Non-Offensive

The moment Ji Jue spoke, the entire workshop fell dead silent. Not only was Ye Chun dumbfounded, but even Professor Ye went quiet for a moment. A flicker of shock surfaced in her expression, like an FPS enthusiast who considered himself thoroughly heinous suddenly crossing paths with a Paradox grand strategy player. Isn't that idea of yours a little… too wild? “…Your suggestion is actually even more unhinged than mine.” She gave Ji Jue a searching look. “Just where on earth did you pick up this habit of jumping straight to murder and arson?” “Huh?” Ji Jue was stunned. *Didn’t you say an eye for an eye, that you were going to show Kong Qingyan what’s what?!* Yet thinking it over, Professor Ye hadn't actually drawn a finger across her throat and told him to go off her… Something was wrong. Was his moral slide becoming more and more pronounced? *I’m a normal person!* *How could I jump straight to wiping out everyone who crosses me?* *Well, probably because everyone who crossed me really has ended up wiped out by me… Too bad, I'm still short Yu Hanguang.* “You’re right. I’ll definitely watch myself,” Ji Jue said, nodding in shame. “I’m not reproaching you. In fact, I think it’s pretty good. At least I don’t have to worry about my student being a soft-hearted pushover who gets taken advantage of everywhere. As for your style and preferences, that’s your own business; there’s no need for me to lecture you.” Professor Ye accepted the reality that her student might harbor antisocial tendencies with remarkable composure. Ignoring the several pleading looks Ji Jue directed at her in an attempt to defend himself, she asked, “What do you think Kong Qingyan came here for this time?” “Uh…” Ji Jue pondered for a moment before venturing, “She made ample preparations and tried to get the upper hand on you by having her student beat yours?” “That might be part of the reason, but it wouldn't be enough to warrant mobilizing a massive entourage and rushing all the way from Chaocheng to throw her weight around the moment she heard I took a student. Personal pride is never the primary motive behind a mature artisan's actions. I want you to remember that.” Professor Ye spoke solemnly. “Alchemy is a precise and intricate discipline. What the vast majority of people spend their lives studying is nothing more than changes down to the millimeter and milligram. Emotional impulses are gradually worn down over the years. “As a result, artisans almost invariably turn into creatures of pure calculation over time, haggling over every penny. Others lose sight of what matters entirely, degrading into mere merchants who know only marketing. “Kong Qingyan is that sort of person. She values prestige over results and status over craft. To her, a venture without profit isn't worth doing, and making a whole trip just to gain a tiny advantage isn't worth the trouble either.” The professor stated flatly, “She came this time for me.” “Huh?” Ji Jue stared, dumbfounded. “Yet if that were the case, she should have made more moves. I stopped just short of slapping her in the face multiple times, yet she didn't dare challenge me. “Which means… was it merely to confirm something? My condition, the state of the workshop, or perhaps scheming after certain results and trying to execute a plan where she wanted to rule out my interference from the very start?” Amidst her murmuring analysis, a faint vibration buzzed from the table. It was her phone. Caller ID: [Wild Gathering · Chen Xingzhou] She picked up, and a voice came through from the other end. Under the phone’s built-in jamming, bystanders couldn't make out a single word, only catching the slight shift in Professor Ye’s expression as understanding dawned. “I see. Understood. The remaining balance will be settled within two business days. Pleasure working with you.” After hanging up, Professor Ye sank into deep thought, as if weighing her options. “Perhaps this is fate.” She suddenly turned back and asked Ji Jue, “How far along are you with the deconstruction and analysis of the Mouth of the Ancient?” “Huh?” Caught off guard by the abrupt leap in topic, Ji Jue went blank. His first instinct was to say, *Pretty much all figured out,* but after careful thought, it felt more like *ninety percent figured out*—and even that was an exaggeration. “Roughly… about half of it, I guess…” He hemmed and hawed, not daring to admit that he had been left completely bewildered and dazzled. It wasn't just the sheer workload; the difficulty exceeded his comprehension by who knew how much. All he could do was feel the elephant in the dark, constantly guessing and eliminating possibilities to identify the purpose and function of each component. He meekly handed over his notes. “I’ve basically sorted out the deconstruction of the main body.” In plain terms, he had figured out which parts actually worked and which parts looked flashy but served no practical purpose whatsoever. Professor Ye took the notebook, put on her glasses, and entered review mode. After about ten minutes of grading, she handed it back to Ji Jue. His eyes stung at the sheer number of red marks and corrections across the pages. Far too many mistakes! Beyond debunking many of his guesses, she had supplemented a wealth of perspectives he hadn't even conceived, surveying the design philosophy of the entire alchemical piece from the commanding height of a Master's experience. More importantly… When she closed her hand around the necklace of the Mouth of the Ancient, the intricate structures that had once seemed to Ji Jue like flowers blooming through a thick fog projected directly into the air. In an instant, they filled the entire living room. Even the spacious room wasn't large enough to display all the ostentatious details. It was a structure condensed into the size of a thumb, yet its internal layout, once unfolded, was vast enough to cover half a stadium. Yet much of that complexity was entirely meaningless, giving the impression of pure technical flexing—lavishing immense effort on bizarre, inconsequential areas and sacrificing vital function and structure for the sake of aesthetics. To Ji Jue, who had grown accustomed to the cost-efficiency principles drilled into modern alchemy from the ground up, it felt gratingly alien. “Did those ancient alchemists really have nothing better to do all day?” “Items presented to emperors were all like that. Etiquette reigned supreme; it was better to overdo it than to show the slightest disrespect. A tiny trinket like this required decades of labor from a massive workshop. “And yet the beasts of burden back then considered it an honor.” Professor Ye offered a mocking assessment, completely indifferent to the painstaking effort poured into it. Effort wasted on meaningless nonsense wasn't true effort; it was merely the vain cost of currying favor with authority and showing off one's own drudgery. After guiding Ji Jue through the structure of the Mouth of the Ancient until he could finally distinguish the functions and redundancies of each part, Professor Ye gave a slow nod. “That will do. To reach this level in just a few days… I had initially estimated it would take you about a month. Unfortunately, it seems we might not have that much time.” With that, her fingers closed tight. The sweeping projections vanished without a trace, followed immediately by a soft, brittle cracking sound from her palm. Seized by sudden shock, Ji Jue instinctively jumped up from the sofa—not out of worry that the Mouth of the Ancient had been ruined, but because of the spiritus fluctuations erupting from Professor Ye’s hand at that very moment. It was so intricate, so vast, shifting at frequencies surpassing microseconds, surging and plummeting without pattern or trace. When she opened her fingers again, minute flakes of debris sloughed off the Mouth of the Ancient and crumbled into dust. The sight drove Ji Jue’s innate ability near madness. Salivating, starved, ravenous. Almost entirely beyond control! Carefully taking the relic and its fragments, he shoved the dust into his pocket and immediately inspected the internal structure of the Mouth of the Ancient. To his astonishment, the appallingly complex construction had completely vanished. The spiritus circuits connecting to the other fragments and the meaningless decorative architecture had been effortlessly and thoroughly erased by Professor Ye in a single fleeting instant! The streamlined structure conformed strictly to modern alchemical principles. Its total mass was less than a tenth of what it had been, yet stripped of all bloated redundancy, its efficiency had increased several times over. Every rune and circuit revolved around the central Sovereign Virtue insignia · Vortex, within which was preserved the blessing from the Vortex’s grace known as [Regeneration]. Beyond that, every extraneous element was gone. “What… is this?” Ji Jue felt as though he were hallucinating. They always said destruction was easy while creation was hard, but destroying the irrelevant portions while preserving the core—and streamlining it in the process—was a feat of astronomical difficulty. Inconceivable! If he were tasked with the same work, he would have had to rely on the workshop’s sub-microscopic equipment, slaving away for months just to peel away and erase those extraneous structures line by line, with no guarantee of success. How could it be done so fast? It was like a precision demolition that blew away everything above and below the eighth floor of a building while ensuring that when the eighth floor landed on the ground, not a single leaf fell from the potted plants and the plumbing and electricity ran as normal. Within a space so minute it required a microscope to observe, she had obliterated and extracted her targets while leaving the rest utterly untouched. “You could call it my signature technique.” Ye Xian smiled—a rare sight on her face. “Stripping impurities, erasing material properties, deconstructing structures—using my own experience, through specialized techniques and methods, to freely dissociate and reconstruct the internal alchemical structures of an object. “Back then, it was precisely with this that I passed the Ring of Taiyi's Rubedo evaluation. “Its registered name is the ‘Dissociation Art.’ “Want to learn it?” Ji Jue nodded vigorously, his eyes glowing like lightbulbs. With such a world-shaking art dangling right before him, if he didn't wag his tail and fawn over her, he would probably weep tears of regret and slap himself across the face when he went to bed tonight! What was the point of playing hard to get? At a moment like this, any hesitation whatsoever would be an insult to his own intelligence and the professor's favor. Think about that warehouse full of scrap! With this trick, would he ever have to worry about running out of scrap food again?! Why would he ever need to exhaust himself trying to overload and collapse a relic's spirituality when he could just chow down directly, devouring as much as he wanted? Taking it a step further… the next time he ran into a pay-to-win warrior armed to the teeth with Federation currency like Young Master Lou, wouldn't he be able to just reach out his wicked little hands and take it all apart? “Very good.” Ye Xian nodded, her expression turning grave once more. “I'm currently busy with another project and can't pull myself away for the moment. I need you to handle something for me.” *Where to? Kill who? How many?* Seeing a gleaming golden exclamation mark rising over Professor Ye’s head, Ji Jue could hardly contain himself. If he didn't smash the confirm button right now, could he even call himself human? “To be precise, go somewhere and bring an item back for me.” Professor Ye added, “The location is outside Yacheng—an entrance to a Border Realm that is due to surface in the mundane world very soon.” The first half of her sentence froze the smile on Ji Jue's face, leaving him unsure whether to laugh or cry. But by the second half, he had no room left for self-pity. “The item I need you to bring back is a matrix,” Professor Ye said slowly. “A matrix that could practically be called a match made in heaven for you. “—Its name is [Non-Offensive].”