After spending two full months of repeated trials and explorations, squandering tens of millions with the sheer efficiency of an incinerator burning banknotes, Ji Jue finally took a solid, reliable first step in researching the Nine Types sword Chunjun!
Now that the prototype was finished through grueling effort, the techniques verified, and the entire process vetted, it was time to find a budget, assemble the project, put it into practice, and prepare for production!
For most craftsmen, this was where the real torture began.
Securing a budget was hard, getting a project approved was hard, conducting research was hard, sustaining it was hard, producing results was even harder—hard, hard, hard... If anything went slightly awry in the middle, the investors would lose their shirts, dragging the craftsman's already mediocre reputation down another notch. That was the nature of a bottomless pit.
Throwing in tens of millions wouldn't even cause a splash.
Ji Jue didn't need a financial backer; his own businesses were enough to sustain the workshop's operations. But setting up such a massive project still left him feeling strapped for cash.
Especially since the end product, Chunjun, was meant for his own use. A sword forged from his own nature and spiritus could never be wielded by anyone else, so he had to bear all profits and losses himself, resolving everything on his own.
Not only did it require numerous blessings, but there was also a massive deficit in materials.
Although he had reaped plenty of friendships and materials from the Desert Sea Rally, none of them were suitable. The Dust Crystals of the Desolate Ruins lineage could be used for Chixiao or Zhanlu, but because their material properties were overly abundant and stable, they would instead form an impediment when spiritus surged, making them ill-suited for the Ascension and Aether lineages.
Materials of the Aether lineage could be resolved through the Tong family. After all, Tong Shan had plenty left over from when he forged Huihao, and there was also an Aether blessing—Embracing Simplicity—that required the Tong family's channels.
It seemed two chickens hadn't been enough.
Next time he visited, he would have to bring two more; if that didn't work, he'd figure out another way.
As for materials and blessings of the Ascension lineage...
These days, ordinary materials could still be bought with money, but truly precious items were snapped up the instant they surfaced, if not monopolized outright. They simply couldn't be bought on the market.
Just as Ji Jue was at his wit's end, an unexpected visitor came knocking on his workshop's door.
Amid a mighty roar, a helicopter descended from the sky, slowly touching down on the deck of the Prosperity.
Upon the pure-white exterior of the helicopter, a familiar emblem was painted in bright red—the insignia of the Church of Chongguang!
From the opened cabin, an aged figure carrying a case stepped down slowly.
It was the deacon elder of Yacheng's Church of Chongguang.
The elderly elder had dark, sunburnt skin and rough hands, with short white hair thinning into baldness that gleamed comically under the blazing sun.
And yet, facing this old gentleman, anyone with a shred of conscience would find it hard to laugh.
Those of the Ascension lineage were stubborn to a fault—deep in feeling yet burdened with intense fixations, at times even more rigid than those of the Desolate Ruins. Most commonly, they drove themselves down blind alleys and never looked back.
Since he was dispatched to Yacheng at the age of twenty-one to take over the Chongguang Sanctuary, which was barely better than a ruin back then, this elder had devoted his life to the Mercy guided by their dogma, day in and day out, for decades.
Rushing about everywhere, he had built from scratch numerous low-cost clinics and hospitals, including Mercy Hospital, soliciting donations for the destitute and orphans nobody cared about. Even to this day, he had never paused.
Facing a youngster like Ji Jue, the old man still proactively extended his hand with a genial smile. "Forgive my sudden visit. I hope I'm not intruding."
"Not at all!"
Ji Jue shook his head emphatically, not daring to put on airs, keeping his posture extremely humble. "If there's anything you need, just send word and I'll come over myself. Why go through all this trouble? Please come inside—the tea is almost ready, please—"
"I'm on my way to deliver a batch of vaccines outside the city. I figured it was on the way, so I dropped by directly. No need for tea; I have to leave right away."
Right there on the deck, the elder waved off Ji Jue's invitation. Instead of sitting down to rest, he handed over the case in his hands. "I heard you've been searching everywhere on the market for materials, so I asked Miss Ye. We had a lot of them sitting in our storehouse, so I brought them along."
The heavy case settled into Ji Jue's hands.
It was impossible to tell how many years the case had been in use; the faux leather covering it was riddled with cracks and peeling spots. But the contents inside were wrapped securely in layer after layer, and underneath, there was even a spiritus seal placed by one of the church's craftsmen.
The moment he opened it, Ji Jue stood stunned.
Right in the center, preserved in a fist-sized chunk of amber, was precisely the Ascension blessing he had spent over a month searching all channels for without a trace—Ascendance to Truth!
Not only that, there were also numerous precious materials of the Ascension lineage, including materials left behind by deceased Celestial Chosen—virtually remnants of their bones!
"Why go this far..."
He instinctively shut the case, not daring to look any longer, and tried to push it back.
The elder didn't take it.
"The Church of Chongguang is no begging organization, nor are we as destitute as you think," the elder said, raising a solemn hand in refusal. "Though Ascendance to Truth is precious, sitting in a storehouse it would only gather dust. These materials are all donations from church members or believers. If they can be put to righteous use, isn't that their wish as well? Entrusting them to you is actually a good thing. It spares them from being coveted by shady craftsmen of unknown origin who might commit heinous deeds with them."
"I'm a craftsman too," Ji Jue gave a self-deprecating chuckle. "How do you know I won't commit heinous deeds?"
He never imagined that after making himself universally hated in the Association with his relentless grind, stirring up trouble all over the city, and setting up sweatshops across the wasteland to churn through new recruits—practically doing nothing decent—the elder would still regard him as walking the righteous path.
The elder chuckled as well, taking his hand and patting it gently. "When dealing with the incorrigible and unrepentantly wicked, there is naturally no need to speak of morality or mercy. Besides, if someone can offer stable jobs to those wavering under the pressure of survival, provide air conditioning and clean water to the elderly and children of the wasteland, and free disabled people from their wheelchairs—how bad can such a person truly be?
"Urging everyone to cherish one another is also the mission of our church."
Amid the roar of the helicopter restarting, he gave a final wave and raised his voice to tell the young man before him, "There is no need to feel guilty. Consider it an investment or a recompense from the Church of Chongguang, Mr. Ji."
And just like that, declining Ji Jue's attempts to have him stay once more, he boarded the helicopter and departed in haste.
Leaving Ji Jue standing alone on the deck, watching until the helicopter vanished beyond the horizon.
After a long silence, he gave a quiet sigh.
Another debt of gratitude owed...
Thanks to the support of the Church of Chongguang, preparations for Chunjun had taken a major stride forward, but the remaining shortfall still couldn't be resolved overnight.
Ji Jue was finally able to step away from his tedious research for a time to deal with various chores.
Time slipped away bit by bit, day after day. Half a month passed in a flash. During this period, Ji Jue experienced that strange dream once again.
It felt like a reminder from Embers.
Just as Tong Ting had said, when faced with such things, all one could do was prepare as much as possible; beyond that, doing more only invited more mistakes. In an instant, that sense of urgency resurfaced.
While the completion of Chunjun's preparations was nowhere in sight and honing Pan Ying still required time, Little Niuma's Immovable as a Mountain sequence came together by a stroke of luck.
And the ones who brought the blessing to his doorstep were actually a bunch of settlement miners illegally excavating ores!
There were actually quite a few ore veins, large and small, in Haizhou. However, the vast majority were either tiny in reserves, low in grade, located in complex terrain or even silt-laden strata, or all of the above, completely lacking value for large-scale development.
In the wasteland, settlements that made a living mining ores weren't uncommon, and most settlers wouldn't turn down moonlighting as miners either. After all, digging something up meant cash, and there was always a market.
As for the cost... it was nothing more than their lives. When people were starving to death, would they hold back out of fear of dying?
Don't talk about workplace safety—just roll up your sleeves and dig. As long as it didn't collapse, dig like your life depended on it... Every year, rumors spread of some settlement striking it rich from finding precious minerals; likewise, every month brought grim news of a mine collapse in some settlement or other.
In the wasteland, life and death were routine.
Everyone was used to it.
And now, Ji Jue looked at the boulder delivered by truck, brought all the way to Haian by this disheveled group of settlement folks who had asked for him by name.
The massive rock, measuring several cubic meters, resembled a raw block of jadeite.
Looking closer, it really was raw jadeite; along the cross-section, one could see winding, lustrous bands of green glow. But its quality was fairly mediocre, and the yield wasn't high.
What was truly precious was the blessing concealed within. Under long-term geological shifts or special circumstances, natural blessing materials would form within leylines; with just a bit of processing, an intact blessing could be extracted. This was also one of the origins of blessings in the Desolate Ruins lineage.
Sometimes, by chance, if these naturally formed blessings were swallowed by wild beasts, they would trigger various mutations—which was also how most calamity beasts came to be.
The piece resting before Ji Jue right now was, in the most literal sense, a treasure of heaven and earth.
What's more, it was the final piece missing from the Immovable as a Mountain sequence: Spring Currents and Leyline Flow!
Nurtured and transformed over untold years within an intricate, vast subterranean water network, where waterways reached far and wide, intertwining with the leylines and enduring numerous earthquakes and upheavals, such a crystal would naturally form.
The movement of the Desolate Ruins, shaped by the manifold variations of leylines and water veins.
With this blessing, a Celestial Chosen's spiritus could effortlessly extend and expand along leylines and water veins without the slightest impediment. Coupled with Man-Heaven Isomorphism, which linked the areas of spiritus circulation into an integrated whole, and Solid as Bedrock, which distributed damage across the entire structure, it formed the highest-tier defensive blessing sequence of the Desolate Ruins lineage—Immovable as a Mountain!
"Are you sure?"
Ji Jue patted the rock's smooth surface and told the men, "From the perspective of raw gemstone, this isn't worth much money. But the thing inside is worth quite a bit. Even though demand isn't high, it could fetch at least several million, maybe upwards of ten million.
"Right now, I can't produce that much cash on short notice."
Hearing this, several young men in the group immediately had their eyes light up, their expressions shifting. But the middle-aged man leading them ignored their tugs and became even firmer.
"We're selling it to you, Boss Ji. More or less, just name a figure—we won't be picky!"
Seeing him so resolute, the young men behind him grew anxious and urged in a low voice, "Uncle—"
The uncle glanced back at him, his expression instantly changing from obsequious to cold and fierce. With his long-established authority, a single sweep of his gaze silenced all the young men like cicadas in winter, not daring to utter another word.
Coming all the way to Haian to peddle this stone had been entirely his decision, executed with astonishing speed. The moment it was dug up that night, he had squatted by the field and smoked for two hours, then set off that very evening. Before the lunch hour the next day, they had already arrived in Xinquan.
He had even paid acquaintances to pull strings and arrange a meeting with Yan Jian and Lu Feng.
Yan Jian and Lu Feng knew nothing about such things, but once the tarp was pulled back, the rough stone caught Isis's eye.
"Can you tell me why?" Ji Jue asked, his curiosity piqued. "There are so many buyers in the wasteland. It shouldn't be hard to sell this, right?"
The middle-aged man, prematurely aged and etched with wrinkles, grinned to reveal yellow teeth stained with tobacco. His demeanor was completely humble. "The higher-up connections, we can't reach a single one. And the ones we can reach, we can't trust a single one."
These days, anyone who could eke out a living in the wasteland had some sort of skill—it might not be much, but they had to have something.
In Ji Jue's observation, the man was an ordinary person, but behind him stood a thin, dark-skinned, meek middle-aged woman who gave off faint spiritus fluctuations, noticeably stronger than an average person's.
While her talent wasn't fine jade material, it was enough for her to sense the anomaly in this rough stone.
The existence of the Celestial Chosen was hardly a distant secret in the wasteland. Besides, anything tied to the Celestial Chosen was usually valuable—very valuable, exceedingly valuable.
Or, dangerous—very dangerous, exceedingly dangerous!
Whether a blessing or a curse, the settlement couldn't keep it. Moreover, a village settlement of ninety-odd people stayed safe solely by being dirt-poor; saddled with something like this, even good fortune would turn into disaster.
They could either bury it back, pretend nothing happened, and live in constant fear, or offload it as fast as possible, earn whatever they could, and relocate immediately—ideally moving into the city under new identities.
Regrettably, the wasteland was no honest marketplace, and the greed and conduct of many caravans and buyers couldn't even pass for human.
The only avenue they could find was Haian, which still possessed a shred of conscience in the wasteland.
In the past, when buying goods at a bargain, countless people who fancied themselves "clever" would scoff that if they were the director of Haian's factory, they would do this or that and make vastly more money.
Yet when trouble actually struck, nobody looked for the "clever" ones.
Word had already leaked out.
In a settlement of nearly a hundred people, it was impossible to keep every mouth shut tight without a single leak. Besides, wouldn't those who didn't take part in the digging and got no cut try to find a payday of their own?
Time was running out; they couldn't afford to gamble.
The man kept his head lowered, not daring to meet Ji Jue's gaze.
Under the cold draft of the air conditioner, he wiped his sweat before voicing the most fatal reason of all:
"The rainy season is coming."
Chapter 399