In through the front doors, out through the front doors.
The people were the same, yet seemed somehow different.
Uncontainable smiles adorned the faces of every former apprentice as they threw back their shoulders, puffed out their chests, and bathed in the sunlight, proudly displaying the badges on their lapels.
From this moment on, they were artisans—reborn anew, completely transformed!
Like swallowing a golden core: *My fate rests in my hands, not heaven's!*
From now on, everyone counted as a proper, capital-letter Human in the Embers.
And not just ordinary people, but superiors—superiors over superiors over superiors!
Never mind rightfully riding roughshod over apprentices—all the indignities they had bent over and sold during those years could finally be reclaimed starting today!
At the thought of this, the practically brand-new, workshop-certified, first-hand artisans grinned so widely they could barely keep their legs together.
Ji Jue included.
Even if he didn't think artisans were anything divine, artisans truly were a big deal.
Granted, entering court wearing sword and sandals while excused from having one's name announced might be hyperbole, but looking down on ministers and scorning lords was completely fair game.
From now on, even if Xu Chaoxian stood smiling in front of him, praising his youthful promise and waiting for a handshake, Ji Jue could just leave his hands in his pockets and not give a damn.
Governor? Who's that?
How many materials can he forge? How many Celestial Crafts does he have?
Out of the way!
During the group photograph, he took his place right in the most prominent spot in the front row, arms akimbo, basking in smug satisfaction for a little while.
And the moment the ceremony concluded, he vanished.
As if evaporating into thin air.
The Association higher-ups waiting outside to snatch him up and instantly churn him through the mill struck out empty-handed, unable to catch up, without catching so much as a speck of his coattails.
He bolted out, chasing after the figure who had been first to push open the doors and leave, glancing left and right, searching, pursuing.
Beneath the afternoon sun, birds took flight from the empty seaside street.
The figure on the bench stared out at the distant glimmer of waves.
Calm and serene.
*(Well, well, congratulations, kid!)*
The Ghost Workmanship dangling beside the thermos flask flashed twice. *(A whole new world today—want your big brother to say a few more auspicious words?)*
"Teacher!"
Ji Jue proudly displayed his badge, radiant with excitement. "I took first place!"
"I know."
Ye Xian nodded, uncharacteristically refraining from pouring cold water over him. "Today is your big moment. What did you run out here for?"
"Whether it's some committee member or some secretary, there are too many flies. The second they catch a whiff, they swarm in—either trying to ride my hype or painting pie-in-the-sky promises. Why waste time on that?"
Ji Jue glanced around eagerly. "Where's Senior Sister? She didn't come?"
He'd even prepared his lines and poses.
He had planned to take advantage of the afternoon's sparkling waves, execute a fierce tiger pounce, sprawl onto the beach, look up into Ye Chun's dead-inside face, and flash a wicked, smug grin:
*Oh? How did you know I took first place in the exam and became an artisan?*
Yet she hadn't shown up at all.
...
Predicting his moves, was she?
"Knowing you'd rub it in her face, why would she show up? Besides, it's not like you don't know what state she's been in lately." Ye Xian shook her head with a helpless sigh.
Watching her niece degenerate day by day from an elite graduate student into a clear-eyed parasite with an empty head, Ye Xian, as her teacher and elder, could only accept reality.
A slacker nature that couldn't be beaten out of her even if hung up and whipped with a crop was just as deeply ingrained as the hyper-competitive tryhard dog living inside Ji Jue.
Rivers and mountains might change, but human nature was harder to budge.
Let her be.
At times, Ye Xian wondered if she had done too many wicked deeds and was now reaping her karma: a niece and a student, the two she had taught with the most dedication, were on the verge of ruining her reputation in educational circles.
And yet she couldn't even purge the sect of them.
Heartbreakingly exhausting.
"That guy just told me..." Ye Xian pointed to the space beside her, gesturing for him to sit down, before continuing slowly, "'The waves behind drive forward the waves ahead. You've done well.'"
"That guy?" Ji Jue blinked. "Who?"
Ye Xian gave him a puzzled look, then sudden realization dawned, and she replied, "My former teacher."
"Huh?"
Ji Jue was utterly bewildered, his mind completely blank. He subconsciously read his teacher's expression; seeing neither gloom nor displeasure only deepened his confusion.
*Didn't we break away and establish our own faction?*
*By all logic, shouldn't they have fallen out?*
In a lineage as rigid as the Embers, drawing blades in a fight to the death after leaving a sect was practically the baseline; never interacting again until the day you died was already considered granting each other face.
Yet now it seemed their relationship was actually decent?
Still, for some reason, Ji Jue's heart suddenly tightened.
Bizarre.
Just scaring himself...
"That elder... came too?" Not knowing how to address him, Ji Jue coughed for a while before tentatively asking, "I haven't heard you talk much about his venerable self."
Ye Xian looked at him, and beneath her expression of understanding, a trace of pity actually surfaced. "He's the one who held the record for fastest registration as an artisan before you."
"Huh?" Ji Jue froze.
"Many call him a Grandmaster of the current age, revered as [Tianlu]."
"Ah!"
"Though I later couldn't stand the sight of him, so I rebelled and left the sect."
"Huh?!"
Ji Jue's brain went into overdrive, his vision swimming with black spots.
"Besides, haven't you already met him?"
Like watching an unfortunate child fall into a ditch unable to climb out, Ye Xian offered a rare, gloating smirk. "With your wits, you've probably already guessed, haven't you?"
She paused, then asked, "Or are you just unwilling to face reality?"
Ji Jue opened his mouth, trying to speak, but no sound came out.
Because he was numb.
Completely, entirely numb!
"Wait... I—he...—he...—"
For a long time, he gesticulated speechlessly, his mind a complete void.
After being manipulated and toyed with for so long, he finally understood, albeit belatedly.
Sudden realization—or rather, gritting his teeth and facing the bloody reality.
The reality was that from beginning to end, that old bastard had played him like a fiddle, and he hadn't realized it at all.
While this gift skipping a generation was indeed generous enough to cause indigestion and make one overwhelmingly flattered, why the hell were his fists clenching so hard?!
Even knowing that their lineage once could walk with heads held high throughout the Association, that he'd come within a hair's breadth of grasping the thickest, hardest, purest thigh in the Embers lineage, and that he could have been the grand-disciple of a Grandmaster with heavenly backing, there wasn't a single shred of regret or lament in his heart!
There was only full agreement with and gratitude toward his teacher.
Leaving the sect was the right call, Teacher!
Bloody brilliant!
If you hadn't broken away, I would have!
Otherwise, wouldn't I have to endure that old bastard rubbing it in my face and piling pressure on me every single day?
In the silence, Ji Jue's expression cycled like a roulette wheel.
Confusion, shock, rage, hesitation, numbness, before finally dissolving together into an indescribable chaos. He had nothing left to say.
"How does it feel, Ji Jue?"
Having had her fill of watching Ji Jue's meltdown, Ye Xian asked out of curiosity.
Ji Jue kept a deadpan face. After a long silence, he squeezed words out from between his teeth: "When I get some free time later, I'd like to request a month off."
"For what?"
Ji Jue's pupils were dark, his voice hollow. "To take the Federation civil service exam."
At that, Ye Xian could no longer hold back. A soundless smile formed on her lips, steeped in nostalgia and mockery.
The exact same narrow-mindedness and rebelliousness...
Could this be a form of inheritance as well?
One could only blame the upper beam for being crooked.
The silence stretched long.
Because the news delivered by his teacher was so absurd and explosive, Ji Jue couldn't digest it at all and nearly felt sick. It took him a long while to recover.
Done with life.
Yet at the same time, his mind finally caught up.
"Wait, if Tian... that person was once your... then Kanemoto, that old bastard—"
"Hmm, you could call him my martial uncle, I suppose?" Ye Xian shook her head dismissively. "Regardless, we never met before I left the sect, and after I left, we had nothing to do with each other.
"If he stands in the way, fighting to the death is completely normal. Nothing unusual."
She paused, giving Ji Jue a meaningful look. "Why? Regret not clinging to your martial grand-uncle's thigh?"
"That old dog and I are irreconcilable!" Ji Jue shot up in fury, swearing to the heavens and earth, before adding, "Both of those old dogs!"
If the Mercy bone blade hadn't been put away, he would have drawn it and cleaved a corner off the bench beneath his ass to prove his resolve.
Now, he finally understood why his teacher never spoke of sect lineage and ancestral ties.
Turns out it wasn't about grudges—it was simply that this entire damn sect was a field of landmines!
Yet, thinking of this, his liver trembled.
He grew increasingly anxious.
Carefully sneaking a peek at Ye Xian, making sure her mood was still decent, he finally worked up the courage:
"Teacher, just in case I die someday without even knowing how... about our lineage—no, our workshop—is there anything else I don't know that I absolutely need to know...?"
Ye Xian fell into thought. After a long pause, she nodded in agreement. "Now that you're an artisan capable of holding your own, there are indeed some things you ought to be told.
"Though, I have quite a few enemies. It's hard to sort them all out at once."
Ye Xian said nonchalantly, "Out of the workshops you ran through during your one-versus-twelve streak, eight of them have dealt with me. None of us completely tore our faces off, but regardless, it never hurts to keep your guard up whenever you encounter peers in the trade."
"..."
Right, got it. Reputation with fellow artisans locked at Unfriendly and Hated.
A disastrous starting hand, but Ji Jue hadn't learned of this just today; he'd braced himself long ago. A drop in the bucket.
"You already know I hail from the Ye clan. But the clan has declined now, so enemies are few. Even if there are any, they wouldn't target a branch member like me, so it has nothing to do with you.
"Of course, if you later develop ambitions regarding the Ye clan's prestige, you'll probably need to be prepared."
"No way, definitely not!" Ji Jue waved his hands frantically. While he still drooled over the *Treatise on Xiang Swords*, at most he'd strive to get on his teacher's good side and learn more. Without her permission, he couldn't pass that legacy downward anyway. As for usurping the Ye clan to establish his own name and replacing Ye with Ji—though such an operation existed in theory, his skin wasn't thick enough, nor his heart black enough.
"Other than that, there isn't much else." Ye Xian pondered for a moment and slowly shook her head. Ji Jue had just breathed a sigh of relief when he heard her add, "There is one more thing you should keep in mind, however."
"Huh?" Ji Jue tensed up.
"The resource consumption of the Embers path is terrifying. Deficits are constant, and no matter how much you have, it's never enough. You understand this, too."
Ye Xian reminisced about her youth. "During the period right after I broke away to stand on my own, I was often strapped for cash, hemmed in by reality. When fending for myself, in order to earn materials and funding, I joined Nirvana.
"Did quite a few things wearing a mask, truth be told."
"What?!"
Ji Jue literally jumped out of his seat in terror, instinctively scanning left and right.
Even after confirming that the Ghost Workmanship's workshop barrier was active, he still couldn't stop himself from dropping his voice to a whisper.
"Wh—which Nirvana?"
"Which other Nirvana could there be?"
Ye Xian glanced back at him as if looking at an idiot. "Aside from *that* Nirvana, is there another?
"The Nirvana that assassinated an Imperial duke a short while ago, took out the leader of the Federation's Progressive Party just last week, eliminated the Lord of the Mid-Continent's Red States yesterday, and is currently jointly wanted by every government and organization across the globe."
"..."
Beneath the blazing sun of a clear sky, a desolate, chilling wind blew through.
Ji Jue shivered uncontrollably.
Tears welled up, refusing to stay put.
"You don't need to worry about that. After so many years, we've long parted ways. Most of those who knew are dead, and the ones still alive wouldn't go blabbing around."
Studying his terrified expression, Ye Xian found herself increasingly amused. "Those guys always loved making big news when stirring up trouble. If you're interested, you could actually make a bit of extra cash there.
"After all, with the Mohist legacy you carry, they might welcome you with open arms.
"Want me to introduce you?
"Who knows? You might finish your primitive accumulation of capital in a year or two."
"No thanks, absolutely not!" Ji Jue shook his head so frantically he nearly shook it right off. He considered that while he was no law-abiding saint, at least he was an ordinary guy working hard to live his everyday life. Had water seeped into his brain to make him join a terrorist organization?! Was he insane?!
Yet looking at it now...
He swallowed hard with a dry throat.
What a bloody gathering of titans this sect of mine is!
Grand-master is Tianlu—looks utterly majestic on the surface, but in truth he's an erratic old bastard who spends his days doing nothing but rubbing it in people's faces and piling on pressure.
Teacher broke away from her sect, beat up all her peers, and joined the world's biggest terrorist organization just to scrape together research funds—
Martial grand-uncle is that damn old dog Kanemoto, who had a screw loose, took an offer from the Profound, ran off to develop in Stagnant Rot, and tried to create a new Ring of Taiyi—
"Our lineage is truly... wholesome and healthy, isn't it?"
He wiped away cold sweat, feeling utterly done with life. But once the thought crossed his mind, he froze:
Wait, it's not like I'm an innocent lamb either...
No wonder Teacher was so calm!
Indeed, just look at the disgraceful states of Tianlu and Kanemoto, folks.
Celestial Rail?
What's the big deal!
"I just never imagined that old bastard Tianlu was so vile and shameless, a moral degenerate, gold on the outside and rotting garbage within—a literal scumbag! Teacher must have suffered terribly at his hands back then, right?"
Ji Jue cursed with righteous indignation. "I knew it—not a single word from that dog's mouth can be trusted! From this day forth, this student cuts all ties with him! The word 'loyalty' is carved upon my shoulders, and in my heart, there is only one sun, and that is you—Teacher, you must never believe the rumors and gossip out there!"
"Is that so?"
Ye Xian looked over with a half-smile. "There are quite a few rumors out there, you know."
Chapter 307