To Share in Fortune

In the brief, dead silence of the corner, Sun Ci's gaze sharpened, cutting like a blade seeking to pierce right through that mangled face. "Let's hear it." "My mentor taught me a few tricks. I'll need some spiritus tonic, some purified mercury, and a few materials..." Ji Jue gave a wry smile. "If all goes well, efficiency should go up considerably." "By how much?" Sun Ci pressed. Ji Jue pondered for a moment—mainly calculating how much of a workload he could churn out to make a suitably impressive impression without being treated like a monster. "If luck is on our side, I can handle the dismantling and cleaning of seventy items all by myself." Nearly half... Sun Ci sucked in several ragged breaths of exhaust air, virtually ecstatic, yet he forcibly reined it in and asked pointedly, "Why help me? With skills like that, wouldn't it be better to suck up to the new manager?" "Once an ass-kisser makes management, what else does he know besides exploiting others to build political capital?" Ji Jue smiled bitterly, fresh blood oozing from his scarred face. "I'm a cripple. If I can't count on a team lead who might look out for me a little, am I supposed to pin my hopes on a guy like that?" "..." Sun Ci fell silent. After a long while, he asked, "What do you want?" "Only that if you ever have the chance to leave this place in the future, you'll give me a leg up." Ji Jue tapped the two crutches propping him up, his tone rueful. "I'm afraid I won't last that long otherwise." Sun Ci blinked, staring at Ji Jue as if beholding an even more wretched version of himself. At last, he made up his mind. "If this falls through, I might get stripped of my post tomorrow, and I could end up even worse off than you." "I know." "Even if I get stripped of it tomorrow, I'm still your supervisor today. Do you catch my drift?" "Of course." Ji Jue nodded. *If I go down, you're going down with me, so you'd better have real answers.* "As long as you can help me pull through, anything's negotiable." Sun Ci extended a hand. "From here on out, we share the good times." Ji Jue smiled as well, blood seeping from his wounds, and grasped Sun Ci's hand with meaningful weight. "And weather the bad." * Having grasped a second lifeline, Sun Ci naturally didn't dare hesitate. As a supervisor, he certainly enjoyed somewhat better treatment than ordinary workhorses. Before long, the pure spiritus tonic, mercury, and various materials Ji Jue had requested were brought before him. These were mostly common consumables and standard components—not difficult to obtain; it was just that apprentices lacked the connections. Sun Ci had worn down an old friend higher up, pleading with tears and draining favors dry, until he finally managed to scrounge them all together. Now, everything rested on Ji Jue. And Sun Ci wasn't the only one watching. The entire team was peeking out of the corners of their eyes—eager to see whether this newcomer, who had brazenly claimed he could handle half the load alone, truly had what it took. Ji Jue, on the other hand, was in no hurry. Taking the tonic vial, he cracked the neck against the table edge with practiced ease, then tipped it into his mouth like glucose, downing five or six bottles in one continuous breath. After enduring severe injury followed by ruthless extraction, the spiritus that had been nearly bone-dry all day finally fully recovered. In truth, this was merely for show. With Cousin nestled in his belly, he hadn't touched his spiritus reserves at all. Doing this now was simply to make the others believe his technique was extraordinarily draining. Next, he picked up the machining tools on the table and skillfully worked over the materials before him. Before long, a steel arm skeleton laced with fascial cords appeared on his workbench. He fished it up, dropped it into a tub of mercury, and when he pulled it out again, he held a complete arm. Just like that, he directed Sun Ci to slice an utterly gratuitous bloody gash into his own back. Amid "bloodcurdling wails" and "agonized convulsions," he "forcibly" grafted the virulent limb onto his body. Then another. And another. Soon, four arms protruded from behind him. Seeing how sinister and bizarre Ji Jue's methods were, Sun Ci's eyes only grew brighter and brighter—as everyone knew, the Path of Embers feared neither the sinister nor the bizarre; often, the more deviant a craft appeared, the more formidable its results. Watching Ji Jue pay such a harrowing price and seeing how terrifyingly nimble those four extra arms were, Sun Ci finally breathed a sigh of relief, his heart settling back into his chest. And when a literal whirlwind erupted over the workbench, he could no longer hold back and burst into wild laughter!!! With six arms operating in seamless coordination, how could the boost be merely threefold? What was being steadily delivered from the front lines were Spikes of Vile Folly. Massive iron stakes as tall as a grown man, they would forcefully trigger all Taint of Vile Folly and spread virulent poison once driven into the leylines. To say nothing of the lingering corruption trapped within. Disposing of these spent implements over the past few days had already chewed through an untold number of apprentices. Even the previous occupant of Ji Jue's station had ended up committing suicide, unable to bear the immense strain of the work. Yet in Ji Jue's hands, such intricate objects were treated like children's toys, effortlessly taken apart, treated, scrubbed clean, and serviced. Smooth as drifting clouds and flowing water, a marvel to behold. Even more astonishing was the low scrap rate: with only a light remelting and the installation of a new core, they could essentially be returned to service immediately. He truly lived up to being an apprentice personally nurtured at an artisan's side. Such skill and experience were leagues beyond anything these wild-grown apprentices could ever match. Still, the strain of such a craft had to be considerable. Ji Jue's face twitched and contorted constantly, as if enduring pure agony. In reality... Ji Jue genuinely felt like throwing up. It was like eating shit. Having grown accustomed to delicacies from mountains and seas—or street snacks at the very least—having a mouthful of dog-shit-flavored curry shoved down his throat made even Deus Ex Machina want to go on strike. *What kind of incompetent garbage made these things?* The fundamentals were a complete mess, propped up entirely by brute spiritus force. Conflicting structures were forcibly held together through corruption and aberrant mutation, yielding creations akin to malformed monstrosities. No wonder the failure rate was through the roof! Surrounding himself with such a batch of worthless fools, Kanemoto had to be exhausted out of his mind! Still, garbage though it was, some of the profound esoteric corruption-refinement techniques within weren't without merit... At least quite a few of the tricks could be applied to Little Niuma. If he used this to draw out the power within the dragon blood, could he perhaps add a flame-breathing function to it? Midway through the effortless disassembly and recycling, Ji Jue lost himself in research. ... After watching for a while, Sun Ci turned and departed. His smile vanished, replaced by a stern, frigid demeanor as he cracked down on the apprentices trying to slack off, barking orders for them to pick up the pace. Ji Jue's promise of seventy units was no empty boast. Yet if the others dropped the ball, Sun Ci still might not survive this ordeal. Dangling carrots while snapping the whip, he drove the workhorses to turn the millstone with everything they had, daring not slacken for a second. Minute by minute, time slipped away. The astonishing efficiency and output had already rippled across the entire subterranean workshop, prompting nearly every team to look up in curiosity. They watched as crate after crate of dismantled, completed components piled up into a small mountain. In the end, it was delivered to the office. Right before the supervisor. A grand total of one hundred fifty-nine. Nine extra. "..." In the protracted silence, the supervisor's expression shifted—dark, then icy—before he finally forced out a smile. "Good. Very good! Well done, indeed!" He reached out and clapped Sun Ci heavily on the shoulder, his gaze drifting toward Ji Jue behind him, who looked "utterly spent" and "emaciated." Nodding slowly, he said, "An apprentice personally trained by an artisan truly works at a different caliber." "You'd better keep it up, Old Sun." The supervisor gave Sun Ci a pointed look. "Don't go letting your subordinates overtake you." "Waves in the Yangtze push those ahead; the new inevitably replaces the old." Sun Ci's smile remained steady, completely unfazed. Start infighting with his greatest asset at a critical juncture like this? The supervisor would be grinning from ear to ear. Giving the supervisor no room to deflect or stall, he asked bluntly, "Take a look, sir. Everything is right here. If the inspection passes, please sign off so I can take my leave." The supervisor paused for a beat. He gave Sun Ci a penetrating look. Roughly yanking the clipboard over, he signed his name on the acceptance form, tossed the clipboard back, and turned away. Nearby, workers were already bustling about, categorizing the reconditioned components and setting them in place for bulk transport. Yet the moment he returned to his office and shut the door, the smile on the supervisor's face vanished instantly. In its place remained only twisted malice and gloom. Standing before the window, watching the crucible not far away and the mountainous heap of parts, his expression gradually settled, leaving only a lingering chill. "That new cripple really is a menace..." he whispered to himself. "Fortunately, menaces don't live long." Hands clasped behind his back, he clenched his fists, resolving his intent—*Operations have gone smoothly for so long; isn't it about time for an industrial accident? A few casualties are always unavoidable...* At that exact instant, he seemed to see something squirm on the pile of parts, crawling outward. Like an insect. He squinted, looking closely, but saw nothing. And after that, he saw nothing ever again. *BOOM!!!!* With a deafening blast, the entire subterranean workshop violently convulsed. Flames erupted, thick smoke billowed, shockwaves swept outward, and massive amounts of fuel rained down like fiery torrents. Screams and panicked cries rang out. Everyone witnessed it—right beside the supervisor's office... the colossal crucible that connected all the workbenches had violently detonated!!! "Supervisor! Supervisor!" Looking as devastated as if his own parents had died, the fair-faced apprentice instinctively charged toward the office, braving the flames in search of him. Then his expression twisted in terror, and he reflexively turned to flee. Unfortunately, it was already too late... Within the raging inferno, the mutilated corpse cloaked in thick, pitch-black sludge suddenly stirred. Across the charred, festering face, a ravenous smile spread. A gigantic bloodshot eye tore open across its chest, and pitch-black tentacles spilled from the rupture, lashing onto metal. It hauled the scraps close, assembling and fusing them together. In the blink of an eye, using mangled flesh as adhesive, it coalesced into a colossal monstrosity several meters tall. A massive hand shot out, seizing the apprentice and crushing him to powder. Devouring him hungrily. Shrill alarms blared, growing increasingly frantic, shrill, and deafening. Everyone's faces drained of color. That was no mere fire alarm, but a far deadlier catastrophic alert: Contamination Breach, Aberrant Coalescence! —Embers Corruption! Amid the screeching alarms, Ji Jue lifted his rust-encrusted cup, took a casual sip, and began humming a low tune. *One day, a peaceful workshop was suddenly attacked by an unknown parasitic lifeform...* And just like that, things were getting lively.