Even Soft Persimmons Explode

"Tianlu through and through, after all." Watching before the shimmering light, Gustav let out a soft sigh. As a director of the Association, no matter how headstrong Gustav was, he still had to provide justifiable grounds to give all contestants a fair account. Why someone was eliminated, what was lacking, where they fell short, and where they had made fatal mistakes. Or rather, for the sake of his own stance, everything he did had to be explainable—easily understood at a glance, even—so that no one would misjudge his intentions or arrangements. The starting point of all measures had to be a fairness acceptable to everyone, no matter how harsh the standards. Round after round of eliminations and duels were as fitting as could be. So long as the victor was sufficiently strong, the loser would have nothing to say; within an absolutely fair contest, absolutely precise results would naturally emerge. Even though everyone knew that such brutal eliminations still could not compare to reality. Reality did not have to make sense. Naturally, Tianlu did not have to, either. There was no longer any need for protracted, bloated segments, nor any need for slow, deliberate duels. The heat was sufficient, the materials fully grown; such being the case, they could fan the flames and stoke the blaze, sparking a true transmutation from the aggregation! If the method to select geniuses was a duel within an environment fair to all, then the way to forge the strong was in a desperate plight that was absolutely unfair to everyone! What need was there for fairness or reason? Did the cruelty of Embers not lie precisely in this?! *Boom!* Amidst a brief, dead silence, thunder abruptly erupted in the fictional world within the shimmering light. In that fleeting flash, everyone instinctively looked in the same direction: toward the towering mountain hollowed out straight through its core, where a workshop gleamed with metallic light beneath fractured rock faces. And at the very peak of that workshop stood the one looking all around him... Ji Jue! "Fuck me—" The corner of Ji Jue's eye twitched once, then twitched again. He could tell with half a brain what fatal development awaited him... There was once a rumor that crabs placed in a bamboo basket did not need a lid, because the crabs scrambling up from below would naturally drag down the one that climbed to the very top. Though the rumor itself was nonsense, in certain environments, it held a grain of truth. Just like right now... When the sky fell, the tallest had to shoulder it first. Amidst this chaotic fray, as the strongest contestant who had remained at the very pinnacle from the start of the exam until now—without anyone ever posing a threat to him—he bore the brunt of it, instantly thrust into the predicament of a target marked by all. If they didn't cripple you first, were they supposed to wait until everyone else beat each other bloody, only for you to reap their heads one by one?! Thus, in less than a heartbeat, every participant reached an unspoken, unanimous consensus: *Blades in hand, slay the hound Ji!* The instant he sensed it, Ji Jue lunged forward, vanishing from the workshop's highest point as a searing beam of light grazed past him by a hair's breadth. The brilliant beam pierced clean through the mountain, tearing out the other side with effortless ease, as if ripping through thin paper. At the same time, dazzling crimson lights flared across the heavens. Behind the dense, overcast clouds, scorching fire expanded at terrifying speed. In an instant, dozens of meteors broke through the clouds and rained down from the sky! Plummeting straight toward Ji Jue's workshop... Amidst the violent shaking and roar of the mountain, massive slabs of rock shattered, exposing intact and mangled steel structures beneath. There was not the slightest room to strike back! "Old Lou, hold them off for me according to the plan!" Ji Jue's frantic shout echoed from beneath the mountain, amplified by dozens of loudspeakers to resound across all of Luye Island. "Remember, you've got to buy time!" *What plan?!* Inside the crystal spire, Lou Feng had just been watching Ji Jue's misfortune with a wide grin, but now he froze in sheer disbelief. *When the hell did we agree on a plan?!* *Why the fuck should I help—* *You bastard!!!* *Ji Jue, you die a horrible death! Aaargh!* The instant realization dawned, Lou Feng felt as if he had been dropped into an ice cellar. Especially as the gazes cast his way from all directions turned increasingly dangerous, he didn't even have time to explain. Nor was there any point in explaining; nobody would believe him. Everyone had just seen the two of them bantering warmly earlier, talking about god knows what! Not to mention, back when you two took photos shoulder-to-shoulder in front of the Gate of Tianshu, neither of you bothered hiding it! Now you want to tell everyone you don't know each other and aren't in cahoots? Who would buy that? Who are you kidding?! Even if they weren't in cahoots, so what? It was just a matter of convenience! Among the thirteen workshops arranged in a ring, some were positioned too far away to immediately swing a cudgel at Ji Jue's head. But Lou Feng was right next door! Take a shot first and ask questions later... The sooner he died, the sooner he'd find peace! Ji Jue hadn't expected them to believe those two sentences in the first place. At best, it merely shattered the illusion of a united front against a common enemy. That was enough. No fine words or promises could alter reality. Every participant knew deep down: from the very beginning, they were not friends... Before Lou Feng's crystal spire could even react, it was engulfed in a storm whipped up out of thin air. A desolate white gale manifested without warning, tearing up from the ground and swirling vast amounts of air to carve a zone of absolute vacuum at its core. Within that vacuum, visible frost spread across the crystal spire, creeping upward, insidiously penetrating and freezing everything from the outside in... Even the spiritus fire in the core crucible seemed to turn sluggish. Shivering violently from the cold, Lou Feng couldn't help but curse, "Damn Nine Seals! Just because you didn't score points last round, did you have to lose your fucking minds?!" Nine Seals Workshop was a behemoth dominating the northern Federation. Its core legacy consisted of the Nine Seals named in its title—nine unique compositions and blessing sequences said to exhaust every entropic change in the world with boundless profundity. When it came to the utilization and development of the Entropy branch, few dared claim to rival them. Unfortunately, those capable of truly mastering all nine seals were as rare as phoenix feathers. Even the participant here possessed mere surface knowledge. In terms of creations alone, they could hardly pose a threat to Lou Feng. Yet if they could move their workshop right to your doorstep... Heh, then you were in for a world of hurt! In that brief instant, before the chill from Nine Seals' assault could even spread, a heaven-splitting roar erupted. A grotesque maw of flesh and blood thrust out from the void, sinews and flesh writhing to weave a bizarre visage, revealing rock-like teeth amidst churning crimson. —*Flesh Engineering: Hundred-Eyed Giant!* Opening its massive jaws without hesitation, it bit straight into the midsection of the spire like gnawing on a popsicle. As the deafening crunch of splintering crystal echoed, Lou Feng's expression changed. He could feel cracks spreading rapidly along the spire's body! Not only that, but gravity was skyrocketing wildly. Under the haughty gaze of the Shadow of the Throne in the distance, rampant gravity churned the earth into a frenzy, sending a surging tide sweeping toward the crystal spire. Seeing Lou Feng in dire straits, the workshops that hadn't managed to get a piece of Ji Jue immediately began scheming in secret. Anyone knew how to kick a man when he was down. Everyone loved a deal that cost nothing. No matter what, eliminate one first! It got to the point that Lou Feng actually laughed. Laughed out of sheer fury. His face was livid. "Fine, fine, fine! All of you want to refuse a toast only to drink a forfeit, huh?!" Lou Feng's raspy roar echoed across the sky and earth. "Then none of you get shit!" *It was bad enough that bastard Ji Jue rammed me with a honeywagon outside, but damn it all, now that I'm taking the artisan exam, you shitheads gang up on me?! Did you think my alchemy was learned for nothing?!* *Crack!* A deep fissure appeared along the sky-piercing crystal spire, followed by a second, a third, and a fourth. Then, from behind the layered cracks, a blinding light flared. Refracted through the crystals, a dreamlike flash spread out in an instant. Red, orange, yellow, green, azure, blue, violet—countless colors shifted endlessly within the flowing light, spreading indiscriminately in all directions like a surging tide. It engulfed more than half of the workshops within its reach! Then, crisp snapping sounds erupted from the void, ringing right by everyone's ears. The storm dispersed, the flesh withered, gravity plunged into chaos, and shadows boiled... Continuous fracturing sounds rose beside everyone's ears, layer upon layer, endless and overlapping, until they coalesced into a heaven-shaking roar. Like a tidal wave! Yet that was not the sound of shattering. It was the faint, lingering sound of crystals multiplying and growing! Across heaven and earth, within the entire domain enveloped by the phantom light, countless minute crystals materialized from nothingness—out of the air, flowing water, the ground, and even from within spiritus circuits, workshop sequences, and modules... and even blessings! Whether the pollution of a Great Sin or the aura of a Sovereign Virtue, none were spared. Anything that could be called spiritus crystallized at a visible pace beneath that phantom light, rendering it utterly unusable! All external spiritus, or spiritus separated from workshops operating out in the open, altered and crystallized beneath the eerie radiance, solidifying into an intractable mass. In an instant, magic across the entire domain was silenced. Not only that, if countless dust-fine crystal particles suddenly appeared inside the vital equipment and cores of a workshop, the resulting consequences... drew enraged curses from every afflicted workshop! *Lou, you bastard! How dare you!* This was the ultimate technique that Kong Qingyan, as a master, had tailored for his personal disciple by combining alchemy, his own specialty of the Tianyuan domain, and the Lou clan's heritage—Spirit-Shattering Domain! It pushed the workshop into overdrive, turning it into an amplifier to indiscriminately project the Lou clan's spiritus shaping across the domain. It not only shattered all spiritus transformations and flows in an instant, cutting off the shifts of blessings, but also penetrated peripheral blockades, spreading inward to corrode and completely crash any alchemical creation lacking sufficient protection. Lou Feng had practiced this ultimate technique day and night, thinking only of how to counter Ji Jue's Fluid Alchemy and get even with that bastard. He had never imagined that after finally completing his workshop, before he could even do a damn thing, Ji Jue would kick him straight into a pit. Treated by everyone as a soft persimmon to squeeze... They had practically surrounded him for a gang beating! "Die, die, die! Drop dead, all of you!" Lou Feng roared as infinite flowing light gathered, shining straight at the nearest Nine Seals Workshop beside him. *To hell with it, kill one first!* As everyone knew, blessings of the Entropy branch were massive consumers of spiritus. And the amount of spiritus stockpiled inside Nine Seals Workshop, which specialized most in utilizing Entropy blessings... could only be described as a tragedy. A roar erupted in an instant as the entire massive workshop was thrust upward by a notch. Innumerable crystals surged like wild weeds from every seam, the sounds of cracking and growth unceasing, as a colossal tree of spiritus took root within Nine Seals Workshop's sequences and core, shooting up from the ground! Lou Feng grinned savagely, clenching his five fingers tight. *Drop dead for your grandpa!* At that moment, a miserable shriek rang through the rumbling. Excruciatingly shrill. The first eliminated participant appeared. Yet disappointingly, it did not come from before his eyes. It came from the distance on the other side! In less than half a minute—under the concentrated assault of nearly everyone—the mountain where Ji Jue's workshop stood had been reduced to scorched earth and shattered to pieces in just a few seconds. Torrents spread and rubble scattered, devoid of any resistance. Nor had there been any attempt to resist. With uncanny compliance, he had let them strip away the burdens and shackles sealing the workshop's exterior, like shedding old scales and a worthless disguise. Then, from the darkness beneath the nine nether depths, silver light surged rampant, soaring straight into the sky! The true monster opened its eyes. And let loose a roar!