Boom!
As if in an instant, the entire interior of the building was turned upside down!
As a hub supporting a crucial node, no expense had been spared on materials. With the grand scheme for Quancheng at stake, there was no pinching pennies; it was practically equivalent to a stripped-down workshop core.
Calling it a fully smart building wasn't an exaggeration in the slightest.
Air, temperature, water and power supplies and upkeep, interior climate regulation, exterior defenses—everything that should be there was there, along with plenty of things that shouldn't be, right down to a self-destruct mechanism.
Once activated, it would instantly siphon the omnipresent corruption throughout Quancheng, concentrate it into an explosive surge, and funnel it straight inside. Paired with the blast, absolutely no living soul would make it out alive.
Faced with such impregnable defenses, Lou Feng's lockpicking, Tong Shan's suppression, Ji Xue's acceleration, their teammates' protection and path-clearing, alongside Ji Jue's Deus Ex Machina and Dissociation Art—right down to those crucial ten seconds—were all indispensable.
Had they lacked even one, they would have been nothing more than fools delivering themselves on a silver platter.
According to Ji Jue's readings, the moment the hub's alarm sounded, at least four remote administrative authorizations would immediately descend. When that happened, what awaited them was a thunderous sweep by the Evil Transmutation Cult.
The moment he realized this, Ji Jue locked down every function and sequence connected to the alarms, even directing quicksilver inside to literally freeze those functions using Solid Alchemy.
[All normal. All clear. Zero issues.]
[The plan is proceeding in an orderly fashion!]
[Steady and promising!]
Operating the central hub with one hand, Ji Jue split his attention to field the inquiries arriving every ten-odd minutes, mimicking the artisan's habitual tone from earlier records. With his other hand, he manipulated the shifting quicksilver...
Relentlessly hammering the Nether artisan who was supposed to be running the place!
Boom!
A grenade tossed casually by Ji Jue detonated with a deafening blast. Amid the erupting power of the propellant, the quicksilver infused within burst outward as well, showering the entire hub in fireworks of fractured light.
Another luminous membrane surfaced under the shockwave. The artisan staggered back in disarray, entirely unharmed, glaring furiously at Ji Jue with emerald eyes as he spewed non-stop curses in the Imperial tongue.
Ji Jue showed no courtesy, firing back in the exact same language.
He raised a hand and flipped his middle finger.
With that gesture, the quicksilver beneath his feet surged, and an iron wall shaped like an upright middle finger rose from the floor, deflecting the incoming bullets. Explosive flashes roared outward, erupting in roaring flames.
Alchemical bullets as well.
Their power was astonishing.
Even the giant erected middle finger developed a startling fracture, its Metallic Quality shaken.
"Radical Change?"
Ji Jue understood at once.
An artisan hailing from the Empire, Metamorphosis tier, Rank 6. His matrix was likely Red Anvil, and his higher awakening ability was 'Radical Change,' which could thoroughly catalyze the reaction process of any material, specializing in forging weapons and imparting qualitative transformations. Provided he was well-prepared, his destructive power was on par with any other class of Celestial Chosen.
After all, any weapon that amplified its force through physical reactions would at least double in power once catalyzed by Radical Change in his hands.
Yet that was precisely what put him at a disadvantage.
Next to the hub, this apparatus was more precious to him than his own life. He didn't dare toss out high-yield explosives to drag everyone down together; even if he survived, his fate would be grim.
All he could do was pray for reinforcements to arrive faster, desperately playing for time.
Having weathered Ji Jue's barrage solely through defensive gear, he was already disheveled and covered in grime. Gritting his teeth, he pulled a palm-sized 'toothpick bottle' from his robes and flicked out slender iron needles. As they plummeted through midair, the needles swelled rapidly, glowing crimson and glacial blue as they morphed into blades of varying lengths and styles, soaring aloft to slash and pierce in sweeping arcs.
For a time, the air shrieked incessantly as a storm of sword shadows howled through the room.
It was as if countless fearless, incorporeal sword masters had formed an encirclement in an instant, throwing away their lives in a coordinated assault. He wanted to see just how long this scarred brat of the Calling tier could hold out!
In the next instant, his face twisted in horror.
Silver light rolled and surged. The seemingly ordinary quicksilver instantly dissolved into thousands upon thousands of endless fine threads, twisting, entangling, surging forward wave after wave to wrap around the blades. One or two were negligible, dozens or hundreds posed no threat, thousands were brushed aside, but even after severing thousands, thousands more kept coming! Enveloped in countless layers of binding within a fraction of a second, the foremost sword sank as if into mud, unable to advance an inch.
Snapping back to his senses, the artisan tried to sneer.
The Bottle of Sword-Forms was his masterpiece. Even if one sword had been ensnared by an obscure blessing like Form of Utmost Resilience, he still had seventy-one left!
Could the brat possibly conjure seventy-one blessings of Form of Utmost Resilience?
Bang!
At that very moment, all the remaining blades seized up in unison, as if wedged into solid iron—Metallic Quality!
Before the Nether artisan could channel spiritus to trigger their destructive power, his sneer caught in his throat.
Because the first blade ensnared by Form of Utmost Resilience had suddenly lost its connection!
It was as if it had vanished into thin air.
Through the gaps carved out by the slashing blades, he finally saw it—his prized creation, held casually in Ji Jue's hand, being twirled around like a toy!
"Mediocre stuff."
With a sweep of his Dissociation Art, Ji Jue stripped away every trace of spiritus construct within, wiping it clean before tossing it into his toolbox. The material wasn't bad; he could reforge it later.
The Nether artisan felt as if he were seeing a ghost.
What kind of sorcery was this?!
What just happened?!
Before he could react, the Metallic Quality abruptly collapsed, replaced once more by countless pliable threads that ensnared another blade. Immediately afterward, the connection severed again!
Gone!
Cold sweat broke out across the Nether artisan's forehead, flowing unchecked.
A chill pierced straight to the bone!
He couldn't fathom it, couldn't see through it. Even now, he couldn't even identify the technique this kid was using to control that mass of quicksilver. Everything about it reeked of the bizarre and inexplicable.
Had the situation been different, he would have called for a timeout just to ask: How on earth are you doing this? How can Form of Utmost Resilience and Metallic Quality coexist in an ordinary material like quicksilver?
Ji Jue's smile grew increasingly mocking and wicked.
A magic trick was a miracle until someone saw through it.
It was like a magician mixing a cup of ice water with hot water, and somehow ending up with water that was both freezing cold and piping hot!
In truth, Ji Jue's vessel had a partition inside, keeping each side thermally insulated.
Two half-finished products placed together were still two half-finished products.
They only appeared to be a seamless whole, but beneath the surface, the two were distinct as day and night.
Within that seemingly unified sheet of silver light, two entirely different layers of quicksilver were superimposed. When flexibility was required, he called upon Form of Utmost Resilience; when hardness was needed, he activated Metallic Quality.
The Converging Streams Form technique allowed him to keep the two separate during operation, preventing mutual interference.
It was just that between Non-Offensive and Masterwork Nature, the transitions were blisteringly fast—so seamless and parallel that they created the illusion of rigidity and softness working in tandem, flowing from hard to soft at will.
No wonder Young Master Lou had been so dumbfounded by such a jerry-rigged method.
It was absurdly makeshift, yet devastatingly effective.
It was a solution tailored solely to Ji Jue. As for the operational difficulty—sorry, that was just how Primacy of Mind rolled.
If you're bad, practice more. In other words, practice enough, and you won't be bad anymore.
It was just splitting one's mind in two. Simple enough.
Hmm? Don't tell me you can't do it?
Bang!
A muffled shockwave suddenly erupted.
In that split second, the Nether artisan's expression changed violently. His entire body dispersed into a phantom, shattering and flying out as a streak of light, only to slam headfirst into the hub's lockdown, leaving him nowhere to flee...
Rebounding off the barrier, he pulled himself together in disarray and slumped to the ground, his face deathly pale.
A wound had opened across the back of his neck, deep enough to expose bone.
The flesh was pitch-black, entirely unable to heal, blood gushing forth in an endless stream.
Had it been a fraction of an inch deeper, it would have severed his head entirely...
If a precious life-saving artifact with preset triggers hadn't self-destructed at the crucial moment, he would have been decapitated on the spot.
"Tch!"
Two voices clicked their tongues almost simultaneously.
Ji Jue was marveling that an Embers artisan, lacking in everything else, was never short on gear. With so many life-saving trinkets on hand, they were truly a pain to kill!
Meanwhile, Ji Xue, who had just recovered a fraction of her stamina by downing a spiritus tonic, looked down at the bloodstain on her short sword, full of regret.
Unlike the difficulty of synchronizing time for others, manipulating her own time was far simpler. As long as she focused completely, a hundredfold acceleration was well within reach.
Now that the enemy was on guard, however, things would get troublesome.
Over fifty blades immediately soared into the air, swooping down toward her.
With the pressure on him drastically reduced, Ji Jue didn't even bother looting more gear. Pulling out his bell, he shook it frantically, three successive chimes ringing out in rapid succession.
The Nether artisan's hair stood on end once more.
Amid the keening of the bone blade, lingering spirits coalesced. A deformed evil spirit resembling a physician crawled out of the blood, its ten fingers razor-sharp like scalpels, moving without a trace and ignoring all physical boundaries. It phased endlessly out of walls and floorboards, hounding him like maggots on rotting bone.
Immediately after, a hardened quicksilver bead from Ji Jue's pocket dropped into the silver pool. A hollow suit of armor rose instantly, swinging four arms to face the slashing blades head-on as it charged.
Nor did it stop there. Ji Jue's hand dipped repeatedly into his pocket, flinging handfuls of beads into the quicksilver. Crude quicksilver spiders scrambled out one after another, forming a dark, surging horde that rushed the battered Nether artisan.
It was an overwhelming deluge!
In the blink of an eye, what had been a duel turned into a gang beating, with him on the receiving end... Amid the perilous siege, his stockpile of alchemical bullets depleted at a visible rate.
He couldn't hesitate any longer.
If this kept up...
Driven by an unprecedented sense of crisis, the Nether artisan struggled out of the slow boil of attrition and erupted. Ignoring his bleeding neck wound and the surrounding assault, he let out a silent roar. Spiritus flared atop all the whistling blades, snapping inward.
They circled him like a hedgehog's quills, warding off the onslaught.
Then he lunged toward Ji Jue—or rather, toward the hub behind him!
At this stage, with no reinforcements arriving from outside, this stronghold was unlikely to survive. In that case, he might as well trash the hub. The moment the other side detected an anomaly, their thunderous fury would arrive in an instant!
Ji Jue raised his pistol expressionlessly, aiming the exaggerated caliber straight at the artisan's face, and pulled the trigger. Bullets shrieked through the air, repeatedly striking the defensive light membrane and deflecting away.
Beneath his feet, quicksilver rose continuously, intercepting the artisan's bullets and blades with pinpoint precision, entangling them.
Just like that, he stood planted before the hub, refusing to yield an inch.
It was a duel with no retreat.
The distance between them shrank steadily, step by step, until they could practically see the fury and chill in each other's eyes and trace the silent spread of broken capillaries.
Amid the roar, another bullet ricocheted off the light barrier before the Nether artisan.
He stared fixedly at Ji Jue.
Ten meters? At this distance, you still dare stand in my way?
Then die!
Yet in that instant, his body jolted violently. A piercing agony tore through his back as bone-chilling cold spread outward.
His rear defense had been breached!
A sniper!
Just moments ago, guided by Ji Jue, he had directed all his defenses forward. At his most vulnerable moment from behind, a bullet fired from outside the bank struck him dead center between the shoulder blades!
It had penetrated floors and walls in an instant, piercing six layers of barriers before breaking through the repulsion field to strike deep!
An alchemical bullet meticulously crafted by Lou Feng using Deft Craft and Crucible, endowed with the qualitative transformation of spiritus shaping, naturally boasted terrifying power.
The bullet struck home, releasing an unbearable chill that nearly froze him into a solid block of ice.
Unfortunately, beyond the repulsion field, the Nether artisan wore a layer of form-fitting flexible armor over his upper body, shielding his vitals.
It's over!
The Nether artisan bared his teeth in a silent grin. Ji Jue wasn't the only one calculating; he could do it too. At this distance, the blades catalyzed by Radical Change were more than enough to breach the defense of Metallic Quality and damage the hub.
In fact, it would blow the brat to pieces.
Die!
Yet before the end, the final thought that crossed his mind was: What just happened?
Without warning, every alchemical blade soaring through the air lost power simultaneously, clattering to the floor. They tumbled into the pool of blood alongside their fallen master.
Silence fell.
Even Ji Xue froze where she stood, bewildered and hesitant, wondering if this was some trick. She stared from a distance at the body steadily losing warmth, unable to comprehend.
"What just happened?"
"Yeah, what just happened?"
Ji Jue murmured with lowered eyes, gazing at the pool of blood spreading toward his feet, offering no explanation.
Behind the corpse sprawled face-up on the ground, a spiritus hand dissolved silently into nothingness, as if it had never existed.
Artisans were hard to kill.
An artisan on guard and prepared was even harder to kill.
Too much gear, too many defenses—heaven only knew how many life-saving trinkets he had strapped to his person.
Yet artisans were also fragile, because once a weakness was seized, there was zero chance of turning the tables...
The moment the repulsion field was shattered by Lou Feng's bullet, breaching the defenses alongside it was Ji Jue's third spiritus hand—capable of gathering and dispersing at will, coming and going without form.
Carrying every property of Non-Offensive, the spiritus hand plunged straight into the wound Ji Xue had carved into the man's neck, its index and middle fingers pinching tight around his carotid artery.
Solidifying blood, disrupting spiritus, scrambling blessings, wounding the soul—in an instant, after a seamless flurry of maneuvers, seizing the exact moment of his greatest vulnerability, Dissociation Art activated!
Matrix unraveling!
Finally, a surge of force delivered at point-blank range reduced his brain to mush!
Under such a sequence, even a Metamorphosis-tier artisan couldn't be deader. In the same situation, even Tong Shan would be locked down and run through by the Mercy bone blade, left entirely at someone's mercy—provided Ji Jue hadn't been crushed into an even paste by telekinesis beforehand.
Only now did Ji Jue finally let out a breath.
Time to hurry up and harvest spiritus... and process the materials!
Couldn't let them go to waste...
Objectively speaking, the opponent hadn't been weak at all.
He was leagues ahead of some shoddy hack like Du Deng, who had been packed off just to keep him out of sight.
Pity it still wasn't enough.
Who told Ji Jue to specialize in taking down his own kind?
No one was better at screwing an artisan than a fellow artisan.
Setting aside his odd assortment of creations and works, without even relying on the temperamental Edge of Revolution, his mastery of Dissociation Art alone allowed him to steadily counter anyone of the same rank. Even against an opponent an entire major stage above him, it remained a lethal threat.
Furthermore, with the Non-Offensive matrix in hand, it was like carrying a portable workshop, giving him the ability to adapt to any battlefield and exploit specific weaknesses.
From the moment his Dissociation Art shattered the first sword, Ji Jue had grasped the artisan's skills, style, and variations inside out.
There had been safer, easier approaches earlier. He could have stalled until Little Niuma arrived to back him up, then crushed the man head-on in one push.
Unfortunately, the tables had turned. Once the man decided to go down swinging, Ji Jue had been forced to prioritize protecting the hub.
He couldn't let the Evil Transmutation Cult realize the place had changed hands.
Otherwise, they would all be wiped out in one fell swoop.
"Finally, a breather."
After finishing his work, Ji Jue dragged over a chair and finally sat down.
Thick blood dripped from his fingertips, splashing into the crimson pool beneath his feet. The dripping sounds within this quiet enclave contrasted with the turmoil outside, accentuating the sudden calm.
Yet before long, both he and Ji Xue stiffened, their expressions shifting in unison.
An undisguised, ferocious aura appeared outside the hub, closing the distance at breakneck speed.
The door crashed open.
"What the fuck, where did the Evil Transmutation Cult scrape up these retards?"
A voice filled with irritation echoed through the swirling dust, dripping with displeasure: "I go take a shit, and everyone's practically been wiped out? Where's the artisan? Artisan, you still alive? Squeak if you are!"
No response.
"Holy shit—"
The backup cursed again upon spotting the corpse inside.
Or more accurately, upon seeing who was inside...
In the brief dead silence, Ji Jue's brows slowly arched. He looked over, his expression turning increasingly bizarre in the quiet.
The reinforcement who had barged in fell silent as well.
The two stared at each other, neither speaking a word.
"Smith!"
From the direction of the underground vault came a furious voice, shouting and urging.
It was the priest, battered and struggling under Tong Shan's overwhelming suppression, howling in grief and rage: "Smith! Smith, you son of a bitch, what the hell are you doing?!"
'Smith' said nothing.
Ji Jue said nothing either.
He just looked at him.
Through the drifting smoke and dust was a familiar face—the so-called 'Smith.'
"Long time no see, Old Tom,"
Ji Jue greeted him. "Ran all the way to Quancheng to pick up another gig?"
Chapter 217