Before the Storm

To be fair, Ji Jue felt the exam was wonderful. Everything about it was great—a phenomenal simulation that set Ji Jue's inspiration spinning. No money needed, no responsibilities, no worrying about consequences, wild mobs scattered everywhere for him to fool around with however he liked with no one to stop him, and exclusive access to the entire island's resources. He had never had such a glorious opening hand. The only pity was that it wasn't PvP. Otherwise, how fun would it have been to hack down his peers! Pull everyone into the simulation without warning, dump them onto a deserted island, and then tell them: only one of you can survive to become an artisan. Then they could dive right into the exhilarating slaughter of scheming alliances, deadly betrayal, and life-or-death intrigue. That plan was great in practically every way—fast-acting, efficient, and top-tier entertainment. There was just one tiny issue... it was way too damn White Stag. If the Chief of the Wild Gathering heard about it, he'd probably give a thumbs-up and praise Tianshu as the true orthodox heir to the White Stag. A magnificent demonstration—that's how we'll butcher artisans next time. Even ghosts knew that the Embers were at their weakest in sudden encounter battles. A bare-handed survival elimination without tools or preparation would hardly reveal any fundamental aptitude at all. In stark contrast to that, however... was the terrifying dominance an Embers practitioner brought to battle once fully prepared. Only those who had crossed an Embers artisan knew how wretched it felt to have a thief constantly scheming after them. It was a suffocating dread like sinking into deep mud. Every weakness relentlessly assaulted, every strength suppressed, every trick countered... Even if you had some secret trump card to turn the tables at the last moment, you could rarely achieve anything. An experience like eating shit from start to finish—even those maniacs from the Swarm chanting "Fight, hell yeah!" would probably steer clear. Fortunately, unless there was blood-deep, life-or-death enmity, artisans generally wouldn't invest so heavily just to target someone. After all, everything cost money... Unlike right now, where not a single cent was spent, materials were lying around free for the taking, with no worry about taking too much, only about not being able to use it all. It was an absolute paradise for the Embers! As for the diminished gameplay experience from the lack of peers, Ji Jue planned to make up for it on the wild mobs. "...What fine, exquisite material!" Ji Jue held up his binoculars, gazing at the abomination lurking in the jungle beneath the distant hills. It stood a full eight or nine meters tall, an emaciated silhouette with corpse-like, ash-gray skin, part human and part tree. Its hanging limbs bore the texture of roots as it bent down, greedily devouring the aberrants that had delivered themselves to its doorstep. Its face was caked in blood and filth. Ugly as it was, it still possessed its own kind of charm. Watching raw material writhe and twist so lively before his eyes held a peculiar coquettish allure, setting his heart racing and his cheeks flushing. Thinking of the intimate contact about to take place made him downright breathless. It lacked the cumbersome, redundant structures common to ordinary aberrants, with no external rot or odd mutations, completely unified from top to bottom as though born that way. An abomination that had completed its Metamorphosis! When an ordinary ecosystem suffered corruptive erosion, it was like undergoing a violent reshuffling of both gene and soul. Organisms unable to bear the burden typically dropped dead on the spot; the luckier ones kept their lives, but usually had no sanity left to speak of. Corrupted entities of this kind were collectively termed aberrants. They were like cancerous monsters warped by biochemical pollution, each bizarre in its own way, their internal physiology chaotic, contradictory, and self-conflicting. Sprouting extra arms or extra eyes was merely the most common manifestation; some would even deteriorate and perish if left alone, becoming food for other aberrants. Corruption was like heavy metal toxins, accumulating upward along the food chain. Organisms either collapsed and died amidst the mutations or, through luck or sheer resilience, completed Metamorphosis and Regeneration, "evolving" into a stable form fundamentally different from their past. Some even possessed the potential for further growth and reproduction. If aberrants were scrap offcuts, then abominations were finished products—an entirely different species spawned within corrupted environments, thoroughly incompatible with the ecology of the Present Realm. A scoundrel living merely drove up the price of rice, but a creature like this produced pollution simply by existing and breathing. Hence why they were called abominations. Many Celestial Chosen of the Vortex lineage ventured deep into contaminated zones year after year for research purposes, hunting for traces of abominations. Over the years, abomination studies had gradually developed into an academic discipline. Ji Jue decided that if he had the chance later, he'd find someone to tutor him. After all, he couldn't just have prime materials right under his nose without even knowing their names, right? What if he wasted materials due to ignorance?! At this moment, atop the hill, the ferocious, heavy armor was concealed beneath a thick camouflage of fallen leaves and withered branches. Ji Jue squatted on the shoulder of the power armor, pen and notebook in hand, scribbling and sketching. Calculating. From time to time, he raised his hand with a crude anemometer to take readings and estimate the distance. If only rough regional coordinates were required, humidity and Coriolis effects didn't need to be factored in for now, and gravity and gravitational acceleration remained unchanged inside the simulation. A simple math problem, hardly even an inconvenience. His pen tapped against the notebook. Based on mass, the target abomination was likely around nine to ten tons. Its spiritus fluctuations were intense; in terms of evaluation, probably on the higher end of Disaster-grade. Roughly at the level where, in an unprepared face-to-face encounter, it could casually crush his current self to death with one hand. Its reaction speed was ridiculous—faster even than ordinary Celestial Chosen, likely a neural mutation and metamorphosis. Regeneration speed was unknown. With this bulk... "Saturation bombardment. Let's start with three rounds." Counting on his fingers the stockpile numbers and ammunition types currently in the storehouse, Ji Jue decided to give them all a try. After confirming the calculations were accurate, he decisively pressed the button on the radio controller. The radio waves didn't seem to alert the abomination in the forest. After all, it had originally been nothing more than a wild beast or a dead Celestial Chosen; it wouldn't have evolved sensory organs for that. Yet the low rumble echoing from afar drew its attention. Before the skeletal carcass it had picked clean, it suddenly whipped its head around on alert, looking toward the source of the noise. And then, it had no head— Like a crushed persimmon, pulp splattered everywhere. In the fiery flash of the blast, a torrential storm of metal fragments sprayed out, and one happened to punch straight through its skull! Only then did the thunderous roar and howling gale rush over. High upon the distant ridge, a crude cannon barrel protruding from the mountain showed no reflection whatsoever, glowing red-hot. And in the hollow behind the bunker, mechanical arms made predominantly of quicksilver had already readjusted their angles under Ji Jue's command. Then—load, fire! In an instant, spanning a distance of several kilometers and leaving behind a silver trail of vaporized quicksilver, the shell screamed through the air once more—guided by manual navigation through Ji Jue's observations and micro-adjustments from a hand of quicksilver inside! *Snap!* The artillery shell came to a dead halt in midair. Frozen. Phlogiston erupted, flames spouting forth. In the muffled boom, gale-force winds swept out, snapping dozens of massive trees. Yet the scattering metal shrapnel ricocheted, rebounded, and scattered as if colliding with an invisible wall. In mere moments, a gore-slick head had already regenerated from the severed neck. A solid black cyclopean eye lifted, its compound structure intricate as a honeycomb, dilating and contracting until it locked onto the incoming shell. It simply raised a limb and pointed from afar. Instantly, the shell's speed dropped to a crawl, froze, and even the shockwave and flames of the explosion were repelled outward. A Stasis Zone of the Desolate Ruins? A mental revision from Ascension? "No, it's a force field interference akin to Tianyuan!" Ji Jue clicked his tongue in a murmur. He hadn't expected to see such a troublesome ability on an abomination. And—wait, did his shot just ruin any vital materials?! In that instant, the abomination had clearly generated a temporary repulsive field, deflecting everything approaching at high speed. The moment it pinpointed the direction of the attack, the abomination vanished. Using the same force field to repel against itself, it catapulted forward. At a speed barely trackable by the naked eye, it smashed through every obstacle before it, hurtling straight toward the origin of the cannon fire. Too fast! "Ah..." Holding his binoculars, Ji Jue let out a soft laugh. "Took the bait." *BOOM!!!* In that instant, the sprinting abomination flew backward at several times its original speed... soaring into the sky amid a blast wave, nearly blown to bits. The explosives pre-planted along the unavoidable route detonated with a roar. Having forcibly infused massive amounts of phlogiston without any regard for safety thresholds, the already volatile nitroglycerin had solidified into a grease-like state. Forget slight impacts—even breathing a little too loudly in front of it could trigger a detonation. Now, as the handmade blasting cap ignited, scorching red flames tore through the earth and shot into the sky, instantly swallowing the abomination whole. Shrapnel swept out like a torrential downpour, briefly held back by the repulsive field. But right after, amid violent shifts in barometric pressure, the field fell apart. In the surging shockwaves, the limbs of the tree-man abomination twisted inch by inch and shattered. The pressure wave was merely the appetizer. Right behind it came the extreme heat and raging flames unleashed by the sea of phlogiston. Especially since Ji Jue had sociopathically stirred in white phosphorus, aluminum powder, copious spiritus, and numerous secret little seasonings, the billowing fire was so thick it could almost be described as viscous, transforming everything in its wake into purgatory. From that inferno, a piercing screech finally rang out. The rapidly regenerating abomination thrashed and writhed violently, crawling on all limbs as though molting, desperate to claw its way out of the sea of flames. Unfortunately, the cannon bombardment had never once stopped. A metallic squall rained down from the sky, piercing flesh and embedding deep into its hardening body before gradually melting into molten iron, the rich aluminum powder mixed within feeding the conflagration further. The abomination roared. Even across hundreds of meters, the sound remained shrill, like blades scraping across eardrums. Blinding beams resembling heat rays burst from its eyes, sweeping wildly in every direction. Yet they could not sever this incinerating cage. Dozens of limbs flailed and lashed out in frenzy. Futile. In the end, its sounds gradually faded, leaving only distant shells slamming into it again and again, ravaging its body. The carbonized husk cracked and crumbled. Only long after the vast quantities of combustion agents had finished reacting, upon the oxygen-starved scorched earth, did nothing remain but a hollow shell. Plumes of thick smoke lingered endlessly. Scarlet armor strode across the blackened ground, advancing slowly, step by vigilant step. Yet there was no reaction. "Dead already?" Ji Jue looked down, raised a foot, and kicked the carbonized abomination. A cracking sound echoed. "Tsk, that was fast... Well, you didn't actually think I'd buy that, did you?" The instant he turned around, gory limbs violently burst forth from beneath the carbonized debris! —Underground! Unlike the chaos and frenzy of aberrants, abominations possessed intelligence; many had originally been human, giving them even greater capacity for thought and survival. The moment it realized it couldn't escape the inferno, amid its seemingly futile thrashing, it had driven more and more of its limbs deep into the earth. Even if the entire ground was burned to cinders, the thick layers of soil insulated it, keeping out most of the intense heat and destructive force. It had preserved itself to the greatest extent possible. Lurking and growing. Just like a plant, rapidly restoring itself. At this moment, the abomination hidden beneath the caked scorched earth erupted! And then... found it couldn't get up. Try again! Up! Fourth attempt! Fifth attempt! Like someone lying under the covers on a freezing winter morning who didn't want to go to work—no matter how many alarms were set, they just couldn't win the war against getting out of bed. Only this time, what bound the abomination wasn't a warm blanket. It was crimson quicksilver that had seeped into the soil without its knowledge, snaking in from even deeper underground! Countless strands coiled around its regenerated limbs and torso, abruptly hardening into shackles, discarding all pretense of concealment as they surged and engulfed it, wrapping tight as vipers. All at once, the scorched earth churned like a boiling cauldron. Crimson quicksilver and thrashing limbs surfaced and submerged amid writhing spasms. Like a death struggle in the deep abyss. Without the enhancement of a blessing, the quicksilver lacked sufficient hardness and tensile strength; in extreme situations, it could usually serve only as drive mechanisms, conductors, or carriers, utterly inadequate for wrestling an abomination. Unfortunately, the abomination was too grievously wounded, and had regenerated too hastily. Not only had quicksilver bored into its wounds, but heavy metal toxins had also infiltrated it as its roots absorbed moisture... Not to mention the devastation Ji Jue had inflicted! Ignoring the constantly squirming roots and limbs, the armor stomped forward across the ground and planted its foot down on the abomination's body through the churning soil. Then, he unslung an exaggerated firearm over two meters long from his back. Holding it in his grip, he leveled it at the abomination's torso. Pulled the trigger! *BOOM!!!* A flash of metallic light vanished in an instant, piercing the dirt and wedging deep into the abomination's body—like tons of straws ruthlessly dropped onto a camel's back! "Judging by the general structure and ammunition type, it should be an anchor assault rifle from the Federation," Gustav explained to his puzzled colleague before the floating light. "Think of it as a shotgun designed for armor. Pure kinetic lethality, using specialized spike rounds meant for large war machines and fellow power armor suits. "Though looking at it, that's likely the previous generation's design philosophy. Modern weapons of this type developed in recent years have done away with solid rounds, opting instead to project shaped metal jets for armor penetration." "Hoh, the kid has quite a varied curriculum!" Jiang Tongguang marveled, ticking them off on his fingers: from the initial refurbishment and maintenance, architecture and construction, to the subsequent assembly lines and manufacturing... As for Ji Jue's greatest strength, mechanical engineering, he wasn't surprised at all. After all, hadn't Ye Xian been researching precisely that all these years? The construction of composite blessed creations was her greatest specialty outside of spiritus refinement, so it was hardly a shock that she would teach her student mechanical engineering. From the looks of it, Ye Xian was dead set on leveling up an alt—a student just like herself, master of all trades, without a single weakness. "So lucky," Jiang Tongguang sighed softly. As a student, encountering a teacher like Ye Xian was enviable luck. But as a teacher, encountering a student who mastered whatever was taught and excelled at whatever they learned—was that not hitting the jackpot as well? Otherwise, there wouldn't be so many lineages dying out without successors. "I see." Gustav's sudden, enlightened murmur brought Jiang Tongguang back to his senses. Looking toward the screen in confusion, he quickly caught onto the key detail Gustav meant. "The bullets?" The ammunition was off! Even the devastating damage from the earlier artillery bombardment was nothing more than a "flesh wound" to an abomination, healable with a breath of downtime and unworthy of concern. Yet now, as Ji Jue fired shot after shot, the abomination's thrashing and movements visibly slowed, sluggish and stiffening... Just as Gustav had said, relying on the kinetic lethality of solid ammunition belonged to an outdated philosophy. Unless necessary, there was no reason to cling stubbornly to old designs. Unless alloy spike rounds possessed an irreplaceable advantage over shaped metal jets. Such as acting as alchemical creations! "...A reverse application of Fluid Alchemy!" Jiang Tongguang grasped it in an instant. Right now, as those alloy spikes over a meter long were violently propelled by gunpowder, driving through the earth and lodging into the abomination's flesh, the spiritus circuits etched onto them awakened upon activation. Their function was simple: seal spiritus, suppress the soul! Each metal spike plunged into its flesh was engraved with the fruits of Solid Alchemy, forcefully imposing that shackle upon the abomination's physical form, choking off the circulation of spiritus, and even using this broken body as a vessel to seal the abomination's soul inside! Entangled by crimson quicksilver and ravaged from both within and without, it couldn't even pull out the iron spikes piercing its flesh. It struggled in vain, blind to any hope. It couldn't even self-destruct. It could only watch helplessly as it was turned into a specimen... *Boom!* When the final metal spike drove into the abomination's body, the mangled husk had already been turned into a pincushion by Ji Jue. To be safe, Ji Jue used a double dose, taking every precaution to eliminate all risks and ensure his material remained fresh, pristine, and whole all the way back into his workshop. Soon, under the flow of crimson quicksilver, the utterly immobilized abomination was completely swallowed, coated, and hardened. It turned into a blood-red metallic statue bristling with barbs. Packaged up, job well done! And so, eating canned rations and humming a tune, he carried the raw material back toward his workshop. Having dealt with the first one, Ji Jue had already figured out where to find the next. The thought of opening his eyes tomorrow to see fresh materials waiting before him made him chuckle aloud. Compared to the dog-eat-dog cannibalism of the Profound, the Association was still better after all. Not only could they feast on people, they could feast on abominations too. These glorious, booming days just never ended! Beyond the floating light, after a long silence, only a soft sigh remained. "Tell me, is there really any need to evaluate a pervert like this?" Holding his pen, Jiang Tongguang pondered briefly and jotted down a score of "99" on the form. The highest score for the preliminary evaluation. Truth be told, he should have given a "100," but one point had to be docked for presentation... Not that it traumatized the two directors, but if they didn't make a gesture, people might think the Association encouraged candidates to lean toward the Profound. Thank goodness there weren't many onlookers right now, or the Association's tip lines would probably be ringing off the hook—such blatant, ruthless exploitation of corruption would have an immeasurable negative influence on apprentices! "Hmm, let me see..." He glanced briefly over the roster in his hands. "As of now, ninety-one examinees have passed the preliminary evaluation, and there should be plenty more to come. Even after trying this hard to weed people out, so many still remain... "The caliber of this batch is getting ridiculously high!" Saying that, his smile grew increasingly mischievous as he glanced at the stone-faced Gustav. "Should I say congratulations?" "Knowing how to follow the book and stick to the rules is, at best, work that any mediocre fool could pull off alone. What caliber is there to speak of? Taking precautions and being prepared is only what's expected." Gustav shot him a sideways glance, not understanding why he was making such a fuss. "Besides, wasn't this week specifically set aside as breathing room for them to adapt to the environment? If they slack off because of temporary peace, it's nothing more than slow suicide." Jiang Tongguang gave a slight shrug. "Then when do you plan to tell these poor kids that a little mystery surprise is coming next?" Gustav remained cold. "When they realize the environmental corruption index is creeping higher and higher... they'll naturally understand." Now that the little frogs in the pot had gradually grown accustomed to the water's temperature... Next, it was time to crank up the gas burner and treat everyone to something truly exhilarating...