Come On, Put on a Show for Her!

Complex, circuit-like patterns covered the elongated base, running from the hand-shaped indentations all the way into the interior of the spherical crystal. It was a shape and construction he had never seen before—strangely bizarre. "Professor, this isn't one of those things from novels that lights up when you press your hands against it, is it?" Just like in those really old fantasy novels where magic academies tested aptitude and the orb flashed like a bulb being screwed in. Ji Jue didn't hesitate, though. He pressed both hands down directly, and just as he expected, a faint glow lit up inside the sphere. Unfortunately, it wasn't even two watts strong—plugging two electrodes into a potato would have yielded about the same result, which left him feeling a tiny twinge of disappointment. Then he felt it: the spiritus inside his body began to pulse eagerly, as if sensing an attraction, seized by an urge to flow outward. "Don't resist the movement of your spiritus. Feed it inside, layer by layer, progressively deeper. Take it slow, take your time. "Its base is called a simplified spiritus probe. It helps a Celestial Chosen's spiritus maintain a stable structure and state within matter. Anchoring spiritus pathways, runes, and imprints inside matter via probes is the foundation of modern alchemy." Professor Ye spoke slowly. "Stabilize your spiritus. Bring it into a fixed form, keep it gathered, and hold it steady." As she spoke, wisps of light arose within the crystal sphere like liquid bronze, carrying a reserved, brilliant radiance. Fed through the spiritus pathways of his ten fingers, ten threadlike lines of spiritus swam smoothly through the crystal. Guided by her instructions, they converged in one spot, weaving into a stable loop. "Now, you can let go." At Professor Ye's command, Ji Jue slowly raised his hands. Neither spoke in the silence. They merely watched as the loop of spiritus Ji Jue had woven revolved slowly inside the crystal sphere. Its hazy, faint glow gradually dimmed, until finally, after ten minutes, it broke apart from the center and dissipated. "Next, use your spiritus to diffuse, fill the entire sphere, and keep it uniform." Ye Xian suddenly asked, "Can you feel anything?" "It feels like, inside here..." Ji Jue hesitated. "The material inside the crystal sphere seems to be shifting between liquid and solid?" "That's normal. It's injected with a high-spiritus reaction crystal that liquefies when spiritus is introduced. Next, you need to control the proportion between liquid and solid—direct it, guide it, make it move." Professor Ye's voice was slow and solemn, each word ringing clear in his ears. Soon, when Ji Jue released his hands again, a golden vortex had appeared inside the sphere. His spiritus was guiding the liquefied crystal into motion and rotation. Professor Ye timed it on her stopwatch. It lasted for thirteen minutes and sixteen seconds before the spiritus dispersed and the spinning stopped. Next, following Professor Ye's directions, he was to liquefy part of the crystal inside the sphere while keeping part solid, forming standard hexahedrons, dodecahedrons, spheres, or nested structures. After a few attempts, Ji Jue grew increasingly excited. He felt as though his spiritus, extended through the probe, had become an engraving chisel, shaping all sorts of contours. He even intuitively figured out how to turn, mill, plane, and grind, carving the silhouette of a Little Sheep moped right inside the crystal. *Holy crap, there's stuff this good in the world?!* Ji Jue's fascination deepened. *Isn't this way simpler and more convenient than a CNC machine?!* *You don't even need to code—just think it, and it happens.* "Is this alchemy?" he muttered under his breath. "It feels..." *Pretty simple.* That was what he wanted to say, and it was genuinely how he felt. It wasn't nearly as troublesome or difficult as he had anticipated; it was straightforward and easy to pick up. *No, don't get careless!* Everything starts easy before getting hard. Right now, this beginner stuff was only kindergarten level. Later on, it might get tough enough to make him cough up blood. What he feared most was Professor Ye telling him: *This is run, this is roll, this is attack. Great, now let's go slaughter these ridiculous enemies called Soul of Cinder, Orphan of Kos, and Malenia...* How would that be any different from logging into a permadeath MMO only to find out Hidetaka Miyazaki was the game director?! "Very good. Maintain this state." Deadpan, Professor Ye fetched a massive, thick tome from a nearby crate. Every single page was made of sharp, heavy sheet copper. Flipping past the cover, she pointed to the first incised symbol at the top. It was intricate and strange, resembling a hazy flame rising upward. "Use your spiritus to replicate this symbol inside the crystal as precisely as possible. Start from the left, first stroke from top to bottom. Don't restrict yourself to a flat plane; it's three-dimensional. Follow your own instincts, and your spiritus will complete its structure on its own. All you need to ensure is absolute stability. Yes..." *Snap!* Ji Jue felt an electric shock and instinctively jerked his hands back. His spiritus had slipped out of stability for a fraction of a second, and the symbol, barely one-third finished inside the sphere, silently shattered and dissipated entirely. He had half a mind to give himself two good slaps across the face! *Who told you to go around thinking it was easy?! The difficulty spiked instantly!* "Failure is normal. Keep going." Professor Ye's expression remained utterly calm, showing no change at all. "Don't second-guess yourself. What you need is to infuse your own perception and will into the spiritus. Don't let the spiritus drag you along. It's a part of you. Yes, just like that..." *Snap!* Soon, another slip. "Again." Another slip followed shortly after. Ji Jue was dripping with sweat, but Professor Ye showed no reaction beyond saying, "Continue." "Keep going." "You messed up the finish just now. Your spiritus density changed. Recall the feeling you had before." "Spiritus isn't a blade—or rather, not just a blade. It's also what forms the imprint itself. They are one whole. Continue." "Again. Hold it steady. Contract it a little more." ... Resetting again and again, accompanied only by the crisp ticking of time, Ji Jue's face grew pale, his breathing turned heavy, and dizziness crept in. Yet through the haze, the stability of his spiritus climbed once more, shifting and flowing little by little through the crystal under the probe's guidance. Until a dreamlike light blossomed beneath Ji Jue's hands. When his spiritus dispersed, the rune left behind within the crystal began to turn as if it were alive, releasing soft colors that shifted so magnificently they lit up his eyes. He forgot to breathe. In that instant, it felt as though his spiritus had formed a bridge connecting him to that turning rune, and an inexplicable comprehension welled up from the bottom of his heart. The soul was like a flame, burning incessantly, rising without end. Thinking, feeling, understanding—all the philosophies and true essences of the world flowed forth from this source of miracles, permeating all things. And so, its name was... —[Ascension]! The emblem and totem of the Twelve Virtues! Then his vision went dark. A drop of blood suddenly appeared on the crystal sphere, followed by a second, then a third... Crimson dripped from the tip of Ji Jue's nose, splattering across the workbench. He staggered back a step, reaching out to catch himself on something, only to collapse into a padded chair, gasping violently for air. It took a long while before he came to his senses, staring at the rune slowly blurring inside the crystal. "Professor, did I succeed?" Professor Ye didn't speak. She stood where she was, staring down at the crystal, lost in thought. She simply wiped away the bloodstains with a gentle touch, then reached out and tapped the crystal with a finger. The rune that had been on the verge of fading suddenly stabilized, shining even more brilliantly than when Ji Jue had just finished tracing it. It burst into dazzling, blinding light! As if a searchlight had suddenly been switched on right in front of his eyes, countless minute branches branched out from the rune. Its majesty and splendor were hundreds of times greater than before—no, thousands, tens of thousands of times greater! That was the absolute gulf between the two of them in their comprehension and mastery of the Path of Ascension. A chasm as wide as heaven and earth. "Not bad," she said suddenly. It wasn't just that he could pick up and use a spiritus probe on his very first attempt; his level of spiritus control was astonishingly high. Stability, endurance, precision... To a master, it was riddled with flaws and far too raw, but for an apprentice, it was already practically flawless. What if this apprentice had never encountered any of this before? What if he didn't have even the slightest foundation in alchemy? What if it had taken him merely half an hour to successfully produce a runic imprint of the Virtues?! If someone had told her this yesterday, she would have scoffed at it. Yet even having witnessed it with her own eyes today, it felt entirely like... A fantasy! Skilled probe operation, controlled manipulation of spiritus, pioneering and maintaining alchemical circuits, applying and mastering runic imprints... Someone had blasted through the entirety of a conventional apprentice's training program in a single half-hour stretch? Back then, it had taken her a full week to complete the fundamentals of alchemy, a pace and efficiency that put her at the absolute forefront of all her peers and left even her teacher astounded. She had thought it was nothing special and hadn't cared, no matter how much fear and envy lay behind the looks directed at her back. And now, more than twenty years later, she finally understood the frustration her peers had felt, and the amazement her teacher had experienced. She even felt a wave of relief that she hadn't let Ye Chun come down to watch. If Ye Chun had seen this, it probably would have been another devastating blow, wouldn't it? "You did well, Ji Jue." Ye Xian finally raised her eyes and looked over. "Better than I expected... Does this have something to do with your ability?" "Uh, it feels a little similar, but parts of it are somewhat different." Ji Jue scratched his head. After gesturing for a while without knowing how to describe it, he simply pointed toward the gantry machining center in the distance. "It's pretty much like this." *[Buddy, get moving! Put on a show for me!]* The instant the command was issued, the massive CNC machine shuddered violently. Power connected, programs booted, indicator lights flared on one after another, and amid a low hum, the machining center cheerfully answered: *[A-fuckin'-OK!]* Then, an ear-splitting grinding shriek erupted from the workbench! A strange, dark-gold cutter head that Ji Jue had never seen before lit up with a brilliant glow and dropped down abruptly, sending a violent shudder through the massive octagonal billet of titanium alloy. Amid sprays of cutting fluid and coolant, thousands of metallic filaments burst out from beneath the tool head. It was literally like a hot knife through butter! This material was ridiculously hard, brittle as hell, and had abysmal thermal conductivity. In the past, machining something like this would have been a waking nightmare for Ji Jue, but right now, he felt as though he had accidentally wandered into a barbershop. The formerly stubborn billet was now being pinned down by the barber, willfully battered, trimmed, and styled, dancing nimbly through the rotations of the five-axis linkage. Just like a foolish boy who had lost himself to the barber's sweet talk! Fast—far too fast. Without any auxiliary tools, without any preparatory work, just jumping right in and getting shit done. Amid the machine tool's imagined, crazed laughter, the billet was reshaped and remade at will, shedding one burdensome layer after another. Fine shavings flew everywhere, yet not a single strand caught on the cutter head, which moved with such agility it seemed to twitch with madness. In less than four minutes, a bust of Professor Ye had emerged from the raw billet, raised up behind the glass partition directly opposite them. It was like looking in a mirror: every strand of hair, every single wrinkle, utterly flawless. Even Professor Ye froze in place. Her eyes went wide. After a long silence, her slightly trembling hand reached up to adjust her glasses, as if suppressing her emotions. "Ji Jue..." "Yeah?" Ji Jue grinned, holding his smug head high. "How does it look to you, Professor?" "...Terrible." Professor Ye slowly let out a long breath, ultimately managing to resist the urge to punch his smug head clean off. "That custom billet was supposed to be the engineering prototype for an armor drive spine. I had almost finished writing the program for it." "Uh, about that..." The grin froze on Ji Jue's face. An awkward silence descended out of nowhere, leaving Ji Jue's head bowed under the weight of an invisible force. Several times, he started to speak and stopped, before finally working up the courage. "Um, was it... expensive?" "Don't worry, only two hundred and sixty thousand," the professor consoled him. "We'll just deduct it from your wages." Ji Jue was even more shocked. "I get wages?!" Professor Ye finally turned back to look at him, studying his stunned expression for a long moment before slowly nodding. "You did."