Tricks Before the Old Fossil

Before the tremor, the entire workshop had been orderly and peaceful, operating like clockwork as its divisions collaborated without a hitch. Yet the moment the alarm shrieked, those tightly integrated parts seemed to shear apart. Systems fell out of control, worked against one another, or crashed entirely. The crowd scattered. Collisions and trampling broke out incessantly as workers swarmed toward the main gates, clogging the exits until they overflowed. Not just the apprentices—even the artisans were gripped by terror. Had the Security Bureau attacked? Fuck, already? Then what about them? What about Grand Artisan Kanemoto? Where had the grand artisan gone? While swarms of apprentices surged toward the exits, many artisans instinctively pushed their way toward the upper levels. After the initial shock, chaos spread through the workshop like wildfire, heightened by the explosions resounding one after another from all directions. An elevator plummeted amid piercing screams. Fuel ignited; electrical circuits spiraled out of control; the power cut out; lights died. Under the dim, eerie glow of emergency lamps, stunned and terrified faces wore expressions of deep dread. "Quiet! Quiet, all of you shut up!" A black-robed artisan shoved open a door in fury. Glaring at the pandemonium in the corridor, he barked, "It was just a minor tremor! Everyone, get back to your posts!" "Get out of the way!" Shoving a panicked apprentice aside, Lianyun, Kanemoto's fourth disciple, roared, "Man your stations! No disorderly conduct! Do you want the grand artisan to come down and hold you accountable himself?!" A dead silence instantly fell over the hall. Everyone froze. Under Lianyun's cold glare, the foremen were the first to step forward, shouting and striking out to drive their subordinates back to their positions. Before long, the crowd thinned, and the remaining apprentices dispersed one by one. Most importantly, after that initial shockwave, nothing else had followed. It was just an earthquake. "A mob of useless rabble!" Lianyun scoffed, utterly unable to understand why the master had recruited such worthless trash. Even if the Security Bureau did attack, the workshop was completely secure; not even a Celestial-Human could pierce its outer defenses. When push came to shove, they could always tear through space and flee, facing no real danger at all. Only these good-for-nothings who couldn't even handle basic labor would descend into panic and stir up trouble at the slightest rustle of leaves. If they disturbed the grand artisan, every last one of them would face the punishment of the stone. And once that was done, they'd have to crawl out with their petrified limbs! The disorder along the way stoked Lianyun's fury higher and higher. When he spotted an apprentice crouched beneath a panel behind a corridor corner, doing heaven knew what, his anger flared past the breaking point. "Trash! What do you think you're doing?!" "Huh? Ah, me?" The panicked apprentice looked up blankly, tools still clutched in hand, babbling incoherently. "N-no, not me... Just now, the alarm... The workshop's verification system broke down. I—I'm troubleshooting..." Lianyun froze for a moment. "Get lost!" He shoved the apprentice aside in annoyance, popped open the panel, and awakened the circuit. He inspected it carefully, but the more he looked, the angrier he grew. "Where is it broken?" he barked, spinning back around. "Isn't it perfectly fine?!" "Huh?" The ugly, scar-faced apprentice blinked, leaned in, took a look, and then reached out to give it a stroke. *Crack!* With a sharp snap under his touch, the sequence module for identity recognition and verification within the workshop's base circuit shattered instantly, dissolving like wisps of light. As if it had never existed at all. The alarm that had just subsided immediately shrieked to life once more, shriller than before. "There," he said. "Now it's broken." "You..." Lianyun froze. As he turned his head stiffly, all he saw was a smile spreading across that scarred face. Then, a chilling sensation pierced his back. *Squelch...* Blood erupted and surged out. Spiritus turned turbulent, blessings ran amok, and his matrix shuddered. Before that blade forged of faint light—hovering somewhere between existence and nothingness—his personal defenses were completely useless, failing to offer the slightest resistance. Once the glimmering edge sank into his flesh, it instantly diffused and rushed through his entire body. The tangible blade transformed into invisible, scattered particles that permeated every corner, choking off the circulation of his spiritus and dulling his blessings. The operation of his matrix grew impossibly sluggish, failing to respond. He opened his mouth, vomiting a massive mouthful of gore, twitching as he instinctively tried to struggle. Then he saw the apprentice reach out again, pulling a bone blade out of thin air. And driving it straight into his forehead. After that, he couldn't move at all... "Phew..." Ji Jue wiped away his sweat, glanced down the empty corridor that no one dared enter, and let out a sigh of relief. The Blade of Flowing Light—a consumable blessed creation contributed by Young Master Lou. Shaped like a dagger, the blade above its hilt was ethereal and transparent, flowing like light. In reality, it was a crystalline creation formed from transmuted spiritus. Within it lay a blessing of the Tianyuan lineage: Harmonize with the Light. Its original effect was to reduce conflict among other blessings within one's body, acting as a buffer to mitigate friction between the self and the rules. Yet after Master Kong's meticulous conditioning, it had turned into an exceedingly vicious weapon for sneak attacks. The Lou clan's spiritus shaping imparted a state transmutation to the dagger's blade, bringing it as close to nonexistence as possible to bypass defensive artifacts. Once plunged into flesh, the spiritus would spontaneously disintegrate, sweeping through soul and body along with the blessing of Harmonize with the Light. Under its interference, the victim's consciousness—the distinctions between ego, superego, and id, along with all stray thoughts—would rapidly blur and turn ambiguous. Soul, flesh, matrix, and blessings, overloaded several times over, would lose their independence and be forcibly harmonized and collapsed into one another. It was like deleting every delimiter in a database, stripping out all paragraph breaks, erasing annotations and identifiers until everything melted into an indistinct mass, unresponsive and utterly crashed. The victim would be reduced entirely to an ordinary human, left helpless at the mercy of others. Of course, if the target belonged to White Stag, Swarm, or Desolate Ruins, it might only daze them for a heartbeat. But if they happened to be fellow Embers... then things became very interesting indeed. Truly, no one wished for the death of a practitioner more than a peer in the same trade. Vicious as hell. Yet ridiculously effective! Bypassing defense, true damage, silence, and crowd control all in one—after using it once, the thrill was simply addictive. Risking his life like this, shouldn't he fleece a few more out of Young Master Lou later? Looking at the artisan twitching uncontrollably on the ground, unable to move, Ji Jue calmly reached down, unpinned the man's talisman, and fastened it to his own clothes. The Non-Offensive emblem surfaced on both of his hands. Under the artisan's despairing gaze, Ji Jue deftly extracted the workshop recognition authority attached to the man's matrix and transplanted it into his own soul. "Thank you for nature's bounty." Ji Jue pressed his palms together in sincere gratitude. Then, smiling, he reached out toward that violently spasming face. He estimated he had three minutes left. Plenty of time to harvest materials. ... In truth, it wasn't enough. He had originally expected the workshop to descend into prolonged chaos, taking at least ten minutes or more to return to normal. Yet before five minutes had passed, all disorder was suppressed with iron-fisted force, returning the facility to dead silence. Not a single person dared wander about. Fast—far too fast! This was Kanemoto's domain, after all. There wasn't the slightest room for foul play under his nose. Faced with an unexpected attack, the workshop's emergency protocols remained exceedingly polished, stabilizing the situation to the greatest extent before they began screening for hidden threats. And upon discovering the mangled, unrecognizable corpse in the corridor, everyone sucked in a cold breath of air. "All departments are to inspect for security risks and verify your rosters! Anyone away from their post or acting suspiciously is to be detained immediately!" Cunling, the temporary overseer of the workshop, barked with a dark expression. "Do you understand?!" "Yes, sir!" His subordinates nodded frantically. Among the crowd, Sun Ci, who had only recently been promoted to scrap depot supervisor, was especially alarmed. Recalling his assistant's mysterious behavior over the past two days, his unease deepened. He could barely keep a calm expression on his face. After humoring a few passing remarks from colleagues, he hurried all the way back down to the basement and cautiously knocked on the office door. An irritable voice came from inside. "What is it?" "N-no, nothing." Sun Ci instinctively breathed a sigh of relief and forced a smile. "There's trouble in the workshop. An emergency sweep." The door swung open, revealing that familiar, ugly face. It was full of impatience. "What? Need my help?" "No, no need!" Sun Ci shook his head vigorously, his heart settling back into his chest. "I was just worried... worried about your..." "Worried I'm the one playing tricks?" The scar-faced apprentice sneered. "Relax. I don't have the guts to pull fancy moves right under the grand artisan's nose." "No, of course not! How could you!" Sun Ci smiled, thoroughly relieved. The door slammed shut with a sharp *bang*, nearly smacking his nose, but he didn't care in the slightest. All his burdens vanished, leaving him light on his feet. It was fine. As long as everything was fine. Behind the door, the mercury puppet bearing an Aether revision page gradually lost the color of its skin, turning unresponsive. Silence fell once more. * Meanwhile, on the third floor inside the Storehouse, a tense inspection and inventory check was still underway. As the outer reserves were gradually accounted for, the bald woman's expression relaxed, and her glances toward the wide armchair beside her grew less guarded. "It appears there are no issues with the materials and reserves here." Looking at the compiled reports in her hands, she let out a sigh of relief. "It's all here. Would you like to inspect it, Lord Lianyun?" "Just a pile of junk materials. What's there to look at?" Lounging with his legs crossed as he awaited the tally, the artisan 'Lianyun' waved an indifferent hand. "If I were a thief, I wouldn't break in for this clumsy trash. "Are you certain there are no problems with the precious materials in the inner vault?" "Th-that..." The bald woman stiffened, growing nervous. "The outer seals are intact, but inside... my clearance isn't high enough. I only have one key." "That's why they sent me." Lianyun glanced at her and raised his hand, displaying the spiritus sequence granted by the workshop. "The other key is with me. You still remember the emergency management protocols, don't you?" "Yes, yes." The bald woman nodded frantically and led the way. In an emergency, opening the Precious Material Storage required two levels of verification—the warehouse manager and special authorization—meaning two keys, unless Grand Artisan Kanemoto intervened personally. Furthermore, at least two people had to enter together, and no withdrawals, relocations, or alterations of any kind were permitted. Having managed the warehouse for so long, she knew the rules by heart. Yet the further forward they walked, the more an inexplicable dread gnawed at her heart. It felt as though something was amiss, though she couldn't put a finger on it. Movie scenes kept flashing through her mind—the kind where the manager unlocks the vault doors, only to find the interior stripped bare... Until the innermost heavy doors slowly ground open. Seeing the familiar scene inside, entirely untouched, she breathed a huge sigh of relief, realizing her back was drenched in sweat. Thank goodness. It was just a false alarm. "The Tier-2 precious materials and the critical items recently delivered are all here." Deftly retrieving the inventory sheet, she turned to hand it to the artisan beside her. But the moment she looked back, she froze in place. A chill ran through her entire body. "Hmm?" Lianyun looked over, puzzled. The bald woman's face twitched uncontrollably. "L-Lord Lianyun... your... your... face... face..." A smile. Just as that smile broke across his face, a thin streak of blood abruptly split open on his forehead, slowly tracing its way downward. *Flap!* Losing its adhesion, half of the thin skin of his face fell directly into the dust on the floor. It was frozen in an expression of despair and terror from just before death. "Oh, don't mind that. It's new; didn't glue it on right." 'Lianyun' bent down, picked up the half-face of skin, and slapped it back onto his mutilated face. But he stuck it in the wrong spot—slapping it directly over the half that was still attached, leaving it dangling halfway off and making the exposed muscle on the other half of his face look all the more grotesque. Under the pallid light, blood slowly seeped from beneath the tear and dripped down. It curved into a mocking smirk. *Gulp.* The bald woman swallowed hard with great difficulty. That monstrous face was now inches from her own. Smiling, he asked, "What were you saying just now... about my face?"