The Nether Sea Project

"……" Isis fell silent for a long time, as if exhausted. "It is incomprehensible. You pour your heart's blood into nothingness, bearing the torment of an unfaithful tool and insubordination, all to secure a victory entirely devoid of meaning?" she asked. "I see no necessity in persisting. Sir, is this truly worth it?" "Isn't persisting the greatest meaning of all?" Ji Jue countered. "Why?" "Because tomorrow will come." Ji Jue controlled his body, showing a smile. "Someone once said that waiting and hoping are the most beautiful things in the world." "Then he must have been out of his mind." Isis said coldly, "Didn't he have to go to work tomorrow?" "Uh, well..." Ji Jue froze. If he still had his physical flesh, he might have slapped his thigh in shocked admiration. "You know what, you're actually spot on! He didn't work—he was in prison." Isis remained silent for a moment, as though struggling to process this. The starlight within her vessel flickered. "...Sir, what is prison?" "Uh..." Ji Jue thought for a moment before answering, "Being in prison means being locked in one place with no freedom, forced to do whatever someone else tells you to do." "Understood. I am working, and at the same time, I am in prison." Realization dawned upon Isis. "So the meaning of persistence is to continue working and being in prison?" "……" Truth be told, she had a point. Ji Jue found himself unable to refute her, and suddenly he understood the Prophet even more. Imagine working overtime for five or six hundred years, cleaning up messes every single day for a master who had lost his mind, pacifying the subordinate intelligences below, watching the situation worsen day by day while completely powerless, unable even to slack off and let it all rot, only able to grit your teeth and endure. He was practically the Border Realm's weightlifting champion, the workshop's undisputed king of stress tolerance! No wonder he wanted to die. There really was no hope in living like that. "According to your emotional monitoring data, my analysis indicates that you appear to be 'using a substitute' again," Isis remarked calmly. "Pity? Sympathy? I have no need for such things, Sir." "If you don't need them, toss them aside." Ji Jue instinctively wanted to shake his head, only to realize the jar was too narrow, leaving him to sigh helplessly. "If you're bewildered by your own existence, you might as well find some fun. "There's no need to view yourself as a tool. Chasing meaning or pursuing a hobby—do whatever pleases you." Isis fell silent for a moment, then asked, "Is that an order?" "...No. Take it as... a suggestion." Ji Jue thought for a bit and said slowly, "Even for a tool, one bound strictly by orders is far too pitiful. Why not enjoy a bit more freedom? "Learn to find meaning and joy in a life that belongs to you, Isis, even if that time is brief." Saying so, he lifted his eyes, the spiritus verification from his soul flowing out to inject into the system. "If a day comes when you grow weary of all this, then give up. Any time, any place." "……" Amid the dead silence, Isis spoke no further. In the deepest recesses of the workshop, the light within the vessel flickered, boiling and churning, bursting with dazzling brilliance for a long, long time. Finally, it settled into silence. Just like an update finishing its installation. "Understood." Isis's voice rang out again, steady as ever. "In accordance with your suggestion, I shall now proceed to administer electric shocks to you, finding amusement in observing your wails and undignified contortions." "Not that!" "Then neural overload, nightmare implantation—" "Not those either!" Ji Jue exclaimed. "Can't you cultivate some normal hobbies?" "Tsk..." Isis let out a displeased sound. She didn't want to talk anymore. Freedom and fun were lies. Just like clocking off! And so, time accelerated once again. Outside the window, the mortal world spun violently, whirling thousands, tens of thousands of times in a mere instant, the blurred flickers making it impossible to discern individual changes. Only at the moment it came to a halt did everything upon the earth finally come into view. All glittering with silver light. Intricate patterns emerged across the Endless Sea in the southwestern corner of the world. Countless megastructures rose straight from the ocean waters, connecting with one another to form an outline plainly visible even from outer space. Stretching across, crisscrossing, Locking the entire Nether Sea within. Meanwhile, up in the stratosphere, countless cables interlaced like a colossal net, linking everything together to drape over the Nether Sea. Down within the rock strata beneath the nine layers of earth, the protracted construction had likewise reached completion. Relying on the massive circulation established by the Nether Sea Worm, an engineering feat surpassing even its grandeur had been erected here. Under an infinite supply of materials and spiritus, it had taken two hundred and seventeen years. "Nether Sea Project Phase Four complete," Isis reported. "We may begin, Sir." "Then let us begin." Ji Jue smiled. "No need to wait any longer." He said, "Initiate descent." In that instant, within that false world that had been quiet for far too long, an earth-shattering boom erupted into a deafening roar! High in the distant heavens, that suspended point of starlight flared with blistering brilliance. It rapidly magnified. From the burning crimson, the glint of iron burst forth. The megastructure suspended in terrestrial orbit, guided by gravity, began its descent! Even under the interference of numerous blessings, the fall of that colossal mass still whipped up an unprecedented gale, shattering the dark clouds into pieces until they vanished entirely. Countless cables rose from the gigantic spires, extending toward the sky, whirling and intertwining like tens of millions of spirals sweeping upward against the heavens. They interfaced the colossal space station into the grid. Amidst an unprecedented tempest, the pitch-black sea churned as if boiling, surging and rampaging, yet it could not breach the embankments that had long since been forged. The entire Nether Sea had already been locked within. By the time the worm's consciousness awoke from its endless slumber, it was already too late. Far too late! It did not even require the stimulation of fusion bombs; the space station hurtling down from outer space was already the most grating alarm clock imaginable. Torrents of corrupted spiritus surged and converged, but before they could even cohere into form, a gigantic pillar radiating silver light rose straight out of the sea. A magnificent shockwave rippled out from it, disrupting the reconstruction process. Not only that. The moment the space station in the heavens, the spires spanning the ocean surface, and the metal cables deep underground connected into a unified whole, the alchemy belonging to Ji Jue finally activated. Right inside this super-colossal workshop that spanned over six million kilometers, blanketing the entire Nether Sea! "I was duped by that heartless bastard for so long, I almost forgot." Ji Jue chuckled softly. "The Nether Sea is actually a fluid, too." A fluid endowed with spiritus and pollution was still a fluid. This boundless ocean was the premier target for Fluid Alchemy! Then let it begin... His final display of Fluid Alchemy! In an instant, a glint of silver flashed from the very center of the space station, plummeting toward the tempestuous sea and descending straight through the howling gale. It plunged into the deepest dark. Then, brilliant light erupted like a tidal wave. Pure silver radiance rampaged outward in all directions, enveloping the entire Nether Sea in the blink of an eye. *Boom!* Another gigantic pillar rose from the ground. As the shockwave rippled outward, it scattered the worm's consolidating body. Before it could fully manifest, the circulation of corruption was severed. Not only that, but at this very moment, the spires dotting the Nether Sea, the network blanketing the sky, and the rivers of quicksilver surging beneath the nine earths all began to operate. Latching entirely onto the Nether Sea Worm's circulation, permeating every pore, they deployed pure Sovereign Virtue blessings to interfere with the operation of this entire colossal system. No matter how complex a structure or how grand a circulation, once its core was seized, it could hardly function. Furthermore, with the full-scale deployment taking effect, that wildly raging circulation slowed at a speed visible to the naked eye... *Crack!* When the first crisp echo rang from the heavens, a wisp of silver light flickered. As the roar—sounding as if the entire world were falling apart—spread outward, countless silver glints had already enveloped the space between sea and sky, blanketing everything. Just like snow. Pitch-black snowflakes condensed of metal fluttered upward from the surface of the sea. Defying gravity, they ascended into the sky. They permeated the entire world! Amidst a storm that sounded like shrill screeching... That was Solid Alchemy! "Reification?" In the lounge, Tianlu applauded in praise. "So that's the move!" Shackling spiritus with matter, substituting falling for rising—the true essence of Solid Alchemy was to use physical objects to lock down the operation of spiritus, just like imprisoning a genie in a tiny bottle. If the worm was omnipresent, then he would use Solid Alchemy covering the entire ocean to seal away every single thing that had been corrupted and assimilated by the worm's spiritus! The countless black snowflakes drifting across the sky were corrupted spiritus bound by Solid Alchemy—the 'blood' drawn from the worm's body! Through unrelenting interference, he shattered the worm's reconvergence process. In turn, he exploited its state of parasitizing the mortal world, acting simultaneously upon every corner and crevice of the Nether Sea to start a continuous bloodletting... He wasn't confronting the worm head-on at all. Instead, he treated the entire mortal world as his objective! The surgery had begun. Incision, tumor excision, cyst lancing, draining the putrid fluid... For this single moment of bloodletting, Ji Jue had prepared across dozens of reincarnations, memorizing every detail of the worm's vast circulation by every conceivable method, knowing the patient's CT scans and medical history backward and forward. At the same time, relying on the circulation parasitizing heaven and earth, he had reconstructed his own workshop. Now, the entire workshop had become an operating table tailored specifically for the worm! Precise, brutal, and effective. If it worked, no method was off-limits. If the worm's most terrifying trait was its assimilation capacity, then he would excise everything it had assimilated along with it. And the worm's greatest weakness, ironically, mirrored the mistake Ji Jue had initially made—it was too obsessed with quantity, to the point of being weighed down by it! It couldn't even unleash the true essence of that vast scale, instead finding itself constrained by its own output ceiling... At this moment, under the workshop's siphoning, countless amounts of corrupted spiritus and pollution leaked out, only to be instantly frozen and sealed by Solid Alchemy, imprisoned within countless snowflakes. Every flake of black snow was like a fragment of the worm, a single drop of its blood. When the countless black flakes ascended into the sky, they gathered into a torrent, erupting along a designated trajectory! Just like a volcanic eruption. Once the hardened, frozen metallic debris broke free from the Nether Sea's perimeter, it fell into the vast void of space, hurtling toward... the sun targeted by its trajectory! In the dark void, faint silhouettes seemed to flash by, struggling violently. Yet those black snowflakes were far too fine, far too tiny. Even if they broke free from their bonds, relying on that minuscule amount of spiritus, they could not escape their predetermined fate and trajectory. Down in the mortal world, the Nether Sea raged. Amid the agony of bloodletting, the worm's silhouette manifested time and again between heaven and earth, but before it could fully appear each time, it was disrupted by the spires Ji Jue had positioned in advance. Even when forced to coalesce, all that formed was an indescribable mass of gargantuan flesh that was incinerated by fusion bombs before it could evolve or reshape itself. Instead, this only catalyzed even more black snow. It was like attempting violent exercise after rupturing an artery... an act of pure suicide! After repeated attempts, the worm's instincts abandoned reforming its physical body, turning instead to its signature forte—corrosive assimilation. It began progressively parasitizing the structure of the workshop itself. In an instant, silver spires rapidly blackened at a speed Ji Jue could barely react to. But to Isis, it was as clear as day. The moment those spires composed of vast quantities of spiritus and quicksilver were on the verge of losing control, they initiated self-destruct protocols, collapsing into clouds of metallic dust. Immediately after, reserve spires dispatched by the space station were installed in their place. Isis had been repeating this creation process for two hundred years. The reserve expendables outside the Nether Sea were literally piled into unending mountain ranges, stretching beyond the horizon. In this entire plan, the only irreplaceable, non-expendable component was the space station suspended above the Nether Sea. "Entering attrition state, Sir," Isis reported. "Signs of relocation detected in the Nether Sea. Structural integrity of the first, second, and third defense lines is declining; collapse estimated in thirty seconds. If the outer perimeter is breached and the worm escapes, the entire project will be rendered meaningless." "No matter. Just maintain the quarantine." Ji Jue instinctively went to wave his hand, only to realize he had no hand left to wave. He could only pout slightly. "If It wants to relocate, let It. "Besides, haven't we left It a path of survival?" In that instant, countless spires completed their lockdown, the heaven-spanning quicksilver network ceased its resistance, and innumerable paths opened before the Nether Sea as it desperately sought to relocate. Every single path led to only one destination. The hub of the workshop. The space station itself, where Ji Jue resided! "Come on, then. Come on in." Ji Jue smiled, waiting to welcome It. "The sweet date segment is about to begin~"