as a rough draft. Still, against two clowns... it was more than enough! At this moment, the instant the title page of the *Calamity Prevention Codex* finished emerging upon his skin, the section shifted, and countless records flickered by at high speed. Tracing back from the page of the Burning Star, skipping past Falling Star and Desolate Night, it came to a halt on the third page of the Celestial Phenomena Chapter. —[Calamity of Collapse]! And so, following the dissipated Burning Star Manifestation, a fissure silently opened within the empty night sky, followed by a second, a third, a fourth... Innumerable intersecting fissures tore like thin paper, exposing the cosmic abyss behind them. "Everyone, hold steady!" Ji Xue's expression changed drastically. She accelerated abruptly, recklessly speeding up her own time. Darting like lightning through the slowed flow of time, she dragged everyone together in an instant, pulling out anchoring ropes to lash them into one spot. Jiang Xuan slammed both hands against the ground. An iron wall rose and enclosed them as dense roots of steel spread and grew out from beneath the earth. Only then did everyone feel the belated sensation of weightlessness... Telekinetic convergence, gravitational collapse, infinite mass intersecting here—what finally took shape was the very disaster manifested in the mortal realm two hundred and ten years ago, when Sovereign Virtue: Eternal Gate was thrown into turmoil. It was merely a black point the size of a thumb, yet it caused Ling Zhi, who had just emerged from the shadows, to turn pale with horror, unable to hold back a shriek. Unfortunately, it was too late. He was too close—close enough to take Tong Shan's life. Yet at the same time, he had delivered himself directly into the lethal gravitational zone... "Goodbye." In that instant, he saw Tong Shan's lips move, but could hear no sound. Then the world seemed to warp and spin amidst screams and roars that could not radiate outward. He tried to grab Tong Shan, but Tong Shan's body was like a phantom, impossible to touch. The sounds of shattering could not escape, and the sight of the collapse was distorted by bent light. No matter how he used shadow form to traverse, he could not escape this vortex of despair. Even more fatal was a hand from behind... In that final moment, he left behind a last cry that no one would ever hear again. It was a venomous roar: "Yan Chong!!!" The moment he sensed something wrong, the heavily injured Yan Chong snapped his broken sword without hesitation to weaken the pull, then shoved Ling Zhi in the back, thrusting him into the deadly vortex. Using this momentum to break free of the gravitational pull, Yan Chong even severed half his own body! Stepping over his ally in exchange for a glimmer of survival, the moment he broke free, he turned into a streak of bloody light without looking back and bolted. In an instant, he vanished. Even the tempest unleashed by the annihilation of the vortex could not catch him. He had fled! In a mere instant, of two Regeneration Chosen, one was reduced to nothingness, while the other escaped gravely wounded. The battle was decided. When the countless ruins and debris sucked into the sky rained back down like a deluge, crashing against the earth, Ji Jue looked out from behind the slowly opening iron wall at the utterly unrecognizable landscape. And the scattered figures fleeing in all directions through the storm... Having survived the lethal gravitational vortex in the sky and lucky enough not to be wiped out by the aftershocks, two or three surviving cultists of the Evil Transmutation Cult did not hesitate to follow their superior's example and flee for their lives. "No, don't let them get away!" Lou Feng reacted and moved to give chase. "My aunt, my aunt is still—" Without a second thought, Ji Jue tripped him with another leg sweep and pinned him down. Seeing him still struggle, Ji Jue promptly gave him two sharp slaps across the face to wake him up: "Calm down! Your aunt is still alive!" He warned, "If you still want your aunt, shut your mouth and don't make trouble!" This wasn't an empty claim; he had seen those seemingly everlasting spiritus crystals with his own eyes. According to what Professor Ye had told him, the Regeneration tier of spiritus shaping usually involved minimal changes to the physical body, focusing more on the soul and spirit. Its most prominent trait was that even after losing control, shaped spiritus could maintain its existence and properties, lingering for a long time as if created from nothing. Until the user died. At this juncture, capturing living prisoners was no longer the most important thing. After all, no one was better positioned to take prisoners than Tong Shan overlooking from above. Since Tong Shan hadn't moved to stop them, there was no need to stir up unnecessary trouble. "Time is limited. Get over here and help!" Ji Jue rapidly rummaged through the ruins for salvageable items, including the supplies, food, medicine, and drinking water they had just unloaded from the car. Fortunately, thanks to tight packaging and sturdy crates, quite a bit had survived all the devastation. Even among the cracked containers, a quick wipe made them edible enough—when you were starving, you wouldn't care anyway. There was no time to be picky right now. Seventeen or eighteen quicksilver tentacles branched out from Ji Jue's back, scavenging every resource within sight and tossing them to the dazed Lou Feng and their other teammates. After Tong Shan nodded, the others stepped forward wordlessly to assist. In a mere two minutes, the vehicle's cargo compartment was haphazardly packed full. Finally, after everyone had boarded, Ji Jue retrieved a large bundle from Little Niuma's cargo bed. He scattered it in a wide perimeter around the ruins, then climbed into the vehicle. The car sped away. Only after they had traveled a good distance did Ji Jue press the remote detonator. From the gloomy distance came the faint rumble of a roar. Explosives!