In this gloomy place where day and night were indistinguishable, a tender wailing echoed through the silence.
It sounded like an infant.
A wave of numbness washed over Ji Jue.
*No way.*
Images of an embroidered slipper, two red lanterns, an eerie mansion on a rainy night, and a pale bride under a red bridal veil instantly sprang to his mind. It was all the fault of that bastard Lu Feng, who kept filling his computer with horror movies and insisted on blasting them through the speakers, nearly giving Ji Jue psychological trauma.
Now that silence had fallen, the faint noise grew increasingly distinct. What sent a chill down Ji Jue's spine was that... it was coming from right behind him.
In the dead quiet, he stiffly turned his head.
And saw Little Niuma shivering like a dog!
Noticing Ji Jue's gaze, the timid motorcycle edged closer of its own accord, huddling against him as if seeking warmth, utterly terrified out of its wits!
*How could you be so utterly pathetic?!*
Ji Jue longed to deliver a resounding slap across its chassis. You're a motorcycle spirit—what kind of ghost are you afraid of?!
"Should we go check it out?" Xiao An asked in a low voice.
Ji Jue shook his head decisively.
Without a shred of hesitation!
Are you kidding? The kind of character in a horror movie who hears a weird noise and wanders over to see the spectacle is guaranteed to die first, alright?!
Yet simply ignoring it didn't feel right either. Sitting in these eerie ruins with such background music playing was unnerving no matter how you sliced it.
Still, there was no need to panic. This was precisely the moment to pull out a nifty little gadget...
Ji Jue rummaged through the backpack on his chest for a good while, his face beaming as he held up the item tucked away at the very bottom:
—A drone!
Ever since experiencing the convenience of such things last time, Ji Jue had gritted his teeth and ordered a high-spec military-grade version from Sister Layla. It was a rotary-wing reconnaissance model, stealthy and whisper-quiet; even the Imperial Army in the Mid-Continent praised it after being blown up by its kind. Reinforced with the Sovereign Virtue insignia of the Desolate Ruins, it was already resistant to small-caliber semi-automatic gunfire.
To prepare the gear for this excursion, he had been detained at the security company, spending an entire afternoon modifying guns for them.
Ever since Ji Jue gave Lu Feng's sidearm a spiritus tune-up, everyone who handled it had gone wild for more. Rumor had it that over at Layla's, appointments for Master Ji's consecration services were booked out until next year.
Now, with a mere thought, the drone rose into the air. The screen in his hands lit up, displaying footage. The compact drone drifted silently through the sky without disturbing the monsters lurking in the shadows, putting Ji Jue's worries to rest.
Only, just as it rounded a corner, it nearly collided head-on with a spider beast. The spider beast acted as if it hadn't seen a thing, showing zero reaction. This left Ji Jue even more bewildered by their trigger mechanics—could it be that the locals only craved fresh meat and turned their noses up at vegetarian fare?
Proceeding cautiously across a modest distance, they traced the source of the weeping to the far side of the ruins: an apartment block riddled with fissures.
Behind a collapsed, ragged wall, dim light flickered intermittently.
A family sat clustered around a dining table, enjoying dinner after a hard day's labor, gentle smiles shared amidst a heartwarming reunion... If only that were all it was.
The husband in ragged clothes vaguely retained a human silhouette, but his head hung down from his neck, the gory grime at the severing wound caked and long dried.
He seemed to be picking up food with a right hand that had long since disappeared, his stiff face twitching as if forcing a smile. "Eat, eat, eat, it's so good. Thanks for your hard work."
The table was completely bare, nothing left in the shattered plates but dust.
The toiling wife busy with chores turned back with a tender smile, exposing deep hollows sunken into her face as thick black liquid slowly trickled from the corners of her eyes.
"The, the, the baby is cry-cry-cry-crying again. Go see, see..."
Inside a tattered cradle, the infant wailed shrilly. The mother's mutated claw brushed across its face in a gentle stroke, leaving behind another curled, bloody gash.
"Mama, it hurts. Mama, I... it hurts."
"Yes, baby, Ma-Ma-Mama loves you too." The mother picked up a rag that was nothing more than rotting lint and asked softly, "Do you like the new clothes Daddy bought you?"
"It hurts so much, Mama, it hurts."
The swaddled infant wailed, crying out, "It hurts, hurts, hurts—"
Beneath the infant's rotting flesh, invisible worms or something else seemed to writhe violently, undulating, constantly bulging out into one vague contour after another.
The weeping turned increasingly mournful and shrill, resounding through the entire apartment.
Yet it seemed to gradually shift... or rather, become progressively inhuman. What had once been a tender voice turned raspy, mournful, shrill, cavernously deep, or simply numb!
It was as though countless souls were concealed within that tiny vessel, roaring out in despair again and again, slipping further into madness.
Until at last, when the lament broke off without warning, the tattered infant in the cradle burst apart. From beneath the gore and shredded flesh sprouted writhing tentacles and insect-like segmented legs, swaying, crawling, darting out from the cradle, and hissing as it scurried away.
It vanished beneath the gloomy heavens.
Yet the mother continued smiling, facing the empty cradle, soothing the non-existent child. Then, she cleared the bowls and chopsticks, tidied the house, and finally switched off the lamp that had long gone out, joining her husband on the ruined bed to welcome a peaceful slumber.
In dreams, beneath the couple's mutilated carcasses, formless things squirmed and undulated, like parasites sucking nourishment from a host's husk, awaiting the day of birth.
The drone drifted back, settling into Ji Jue's hands.
The two exchanged a wordless glance.
At least Ji Jue now knew where all those bizarre abominations came from...
Inhuman things bred from inhuman things.
Butterflies, birds, crocodiles, snakes, even that terrifying colossal bug coiled in the ruins that could devour Ji Jue like several bags of snacks without even burping—all those godforsaken horrors likely originated like this!
Though he had no idea why those 'people' clung so obsessively to mimicking a normal human life, there was no doubt that all of this was Quicksilver's handiwork!
Temporarily reducing materials to a fluid state, yielding to their material properties and nature to adjust them to the optimal condition aligned with their internal essence, or conversely catalyzing the creation through spiritus qualitative changes to bestow an even deeper Metamorphosis.
This was the very credential that had allowed Quicksilver to ascend to Grandmaster and claim a seat among the Sages—the art that had become a lost legend in the history of alchemy: 'Fluid Alchemy'!
Even her title had been derived from this technique.
Creations forged through Fluid Alchemy often possessed extraordinary concealment, bearing no trace of external processing whatsoever, and could even assume multiple forms and countenances.
Hence, it was known as the Art of Myriad Changes.
The scene Ji Jue had just witnessed was likely a further Metamorphosis undergone by the creation amidst the chaos of spiritus.
And according to the reference materials Ji Jue had frantically cram-studied: such a Metamorphosis, if left unrestricted, would never stop at just one. They could continue growing like living organisms, mutating into ever more hellish things, until spiritus overloaded and material properties collapsed upon themselves!
What sent an even deeper chill through him was that even with chaos and loss of control reaching such a pitch, the entire Border Realm bore not the slightest sign of aberration.
Not a single flaw of tainted aberration.
The hell before his eyes was forged entirely through the power of Sovereign Virtue!
"Just what kind of monstrosities did she cobble together?"
Sitting on the rubble, Ji Jue felt his scalp tingle with numbness, like a fresh-graduate programmer who had accidentally opened a giant pile of legacy spaghetti code accumulated by decades of predecessors.
Nowhere to begin, nowhere to fathom, nothing to be done.
He had no idea what mechanisms lurked inside, nor what secret mega-surprises lay buried in the underlying layers that could send him into cardiac arrest; the urge to just die grew stronger with every second.
Xiao An sat quietly on the ground, still wearing that dazed expression of 'something happened, but I don't get it at all.' Sister Wen had said to listen to Ji Jue if anything came up anyway, so didn't that mean he didn't need to use his brain?
This was his first time on such an effortless Border Realm expedition!
Awesome!
Brother Ji Jue is magnificent—no further words needed!
Sensing the teenager's admiring, reverent gaze, Ji Jue opened his mouth, hesitated, and felt an even stronger urge to die.
Yet amidst the silence, he finally felt a faint vibration in his chest.
The puzzle ball, which had been burning hot for hours, seemed to have finally cooled down.
It gave off a faint response.
The instant Ji Jue caught it, he scooped it out and frantically poured all his spiritus into it, letting the puzzle ball drink it down like a whale gulping water. Draining Ji Jue alone wasn't enough; it even sucked dry more than half of Brother Watch's spiritus reserve before finally letting out a faint sigh.
"Brother Ball, you're back?!" Ji Jue exclaimed in delight.
[...Half dead, but barely holding together.]
The puzzle ball, still carrying residual warmth, let out a groaning reply: [To think that after weathering so many storms over all these years, I nearly capsized in a ditch.
Taking an apprentice out for a stroll almost ended in a total wreck.
The moment the door opened, they came to swindle and ambush me, bullying a helpless old ball like me! Almost kicked my parting line right open! Despicable, utterly shameless!]
The puzzle ball shuddered violently, cursing furiously: [That dog Quicksilver calls herself a grandmaster?!]
The moment it stepped into the Border Realm and activated reconnaissance mode according to the logic of its underlying circuits... it was counter-detected by another signal so staggering it defied belief!
Like two sonars pinging each other across the deep sea.
The instant it sensed the other's presence, the puzzle ball knew something was wrong and tried to shut down, but it was already too late. The malice from the other end came surging in like a tidal wave.
The moment the second signal was detected, the workshop defense module left behind by Quicksilver was activated. It stirred up an aggressive tide directly from the fluctuations of spiritus.
Across hundreds or thousands of li, it began invading the puzzle ball's spiritus circuits from afar, even attempting to thoroughly overwrite the puzzle ball's foundational instructions right on top of Professor Ye's framework.
This was an essential course for the Embers lineage in workshop warfare: suppress the opponent's alchemical items, or even seize control to trigger a backlash.
Regrettably, four hundred years had passed.
The world outside had continued to evolve, and the foundation of modern alchemy had rendered the versions entirely different. Paired with the rigidity of an unpiloted defense protocol, the puzzle ball had ultimately managed to shake it off completely.
The price was that it had crashed for who knew how long.
Unfortunately, it had been unable to launch a counterattack.
Because in a contest at this level, Ji Jue was useless! Had Ye Xian been here, far from suffering a setback, the workshop across from them would have changed its surname to Ye in the blink of an eye!
Still, at the very least, through that brief clash, it had gleaned a fundamental understanding of the workshop Quicksilver had left behind.
"You found it already?"
Ji Jue's eyes lit up. "Incredible efficiency, Brother Ball! Where's the workshop?"
[Haven't you figured it out yet, you silly brat?]
The puzzle ball let out a faint sigh, mirroring the way Professor Ye used to express pity for other people's intellect: [We've been inside Quicksilver's workshop the entire time.]
It said: [The entire Border Realm is her workshop!]
Chapter 64