Rivers of Blood

[32] A glaring number hung before every participant. Not only did the candidates within the time-accelerated simulated cosmos gasp phantom breaths of cold air, their vision swimming, but even the eliminated participants on the outside felt their eyes go dark. After the first round of eliminations, over eighty had remained. Yet in the second round, it wasn't merely cut in half—only thirty-two were left... The intensity of the duels had surpassed everyone's expectations. In truth, a portion of candidates had been hindered by poor performance or various other factors, failing to eliminate their opponents—either ending in a draw with one win and one loss, or reaching an impasse where neither could do anything to the other. Yet the trouble was that everyone had far too many vicious tricks up their sleeves. To take down their opponents, far too many people had focused solely on offense and destruction without any qualitative improvement in their workshop's defensive capabilities. As a result, both sides poured out maximum firepower in a single salvo and blasted each other to death simultaneously. Some, realizing they might not survive, had opened directly with moves of mutual destruction, dragging a companion into the grave to accompany them on the road to the afterlife. The leaderboard had been halved, and the scores of the surviving candidates doubled in an instant. Furthermore, fearful that the struggle between candidates wouldn't be fierce enough and that they would merely dance around without killing each other, the exam directors—hungering for rivers of blood—directly added points to each participant based on the combined total of both their rounds! It was a veritable snowball of growth. After defeating his opponent this round, Ji Jue's original score of 362, combined with his opponent's 272, brought his earned total to 634 points. He still had over a hundred unspent points left over from the previous round, pushing his current available score to a staggering seven hundred—more than enough to pull off several insane stunts! Looking at the current scoring system, saving and hoarding points for higher-tier blessings and materials in the late game was no longer a wise choice. The exam organizers practically screamed into every contestant's ear: "Spend your cash now, earn bigger next round!" On the leaderboard, he remained in first place, though the gap between him and second-place André had narrowed to within ten points. Evidently, his opponent had also reaped a massive haul this round. The top three remained unchanged: first place, Chaosheng's Ji Jue; second place, Clock Tower's André; third place, Dragon Heart's Lin Ke. To everyone's surprise, Young Master Lou had actually climbed all the way to eleventh place. Not a trace could be seen of the wretched state he had been in when Ji Jue used to beat him into the dirt. One could only say that after fighting so many skirmishes with a dog like Ji Jue, although it had left behind untold psychological scars, Lou Feng's thief-proofing techniques had advanced by leaps and bounds, making him a force to be reckoned with. At the same time, what became even more blatant was the exam organizers' undisguised desire to stir the pot—in the post-match Event Review, all combat records between the remaining candidates were made completely accessible to everyone. To facilitate mutual understanding so they could join hands and build a brighter tomorrow... yeah, right. The more artisans knew about one another, the easier and more delightful it was to counter each other. Right now, the only thought running through everyone's minds was probably how to plow a dump truck straight into their rivals, crush them flat, take their little hands as they turned into points, and march toward a glorious future meant for themselves alone. And then, during the illusion replay, another round of sharp gasps of cold air commenced. As the saying went: vicious tricks could never be killed, but I've got something even more vicious! After watching their own reviews, everyone decisively clicked into the top dog's stream to see how the big bro bit down on lighters. The resulting round of offense and defense left everyone rendered utterly speechless. The shamelessness of the offense and the sheer malice of the defense were truly a sight to behold. Being vile, underhanded, treacherous, and shameless was one thing, but how the hell was someone doing manned spaceflight in an artisan examination?! And the bastard had actually pulled it off?! *Bro, this damn artisan exam is really pointless. Stop tryharding here. Why don't you submit your résumé to the Federation Space Agency instead? I've got connections, I can hook you up...* Then, when they opened the records of the second-place André, everyone went completely numb. Yet another lunatic loaded with extreme stunts. A young man who looked like an honest old farmer, hands covered in calluses, dull and taciturn to the point you couldn't beat a fart out of him with three clubs, had quietly driven his crucible and workshop deep into the ley lines. Then, simply to verify the ley line currents and the flow of corruption, he blasted tens of thousands of meters down into the earth, nearly blowing half of Luye Island to smithereens. When they reached third place and encountered someone slightly more normal—who merely captured a bunch of evil spirits to skin, de-bone, and refine into crafting materials—people actually found it hard to process. Is this normal? This is totally normal—no, wait, *this* is what normal is supposed to be! As for the subsequent horrors like Bone Alchemy, Spirit-Inscribing Transmutation, Soul-Forging Bloodslaughter, and other vicious arts... well, a bit sinister, sure, but that's just how us Embers folks roll. Not just the others—even Ji Jue felt his scalp tingle watching it all. Young Master Lou had already rolled up his sleeves, unveiling his Entropic Spirit Transmutation that merged the Lou clan's heritage with alchemy. Using spiritus as a bridge, it enabled arbitrary conversion between the blessings of Desolate Ruins and Entropy, allowing matter and energy to flow freely, unconstrained by form. North Wind Workshop's Valhalla series ranged from Soul-Hunting Knights to Berserkers, all the way to Surtr, forged from the torment and slaughter of ten thousand melted souls. And that Imperial Trueblood who hadn't even shown his face yet brought out an advanced version of the Shadow of the Throne, along with an immortal army of ten thousand marching beneath the throne. Aside from the Bone Alchemy that, like Fluid Alchemy, belonged to ancient alchemical heritages, the third-place Lin Ke of Dragon Heart Workshop finally revealed a trump card outside of modern alchemy: the Lin Clan Heritage: Knot Subjugation, which harmonized the essences of Embers, Ascension, and Aether. Simply put, tying knots. This oldest method of human record-keeping, after thousands of years of evolution and inheritance, had been elevated to an unfathomable level. Knots as locks, ropes as cages. Ropes tanned from the hide of evil spirits could not only imprison and seal their souls, but even serve as nutrients to incubate and cultivate curses. Witnessing its myriad miraculous applications, even Ji Jue was left dumbfounded, feeling he had finally met his match in the realm of sinister arts. Just looking at the knots hanging all over that workshop and imagining how many curses and souls of evil spirits were packed inside made him feel a headache coming on. And when he looked at the second-place contestant hot on his heels, he felt a prickling sensation on his back, quietly breaking into a cold sweat. André Ángel Gonzalo, nineteen years old, a year younger than Ji Jue, belonging to the Empire's legendary workshop: Clock Tower. Rumor had it that the master of the Clock Tower had bypassed his own disciples to personally keep this grand-disciple by his side for tutelage. Traced upward, he could be considered a great-great-disciple of the Carrion Eater, one of the three great masters of the contemporary era—a true scion of the academic elite. Yet compared to a bona fide patrician scion like Young Master Lou, his style belonged to an entirely different frequency. He could only be described as neat, not sloppy. His ten fingers were coarse, his entire body dusted with stone chips and powder, making him look like a stonemason weathered by wind and sun. From start to finish, he showed no reaction whatsoever to the intruders' carpet bombing, not even deigning to spare half an expression. It wasn't out of arrogance, but an almost glaringly obvious... dullness. Quiet, wooden, focused solely on the task before him, as if forever locked away in his own world, completely indifferent to all external changes. And his workshop was a colossal hall purely carved and stacked from stone. Just like the man himself, it was austere and blunt, with not a shred of sharp edge showing. Only when the workshop was activated, and the divine marrow circulated through one stone sculpture after another, could one feel an aura that bordered impossibly close to the essence of Sovereign Virtue. In an instant, inanimate stone statues were imbued with divine-like spirituality, as if an ancient pantheon had been reincarnated, turning the workshop into a cathedral-like sanctuary. If that were all, he would merely be a rare, formidable foe. But what truly made Ji Jue's scalp prickle was the domain formed when those numerous holy statues began to operate. Flowing water stilled; fire froze; howling winds solidified. Under the workshop's suppression, all flux and change became sluggish and blunted, barely able to operate at all—as if stripped of responsiveness and spirituality, sinking into dead matter. Severing all artifice and transformation, using unchanging stillness to conquer all change... He was practically Ji Jue's natural nemesis! Whether it was Fluid Alchemy or Solid Alchemy, both originated from the same root; they merely diverged in direction. Their essence lay in manipulating the interaction between spiritus and matter. The former focused primarily on spiritus, ascending upward, while the latter focused on matter, sinking downward. Yet before André, the interaction between spiritus and matter was severed. If they had never combined in the first place, there would be no chance for change inside his sanctuary. When that happened, Fluid Alchemy could not elevate matter to display transformations, nor could Solid Alchemy shackle the interior to seal spiritus. With no way to unite or circulate, it was as if the connection between inside and outside was completely severed, disintegrating into loose sand. Not to mention that Ji Jue was inherently accustomed to tailoring different strategies to different situations. Once change was locked down, Ji Jue's capabilities would instantly be cut by more than half. "Sweating now, aren't you, little brother?" Beyond the streaming light, Jiang Tongguang eyed Ji Jue's grim expression and began to gloat. Even as an exam director, he could hardly have imagined that a single examination could produce two such once-in-ten-thousand-years freaks that were so utterly diametrically opposed. One was ever-shifting, possessing no fixed form; the other was steadfastly rooted in himself, unshakeable by external things. "Hey, Old Gustav, who do you think will win between the two of them?" Never one to shy away from stirring up trouble, Jiang Tongguang continued, "How about we add some fuel to the fire... hey, I've got an idea!" His eyes lit up, and he raised a finger. "Why don't we put limits on the blessings in the redemption list? The rarer they are, the fewer there'll be. Some can just have a single copy available! Then we introduce a bidding mechanic..." "..." Gustav glanced at him, looking as if he wanted to speak. It was hard to tell whether he wanted to urge him to act like a decent human being or remind him of his neutral stance as an examiner. Yet it seemed they didn't even need to stir the pot further. After watching Ji Jue's event replay, though André remained silent and expressionless, he stared blankly for a long time. The instant he snapped out of it, he spent the bulk of his points without hesitation to redeem a heavy-hitting Tianyuan blessing from the list: 【Inscribed Mandate】! *Granted the mandate, marching with destiny.* What it represented was divinely bestowed authority. In other words: *All beneath heaven save myself are treacherous rebels!* It was undeniably potent—the eternal white moonlight in the hearts of Tianyuan's Celestial Chosen. But it was also undeniably scarce. Aside from the rare opportunity to obtain it when one truly ruled the order of a domain and made one's own laws into governing principles, there was only a slim chance of it being birthed from ceremonial vessels of authority that had been consecrated in an orthodox regime for over a century. Its effect was to drastically amplify one's suppression over the controlled domain, even isolating all external interference, instantly elevating the already monstrous suppression of his sanctuary to the absolute limit. At the same time, Ji Jue almost wiped out his entire score in a flash. Redeeming all of it for blessings. "Oh? Finally done messing around and getting serious?" Jiang Tongguang's eyes brightened, and he leaned in to inspect: "Let me see... Swarm's Battle-Tempered Edge, Ascension's Spirit-Source Circulation... huh? Embers' Matter-Spirit Excitation, and White Stag's Day-Seizing Raid? "Heh, these brats, every single one of them is Embers to the bone." A blessing like Battle-Tempered Edge, specifically designed to empower weapons and enhance destructive force, went without saying. Not only did Swarm's Celestial Chosen adore this blessing, Embers loved it just as much—loved it to death. It was simply too convenient for crafting weapons. Though weapons forged with it required blood and death to be nurtured and grow, Luye Island had evil spirits in inexhaustible abundance... With Ji Jue's vicious nature, if he used an ordinary creation as a scalpel for two days, it would probably be maxed out with resentment, lingering spite, and blood curses. The effect of Spirit-Source Circulation was to elevate the quality of spiritus, producing a qualitative leap, boosting spirituality and dynamic circulation—making it ideal for resisting Tianyuan's suppression. Matter-Spirit Excitation took it a step further by intensifying the friction between matter and spiritus, mutually stimulating them to amplify transformations and explosive power. As for White Stag's Day-Seizing Raid, it was entirely geared toward plundering enemies and sustaining warfare through plunder. The judges and directors didn't need to waste a single breath. The moment true Embers caught sight of their peers, they had already begun sharpening their gleaming blades against the whetstone! "Fight! Fight!" Seeing them girding for war, Jiang Tongguang was grinning so hard his legs practically gave out. Not just Ji Jue and André—under the intimidation of these two monstrous catfish, the entire fishpond was beginning to boil. Just like an approaching storm, everyone began gritting their teeth and climbing upward once more. Looking at it all, Jiang Tongguang's eyes glowed with fierce crimson light. *Gwa! Hurry up!* *I want to see rivers of blood!*