The plan to rule humanity had been formulated by Lady Isis herself!
Unfortunately, due to various reasons, it had to be temporarily shelved. The crux of the matter lay in the fact that if a dog like Ji Jue counted as human, the cost of ruling humanity was somewhat too high; but if a dog like Ji Jue didn't count as human, humanity hardly seemed worth ruling at all—
Still, the industrial park continued to operate normally.
Iterating in an orderly fashion.
And step by step, they pushed forward the work Ji Jue had assigned them.
"Truly magnificent—"
Standing atop a towering cliff, Ji Jue looked down. Dense plumes of smoke billowed from the factories, working around the clock. Flames surged, tinting the grayish-black canopy of the sky a scorched red.
Ashy white and pitch-black cinders drifted lazily through the acid rain, floating and descending. A literal hell on earth.
Yet where in hell could one find such a majestic scene?
Geothermal energy was tapped for power, and spiritus was combusted to kindle the flames. Molten steel churned within massive furnaces, radiating intermittent flares of scorching crimson and eerie white.
The temperature climbed, climbed, and climbed again...
Beneath crisscrossing layers of spiritus circuits, the crest of Supreme Goodness materialized, forming an intricate structure. Purification, Catalysis, Transmutation, and Fusion—immense quantities of impurities separated and precipitated out beneath the blistering heat, being discharged or cleanly incinerated into puffs of pale smoke.
The brilliance within the crucibles grew increasingly incandescent. Sirens wailed sharply.
Amidst the piercing shriek, the mechanical cats overseeing the heat worked together to pull down the floodgates, and a blinding cascade of sparks instantly erupted from the rushing torrent of molten steel.
Following predetermined channels, the viscous liquid steel surged forward with an almost illusory roar that echoed endlessly. Downward, further downward, along the laid-out tracks, it plunged toward the colossal keel resting silent in the dark. It cascaded like a dazzling streak of celestial light, ripping through the darkness, plunging into the gargantuan steel structure and being swallowed whole until not a trace remained, like an illusion.
In the darkness, only complex spiritus circuits lit up across the keel. Three-Phase Alchemy circulated, using the keel of the Prosperity as the foundation to conduct quenching and transmutation.
The incessant crackle of crystalline growth rang out. Sharp clusters of metallic crystals rapidly sprouted from various sections of the keel, glistening with a vibrant, multicolored halo under the glare of the spotlights, breathtakingly beautiful.
Unfortunately, these were merely impurities precipitating from the keel.
Soon enough, mechanical cats carrying hammers and chisels scrambled up the scaffolding, vigorously hacking away at the growths. Massive piles of fractured metallic clusters had already formed small hills on the floor. Once a sufficient quantity accumulated, they were loaded onto trucks and hauled off to other smelters for recycling.
For this project, while the material properties of the slag were not pure enough to be reused here, it still held substantial recycling value; its performance was more than sufficient for manufacturing critical components for heavy engineering equipment.
"Following the direction you proposed, using Gas Alchemy to plunder the material properties of external matter, Solid Alchemy to stabilize internal properties, and Fluid Alchemy to purify and balance, the principles of Three-Phase circulation have been perfectly realized on such a large-scale project."
Isis said slowly, "Reinforcement of the Prosperity's keel is roughly ninety-seven percent complete. Unfortunately, the marginal utility is diminishing too sharply; the enhancement of the keel's material properties has slowed. Based on the target parameters you specified, it will still take an estimated week to reach completion."
"Not bad."
Ji Jue rubbed his chin. "Is there any way we can speed it up a bit?"
"This is already the theoretical optimum," Isis reported. "Constrained by current transport capacity and potential fallout, while still ensuring the park's security and concealment, ore shipments from Xinquan have reached their limit.
"Furthermore, considering input versus output alongside the park's demands, building another large smelting furnace specifically for this isn't worth the cost.
"In addition, Punabantu's leyline can no longer sustain another planting, and you, as a craftsman, are unwilling to waste time on such effortless, repetitive labor, while as a precious ingredient you refuse to sacrifice yourself to be driven into the ground as a human pile. You are truly making things difficult for me, sir."
"Ahem, the current efficiency is plenty good. It's fine, it's fine as it is."
Eyeing the few knives twitching eagerly beside her, Ji Jue hastily changed the subject. "How are preparations going on Little Niuma's end?"
"Perhaps your habitual behavior is simply too atrocious, to the point where even your own creation cannot foster trust in you. Currently, it remains somewhat resistant to being disassembled.
"However, to borrow your phrasing: after undergoing 'education' and 'pacification,' it has come to recognize the project's 'grand prospects' and its own 'indispensable value,' and has gradually begun to cooperate..."
"See, what did I tell you? When a kid acts out, it's mostly because they've been spoiled. A good beating fixes everything."
Ji Jue sighed with deep emotion. "Besides, how am I atrocious? Isn't this all for its own good? Such a fantastic opportunity for an upgrade, and it didn't even appreciate it—alas, it breaks an old father's painstaking heart."
Honk—!
A sharp blare of a horn echoed from the distance, brimming with sorrow and indignation.
Isis's projection turned to him, her gaze laced with deep meaning. "Do you need me to translate what it means?"
"No need." Ji Jue waved dismissively. "It's nothing more than words of gratitude and admission of fault. We're all so close, there's no need to be so polite."
"Sir—"
"Hm?"
"You are definitely going to get hit by a car and die tomorrow when you step out."
"Then I won't step out tomorrow."
"The day after tomorrow works too."
Modification, upgrade, overhaul—call it whatever one liked.
Little Niuma had been eating more and more lately, growing increasingly heavy. The original armored vehicle's frame was on the verge of collapsing under the circulation of dragon blood; expanding its capacity had become unavoidable.
Since alterations were inevitable anyway, taking advantage of the abundant labor in Punabantu to settle it all in one fell swoop would save him the hassle of endless patching and tinkering later.
Ji Jue planned to seize this chance for a total overhaul, transferring the dragon blood that formed Little Niuma's conscious foundation, along with the blessing chain of Immovable as a Mountain, from the original armor into the newly recast Prosperity.
Vacating the cage to make room for a new bird.
And along the way, he would complete a brand-new project.
—Project Juque!
Ever since modifying Zhanlu last time, Ji Jue had thoroughly tossed aside the noble traditions of the Nine Forms and any self-consciousness of being a sword-crafter. After extensive experimentation and gradually digesting and comprehending the essence of the Nine Forms, he intended to apply Juque to the Prosperity!
Was it difficult? There were a few minor snags, but once actually solved, it turned out not to be difficult in the slightest.
After all, the scale spoke for itself.
In sculpture, carving on a grain of rice was inherently more troublesome than carving stone. How could conducting a grand ritual within the cramped confines of a snail shell—a single sword—compare to the ease and simplicity of using a ten-thousand-ton cargo ship as the foundation and vessel?
It merely required slightly more investment. But the most troublesome part had already been resolved by Little Niuma.
There was no need for the True Essence of Desolate Ruins refined from an entire leyline. After Ji Jue's persistent feeding over all this time and Little Niuma's own endless binging on all sorts of materials, its dragon blood was already qualified to shoulder the duty. Though it still fell a bit short in pure scale, that wouldn't stop it from eating more down the road.
It grew larger, simpler, and naturally, weaker.
Having your cake and eating it too was a fantasy reserved for dreams. Ji Jue had used dragon blood to solve the biggest hurdle, and the trade-off was that Little Niuma would have to keep eating, eating, and eating.
Yet even without doing this, Little Niuma would still have to keep eating. So why not let the child eat to its heart's content?
In the theory of the Nine Forms, Juque's defense was undisputed number one, but that also depended on scale. If it merely covered a craftsman, it was an absolute epic-tier turtle shell; but if stretched across an entire freighter, the resulting efficacy would suffer a massive drop.
Therefore, Ji Jue merely drew upon the core concepts and main framework, then took an axe to the rest.
Had this been the Ye Clan of the past, the moment he showed any inclination to alter it, he probably would have been tossed into the furnace as a sword sacrifice for sheer heresy.
Yet in the eyes of the present Ye Xian, it was as if she had received splendid news.
He finally knew how to adapt.
He hadn't betrayed her expectations when she passed down the Nine Forms to him as his teacher.
Damn right. Things like the Nine Forms were meant to be stepping stones. Once you digested, understood, and mastered them, you tossed them aside. Discarding them like worn shoes didn't matter in the least.
Keeping them around like ancestral tablets to kowtow to morning and night, burning incense around the clock—what was the point? Weren't there already enough useless wretches doing that?
All these years, with the first branch, second branch, third branch, inner lineages, outer lineages, legitimate sons, and concubine sons squabbling back and forth like dogs tearing at each other, had they managed to produce a single Grandmaster?
A disgraceful spectacle!
Change what needs changing; use what needs using. Whatever isn't useful can sit in the corner and gather dust. Whether the modification turned out great or terrible, it was all a lesson. Just let loose and forge ahead.
Among the Nine Forms, Juque, as the pinnacle of the Desolate Ruins lineage, was undeniably the prime manifestation of Supreme Goodness's Desolate Ruins: immovable as a mountain in stillness, roaring like a tidal bore in eruption.
Though inferior to Zhanlu in raw output, when it came to defense, it was the absolute pinnacle of the Nine Forms.
The secret transmission's phrase, "Rooted below in the leylines, aligned above with the morning stars," was no empty boast. A fully realized Juque seemed like a mere sword, but in truth, it resonated continuously with the earth and the heavens, nearly one with the cosmos.
To say nothing of the defensive capability of Immovable as a Mountain and over eighty percent damage reflection, it could also easily adjust its own mass through this resonance, truly achieving the feat of being lighter than a feather or heavier than Mount Tai.
When light, it was weightless as nothingness, able to bear a sword-crafter aloft to soar into the azure heavens. When heavy, an immense weight of billions of jun would erupt from the nine skies, and the falling Juque could crush everything on the earth like a meteor, gouging straight down into the underworld at the bottom of the mortal realm.
Of course, that was the theory. Unfortunately, theory was just theory. Who didn't indulge in pipe dreams every now and then? From the Eternal Empire until today, not a single Juque had ever successfully refined that many leylines into itself during the forging!
Juque wasn't Pan Ying; it couldn't undergo repeated tempering.
Craftsmen of old had only forged a scant few, which were scattered to the winds with no trace remaining. By the time it reached the Ye Clan, not a single fully finished piece existed. While ownerless leylines across the world were countless, extracting an entire leyline into essence and dumping it into a furnace without causing an explosion was about as difficult as cramming an elephant into a convenience-store beverage cooler for three years and expecting it to pop out alive and kicking.
It was a feat ordinary craftsmen couldn't pull off and Grandmasters couldn't be bothered to attempt—they didn't possess an anomaly like Three-Phase Alchemy.
As for Ji Jue, he couldn't be bothered with pipe dreams of finishing it all in one go. Aside from being tedious, exhausting, and completely cost-inefficient, if he blew up Punabantu's leyline, what would happen to the park?
How would his brothers clock in for work?!
"While it works in theory, predicting its actual efficacy remains difficult," Isis said slowly. "Considering your modular design and compatibility with other Sovereign Virtue blessings, while the defensive performance will be excellent, it will inevitably lack purity."
"Purity?"
Ji Jue countered, "Is purity really useful all the time?"
Even if Purification was one of the four steps of alchemy, it was ultimately just one of four.
The vaster a project, the more it demanded overall integration and balance, rather than reaching an extreme in a single aspect while surrounded by glaring shortcomings.
"One of the core essences of the Path of Desolate Ruins lies in eternity—the eternity and immutability of matter. But I don't need something eternally unchanging. No matter how consummate Project Juque becomes, I hope that someday in the future, it can still undergo further transformation."
Ji Jue gazed at the silent keel before him, sighing softly. "What I need is a sufficiently robust foundation and vehicle, a platform capable of carrying infinite possibilities."
Among Juque's countless virtues, what he valued most wasn't defense, but the material properties that steadily strengthened and expanded through its resonance with boundless matter.
Like an endlessly expanding vessel: as long as resources were poured in, it could yield ever more possibilities.
From the battered Little Sheep at the start, to the current armored vehicle, to the future ten-thousand-ton vessel, and perhaps even further down the line, new breakthroughs and transformations would emerge.
Within Supreme Goodness, Ascension representing the spirit was the origin of all things, while Desolate Ruins representing matter was the end of all things. Right in between Ascension and Desolate Ruins, within the intermingling of spirit and matter, lay the manifestation of the Ember's transformations.
What was that?
That was the Ember spirit, don't you get it!
Isis listened impassively to Ji Jue's impromptu monologue before asking bluntly, "Put simply, you feel that playing with such a massive toy just once isn't enough fun, so you want to keep it around to play with in the future, correct?"
"Exactly! Spot on!"
Ji Jue nodded decisively.
Amidst the mournful blare of Little Niuma's horn in the distance, Isis let out a silent sigh. "You'd better just get hit by a car and die today."
***
For the days that followed, Ji Jue simply put down roots in Punabantu.
Aside from pushing Project Juque forward, numerous tasks that required his personal touch demanded intense overtime. Given how scarce Ji Jue's free time usually was, it was best to finish everything in one breath while he had the chance, and even make extra preparations.
Isis showed no mercy, running Ji Jue ragged. He worked from dawn till dusk, then lit the lamps to work from dusk till dawn, operating non-stop.
During this time, as a matrix relic, Isis implanted the Transmutation-rank Ember Trinity with zero obstruction, accomplishing it in a single stroke. As for the verifications and requirements of the Embers, they posed no concern whatsoever.
The immense creation demanded by Crucible Blood was right before her eyes. The transformation of the world required by Unquenched Fuel was already amply demonstrated by everything currently in Punabantu.
As for the heavenly craft demanded by Heaven-Endowed Spirit, she was heavenly craft incarnate!
From the very instant she awoke from the leylines, she had already fulfilled it!
In less than two months, starting from scratch, she had bridged the long journey Ji Jue had trudged through. Had she not been constrained by her own upper limits, surpassing Ji Jue might not have been out of the question.
"Next, you will need to head out more often to gather materials and achieve All Things Self-Transform as soon as possible, sir. Otherwise, everything at present will remain too severely bottlenecked. Furthermore, for the sake of your financial health, you had best generate some additional income, or the park's development will grind to a halt."
Isis produced an alarming requisition sheet and a row of numbers whose zeroes alone were enough to make one's head spin, helpfully offering a suggestion: "I recommend considering the Federation Reserve Bank, the Empire's Grand Radiance Bank, or perhaps Everlasting Bank's Mid-Continent vault—"
"..."
Ji Jue's face twitched. Having pulled too much overtime, his vision went black. He couldn't even tally how vast the deficit was, nor did he dare look closely. "Uh, isn't there any option that doesn't break the law?"
"Sir, please consider your public persona before speaking. Have you ever actually done anything legal?" Isis pointed out incisively. "Setting aside the legitimacy of your numerous identities, as far as I know, your most legitimate enterprises, Haian Industry and Haian Tech, have to this day paid an exact tax total of zero."
"We run a small business! Our profits are razor-thin, where would we get taxes to pay?!" Ji Jue bristled with rage. "I'm a factory director, yet I own barely two outfits across all four seasons! I eat all my meals in the cafeteria, and whenever I want an extra dish, my first thought is whether the brothers in the park have enough to eat! Do you know how hard it is for me?!"
"Yes, keep that exact tone. Tell that to the Federation Internal Revenue Service when the time comes," Isis said. "Now, you may consider the options I just proposed."
Truth be told, she wasn't wrong.
Ji Jue fell into deep thought.
No man grows rich without windfall, no horse grows fat without night grass. How could one rebuild the Holy Dynasty without funds? If push came to shove, he would just have to make the Federation suffer a little!
Jumping straight into action wasn't realistic; he would have to look for opportunities and make ample preparations first!
Besides, he still had the gold sponsored by the Empire's garrison base, which could hold them over for a few months.
Just as he was pondering, a long-unseen incoming call finally flashed on his screen.
[Lou Feng]
"Ummm..."
Looking at the flashing name on his phone, Ji Jue felt a sudden, ominous premonition on his linguistic radar.
Maybe he should hang up?
In the end, he didn't.
He had hung up too many times before. Lou Feng had sent over eighty voice messages, not a single one of which Ji Jue had listened to, and today Lou Feng was on his eighth call. If he hung up again, their already battered ship of friendship would probably capsize entirely.
"Ji, you bastard, I'll—you just wait, I'm going to—from now on... if you ever... I'll—when the time comes, you and me—"
The instant the call connected, an epic rant lasting five minutes and forty-seven seconds erupted.
One couldn't tell how long Lou Feng had practiced, but his delivery was consummate.
By the time Lou Feng finished his performance, his voice was practically hoarse.
Yet Ji Jue still hadn't figured out what this was about.
"Did you fucking forget you have a company?!"
Lou Feng's voice on the other end was dripping with resentment, sounding as though he was gearing up for another marathon run of compound insults. Ji Jue hurriedly cut him off. "The new product is done?"
"No shit!"
Lou Feng roared, "I don't give a damn where the hell you are! If you're not downstairs in half an hour, I'm quitting this damn partnership, you hear me?!"
Ji Jue hung up the phone.
He let out a low whistle.
New income?
Here it came!
Chapter 662