The Beginning of Strife

A donkey dropping might look glossy on the outside, but it was still dung. The battered chair looked so pretentious that Ji Jue had thought it was something great. Yet it turned out not to possess even a shred of ergonomic design, lacking so much as a cushion. No wonder that damned thing earlier had such a foul temper and loved glaring at people. It had probably been suffering from an aching ass thanks to a flare-up of hemorrhoids. *Snap!* Just as Ji Jue was letting his mind wander, he saw the spiritus crystals scattered across the floor fade like draining color, rapidly turning transparent and dissolving into nothingness like phantoms. He didn't even have time to stop it. And then, not only the chair under his rear, but even those Valhalla statues sealed in blood-colored metal rapidly emptied into mere shells. Their contents had vanished into thin air! "Wait, where are my materials?!" Ji Jue was incensed, looking all around. Imagine spending a fortune whale-buying items, finally downing the boss after a grueling fight, and just as you were getting ready to inspect the drops and loot, eager to feast your eyes on the precious materials right before you—*snap*, gone in an instant. How the hell was anyone supposed to play this?! Unplayable trash game! Yet it wasn't just the invaders' remains that vanished; the damage and debris throughout the workshop, and even the spiritus Ji Jue had expended... everything rapidly restored itself as if time were rewinding. In the end, it was as though nothing had happened at all. All that remained was Ji Jue looking around, completely baffled at what the hell was going on. Suddenly, everything before his eyes seemed to turn illusory as well. "What the... fuck?" It was as though he had plummeted into the cosmos in an instant—boundless darkness, leaving only the shining point of light representing Ji Jue and, farther off, a series of distinct lights. At that moment, near those other lights, blurry silhouettes were also looking around. Unfortunately, beyond the gleams, nothing else could be distinguished. Eighty-three! In a flash, Ji Jue had counted the points of light. If he wasn't mistaken, that was the number of examinees still remaining. Counting himself, eighty-four. Immediately after, streaming light washed over him, the scene shifting as a third-person observation perspective unfolded. Through torrential black rain, the silhouette of the abomination armor emerged, running on full power, advancing! It was undeniably a recording from another simulation. When Ji Jue saw it, he grew excited at once, slapping his thigh and leaning closer. *Let me see which unlucky bastard this is!* Then he saw, in the domain surrounding the observation post, countless crisscrossing spiritus prisms and, reconstructed right at the center, a colossal workshop that was seamless and integrated like polished jade. That familiar aura... "Holy shit, Old Lou!" Though he had been so angry he almost laughed when Old Lou ambushed him earlier, witnessing this scene made Ji Jue thoroughly entertained. Watching the overloaded armor barge through everything, breaching the perimeter defenses at top speed and crashing into the workshop, he was grinning ear to ear. "Ah, it's Old Lou after all—still green, just a bit too green." Ji Jue pointed and critiqued. *If I were Old Lou, I'd definitely have planted a field of directional mines or phlogiston explosives here, or even mounted a massive spiritus cannon right behind the door to give the intruder a mysterious surprise. Pity he's still bound by common sense; the doorway is positioned far too politely—not kicking it open would almost disappoint expectations. And the biggest problem is... such a massive base, and it doesn't even have a self-destruct mechanism or a self-destruction sequence?! Come on, what a waste of such a huge workshop! How is this any different from having hotpot in Shuzhou without spicy red broth?* Along the way, it wasn't as if there were no defensive installations or counterattack sequences, but unfortunately, against the thick-hided, armed-to-the-teeth abomination armor, they were completely useless. Simple, robust, maxed-out offense and defense, driving straight for the heart. Using the repulsive field to destroy or defend when necessary. Those translucent spiritus servants and numerous crystal guardians couldn't even withstand a single clash; the armor drove straight in, to the point that... it completely ignored any other signs. A mirror image was ultimately just a mirror image. It couldn't fully replicate the real person; its consciousness couldn't keep up either. At best, it was a paint-by-the-numbers copy. Not only were its moves occasionally laughably bad, but Ji Jue could feel his blood pressure spiking just watching it. His smile slowly faded. He wanted nothing more than to fish the mirror image out, grab it by the throat, and demand: *What the fuck are you thinking?* Lou Feng had clearly tuned the environment inside the workshop, using a high-density spiritus environment to corrode and disrupt. At a time like this, why was it still barreling blindly forward? It had two auxiliary engines; detonating just one would be enough to temporarily disperse the conduction lag caused by spiritus corrosion. Come on, can't you see such an obvious trap?! He's flaunting himself to bait you! *Boom!* As the crystal golem abruptly transformed, dissolving and reforming, it seized the moment of the armor's sluggishness to spread across it, re-solidifying to lock down the monstrous arm and the chassis's movements... A glimmer of light burst through the wall, flashing by in an instant! Inside the workshop, a drenched Lou Feng finally let out a breath of relief, slowly lowering his searing palm. That wisp of a spiritus jet, so tiny it barely registered as a threat, had actually slipped through a seam in the armor, navigated several bends within, and pierced straight through the cockpit! Blood seeped out; the armor went dead. A reversal kill! Just like a needle slaying a giant. Form and raw power didn't matter; how to properly utilize that single sliver of force to achieve the objective was the true essence. "Tsk..." Ji Jue gave a soft sigh. "Hiding a move like that, huh?" He had never seen Lou Feng display such an ultra-long-range manipulation of his own spiritus; it had clearly been kept in reserve against him. In less than two minutes, Lou Feng had deduced the abomination armor's rough internal structure, sacrificed part of the workshop to lure the intruder into a trap, pinpointed the weak spot, and struck with a fatal blow! In all fairness, even Ji Jue himself, if hard-crowd-controlled, wouldn't have had a better way to respond to a strike like that. It couldn't be helped; ever since his debut, Ji Jue had practically never encountered an opponent that Non-Offensive and Deus Ex Machina couldn't handle. Without Non-Offensive, he couldn't perform barehanded transmutation and various maneuvers, naturally losing most of his ways to adapt on the fly based on the situation. Once separated from the workshop, the armor could only respond passively using its own armaments and set routines; once an opponent saw through its tricks, it was naturally at their mercy. Without Ji Jue's consciousness and piloting, the pilot 'Ji Jue' inside the mirror armor had instead become its greatest vulnerability. In other words, in this workshop invasion phase, one couldn't count on extraordinary piloting; how to utilize limited conditions and materials to minimize the construct's flaws and maximize its strengths was of paramount importance. Still, it wasn't impossible to work around... Ji Jue pinched his chin in thought, only to hear exaggerated laughter from the scene. After repeated testing—including but not limited to hammering, spiritus bombardment, dismantling, and poking repeatedly with a wooden stick—Lou Feng, finally certain the intruder was completely dead, stepped forward. Stepping onto the armor, he threw his head back and laughed uproariously. "Hahahahaha! Ji Jue, a mere nobody—nothing special after all!" *Bang!* A strange noise came from inside the battered armor, likely the sound of an idling engine burning out. Lou Feng jumped in shock, darting back like lightning. After watching for a good while, he actually stepped back onto it again and resumed laughing maniacally. *Give me a damn break!* Ji Jue's eye twitched, veins bulging on his forehead. *Nothing special, huh?* *A mere Ji Jue, huh?* *Fine! Just you wait! Once the exam is over, I'm throwing a sack over your head and beating you with a club!* Meanwhile, not only Ji Jue, but nearly all the apprentices participating in the simulation had learned through the illusions what had befallen their creations. Some beamed with joy upon discovering their creations had crushed all opposition in ruin, eliminating their opponents entirely; some calmly took notes on the strengths and weaknesses exposed in their workshop offense and defense; while others... were sweating bullets, questioning their life choices. "What kind of monster is this?!" An apprentice whose beard and hair were braided into plaits looked thoroughly grim. His exposed hands, forearms, neck, and face were covered in intricate tattoos—spiritus circuits grafted onto his body through tattooing via the techniques of North Wind Workshop over recent days. In a sense, his entire body was a creation, the workshop's core hub. Watching the tragic fate of his painstaking work—more than a dozen Soul-Hunting Knights being utterly ravaged—and the near-absurd control of the defender, his expression grew darker and darker. Indeed, compared to berserkers, models like the Soul-Hunting Knights were better suited to harassment and eradication under supportive buffs... but that didn't mean that once separated from the workshop and support, they should be reduced to scrap for anyone to trample! After hearing the rasping commentary within the illusion, his face was completely ashen, yet in the end, he didn't utter a word. A win was a win, and a loss was a loss. Beyond the harshness and cold pragmatism of the Embers lineage, the iron laws of North Wind Workshop did not permit him to make excuses or shift blame after a crushing defeat. If he wanted to reclaim his honor, the only way was to rise from the battlefield again and secure victory by any means necessary. The Soul-Hunting Knights were indeed sufficient to defend the workshop, but their destructive power was ultimately limited. *It seems the core construction of Surtr needs to be accelerated...* In another dark void, a slender figure wearing a mask sat motionless in a chair. The eyes behind the eerie mask remained unshaken. "...From the Federation?" she murmured to herself, searing that bloodstained metal beast mask into her memory. Winning or losing was secondary; as Imperial trueblood, she could never permit the throne to suffer such defilement and contempt. This debt had to be settled with her own hands! "Aside from maintaining Weight of Kingship, priority should go to constructing the interference sequence of Worldly Turmoil..." As for the last one, Lou Feng: seeing his spiritus giant countered so brutally, he wore an equally foul expression, and he couldn't help wanting to curse. So many unbearable memories surged into his mind, rumbling like a dump truck. Yet hearing Ji Jue's final assessment, his expression twitched slightly, the corners of his mouth threatening to curl upward. He gave a cold snort and looked away. *His taste isn't half bad, at least.* The replays of the many recordings soon concluded. Though there was no way to inspect records unrelated to oneself, a list appeared at the very end. On it were the eighty-four surviving participants in the current Tower of Myriad Transformations simulation, ranked according to their scores at this stage. However, after first locating their own positions, nearly every apprentice raised their eyes to the top of the leaderboard, toward the unfamiliar name sitting at the peak with a score of 363 points. —[Tide Sound Workshop: Ji Jue]! Following him was second place, [Clock Tower Workshop: André Ángel Gonzalo], score 311; third place, [Dragon Heart Workshop: Lin Ke], score 302; fourth place, [Hundred-Eyed Giant Workshop: Nikolai Gorbunov], score 293... "Twenty-seventh?" Lou Feng froze for a moment, his expression immediately turning solemn. Before the leaderboard, expressions varied wildly—some elated, some furious, some relieved and triumphant. Yet no matter what, looking up at that other name hanging high above their heads, their hearts inevitably sank. Just as when all craftsmen looked up toward the towering Path of Embers, toward those distant silhouettes high in the heavens. *Why am I confined to the shadows?* *Why can't I advance further...?* *Why can't I stand higher?* *And why can't I pull those high-and-mighty names down with my own hands?!* As pupils trembled, shifting between ambition, ideals, jealousy, and darkness, a final scroll unfurled before everyone's eyes. It was also a chart. But what it recorded was no longer the participant rankings, but various priced blessings, rare instruments and equipment, and even materials that didn't exist on the island... In the simulation of the Tower of Myriad Transformations, recreating the power of blessings was naturally effortless. In the heavy silence, all participants looked at the balance equivalent to their own score, then back at the list before them, their composure slipping away. Especially when the final countdown appeared. [168:00:00] One hundred sixty-eight hours, translating to a full seven days... for a craftsman's creation, it would pass in the blink of an eye. Seven days later, the confrontation would resume! Having weathered the initial survival phase, which weeded out the vast majority of filler and mediocrity, a head-to-head clash would begin among the surviving eighty-four apprentices. If one's own workshop were breached by an opponent, they would be eliminated. If one failed to defeat an opponent and breach their defenses, they would be unable to obtain more evaluation points. What lay before all participants was the spear and shield of rivalry and struggle among craftsmen: how to preserve oneself to the greatest extent while wounding or even destroying the enemy. Whether to be stripped of all utility and expelled from the competition, or to seize more points through victory, acquiring more resources and greater odds of success... This was a contest where neither fluke nor luck existed. Any slackening would mean falling behind step by step, erring at every turn. The weak grew weaker, and the strong grew stronger! "Oho..." Ji Jue rubbed his chin, his eyes lighting up. "I see. I fully understand this game now!" PvE for mining, PvP for making bank! If you couldn't protect your workshop, you couldn't stay in the match; if you couldn't take someone else's workshop, you couldn't get more rating points and resources. Under conditions of virtually limitless basic resources alongside rare, precious items, the only thing one could rely on was their own ability and skill. After such brutal elimination and competition, the sole one left standing would naturally be the undisputed strongest! And as the temporary number one, being targeted was only natural... Predictably, in the upcoming confrontations, the pressure he would have to bear might be even greater. Alternatively, he could take it a bit easy, preserving himself while letting someone else take the top spot to avoid drawing covetous eyes and coordinated sieges. But... why should he?! "Sure. Come on, bring it on, all of you." Ji Jue whistled, utterly unbothered as he browsed the exchange list before him. *Since I'm already here, I ought to leave them with something. Like, for instance, a psychological shadow...* . "Oho, looks like this round of pot-stirring worked pretty well." Jiang Tongguang looked down upon the myriad shifts within the floating lights, chuckling softly. "The little fellows seem to be ratcheting up the competition... Hey, would you say this counts as introducing the Association's bad habits to the apprentices ahead of schedule?" "Isn't that precisely the arrogance of Embers?" Gustav said coolly. "Looking down on everyone else is the norm; humility is merely a facade. Rather than let them bask in lies, it's better to let them experience the brutal struggle among craftsmen early. It saves some lucky bastards from thinking everything is smooth sailing once they get their licenses." "How considerate," Jiang Tongguang remarked with feeling. Gustav looked over with an expressionless face, but Jiang Tongguang was unfazed, his smile growing more mischievous. "At the end of the day, rather than calling you callous and harsh, wouldn't it be more accurate to say you're doing tough-love parenting like an old father? The kind who's terrified the kid will suffer outside, so you make sure they eat their fill of hardship at home first. If it were anyone else, no matter how genial and warm they seemed, they wouldn't have this sort of good intentions. In fact, some masters wouldn't even be this dedicated, would they?" "Merely doing my duty," Gustav replied indifferently, seeming to hint at something. "As directors, we have to take responsibility for the Association, don't we?" "Hmm? Is that so? Hahahaha, fair enough, fair enough." A certain craftsman who had become a director and never bothered to lift a finger because he found it too troublesome glanced left and right, playing dumb with hearty laughter. "Speaking of which, has our number one lad made any moves?" "He just exchanged for a massive amount of materials, all common varieties. The vast majority is purified mercury at three points per ton, along with some instruments and equipment." "Mercury's compatibility with Fluid Alchemy isn't low at all, but what about blessings?" Jiang Tongguang raised an eyebrow, quite expectant. "Over three hundred evaluation points ought to be enough to redeem something heavyweight, right?" "...He only redeemed two, and both are the most basic and common, costing fifty points each." Gustav glanced at the record before him, seeing right through it. *His upcoming opponents are going to have a massive headache...* On the recorded list were only two emblems of the Desolate Ruins. —[Metallic Quality], [Form of Utmost Resilience]! At this moment, within the workshop, amid streams of surging mercury, Ji Jue looked up toward the two brilliant rays of streaming light descending from the sky to settle into his hands. Unable to hold back any longer, his face broke into a broad smile. "—So good to see you, old friends!"