T5

She gave Ji Jue no time to react at all, showing none of the shock, bewilderment, or wariness he had anticipated. It was entirely as if she were naturally chatting about how nice the weather was today, or what he had eaten for breakfast—casual, offhand, and utterly indifferent. It almost made Ji Jue tumble off the sofa in fright. Subconsciously picking up a can of cola, he offered it with both hands. "Young hero, have some tea, and please, elaborate." Ye Chun gave his eager expression a bewildered look, then lifted a hand and pointed at the bookshelf behind them. "Should be the cabinet on the left, middle shelf. Go look. There ought to be an encyclopedia from the Universal General Knowledge Explained series." It was a massive, dictionary-sized tome. Glancing at the back, he saw it had been published in the year 388 of the Cataclysm Era—older than Ji Jue himself. Following Ye Chun's instructions, he checked the index and found the entry for Celestial Rail. It led to an abbreviation that left him completely baffled. —[T5]. The name designated five massive corporate organizations that had existed as far back as the Central Era before the Cataclysm Era—the period of the Mid-Continent's Everlasting Dynasty. Supposedly, in the era prior to the Sovereign Reign of the Virtues, they were already active in history, playing indispensable, pivotal roles within the Everlasting Dynasty. Though they held no official standing in the imperial court, they still enjoyed authorization and respect from the emperor. Then catastrophe struck. The various lands fractured, the world was turned upside down, and the Cataclysm Era arrived. The Everlasting Dynasty broke apart into ashes, and the Mid-Continent fell from a former paradise and Holy Land into a mire of ceaseless warfare. Yet these five corporations endured. They had even taken part in rebuilding the world and its order during the Cataclysm Era, making substantial contributions and sacrifices. Whether in the Federation to the north, the Empire on the Southern Continent, or across all the archipelagos adrift upon the Endless Sea, every legitimate regime acknowledged their transcendent status and authority above the secular realm. At the same time, to prevent a recurrence of the disaster and stem the collapse of the Border Realms to the greatest extent possible, the various factions gathered and signed the T5 Protocol, which restricted the power, operations, manufacturing, and scope of activity of these five companies. Backed by a convergence of immense resources, centuries of accumulation, and countless unbroken lines of secret research, each of the five corporations held absolute dominance in their respective fields. Their sectors of operation were healthcare, communications, manufacturing, finance, and transportation... Among them, the enterprise engaged in production and construction had, after a split, transformed into the colossal titans monopolizing most of the industrial markets in the Federation and the Empire: Universal Heavy Industries and Grand Creation! Universal Heavy Industries, of all damn things! Ji Jue felt sick to his stomach. Just as it was impossible for an Imperial citizen not to know Grand Creation, it was impossible for a Federation citizen never to have dealt with Universal Heavy Industries. For some people, birth, aging, illness, death, eating, drinking, and relieving themselves all fell within the scope of its operations. Ever since Ji Jue began learning auto mechanics, he had seen those four words constantly. The spare parts were manufactured by subsidiaries of Universal Heavy Industries, the engine oil was refined by them, the gloves came from their chemical plants, and the hard hats, uniforms, and fuel—even Yacheng's local Haian Auto Works—had their investment and controlling stakes. Mother Lu's Dalu Auto Repair Shop wasn't even considered a downstream distributor; it couldn't even graze their edges. In the communications sector, Boundless United Communications Group was a behemoth that directly controlled eighty percent of the global market. In a world fraught with earthquakes and ceaseless calamities, someone from Yacheng couldn't even place a phone call to Midtown without going through them. Ji Jue was still subscribed to an eighteen-yuan-a-month data plan from them. In healthcare, Hope Hospital... He seemed to have heard of it somewhere, but had no real impression. Perhaps it was too high-end for a bottom-feeder like Ji Jue to ever brush against. Or perhaps they had long since spread across the world through equity holdings without him ever realizing it. In finance, Perpetual Bank had no detailed description beyond its name. And with the measly pennies in Ji Jue's pockets, he probably wouldn't cross paths with them in his lifetime. As for the last one, it was the undisputed overlord of transportation—Celestial Rail Transit Group! According to the book, this conglomerate not only operated everything from airships and trains to cargo and cruise vessels, but had also constructed a transportation network capable of reconnecting the terrestrial world. Reading this made Ji Jue's blood surge with vicarious pride. Such an incredible corporation had to be powerful, badass, and dominant. The pay had to be extraordinary, right? Unfortunately, Ji Jue could not find the slightest trace of their current existence, and even their profile was exceedingly brief. Aside from a cursory sentence regarding their name and business scope, only a single line remained: —[Due to poor management, now bankrupt and defunct.] Bankrupt?! Ji Jue nearly bored a hole through the battered paper with his stare. *Bankrupt? Are you serious?* Though he had genuinely wished for something like this from the bottom of his heart, the other four were flourishing so tremendously—how did you manage to flop this hard? A company that sounded so badass it could practically reach heaven and earth—no, one that literally *did* reach heaven and earth—just vanished into thin air?! And when he glanced at the date of closure, he lost his mind all over again: Year 198 of the Cataclysm Era? It went under more than two centuries ago! Then what did that make him?! He had only become a regular employee last month, damn it! Never mind leaning against a big tree to enjoy the shade; at this rate, was he going to be appointed the legal representative on his very first day of work?! *Snap!* Without hesitation, Ji Jue slammed the book shut, shoved it back onto the shelf, and meticulously closed the cabinet door. Whoever wanted this wretched Celestial Rail company could have it; it had nothing to do with him! Farewell! In any case, he hadn't signed a contract, and the business had gone belly-up anyway. Even the watch's own system couldn't connect to its superior. No matter how formidable Celestial Rail had been, it had been bankrupt for over two hundred years. It wasn't as though some manager could turn into a ghost and come knocking in the dead of night to demand overtime, right? Just like that, he resolved to toss all thoughts of Celestial Rail to the back of his mind. *Never heard of it, don't know it, no clue. I found this watch on the ground—I thought nobody wanted it!* Having endured an unexpected scare, Ji Jue spent the rest of the afternoon throwing himself into the study of alchemy to settle his lingering dread. Lost in his work, he completely lost track of time. Until that familiar cracking sound echoed from the furnace once more. Failure number fifty-one. Cause: physical disharmony. Tongs in hand, Ji Jue scrutinized the bronze scrap that had endured an afternoon of torture, sensing the spiritus running wild and diffusing inside as he analyzed the cause of failure yet again. Yet, right before his eyes, a fissure suddenly split across the cooling bronze fragment, followed by a second, a third, dense and spreading... until finally, right under his nose, it collapsed into a heap of glowing-hot copper sand. "Oh, congratulations, congratulations." Ye Chun poked her head in. Seeing the scrap completely ruined, she couldn't help but clap. "The first step toward clearing out the junk pile is finally complete!" Spiritus overload. After an entire afternoon of Ji Jue's tempering and engraving, the already discarded scrap could no longer bear any further processing or carving. Pushed past its threshold, it collapsed from within. The simpler the material, the more fragile its physical properties, the lower its endurance limit, and the milder its reaction upon self-destruction. If it had been certain hazardous materials, after being pumped full of immense spiritus and the essence of the Virtues, losing control inside the furnace might have triggered an outright detonation, potentially leveling the entire workshop into a crater. Furnace explosions had always been an eternal nightmare for alchemical craftsmen. This was Professor Ye's teaching methodology: *as long as it won't blow up, work it until it does.* In any case, the warehouse was filled with useless scrap and offcuts of zero value. Rather than let them sit, they might as well spend their remaining utility serving as practice material for Ji Jue. Even a dog, if it could rely on its own alchemical craft to overload and destroy an entire warehouse of junk, would eventually be forged into a craftsman—to say nothing of a Celestial Conscript. Right now, having finally taken the first step of this ten-thousand-li journey, Ji Jue ought to have been cheering with joy. Yet, inexplicably, he fell into a daze. In a stupor, he looked down at the copper dust beneath his feet, and at the spiritus gradually rising from the searing granules, dispersing rapidly. The sediments and impressions accumulated from dozens of rounds of processing and engraving were swiftly evaporating away. *But why do I feel... so hungry?* Hunger, hunger, hunger, hunger, hunger! Like a starved ghost that hadn't eaten a single grain of rice for dozens of days, an indescribable craving surged up from Ji Jue's soul and consciousness, almost turning him into a ravenous beast. He reached out instinctively, wanting to clutch that rapidly dispersing spiritus and essence and shove it into his mouth. Only when he came to his senses did he offer a bitter smile. Trying to grab invisible spiritus and essence with bare hands, trying to digest residues compounded by countless cycles of forging and shaping with his own mouth and stomach—it was pure madness. The next instant, he froze in place. Because his hand actually seemed to have caught hold of something... Not only the spiritus essence evaporating into the air, but even the lingering essence within the copper sand seemed to be seized, controlled, and pulled by an unseen force, gathering into Ji Jue's palm. Upon his right hand, streaks of silver radiance resembling circuit board traces faintly lit up, intimately familiar. Every time he used the watch to siphon spiritus, Ji Jue would see them. But now, with just a thought, that dizzyingly intricate spiritus circuit surfaced directly from his hand. It was as though his hand had turned into an alchemical item. Drawing and extracting it out of thin air, he closed his fingers, and the emblem representing his ability in his soul suddenly flared, absorbing, devouring, and digesting all the essence. A sudden wave of dizziness hit him! Ji Jue twitched. In that fleeting fraction of an instant, what emerged in his perception was actually fifty-one iterations of engraving and processing! It was as if he had become the bronze itself, enduring the searing flames and hammer blows, feeling the flow of spiritus. Yet simultaneously, he seemed to have become the spiritus itself, leaving circuits and imprints time and again, only to meet failure time and again... And before that, even earlier, he seemed to have been part of some colossal entity. Back before the fragment had ever broken, amid the furnace's blaze, countless spiritus circuits had coursed through its body beneath the hands of a blurred silhouette. It was like working wonders, forging all creation! Runes flickered to life and faded amid the roaring flames and molten copper. Complex circuits ran through everything like a colossal tree, and finally, at the innermost core, the essence of the Virtues collided and merged. A magnificent creation surpassing Ji Jue's imagination manifested from the furnace. Under that silhouette's command, the unruly physical traits were like loyal hounds, and the shifting spiritus was like flowing water, achieving fresh transformations with every gesture. Until at last, the flames parted like a tide to either side, and from the violently trembling furnace, a massive engine over two men tall slowly ascended. Brilliant light shone across the intricate machinery, and the blessing of the Virtues rippled through the bronze gleam with profound solemnity! Yet what greeted it was a gaze touched with faint disappointment. "Excessive ascension, insufficient purification." Professor Ye withdrew her gaze. "Another failure." With a flick of her fingers, the newly finished, magnificent engine instantly broke apart, shattering into countless fragments. All that remained was a colossal roar echoing within Ji Jue's soul. *Boom!* Ji Jue's vision went dark, and he staggered back a step. Yet the moment his senses returned, he had already snatched up the tongs, seized another fragment, and tossed it into the furnace. Fighting against every second, without even waiting for the material to heat up and its physical properties to shift, he pressed his hand against the console once more. Before that vivid sensation of having become Professor Ye and the fragment itself could fade, the spiritus surged forth! *The feeling is here!* Gone was the previous awkwardness, gone the trembling hesitation. Ji Jue's consciousness and perception coursed through the fragment alongside the spiritus, like a fish in water, driving forward with reckless abandon, untroubled even by layers of interference. Rough and bold, like cursive calligraphy flowing across the page, he manifested the concept in his mind in a single breath! In less than a few short seconds, a process that once required Ji Jue's painstaking care for over a dozen minutes was already finished, leaving behind an unprecedented rush of exhilarating satisfaction. He picked up the tongs, extracted the fragment from the furnace, and stared at the sole success he had achieved after an entire afternoon of failures—the totem of the Virtues! Like an invisible fire, ascending upward, burning eternally. It was the first of the Twelve Virtues, the foundation of Truth, Transcendence, and Insight, the fountainhead of all thought and spirit in the world. —[Ascension]! After stepping out of the interference-free simulated operating environment, in less than six hours, Ji Jue had overcome a hurdle that took other apprentices countless failures and accrued experience to surmount, completing his first true Virtue engraving... He raised a hand, wiped away the nosebleed brought on by spiritus overexertion, and could no longer hold back an excited smile. This was his true first step!