The Plague of the Lord of the Flies

Ah, youth was truly wonderful; sleep came the second your head hit the pillow. Lou Feng closed his eyes and lay flat out. Ji Jue, on the other hand, had so many things to consider—snapping photos, recording audio and video, striking poses, and flashing gestures. To leave Lou Feng with a wonderful memory, he went to truly painstaking lengths. If the man didn't say thank you upon waking, his conscience would have to be thoroughly rotten. Though whether artisans possessed such a thing as a conscience remained open to debate, at least the position of business partner was firmly locked down... Watching Lou Feng in a dead faint, Ji Jue didn't mind in the slightest. *Sleep, go ahead and sleep. Once you wake up, you'll be my partner for life!* *Jie-jie-jie! Not just a partner—I'm going to make you the company's legal representative too, haha!* Regarding all this, Master Kong said not a word. If you bet, you had to accept the loss. After pouring two bottles of medicine down his throat and confirming his life was secured, she left. Fawning over him with solicitous concern or rubbing salt into his wounds was naturally left to the Lou family's kin and companions. As a teacher who had witnessed her student's overconfident challenge with her own eyes, she offered neither praise nor criticism, remaining as calm and aloof as ever. Winning and losing were par for the course. What was more, walking away with one's life to make a comeback later—wasn't that a tremendous stroke of fortune? At most, he had lost his independence as an artisan, lost the autonomy of his workshop, lost all the accumulations he had built up since becoming an artisan, and burned through all his saved spiritus along the way. He wasn't dead. As long as a single thought and will endured, the climb of succession and change would never cease. Nothing shameful about it. Besides, even if he couldn't hold a candle to an off-the-charts freak like Ji Jue, the strength Lou Feng had displayed was enough to crush the vast majority of his peers. Even if word spread, no one would ever claim his third-place ranking had any fluff in it. If he hadn't been holding back to hit Ji Jue with something vicious, the newly innovated, advanced Blessing Chain: Hanguang he produced at the end—forged by fusing the Lou clan's heritage and the arts of Embers onto the foundation of the Blade of Flowing Light—would have been enough on its own to contend for a Golden Ribbon and make a name for himself. Furthermore, losing to Ji Jue... which artisan of the same cohort in the Association could afford to laugh at him? As for Ji Jue, after weathering this consumption, his losses couldn't be called huge—they were practically nonexistent. What had he lost? A set of armor plating on Little Niuma that could be swapped out like clothes? Punabantu's warehouses had mountains of that stuff; they were pure consumables. Dragon Mountain armor? Just a matter of swapping a set of accessories. Under the protection of Immovable as a Mountain, the basic framework had suffered only minor wear and tear; a quick reinforcement with Earth Bears and Sea Embraces, and it was done. In comparison, the biggest drain had been his spiritus reserves, but that didn't matter... Wasn't the eldest young master of the Eastern Federation's largest spiritus conglomerate about to become his partner? When the time came, would he ever run short of mana? With Young Master Lou's credit card in hand, wouldn't the days of running the Doomsday Express whenever he pleased finally arrive?! Just thinking about it made Ji Jue hum a little tune. After seeing off the guests and properly arranging the bloodthirsty spectators, Ji Jue brought his teacher over to show off what he had just created. "Not bad." Ye Xian glanced at the scale of the Lord of the Flies. "Your craft in spiritus alchemy has entered the hall of mastery. It seems your advanced studies were useful after all." "It's all thanks to Teacher's excellent guidance." Ji Jue smiled modestly, the corners of his mouth twitching upward in an involuntary smirk. Only, without even looking back, Ye Xian suddenly asked, "Your Regeneration form came together quite fast. You even solved Earth Bears and Sea Embraces... Did you go stirring up trouble again?" "No, absolutely not!" Ji Jue's eyes widened, and he replied in a ringing voice, "Teacher, you know me! I've been in Haizhou this whole time—haven't taken a single step outside!" "Is that so?" Ye Xian nodded slightly. "That's good, then." *She bought it! She bought it! She bought it...* *Did she?* Ji Jue felt butterflies in his stomach, utterly uncertain. Fortunately, his teacher didn't press the matter further. In fact, she showed zero interest in what was going on with that corrupted version of Earth Bears and Sea Embraces, not even mentioning it. In contrast, what she focused on was completely unexpected. "Your Regeneration form..." Pondering, she fell silent all of a sudden, leaving Ji Jue baffled. "Teacher, what is it?" "Nothing, just surprised." Ye Xian sighed in wonder. Ji Jue grinned smugly, but before he could speak, he heard her appraisal: "...I've just never seen such a trashy Regeneration form before. It caught me off guard for a moment." [???] Ji Jue froze on the spot, a hundred thousand question marks sprouting on his forehead. "Tra... shy?" He stared blankly, feeling as if his whole being was about to shatter. "Its quality shifts are passable at best, but aside from your own Blessing Chain, it possesses no other capabilities or effects whatsoever. If that isn't trash, what is?" Ye Xian asked coldly, "A Regeneration form—a remaking and rebirth—is the life-reforging of a Celestial Chosen, the form and ability best suited to the self. Yet yours only reaches this meager level, where only its assimilation efficiency is even worth looking at. Did you expect me to praise it? An artisan's Regeneration form has always leaned toward reification, and most of what it produces are creations. Ji Jue, you tell me: from the perspective of alchemy, what does that Regeneration form of yours even count as?" Ji Jue parted his lips to speak, but had nothing to say. Indeed, while this form was exceptionally well-suited to *Deus Ex Machina*, there was no denying Ye Xian's point. A robot looked very cool... but what about its effects? What about variations? Far too simplistic. In truth, after numerous trials, Ji Jue had discovered that his flesh-and-blood form and mechanical form could influence each other. In other words, if his physical body suffered some irreparable injury, switching to the mechanical form meant the damage would still exist... but repairing was far simpler than healing! Whatever broke could be replaced; in his spare time, he could do some maintenance and apply engine oil. Moreover, the Regeneration form's assimilation of mechanical items was remarkably outstanding. Once assimilated, he could subtly enhance their strength through Fluid Alchemy. He could freely swap out different gear according to his needs to handle different situations. Yet besides that... "It's purely a blank vessel," Ye Xian sighed softly. "Is that a bad thing?" Ji Jue asked, puzzled. "The starting point might be a bit low, but whatever effect I need, I can calibrate and modify it at any time. Besides, I plan to upgrade and elevate it step-by-step down the line." "A blank sheet is good for painting; having no restrictions means a high ceiling, that's true. But don't forget: machinery might be able to expand endlessly, but humans cannot." Ye Xian finally turned her gaze fully onto him, her eyes sharp. "Do you still remember the corruption symptoms of the Embers lineage?" "Rei..." Ji Jue answered without thinking, but abruptly cut himself off. He began to sweat. Rei-what? What else could it be! The most common loss of control in the Embers lineage was an artisan's reification! And Ji Jue's Regeneration form matched that perfectly—every inch of him, from top to bottom, was reified... "Hiss..." Ji Jue involuntarily inhaled two gulps of cool air from his server room, feeling a chill run through him. It was one thing for his soul reflection to be cloaked in flames and corrupted, but how had his main body corrupted too? "Then isn't that super dangerous?" "..." Ye Xian stared at him with the exact expression one would give a drooling idiot about to shove a finger into an electrical socket, filled with genuine curiosity: *You actually know how to spell 'danger'? Wait, are words like 'safety' and 'prudence' even in your dictionary?* Ji Jue looked down awkwardly. "Walking a razor's edge isn't necessarily bad, but going to extremes is never wise. Though telling you this is usually pointless, as a teacher, I have certain obligations to fulfill." Ye Xian paused, then suddenly asked, "Let me guess—are you harboring the suicidal notion of constantly pouring in effort from now on to replace every single part of your body with Heavenly Work?" "..." Ji Jue's gaze began to drift. He was practically drooling at the thought. A soul had its own threshold of endurance. Stacking gear without limit was like cramming more CPUs, GPUs, and RAM into a motherboard—the board would eventually buckle under the strain, or the power supply might blow up in your face. Tuning a car without changing the engine made the tuning pointless, but if you replaced every single part from top to bottom, was it still the original car? A small horse pulling a heavy cart—only the person behind it knew the bitterness and misery. Not to mention self-modification, which required extreme caution, prudence upon prudence... Even so, nine and a half out of ten went stark raving mad. To this, Ye Xian's verdict was: "Suicidal as it is, it's not bad either." "Huh?" Ji Jue was stunned again. "Even if I forbade you, you'd just do it behind my back, testing the waters bit by bit until it spiraled out of control. Stopping you is worse than letting you run. Besides, I'd like to see your limits too." Ye Xian smiled, a glimmer of anticipation in her eyes. "Who knows? Maybe you really will turn into a piece of fine jade." "..." Wiping his sweat while drooling, Ji Jue felt he could barely tell good words from bad anymore. Was his teacher encouraging him or warning him? Perhaps both. The danger was right here, progress was laid out before him, and the final result was far in the distance. Trembling before peril and standing still was never the artisan's way, but how could a teacher urge a student to tread a razor's edge and court death? "If you want to try, I won't stop you," Ye Xian said slowly. "Because every artisan has harbored such thoughts, harbored such ambition. To varying degrees, they've all made the attempt. This, too, is part of an artisan's path. "It's just that your expandability is too immense, your malleability too high, to the point where it's exceedingly dangerous. So much so that I had to lay out the ugly truth first. "Still, even knowing this, you'll still give it a try, won't you?" "..." After a brief silence, Ji Jue gave a slow nod. "Then go ahead." Ye Xian nodded indifferently. "You have to walk your own path. Why worry about anything else? Sometimes I really wonder if you're even a student of our lineage. Why act so respectful to your teacher?" *Uh...* Ji Jue parted his lips, but to avoid receiving a lesson in spiritus offense and defense, he wisely held his tongue. "However, there is only one thing on which I, as your teacher, must impose a restriction." Ye Xian stopped in her tracks, turned back, and looked at the student behind her with a solemn expression. "The assimilation of your Regeneration form is convenient, but you must never abuse it. Patchwork repairs and emergency measures are fine, but rashly fusing other alchemical creations into yourself is strictly forbidden!" "I understand." Ji Jue nodded decisively, then hesitated for an instant. It wasn't that he wanted to argue, but rather that he had spotted the loophole in her requirement: "In other words..." "Yes, exactly." Ye Xian nodded, accustomed to Ji Jue catching on immediately. "To keep your own will stable and prevent alienation by external objects, every alchemical creation you fuse with must be crafted by your own hands, and you must use yourself as the primary material. Only then can you minimize the latent risk of conflict and the burden on your soul. In any case, isn't that Regeneration form of yours remarkably convenient to modify?" She paused, a glimmer of expectant light reflecting off her glasses. "Of course, if a day comes when your strength falls short, as your teacher, I wouldn't mind stepping in to lend a hand." *No thanks, no thanks!* *I'll do it myself!* With such an arduous goal ahead, Ji Jue wiped his brow, feeling the pressure instantly spike—yet deep down, a flicker of anticipation and excitement surfaced alongside it. If he didn't want to end up like the Ship of Theseus, transformed into something unrecognizable, he would have to use everything he possessed as material to undergo sublimation. In that process: elevate mortal matter, purify nature, extract essence, integrate the whole. Be his own fine material; be his own artisan. Turn this blank slate of a Regeneration form into a true Heavenly Work belonging exclusively to him! When the time came, Autobot transformation! Truck-kun could run over whoever he pleased, forcing whoever he wanted to struggle hard to stay alive... wouldn't that be magnificent? "Alright, I won't waste more words on other matters. I'm off." Ye Xian waved her hand, having no intention of lingering. Ji Jue followed closely behind. "Does Teacher have any other instructions?" "You have your own joint workshop now. Learn to make your own decisions; stop always trying to read other people's expressions and thoughts. "Whatever you decide, just go do it." Standing before the door, Ye Xian looked back at him one last time with a faint smile. "As your teacher, all I ask is that whatever mess you make one day doesn't drag me down with you. "And I'll try my best not to drag you down with whatever mess I make. "If we can manage that, we can consider it mutual fulfillment." With that, without waiting for Ji Jue's response, she waved and turned away. Leaving Ji Jue standing alone before the elevator. Silence. Was she giving him advice? Perhaps. Or perhaps she simply didn't care, and wouldn't mind taking her time to mock him once this literal rogue disciple brought about some irreversible catastrophe. Ji Jue gave a silent sigh. He turned and walked toward the crystal array behind him, where a sky full of stars ascended. "Sir, Phase Seven of the project is ready," Isis asked. "Shall we proceed?" "Proceed." Ji Jue smiled silently. "It isn't every day we bring in a 'good friend' as a partner to foot the bill. We can expand the scale a bit more. No need to scrimp on costs—boost the output again this time." "Understood. Production workflow adjusted. Initial estimated increase is one-third, with gradual batch-by-batch increases and optimizations to follow." A magnificent sea of intelligence surged once more. Wisps of faint phantom light rose from within it, streaming along the quicksilver toward the distance. In another workshop, countless mechanical arms began to process in unison... The assembly line whirred to life. The Lord of the Flies took shape once again. In truth, most of Lou Feng's analysis of the Lord of the Flies had been accurate. There was only one point where he had been dead wrong: as an artisan, he habitually categorized the Lord of the Flies by functionality, but its internal structure wasn't four tiers—it was five! Tracing downward from the Lord of the Flies to adult cats, kitten spirits, and spirits awaiting incubation was indeed correct, but he had instinctively overlooked what seemed to him utterly useless 'failures'! —The shards and remnants of intelligence that had failed incubation or withered on their own! If counted toward the total volume of the Lord of the Flies, they accounted for a full third or more, and as the Lord of the Flies developed, they would be produced in an endless stream. Like scrap. Yet in reality, was there ever truly useless scrap? To Ji Jue, in the short term, these so-called scraps were vastly more useful than the 'proper products'! One had to understand that even as fragments and debris of intelligence, they remained part of the Lord of the Flies' overall composition. Even if they couldn't be manipulated, their birth and demise remained within his perception. Precisely because of this, they held processing value. At this moment, what awaited processing on the assembly line was no high-tech equipment or weaponry, but rather a massive quantity of parts and handicrafts produced by the peripheral factories of Xinquan, refurbished secondhand pistols and submachine guns, and even cheaply recycled old clothes and books... Tiny specks of faint light, so subtle as to be almost nonexistent, guided by Fluid Alchemy, settled into them and quickly vanished, sinking into obscurity. The residual spirits and fragments attached to them were so minute that they were virtually undetectable, clinging and permeating just like ordinary grudges and obsessions—infected by a 'spiritus plague'. Soon, carried and transported by numerous mechanical cats, these shockingly cheap handicrafts, bullets, and components were mingled into even larger batches of ordinary parts and freight. Utterly unremarkable. With Haian Industries' ceaseless logistics throughput, these jumbled goods would hitch rides on various transport vehicles bound for the docks across Haizhou. In as little as six hours, or seven days at most, these goods would be packed into shipping containers, then sent along smuggling or legitimate trade routes toward the Federation, the Thousand Islands, and even the Empire! The vast majority of them were headed for the Mid-Continent, destined to spread and circulate throughout its colossal low-end market before long. Those cheap handicrafts would soon appear across various street stalls and open-air markets, perhaps catching the eye of a discerning housewife who, after some haggling, would take them home. Cheaply stuffed plush toys and ragdolls would end up in the hands of children. Those outdated old clothes, once washed, might hang in boutique shopfronts under the label of trendy Federation brands, waiting for passersby to browse. And heaps of secondhand parts would, through the dealings of suppliers, gradually appear in various repair shops—installed into car radios, brakes, or steering wheels; generators and water pumps that had run for god knew how many years; or patchwork firearms pieced together from odds and ends... Amidst the circulation that everyone took for granted, the shapeless, formless Plague of the Lord of the Flies quietly spread. Like duckweed on water, they drifted with the waves, heading toward distant lands at the mercy of fate. Throughout this process, the wisps of residual spirit clinging to them would trigger no symptoms, possessed no contagion, and revealed no abnormalities. They produced no ill consequences whatsoever. After Ji Jue's meticulous tuning and concoction, they had only one sole function remaining: upon encountering any aura suspected to belong to a 'wolf', they would swiftly wither and self-annihilate. Leaving not a trace behind. Moreover, a wolf's spiritus naturally possessed stronger erosiveness and suppressive force; the annihilation appeared entirely natural, something nobody would ever pay mind to. Nor would it transmit any signal. Ultimately, this infinitesimal fading would linger in matter, the air, or the soil, leaving behind a subtle tint unnoticed by anyone—until perceived by another component of the Lord of the Flies nearby. Admittedly, false positives and errors would certainly not be few, but through cross-verification, traces that were normally impossible to uncover could always be found. The seventh deployment and sowing was nearly complete. Yet another invisible, loose web had been cast over the achievements of the previous six. Perhaps in the short term, no feedback or meaningful results would return, but it didn't matter. Ji Jue had plenty of patience to wait slowly. Even if it took day after day, year after year. The Plague of the Lord of the Flies had arrived. Amidst chaos and upheaval, it spread silently, waiting for the rustle of leaves when the wolves lurking in the shadows walked right into the trap...