Tricks or No Tricks

And so, the good days began. While Ji Jue only had to take over the top eight floors as a temporary workshop to peacefully conduct his research, Yan Fei—sporting dark circles under his eyes as he hung from the walls applying white putty—had a lot more on his plate. And as for Old Gou, he had even more to do. Out early and back late every day, pouring money out like water, after tossing and turning for over half a month, he finally managed to get the other factory zone cleaned up and organized amidst cold stares and ostracism. Everything was ready; all that was needed was an east wind! Yet right at the critical juncture when everyone was on guard against Ji Jue stirring up trouble, Ji Jue suddenly settled down. Every day, he merely conducted research, staying inside his office building without taking a single step outside. He completely ignored whatever was happening outside, acting as if previously he had no choice, but now he just wanted to be a good artisan. It left everyone utterly unable to gauge what medicine this dog bastard was actually peddling. Should they still snipe at them, set up an encirclement, and weaken Haichao Armaments or what? Soon, they discovered... there was simply nowhere to snipe, encircle, or weaken! In fact, they couldn't even begin to comprehend what this dog bastard Ji Jue was thinking. Under Old Gou's management, Haian's Mid-Continent factory zone finally stumbled through the hurdles and got onto the right track, commencing official operations. Then, under the watchful eyes of all, Haian Industries officially launched its flagship product in Mid-Continent. —*The Lighter*! *Out of tricks, family! Let me build everyone a lighter...* At this, not only were the lingeringly terrified peers who just wanted some sense of security left dumbfounded, but even Dugu Ming, who had been gritting his teeth waiting in ambush to teach Ji Jue a lesson, was stunned. Sitting in his office all night, he twirled the plastic lighter produced by Haian between his fingers, inspecting it over and over. No matter how he looked at it, the damn thing felt like nothing more than an ordinary fucking lighter! What's more, it was atrociously cheap, with quality rough enough to match its price tag—an item that yielded virtually zero profit margin for an entity of Haian's scale... No, brother, what the hell are you after?! For a moment, in total bewilderment, everyone felt their vision turn black. You came to Mid-Continent, and right off the boat you had everyone living in fear, using a whirlwind blitz to execute that dog Mudaheka, aggressively muscling onto the Mid-Continent track looking like whoever blocked your way would die. Everyone thought you were here to carve out an empire... And the result? The result was just to sell your crummy lighters with a wholesale price of twenty cents each, or eighteen cents in bulk?! You should have said so earlier! If you had said so earlier, wouldn't we have avoided all this damn nonsense! In a short half a month, it had gone from *The Monster from Haichao Armaments Lands at Yuanshan Port* to *The King of Lighters, Ji Jue, Arrives in His Loyal Tacheng*. Amid the shock, stupor, and confusion, everyone suddenly felt that Mudaheka had died a bit too unfairly... So much so that in the silence, people harboring their own private thoughts exchanged blank looks. Snipe? Snipe what the fuck, exactly?! Were they supposed to enter the arena and compete with Ji Jue in the cutthroat lighter market? Forget it. Let's just wait and see. Dugu Ming did not let down his guard, maintaining a high state of tension. He even instructed his subordinates to keep close watch over Ji Jue's every move, reporting immediately if the slightest wind stirred. And thus, prison time began... Over the course of half a month, Ji Jue hadn't made the slightest suspicious move, while Dugu Ming had practically memorized the entire Tacheng lighter market like the back of his hand. Every day, he opened his eyes to guard against that dog Ji, and closed his eyes only to dream about these stupid lighters. His complexion grew darker by the day, and more and more blood vessels spiderwebbed across his eyes. Tacheng was clearly calm and peaceful, with harmonious and stable order, so why in the world did he feel... that this shit life was simply unbearable! A man could be out of tricks, but a man could never be without a lighter! If you looked into it deeply, you would discover... the worse off a poor fellow was, the more desperately he needed such an item. At the same time, no one couldn't afford a lighter. Even if you were so destitute that you couldn't afford a lighter, couldn't you just nick someone else's? Even if caught red-handed, you could turn around with total self-righteousness and challenge them: "Aren't we fucking brothers? What's the big deal taking one lighter? Why so stingy?" And then do it again next time. Keep up the good work! Fairly speaking, if the sole goal was to make a name, Ji Jue's move was a masterstroke. But the crux was that, from an advertising and publicity standpoint, it was completely useless marketing and wasted investment. Because lighters were so cheap that Tacheng's upper crust didn't even deign to glance at them, the middle class didn't care, and even if the lower class learned of Haian, what difference did it make? Unlike the scrappers and destitute folks in the Federation's wastes, in a godforsaken place like Mid-Continent, people were truly poor enough to pawn their pants and go hungry for nine meals every three days! Never mind off-road vehicles—even a little three-wheeler required a loan, and a dozen people pooling together might not even scrape up a down payment! A week had passed since launch, and fewer than a few hundred had been sold in central Tacheng, most of which were just inventory sitting in convenience stores. In the sprawling, densely packed slums outside central Tacheng, they circulated widely, but what was the point? To put it bluntly, even if it nominally belonged to Tacheng, the organisms living there didn't even count as human beings in the eyes of the overlords! When picking trash or burning cow dung, would you care what brand of lighter you were using? Nobody gave a damn. The only ones affected were the local lighter manufacturers, completely bankrupted by Ji Jue's dimensional-strike competition. Yet these craft workshops had nowhere to even air their grievances. No, there was no need to cry misery anymore. Because they had all switched to being distributors. Manufacturing lighters yourself wasted time, effort, and money, and barely made a few copper coins. Why not distribute for Haian? The profit margins were even higher than making them yourselves! Sell them at your usual prices. Don't ask why. If asked, we're here doing charity; Mr. Ji is soft-hearted and can't bear to see folks suffer. Just say whether you want to sell them or not! And so, right beneath everyone's noses, the business of the King of Lighters unfolded in full swing. In less than half a month, he had completely monopolized Tacheng's entire low-end lighter market. A generational King of Lighters had ascended his completely useless throne. Content in his own amusement. Paying not the slightest heed to the gazes of others. Even as others observed frame by frame through magnifying glasses. *Look, go ahead, take your time. I'd love to see what you can figure out.* From start to finish, Ji Jue had never forgotten his purpose here: establish a foothold in the city, spread out his operation... —And start hunting wolves! Wolves! Wolves! Wolves! Wolves! Wolves! Even if Tacheng blew to pieces, it had nothing to do with him; he wanted to find the wolves! Ji Jue's mind was full of wolves now. He kept Chunjun running in his mind twenty-four hours a day to seal off the inside from the outside, worried only that his intentions might be too obvious, his plotting and targeting too direct, causing the wolf hiding in the shadows to sense something. One had to know that a corrupted wolf with truly sharp senses could detect even a wisp of malice directed at it from a thousand li away. However, this wasn't much of an issue for Ji Jue. Because no matter how much Ji Jue targeted wolves, it paled in comparison to the hunters of the White Stag lineage. When it came to actual malice and killing intent, he didn't even rank. Besides, he harbored no real malice toward the wolf. He merely wanted to catch up with his old friend Shehri... Relying on the massive shipment of lighters, the density of the Plague of the Lord of the Flies across Tacheng had jumped several tiers over the half month. In the observation of the Lord of the Flies, the slums were packed with countless tiny dots. Compared to a truly seamless, airtight web, it was still far too sparse. After all, under so many watchful eyes, Ji Jue couldn't stuff a Plague of the Lord of the Flies into every single lighter; otherwise, he would have been exposed long ago. In truth, the actual Plague of the Lord of the Flies was planted in the recycled scraps collected for reuse. In the production process, massive heaps of junk gradually turned into cheap lighters one by one. For a few of them to occasionally be haunted by lingering spirits was all too normal! So normal that if you bought a piece of clothing with unwashed blood at a second-hand market, the lingering spirits clinging to it would probably be stronger than on these crummy lighters... Because the traces were so faint and dissipated so easily, out of the signals Ji Jue received via the mechanical spiders scattered through the sewers, over ninety-nine percent were false alarms or accidental triggers, and the remaining one percent was of questionable authenticity. He was in no rush at all. Hunting wolves required patience above all else. Even angling required waiting for a bite. Sowing handful after handful of the Plague of the Lord of the Flies, he was bound to stain one or two sooner or later during the tagging process. The traces he could find lately had been growing steadily. Through those footprint-like traces, he could be entirely certain: there were definitely wolves in Tacheng! Perhaps even more than one... Tacheng, ostensibly calm and full of order, was actually a powder keg with undercurrents surging beneath the surface. And Ji Jue felt he was on the verge of finding the fuse. Like a spider silently spinning silk to weave its web, he gradually drew the entire slum into his net, layer upon layer. Ji Jue was waiting. At the same time... that didn't stop him from continuing to grind! *Snap!* Like a burst of electrical sparks. Inside the workshop of the Doomsday Express, within Ji Jue's hands and beneath layers of spiritus binding and suppression, a wisp of bronze shimmer twisted and shifted restlessly, rising and transforming like a living creature. Merely maintaining the containment pushed Ji Jue near his limit. It couldn't be helped; the nature of this wisp of faint light was far too sensitive and its transformations far too swift. With the slightest lapse in attention, it could slip away through any gap too minuscule to perceive. Even a fissure so fine that not even a microscope could detect it would seem like wide-open doors to it. And once it escaped the sealed environment maintained by Ji Jue's spiritus, it would instantly dissipate into the mortal world, vanishing forever and rendering all previous efforts in vain. Previously, tasks demanding such absolute stability had been entrusted to Isis for assistance. Now Ji Jue had to do it by hand himself, maintaining it with extreme care until it was locked inside a dedicated container. At this moment, before him, lined up in five spiritus crystals, were dazzling golden yellow, brilliant silver white, weathered bronze, unadorned iron gray, and even a nearly nonexistent transparent hue. Five ever-shifting wisps of shimmer, flashing like electricity, continually leaped and darted within the crystals, faintly resonating with one another and converging in the same direction across the containment barriers. "Finally, done..." Ji Jue wiped the sweat from his forehead with a soft sigh. Working around the clock for over half a month had thoroughly exhausted him. This was the result of matter purified to the utmost extreme, the pinnacle of metal's active nature. After consuming who knew how many materials, continuously refined day and night through Fluid Alchemy, it had finally been extracted and gathered. The so-called Essence of the Five Metals!