Between Preparations

Five days later. "High-end ingredients often require only the simplest cooking methods. At three in the morning, Chef Ji, after a busy day, begins preparing a new dish..." Accompanied by Ji Jue's mutterings, the shrieking aberration on the workbench was pinned down firmly by dozens of mercury hands. Thick metal spikes drove into its limbs, and once Solid Alchemy froze the flow of spiritus, chainsaws, hammers, and vibrating blades took turns going to work. A display of effortless fluidity, truly pleasing to the eye. Under the disassembly of numerous shifting tools, it was taken apart completely from head to tail, skin to shell, in no time at all. Once everything was categorized and stored, he gladly welcomed the next one. Throughout the entire process, Ji Jue didn't even have to lift a finger. Sitting in his chair, liquid mercury flowed out naturally, forming dozens of limbs that worked in coordinated division of labor with blazing efficiency. Everything had returned to the familiar old groove. As they say, rehiring veteran staff makes onboarding a breeze! Having flouted laws and committed misdeeds together in Quancheng for so long, they shared an effortless, unspoken rapport and practiced coordination, operating without a single hitch—pinning a foot when a foot was needed, holding an arm when an arm was needed. If a raw material roared a bit too loud, before Ji Jue even said a word, its mouth was smothered shut. They had all the cooperation you could ask for, and all the posture you could dream of. Otherwise, Ji Jue wouldn't even have been able to process the mountain of materials piled up in the storeroom. Ever since that rain of pollution fell, the aberrations across Luye Island had sprung up like fertilized chives, proliferating madly everywhere, too numerous to harvest. Every time Ji Jue stepped outside, he had to haul his harvest back by the cartload. Unfortunately, once the initial grace period ended, drop rates became tear-jerkingly abysmal. Aside from raw materials from the aberrations themselves, not half a blessing dropped. It was finding every excuse to force players to whale. In the current climate of the leaderboard, without spending points, the game was unplayable. It was only because there were so few examinees and the Association was too big to care about a few bad reviews; otherwise, outrage and review-bombing would have erupted long ago! Ji Jue had anticipated this. These days, game operators secretly tweaking drop rates and stats was hardly news. At least the prices were clearly listed; they hadn't introduced a bottomless gacha pool without pity guarantees, forcing examinees to smash ten-pull after ten-pull with their hard-earned points. Still, looking at that redemption catalog, the intentions behind it reeked of malice. The common materials and ordinary blessings at the top were fair enough, but toward the bottom, the prices for precious materials and rare blessings soared straight into the stratosphere. Especially the passive types. Masterwork Nature went for 400, Primacy of Mind for 540, Sovereign Axis for 600... not to mention his Metamorphosis three-piece set, which offered zero cost-effectiveness whatsoever. If one wanted to save up for something big, they had to hoard their points. Yet with everyone else grinding furiously to get ahead, hoarding points to stagnate in place was practically suicide. At the same time, the catalog slashed prices on numerous blessings that offered immense destructive power and immediate, dramatic results. The pricing on Drop, Swarm, White Stag, and other early- and mid-tier blessings looked like a fire sale. It was practically one step away from scrawling *Buy One Get One Free* and *Bored. I want to see rivers of blood* across the sheet. He seriously questioned the examiners' ideological leanings. He recommended the Association launch a thorough internal investigation! At this stage, Ji Jue didn't have many needs. What he lacked instead was a colossal volume of basic materials. Even after scaling back repeatedly, it remained an astronomical figure. Even if he dug up the entire island of Luye, it would barely plug the deficit. With the exchange list available, he could only take things one step at a time, first upgrading and overhauling the workshop's core zone to bolster its defenses and control. At a time like this, the importance of lineage and pedigree became glaringly apparent. While some participants stared blankly at the materials and exchange catalogs, not knowing where to begin, the workshops of top-ranked examinees had practically all been upgraded to top-tier arsenals. Apprentices born of major workshops had absorbed the craft from childhood; they had tasted it, seen it, touched it, and worked with it, to say nothing of their masters' personal guidance and direct hands-on experience. Even if they copied mindlessly without thinking, they could assemble a workshop's architecture. As for apprentices who failed to break into the inner circles and could only run odd jobs on the periphery, just knowing what a workshop looked like was hard enough. Unorthodox practitioners had no chance of surviving in the intensely cutthroat environment of Embers. As for Ji Jue... Ji Jue had the least to worry about on that front. Even if his time had been short and Professor Ye hadn't taught him excessively deep theory, he had seen plenty... From Embers to Stagnant Rot, from the Association to the Profound, smashing what needed smashing, tearing down what needed tearing down—he had even poked around Kanemoto's workshop for days. Besides, the architectural blueprints of Sage Quicksilver's ancient workshop were still sitting right inside the storage vault of the Doomsday Express! Even if Ji Jue's own research and bootlegging were just getting started, he at least knew how to copy, right?! Sometimes, getting hands-on experience and operating it yourself once was worth years of daydreaming on paper. With the Association willing to foot the bill and give him this free practice run, he had been waking up grinning in his sleep these past few days. If he didn't seize the chance to shear this sheep bald, Ji Jue would probably weep tears of regret for a long time, even if he took first place home when the exam ended. For five whole days, Ji Jue's total sleep time didn't exceed four hours. Only after processing the materials and programming the Crucible's automated workflows did he finally face-plant onto his bed and fall into a deep slumber. Five hours later, he forced himself awake, finishing the final processing in a half-conscious daze. After taking a cold shower and snapping fully awake, he sat in his chair, looked at the fruits of his labor, and couldn't help bursting into laughter. Right before his eyes, on the assembly platform, the completely finished armor was entirely transformed from before. Still sporting its red-and-black color scheme, compared to its previous iteration, the power armor now looked as though a hulking brawler had shed heavy, cumbersome garments to reveal a lean, chiseled frame. Using the bone and blood of numerous aberrations as material, built upon an alloy base, the reforged outer armor plating was several times lighter than before, while its defensive capabilities were more than several times higher. At the same time, with the addition of a secondary engine array, its maneuverability had undergone a qualitative leap. In addition to numerous weapons bootlegged from Federation military designs and infused with alchemical elements, two extra aberration batteries were installed; in overload mode, its output would double. To prevent a repeat of Young Master Lou's blunder from last time, a layer of fluid mercury was added to the exterior of the cockpit, providing 360-degree protection with zero blind spots. Beyond that, the most groundbreaking innovation—apart from new devices and creations designed to assist the two blessings *Metallic Quality* and *Form of Utmost Resilience*—was that Ji Jue had compensated for his mirror image's greatest weakness! It couldn't speak. He had meticulously recorded over four hundred lines of trash talk, taunts, jeers, and other vital battle cries, imported them all into the machine's spiritus repository, and wired up two massive external loudspeakers. Under any circumstances, his opponents would be guaranteed the most authentic ranked-match experience! And now, after days of preparation and planning, the most crucial moment for any alchemical creation had arrived. Naming it! A good name not only accompanied a creation for life; at critical moments, it often gave it an extra edge. Just like with people. If a line of figures stepped out on the opposing side, chests puffed out, grandly announcing themselves as Ye Feng, Long Aotian, or Li Xiaoyao—oozing style and dominance—while your side had someone named Er'gou, the sky would practically collapse. Look at Zhou Chong: the moment he came up with a new blessing sequence, he christened it *Heaven and Earth Are Ruthless*. Look at his own teacher: that Ink Omen sequence of hers had slaughtered from the Federation to the Empire and on to the Mid-Continent, to the point where the name Ye Xian alone could trigger PTSD in her victims! Racking his brains, Ji Jue stared at the ferocious armor before him, lost in thought. Considering its functionality, since its purpose was shock assaults and destruction, the name might as well highlight that purpose, while also honoring the lineage of the series and his expectations for it. "Assault... forceful..." He suddenly smacked his fist into his palm, an epiphany striking. "Assault... Assault..." "—How about Assault Niuma!" For a split second, the silent armor's engine hesitated and revved in neutral, as if desperately trying to lodge an objection. Alas, Ji Jue was already gleefully grabbing the spray paint and going to town. Halfway through painting, he realized that this was already a modified version and needed to be distinguished from the prototype. With a grand sweep of his hand, he added a suffix. [Assault Niuma Unit 02]! With such a powerful name, it would surely bring endless terror and humiliation to any opponent who fell beneath it, right?! Not only that, after coming up with the name, inspiration struck in torrents. Ji Jue even figured out the names for the two units on the subsequent assembly line meant to guard the workshop. The one clad entirely in pure white, whose armor would purge and glow during overload, would be called [Two-Headed Donkey], and the other would be [Auspicious Banshee]... Yet for some reason, once the names were set, ideas about recolors, cost-cutting, and stripping parts kept popping into his head, impossible to stop. He even found himself wanting to produce a dozen different accessory packs, double the Federation Military Department's pricing, and export them to the Mid-Continent. Wouldn't that dirty money just come rolling in by the truckload...? Terrified, Ji Jue rechecked the workshop's spiritus containment several times and reinforced it with an extra layer. It had to be corruptive pollution messing with his mind! Horrifying. After finishing the centerpiece, Assault Niuma, Ji Jue devoted the rest of his time entirely to upgrading and improving the workshop. As aberration carcasses passed through the assembly line, receiving full-service skinning, deboning, and draining before emerging reborn from the Crucible, the workshop buried deep underground expanded further, driving its roots downward into the deeper darkness. Meanwhile, as peaceful days passed underground, the world on the surface deteriorated rapidly amidst violent storms. On the sixth day, when Ji Jue went up to inspect the situation, he was already forced to wear breathing equipment. Even the air was thick with specks of fine black dust. In the distance, behind the gray mist, veins of flesh and blood surfaced across the mountains. The river flowing nearby showed faint traces of crimson. A pungent, fishy stench assaulted the nose. Bones sprouted from the soil like plants, growing into grotesque flora. Out on the dark, near-ink-blue ocean, a colossal beast resembling a manta ray drifted silently, trailing tentacles that swept across the water's surface like nimble limbs, ravenously hunting. Just half of a fleshy wing passing over the island cast a shadow like midnight. Luye Island was steadily devolving into a heavily polluted zone... Was this also part of the historical event record? Ji Jue wondered from the bottom of his heart just how much extra poison those bastards in the Association had mixed in. On the seventh day, once again, torrential rain poured down. Black rain fell from the sky, blanketing everything. Amidst everyone's tense, anxious waiting, the instant the countdown hit zero, a crisp chime seemed to ring by every ear, sending a sudden jolt through countless hearts. And then, a structure resembling a prismatic kaleidoscope materialized before everyone's eyes. At last, it had begun!