The afternoon sun shone brilliantly as the distant sound of the tide echoed.
White clouds drifted across the vast, clear winter sky, and the sun cast a warm halo that dispersed the damp and the cold.
Flowers bloomed, and birds sang.
Meanwhile, a certain unfortunate soul was drawing his last breaths...
*Thud!*
The workshop doors slowly swung open, and an unrecognizable figure crawled forward with great difficulty, squirming along the floor with barely a thread of breath left.
Beneath him, the cashmere rug sizzled, leaving behind a scorch mark wherever he passed.
Intense heat radiated outwards.
"Junk, junk... Give me junk..."
Ji Jue feebly reached out, pleading for rescue from the person on the sofa with tear-filled eyes. "Just one bite, Senior Sister... just one bite..."
Ye Chun lay sprawled on the couch, resting her chin in her hands as she gloated over his miserable state.
"Hmm? Who's speaking? Sorry, I can't hear anything!"
A piece of scrap metal she had just brought out from the warehouse dangled from her finger, swinging back and forth in front of Ji Jue's eyes, yet staying just out of reach. "Perhaps the top-ranked artisan speaking is far too lofty for a tiny ant like me to see... Say, what happened here anyway? Just two days ago, he was bragging to me about how easily he snatched the top rank, but today he's vanished without a trace. Do you have any leads on that?"
"It's definitely the work of the Evil Transmutation Cult!"
Ji Jue boomed, shamelessly shifting the blame as he gritted his teeth and reached for the helmet in Ye Chun's hand. Yet each time, he missed by a hair. Only when Ye Chun finally grew bored of teasing him did she lower it slightly, though the grin on her face turned increasingly sinister. "Do you want it? If you want it, then—"
Before she could finish, a sharp gaze seemed to pierce through from the deepest part of the workshop, checking to see what sort of nonsense she was about to spout.
The salted fish shuddered instinctively.
In that split second, Ji Jue snatched the scrap helmet, refining it in an instant.
Under his increasingly masterful Dissociation Art, the intact helmet collapsed and shattered into pieces, turning into a pile of dust. Sovereign Virtue essence drifted down like falling snow, congregating before settling into Ji Jue's grasp.
It merged into his soul.
"Phew..."
Ji Jue breathed a sigh of relief and went limp on the floor.
He couldn't muster the strength to move another inch.
The scorching heat swirling around him gradually subsided.
Meanwhile, Ye Chun's expression grew heavy with profound grief.
"Didn't you promise me you'd never eat trash again?"
She lifted a hand to wipe away imaginary tears, taking advantage of Ji Jue's inability to resist to give his head a vigorous, messy rub. "Quit while you can, Ji Jue! If you get hooked on this stuff, your life is ruined! The family doesn't have the money to feed your trash addiction anymore! Waaah... Your senior sister will have to go bus tables just to buy you garbage to eat..."
Ji Jue rolled his eyes, ignoring her.
Wasn't it just that after coming back last week, he had accidentally bragged seven, eight, nine, ten-odd times in front of her about how he had effortlessly taken first place, seized the title of top artisan, and told off that old fossil?
She clearly had such an ample bosom, yet her mind was so petty!
He sighed inwardly, lamenting how cruelly time had passed. The cool, considerate senior sister of the past was gone without a trace; all that remained was a freeloader whose sole daily purpose was driving up the price of potato chips!
Before he knew it, a hat folded from an empty chip bag was slapped onto his head, with Ye Chun continuing her enthusiastic recital from the side: "Once you don this crown, you shall be a scrapper for life, never again to touch any finished goods of the mortal realm..."
*Smack!*
The hat and her hand were swatted away.
Leaving behind only a face full of salt and pepper.
Ji Jue finally caught his breath and scrambled up from the floor, his head still spinning.
Hands clasped behind her back, Ye Xian walked out of the workshop. After glancing at him, she settled into her designated seat, picked up the strong tea she had brewed and timed to perfection, and took two sips before asking, "How's your condition?"
"Let me see..."
Ji Jue raised a hand and slapped his own forehead. The intellect within the digital thermometer stored in his soul promptly reported the readings: "Current body temperature is fifty-four degrees Celsius and still dropping. Normal resting temperature has been hovering around forty-one lately. When it got out of control just now, it spiked past ninety..."
Ye Xian gave a cold snort and shook her head, completely devoid of sympathy.
Serves him right.
That was the price of taking shortcuts.
Whether in scholarship or artisanship, the most crucial thing was taking it one step at a time. Even when progress stalled and one paced in circles, each overlapping footprint still held its own meaning.
Rapid breakthroughs came at a price, bringing endless hidden perils in their wake.
Like a castle in the air, it would topple with a gust of wind or collapse with the incoming tide.
Now that Ji Jue had been yanked upward in an aggressive burst of forced growth by Tianlu, suffering merely a fluctuating body temperature was already a blessing in disguise; it could hardly even be called an aftereffect.
It was only a bit miserable and undignified, nothing genuinely troublesome.
It seemed he needed more spiritus offense and defense classes in the future. Ji Jue was a wretch to the bone—he only remembered the treats and never the beatings. A little suffering like this wouldn't instill any real caution in him.
If he wasn't taught a harsh enough lesson now, who knew what colossal mess he might stir up later? Coming out of it without even his bones intact would be getting off easy.
The root cause behind all this trouble came down to a single factor:
The blessing [Crucible Blood] was out of control.
A blessing that originally required quantitative accumulation and gradual, long-term conditioning to slowly alter an artisan's physique until achieving a qualitative leap had suddenly been shoved straight into his soul and body.
In the blink of an eye, a little electric scooter had been turned into a Little Niuma.
It would be strange if there *weren't* aftereffects!
If anyone else had done something so reckless, they likely would have exploded on the spot, sparing them all this hassle. But the feedback and Sovereign Virtue essence Ji Jue had received were entirely the fruits of his own achievements, completely free of conflict or contradiction. As a result, what should have been an instantaneous explosion was reduced to a minor nuisance that countless people would have begged for:
Uncontrolled body temperature.
His flesh and soul had yet to adapt to such a radical transformation and were still slowly digesting it. During this period, Ji Jue's body temperature constantly hovered above fifty degrees. If it accidentally spiraled out of control, it could easily surge to several hundred degrees within moments, turning him from a living person into a torch that spontaneously combusted.
Though it wouldn't kill him, suffering was inevitable.
Ji Jue had turned it over in his mind for a long time, yet he still couldn't determine whether this aftereffect was an honest accident or that old dog Tianlu seizing the chance to take petty revenge on him.
Considering how narrow-minded the old dog was, there was no need to wonder: even if it wasn't intentional, it was intentional!
Every time his temperature flared, gloating laughter seemed to echo in his ears: *Next up, I'm going to make an unfortunate kid suffer a little...*
Fixing it was actually quite straightforward.
The radical cure was simple: eat more, drink more water, and rest well. The cells of the human body underwent a complete turnover roughly every one hundred and twenty days, by which point he would naturally achieve an initial adaptation. If one cycle didn't suffice, he would just go through another.
The symptomatic fix was equally simple: break down scrap using Dissociation Art, pop some Sovereign Virtue essence to enhance the effects of Deus Ex Machina, and forcefully suppress it with his own soul.
By now, through snacking on scrap, the progress bar on the number "4" on his wristwatch was already more than halfway full. Once it filled completely, his soul and capabilities would be sufficient to contain and master this fourth blessing, paving the way for a smooth, seamless transition to Rank 5.
After all, an ordinary Celestial Chosen would only seek a blessing at a given rank once their spiritus was fully developed and abundant. A case like Ji Jue's—reaching the destination before he had even scraped together the ticket fare—was exceedingly rare.
Receiving a blessing too early was, in a sense, its own burden.
In the early days, Ji Jue had nosebleeds if he wasn't careful, and he had to be cautious even when spitting; if his gums bled, a stray fleck of saliva could spark a fire.
Sometimes, before he even opened his eyes in the morning, his pillow and blanket would catch fire. In the end, he had to weld a metal bed frame for himself and sleep directly on a sheet of iron.
Now, with a mere thought, Ji Jue could raise his blood temperature to several hundred degrees.
And that was far from the limit. If he fully digested Crucible Blood, the peak temperature of his blood could reach around two thousand degrees, surpassing molten steel.
Yet that was merely the crudest application of the blessing.
Also a passive blessing, Crucible Blood was not as broadly applicable as Masterwork Nature, Primacy of Mind, or Sovereign Axis.
Instead, it focused specifically on Embers and oneself.
Under the effects of Crucible Blood, his mastery over furnace heat had become pure instinct, elevating every facet of his creations and craftsmanship to a brand-new plane.
Through material properties interference combined with spiritus, his blood was undergoing a comprehensive renewal and qualitative shift, turning into an exquisite vessel for spiritus. It had taken over a week of Ji Jue's natural recovery just to convert barely a third of his blood.
The transformed Crucible Blood had also become a rare and precious material. When used in alchemical Ascension, it could impart spirituality to materials and enhance their quality.
Even without forging, it was a superb pairing for Fluid Alchemy, proving far more pliable and responsive than ordinary purified quicksilver. Nowadays, whenever Ji Jue had free time, he would draw a bit of blood and blend it into the quicksilver.
This built up his reserves while simultaneously dampening the backlash and side effects.
After all, who could stand living a life where a single sneeze risked spontaneous combustion? How was anyone supposed to get through the day?
Because of this, Ji Jue had not even begun his studies of the Treatise on Xiang Swords.
Without absolute control over himself, beginning such a dangerous curriculum would likely result in him turning into a sacrificial offering to the blade after a single lesson, perhaps even becoming a notoriously overachieving cursed sword that went down in history for all the wrong reasons.
For now, all he could do was commit the stack of Ye Clan legacy manuals and sword diagrams that his teacher had tossed him to memory, pondering over them with great care.
The Treatise on Xiang Swords was divided into two parts: the Hanxiang Chapter covered practical application, while the Shuojian Chapter handled theory and analysis. Neither could be omitted.
Yet while times had changed, the legacy remained in its original form, laden with metaphors, ciphers, and archaic references. To avoid misinterpreting them, Ji Jue had to turn back and hammer away at classical language and ancient texts, filling his head with archaic grammar and dusty turns of phrase.
Even so, he could barely comprehend ten to twenty percent of it, grasping the surface rules without understanding the underlying principles.
"If you don't understand it, take your time. You have plenty of it anyway."
After answering several of his questions, Ye Xian set down her teacup. "The legacy of the ancestors isn't necessarily absolute truth. The Treatise on Xiang Swords certainly has its brilliance, but the era changed long ago. Over the past few centuries, it hasn't been uncommon for practitioners to fall into madness or throw themselves into Stagnant Rot, yet not a single Sage has emerged from it since."
Regarding the priceless family legacy, Ye Xian had long since adopted a detached view.
As long as it was passed down, what form it took didn't matter.
"Times change, and situations shift. Reciting an old formula for a lifetime will only cocoon and trap you. All you need to care about is whether you can digest it, and whether you can use it as a stepping stone to glimpse even grander vistas."
"...Teacher, aren't your expectations for me a bit too high?" Ji Jue said with a bitter smile.
Never mind using it as a stepping stone; right now, just the theoretical portion was threatening to crush him to death beneath the stone, leaving him unable to crawl out.
A goal set too far away was sometimes its own heavy burden.
Ye Xian glanced at him with a faint, half-smile. "Don't you want to punch that old fossil in the face one day?"
"Good point!"
Ji Jue's eyes widened, his fighting spirit blazing instantly.
Not only did it blaze, but he was also going to outwork ten salted fish into the dust! *Kheh-kheh-kheh!*
Sprawled on the sofa, Ye Chun suddenly grew vigilant, clutching the bag of shrimp chips to her chest.
A phone began to ring.
It was hers.
Chapter 309