Intermission

The air abruptly vibrated. The auras of the Desolate Ruins and Embers clashed in an instant. The essences of eternity and change parted as quickly as they met amid the surge and friction of spiritus. A fleeting silver shimmer seemed to flash past, and immediately after, a faint fissure appeared in front of Ji Jue, only to vanish just as quickly. In the span of a breath, the stasis zone spreading from beneath the giant's feet—that invisible iron wall barring Ji Jue's way—had been cut open with a crack. Even if there was no distinction of rank among the Sovereign Goods, a stasis zone forged by someone at the pinnacle of Regeneration had actually been breached by an Embers artisan in the Metamorphosis stage... A sight that scarcely anyone would believe even if word spread unfolded right before everyone's eyes. In the stunned silence, only a faint, gentle sigh echoed. "It seems this path is walkable after all, isn't it?" That trace of insight left behind from the brief union with the Edge of Revolution back then, the divine essence flowing from the heart of the Embers—even if less than a ten-millionth of it remained, it was still enough to shatter the obstruction before him. Ji Jue gave a final nod and strode forward. "Well then, goodbye." With that, he walked off nonchalantly. Skipping along behind him, An Ning amused herself playing a game of stepping on footprints and shadows, following him closely step for step. Amid the dead silence, no one spoke another word. Only the crisp crack of glass echoed once more. Yue Chen snapped off the bottle's neck, tilted his head back, and drained the strong liquor in a single gulp. Like fiery molten lava trapped beneath the earth's crust, his power surged and spread silently, quietly awaiting the moment when it would see the light of day once more and burn everything to ash. Upon returning to his room, he closed the door. Quicksilver flowed, creeping up along the walls in countless interwoven threads. Only after casually laying down a spiritus barrier to block prying eyes and a modest layer of defense did Ji Jue let out a long breath he had been holding. He raised a hand and wiped away the trace of blood trickling from his nostril. "Tougher to deal with than expected," Ji Jue murmured softly. "And it might turn out even worse than I think right now." In the instantaneous spiritus clash just now, testing the waters between the Desolate Ruins' stasis zone and the Embers' material property interference, Ji Jue had technically won the exchange, but he had still come off worse. After all, even with the divine essence of the Edge of Revolution at his disposal, Metamorphosis was still Metamorphosis, and Regeneration was still Regeneration. The gap between stages could not simply be erased, and the sheer volume of his spiritus lagged behind by an unquantifiable margin. His opponent's foundation was far too immense. Even within the Desolate Ruins—famed for raw volume—it was exceptionally exaggerated. He had smashed through the brick wall. The wall was gone, sure, but his head throbbed like hell! "Wanna run for it?" An Ning poked her head out curiously and raised a hand in suggestion. "If you want to flee, I can cover you, anytime, anywhere! I'm super fast on my feet." Ji Jue sighed. "Isn't this the moment where you're supposed to show off your reliability as my heavyweight ally and promise to handle it? Besides, how do you talk about running away like it's the most natural thing in the world?" "Ehh... I'm just a hired hand, you know. When the boss doesn't offer a shred of emotional value, it's tough on me too." By now, making herself completely at home, the girl had claimed the large bed, rolling back and forth. "Besides, our compatibility against him is abysmal. No matter how formidable Flying Light is, it's meant for killing living flesh. Against a guy who turns himself into solid stone, who knows how much good it would even do? "Grandpa tells us all the time: the only difference between hunter and prey is victory and defeat. Once the winner is settled by any means necessary, the one left standing is the hunter. If someone knows they're going to die and still doesn't run, idiots like that offering themselves up on a silver platter might as well die sooner rather than later. Staying alive would only bring shame." Ji Jue was utterly awestruck. "Do you White Stag people really have no martial ethics whatsoever?" "Martial ethics? Are they useful?" Wriggling like a grub, An Ning poked her head out from the quilt, full of curiosity. "Brother Ji Jue, it's not like you have any of that either, do you?" "..." To tell the truth... she wasn't wrong. Ji Jue was left speechless. An Ning immediately burst out laughing. "So just hurry up and join the White Stag! The House of An doesn't discriminate against people with outside surnames. If Grandpa laid eyes on a fine piece of raw jade like you, he'd definitely grab you by the collar and have you defecting to the House of An in minutes. Then we'd all be family, and you could be A'ran's guardian. Wouldn't his problem be solved just like that?" She made an awful lot of sense. That really did seem like a solut—like hell it was! Ji Jue had a sneaking suspicion that within the White Stag, the House of An was a tiger's den of its own, probably some scam compound where stepping through the front door meant getting stripped bare and eaten alive, skin and bones. What kind of logic was jumping into a pit himself just to fill it for a friend? Ji Jue rolled his eyes and tuned out her chatter. Popping open his case, he focused all his attention on the task at hand. With Stage S1 finished, they had a day of rest before the start of Stage S2 in Kunwu. It was the perfect window to process their spoils. Not only did Little Niuma need tending after gorging itself along the way to the point of near-indigestion, but Pan Ying had also reached its limit of blood sacrifice once again and required tempering and recasting as soon as possible. And then there was Ji Jue's greatest current shortcoming... —Consciousness defense! Earlier, when ambushing Team Tiancheng's convoy, what started as a decisive advantage had nearly capsized under several spiritus blasts from that Heart Pivot cultivator. If An Ning hadn't dealt the finishing blow without hesitation, things might have genuinely gone off the rails. In all fairness, Ji Jue's consciousness protection and soul defense were by no means weak. On top of that, Primacy of Mind from the Ascension branch steadily enhanced them in subtle ways, putting him in the upper echelons of the Metamorphosis stage. Yet out of all his gear—from Pan Ying to Little Niuma, down to his quicksilver armor reinforced with Metallic Quality and Form of Utmost Resilience, plus numerous weapons—not a single piece offered defense against mental attacks. He could only rely on the matrix amplification from Non-Offensive and his raw base stats, essentially using his bare skull to endure the other party's spiked club. He could take a blow or two, but the searing agony was something only he could fully appreciate. Considering his total lack of compatibility with the Heart Pivot, naturally boosting it in this lifetime was out of the question. Thus, he planned to seize this chance to carry on the fine tradition of an artisan: craft a piece of gear posthaste to shore up his weakness and avoid another close call... And as luck would have it, pristine raw materials had just been delivered to his doorstep. As the briefcase clicked open, the quicksilver bricks hardened by Solid Alchemy inside quickly softened and melted away, parting to both sides. A low, muffled sound rose from within the case and echoed through the room. A heartbeat. A fist-sized heart pulsed rhythmically inside the case, breathing spiritus in and out of the void like a beating drum, its measured thrum resounding continuously. Listen to it long enough, and one's breathing began to waver, synchronizing with the foreign heartbeat as consciousness slowly slipped away into dazed torpor. Following closely behind was a surge of desires and cravings welling up in the chest, endless fantasies roiling in the mind, impossible to shake free. Hunger, resentment, lust, longing, loss, rage— A kaleidoscope of emotions rotated through his heart, stirring an inexplicable fury that set his breathing heavy and his eyes bloodshot. He snapped his head around to glare at the bewildered An Ning—at this moment, all Ji Jue wanted was to yank up that ignorant brat rolling all over his bed without a care in the world, pin her down, and make her experience the true terror of *Calculations for Scissor Mechanisms and the Principle of Virtual Displacements*! To violently cram angular displacement, linear displacement, actual displacement, virtual displacement, actual work, virtual work, relative axial strain, relative shear strain, and the principle of virtual work for deformable bodies straight into her head, reducing her to bitter tears as she solved for the vertical and horizontal displacements of points A, B, C, D, E, and F along with the forces on the scissor linkage! Yet before long, the innocent gaze in An Ning's eyes—completely unpolluted by knowledge—splashed like a bucket of ice water over Ji Jue's heart. He let out a helpless sigh. Not out of pity, but because rotten wood simply could not be carved. You'll never understand structural mechanics and the mechanics of materials in this lifetime! "What is it, Brother Ji Jue?" An Ning tilted her head. "No, nothing." The bloodshot red faded from Ji Jue's eyes, no longer fierce, replaced instead by a warm, tolerant gaze usually reserved for the mentally impaired. "Go play. As long as you're happy." "I feel like you're thinking something terribly insulting!" "How could I? Abusing the intellectually disabled is against the law..." Ignoring An Ning's indignant glare and grumbling, Ji Jue breathed out a long sigh, smiled faintly, and found his mind as tranquil as still water once again. Much better! When he looked back at the heart in his hands, wariness filled his eyes—truly worthy of the Heart Pivot. Even the stray aftereffects of uncontrolled blessings had nearly driven him to lose control! Thanks to the effect of An Ning's Flying Light severing consciousness and obliterating the soul, combined with Ji Jue's prompt handling, Maya's matrix had been preserved quite intact. Ji Jue had promptly pulverized it with his Dissociation Art to feed Deus Ex Machina, picking up a wealth of insight and comprehension regarding Ascension and the Heart Pivot in the process. Stripping and preserving the blessings had gone surprisingly smoothly as well. It had even left three intact blessings with their unique secondary qualitative shifts intact, ready for reuse. One was a rare Ascension blessing, Ever Unforgetting. It could solidify one's mental and conscious state, preventing deterioration or regression while maintaining peak condition to the greatest degree, granting immunity to interference and transformation. Across numerous blessing chains, it held a pivotal position. When paired with Aether branch blessings, it could function almost like a save state—the moment it triggered, one's spirit and soul could instantly recover from the brink of death to peak condition with a single click. Another was the Heart Pivot's Harboring Resentment, which allowed emotional energy within the heart to be accumulated, stored, refined, and sublimated. Once it reached a certain threshold, it could be released in a single burst, forming a torrent that crushed foes. The last was the Heart Pivot's Consuming Lust, which was even simpler to understand. It stoked whatever suppressed desires lay within any living creature, pouring oil onto the flames until the feelings breached all restraint and became uncontrollable. In the end, their consciousness would burn away in a frenzy of wild delirium. And as for what could be done with the hollow shell left behind, the possibilities were virtually endless. Setting aside the Ascension blessing Ever Unforgetting, just take a look at these two Heart Pivot blessings. Folks, what kind of freaks and demons are we dealing with here...? Could a Sovereign Good like this even be considered good? No wonder it didn't show up back then. It saw my bro Embers and got scared, didn't it? Whatever, come or don't! Not like I cared anyway! Hilarious—has anyone ever told you how fake you are? Still, regrets aside and gripes aside, if the Heart Pivot didn't want him, somewhere else would. Ji Jue wasn't conceited enough to believe he was God's gift to the world, beloved by all. With compatibility with nine Sovereign Goods at the Celestial Conscription, his starting line was already ahead of ninety-nine point nine-nine percent of Celestial Chosen. What right did he have to be dissatisfied? Besides, with these three blessings, he could really cook up something big this time. Ji Jue rubbed his hands eagerly. The terrifying heat of Crucible Blood rose between his palms, and the matrix of Non-Offensive manifested over his ten fingers. Countless threads of spiritus radiance danced into view, enveloping his hands. The forging had begun! Through the long night, transformations unfolded. The following day, when the sun rose into the sky once more outside the bustling camp, the departures for Stage S2 officially began! Full of vigor, Ji Jue appeared once again before the livestream cameras, showing not the slightest hint that he had pulled an all-nighter. Through the car window, he turned back to smile and wave at the audience watching the screen. And on the fingers of his right hand, beside that plain, unadorned silver band, a new ring had appeared at some point. Luster flowed over the gemstone-like crystal, brilliantly vibrant and vivid. Exquisitely bewitching.