Ji Jue passed away very peacefully.
To be precise, the entire process went: Ji Jue rose, Ji Jue charged, Ji Jue died.
He had thoroughly demonstrated the qualities and advantages expected of a young man—especially in the department of "falling asleep the second his head hit the pillow," where his achievements were formidable.
From start to finish, Ye Xian used only a single move.
She deployed no matrices and no blessings. She channeled no strength or spiritus beyond Ji Jue's own limits, and did not even alter her tactics, acting as though she had no clue Ji Jue had padded his chest with a lead plate as a precaution.
Toward the center of his chest, she raised her hand.
And pressed down.
"Dissociation Art?"
In the midst of his ferocious charge, astonishment flashed through Ji Jue, but his vigilance only spiked higher. He went so far as to consume most of his spiritus to reinforce the stability of his internal spiritus circuits.
If it came down to a contest of basic fundamentals, he might actually stand a chan—
*Bam!*
His vision went dark.
And then, there was no "then."
In that split second, what struck him was not a clash of basic skills between two Dissociation Arts, nor was it a quiet, permeating tremor of spiritus slipping effortlessly into the gaps. It was a violent impact that defied imagination.
It was as if the Dissociation Art's frequency of alteration, total spiritus, and maximum output had all been jacked up dozens, if not hundreds of times—a total detonation tearing through flesh, consciousness, matrices, blessings, and his very soul all at once!
Defenses were useless. Caution was useless. Even having prepared specifically against the Dissociation Art in advance made no difference whatsoever.
This was no longer a targeted assault capitalizing on an exposed weakness...
It was a full-blown shaped demolition!
The lead plate disintegrated in an instant. The moment it breached Ji Jue's body, the spiritus—initially as calm and featureless as still water—underwent an immediate qualitative transmutation. Under the craftsman's calculated guidance, it burst like roaring flame, swept forward like a hurricane, struck swift as thunder, and became... an invincible blade!
"A sword?"
The moment Ji Jue opened his eyes from the icy floor, the word slipped out of his mouth on pure instinct.
As the haze and grogginess receded, Ye Xian's face came into focus in his swaying vision, wearing a faint hint of amusement and gratification.
"Teachable after all," she remarked.
Experiencing it just once had been enough for him to grasp the essence of the technique.
Throughout the long years from her debut to her fame and up to the present day, Ye Xian had relied on her creations and her mastery of the Dissociation Art to carve a path from the Thousand Islands to the Mid-Continent, from the Mid-Continent to the Empire, and then to the Federation, settling down only when she reached the end of her long journey.
Thirty years of blood and violence, starting from age twenty-four.
Thanks to the outstanding average caliber and capability of the Embers lineage, throughout her journey she had by no means lacked peers and adversaries who prepared countermeasures against the Dissociation Art.
In fact, methods to counter it had been found long ago, and the tactical concepts were already mature!
Whether it was reinforcing one's spiritus structure to endure it passively; erecting outer barriers; expanding volume so the Dissociation Art couldn't dismantle it in time; or even crudely sleeving the critical components of a creation in spiritus-insulating material to shut out interference...
Solutions always outnumbered problems—people could always dream something up!
The little heads of the Embers never lacked shocking ingenuity in every sense of the word.
Unfortunately, most shocking ingenuity turned out to be useless.
Because behind that backdrop, Ye Xian's Dissociation Art had taken yet another step forward.
It was precisely because craftsmen suffered from weakness and disadvantage in encounter battles that they needed trump cards—and trumps behind trumps, preparations behind preparations.
Long before she ever laid bare her cards with the Dissociation Art, Ye Xian had already begun developing its successors.
With a clear concept in mind, it had not taken long. Building upon the Dissociation Art and fusing it with the Ye Clan's legacy, an entirely new technique had metamorphosed into being.
If the defenses were thickened, she transformed the quality of her spiritus to shred them. If the volume increased, she scaled up her total spiritus to overwhelm it.
And if a creation possessed spirit, she forged a sword from within the target in the split second of dissociation, cleaving its soul and shattering its spirit!
If the original Dissociation Art was picking a lock, this advanced form was figuring out the lock's design and pouring dynamite directly into the keyhole.
A lock?
Screw your lock—did you ask the hammer in my hand?
When pure technique was infused with absolute power, an advanced art was born.
"'The essence of Yang shines forth as light; the vapor of Yin unleashes as thunder...' By endowing spiritus with radically opposing properties, provoking and transmuting them, one attains the realm of 'Jingzhen.'"
With her hands clasped behind her back, Ye Xian looked down at Ji Jue playing dead on the floor, a half-smile on her lips. "This is 'Jingzhen,' sublimated from Dissociation."
She asked, "Want to learn it?"
"Yes!"
Ji Jue nodded emphatically, without the slightest hesitation.
Why pretend? If he wanted it, he wanted it!
Even if mountains of blades and seas of fire lay ahead, he still wanted it!
If he missed out just because of playing hard to get, he would weep pearl-sized tears in his dreams every night and spend his days in bitter regret wishing to hang himself from a beam—that was how much he wanted it!
And so, Ye Xian nodded with satisfaction.
Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out an object resembling an iron plaque and tossed it into his chest.
"Then go learn."
The metal plate spun through the air. Ji Jue instinctively caught it to keep it from smacking his face. The moment the icy cold touched his palms, a faint chime seemed to ring in his ears.
Like the low hum of a sharp blade.
Ji Jue squinted and blinked hard, bringing his unfocused eyes to bear on it. On the reverse of the octagonal iron piece, he saw rows of archaic, vigorous raised characters. Turning it over, surrounded by rings of intricate emblems, he saw a bright, mirror-smooth face that could reflect a person's image.
Was that... an ancient mirror?
No!
Something was wrong—dead wrong!
Subconsciously, Ji Jue channeled a wisp of spiritus into it. Then, as the ancient mirror swallowed the spiritus like a whale gulping water, a flash of cyan light burst in his eyes, and the world transformed completely.
Everything he took for granted suddenly revealed a radically different landscape.
Countless spiritus circuits manifested behind physical matter like a sky full of stars. Right in front of him, Ye Xian seemed to turn into a blazing sun; the outlines of the matrices and the radiance of blessings within her flashed briefly, nearly blinding him.
He couldn't see them clearly at all.
More importantly, amidst the manifold shifts in material properties and the flow of spiritus, the weak points across the surrounding floor, ceiling, and walls became countless times clearer!
The instinct to scream clashed with a gasp of pure shock.
It turned into a violent coughing fit.
Ji Jue sat bolt upright like doing a sit-up, heedless of the pain, losing his voice in disbelief.
"Wait!"
His hands began to tremble, as though what he held was not an ancient mirror, but a red-hot branding iron.
"The Mirror of Contained Forms?!"
The most profound and exalted core of the Ye Clan's legacy was the *Treatise on Xiang Swords*, divided into two volumes. The lower volume was passed only to direct blood kin, while the upper volume could be mastered solely by the head of the clan.
The lower volume, *Shuo Jian*, cataloged the structures, weaknesses, forging processes, and essential techniques of countless famous swords from the Age of Chaos down to a century ago. Possessing it, one could become a grandmaster craftsman simply by following its blueprints.
The upper volume, *Hanxiang*, comprised the core techniques, secret arts, and theories that the lower volume could not even touch—a legacy once capable of producing Sages. The name *Hanxiang* derived from its absolute core: the *Shangyuan Hanxiang Sword Mirror Chart*!
And the creation forged according to its theory and soul was none other than what Ji Jue held in his hands—the Mirror of Contained Forms, an artifact containing and encapsulating every technique and permutation!
—Celestial Craft: Hanxiang!
Whoever held it could illuminate all phenomena, perceiving every gap and flaw in the flow of heaven and earth.
Just like that brief glimpse moments ago.
Even if his spiritus had only lasted for that single breath, Ji Jue knew with certainty that with this in hand, mastering the Dissociation Art would pose no difficulty whatsoever.
He could even be sure that the Dissociation Art, and the subsequent Jingzhen, had been developed using this as an aid.
Yet its significance went far beyond that.
Setting aside its power and effects, what mattered even more was what it symbolized.
It was the absolute vessel and incarnation of the *Treatise on Xiang Swords*. In other words...
This was the token of the Ye Clan Patriarch, the repository of their legacy!
Only its bearer was the Master of the Ye Clan!
"Are you... l-lending this to me?" Ji Jue's voice trembled. "Is that appropriate?"
"Lending? Why lend it?"
Ye Xian's first words made him breathe a sigh of relief, but her next plunged him straight into the abyss. "After so many years, I've already learned and mastered everything I need to. It isn't much use to me anymore.
"Consider it a congratulatory gift for becoming a craftsman."
She said, "It's yours."
"..."
In the silence, a soft thud echoed.
Ji Jue lost the strength to hold his sit-up, crushed flat to the floor by this gift fallen from the sky, unable to get up at all.
"Is that... really necessary?"
Sweat poured down his face. He was terrified his teacher would see him as an ungrateful wolf or an untamable hound. "Teacher, I really don't have any designs or ambitions on the Ye Clan's legacy. Just teach me whatever scraps you can manage; there's no need to—"
"Didn't you want to learn it?"
Ye Xian asked, puzzled. "How are you going to learn it without this?"
She bent a finger and flicked the mirror's surface. Instantly, light surged, shifted, and intertwined, projecting a vast and intricate structural diagram in endless permutation.
"The art of Jingzhen was born from the Jingzhen Sword recorded in the Mirror of Contained Forms: *Wielding lightning and thunder, commanding the dark stars. Vanquishing malice and evil, supreme, prosperous, furthering, and persevering. Heaven descends its essence, Earth answers with spirit. Imaging sun and moon, embodying peaks and rivers.* Exhausting the transformations of Yin and Yang, dismantling all that has form, annihilating all that has none.
"Beyond targeting an object's structure, what it truly destroys is the spiritus and divine soul flowing within.
"Thus, it can be called 'all-conquering.'"
She suddenly asked, "Tell me then: without the Mirror of Contained Forms, how do you expect to learn the transmutation of Yin and Yang? How will you forge spiritus into a blade? How will you ever unleash the true essence of Jingzhen?"
"...I could always learn... a little bit, right?"
Ji Jue squirmed back a few inches, clinging to a sliver of hope.
"Without Hanxiang, you might still scrape together the basics of the Dissociation Art, but the realm of Jingzhen? Don't even dream of it. Besides, haven't you been prepared from the start?
"Nothing under heaven remains eternal and unchanging. Even the gods who ruled over everything perished to the last. The kings of the Age of Chaos who laid the foundations of the world had their day of turning to ash. An Eternal Empire spanning millennia collapsed overnight into nothingness. What is a single family, a single surname, compared to that?"
Ye Xian smiled disdainfully. "Since you have the ability, there is no harm in entrusting this legacy to you. If you lacked the talent, do you think I'd spare you a second glance even if you kowtowed until your skull split open?"
She paused, her expression turning teasing. "Or perhaps you find the Ye Clan's heritage so precious and my benevolence so immense that you want to marry into the family and carry on our name?"
"Huh?"
Shocked, Ji Jue's brain short-circuited. "D-Do I have to?"
Marrying in wasn't ideal, but if it was the parasite senior, then maybe...
*Bam!*
Ye Xian flicked her finger, whipping up a violent gale.
Ji Jue went flying.
Amidst a bloodcurdling scream, he spun seven thousand two hundred degrees through the air before hitting the ground, tumbling like a rolling gourd from one end of the room to the other until his brains were practically scrambled.
He lay there, barely breathing.
*Clang!*
The Mirror of Contained Forms plummeted from above, landing right in front of his face and reflecting his miserable mug.
"Once you're done daydreaming about having your cake and eating it too, haul yourself upstairs."
Ye Xian walked away, hands behind her back, her distant voice drifting back faintly:
"It's time we talked about your future..."
Chapter 315