In less than half an hour, giving Lou Feng no opportunity to make a scene or give him the cold shoulder, Ji Jue simply pushed open a door in Punabantu and stepped directly into his residence in Xinquan.
A journey that would take an airship well over a day had been crossed in a single instant. The convenience of the Celestial Rail was absurd beyond belief; as long as a teleportation waypoint was unlocked on the map and a beacon established, distance became practically nonexistent.
Yet it differed from the teleportation method of the Star Core Association.
For a long time, the impression the Star Core Association gave the outside world—aside from being ravenously greedy and impossibly stingy—was simply that they had stopped caring entirely.
Both utilized spatial teleportation, but to maximize cost-efficiency and minimize effort, the Star Core Association's transport services were usually anchored to leylines. Simply put, they treated leylines as fiber-optic cables, cutting over ninety percent of the work required to accomplish teleportation.
The downside was that it was easily restricted and countered, but its virtue lay in that very same trait.
As long as it had flaws, faced difficulties, and remained bound by restrictions, it would always be your friendly neighborhood partner. Perhaps that was simply their survival strategy.
After all, Celestial Chosen of the Eternal Gate were way, way, way, way, way, way too fucking few—so rare that one in ten thousand didn't even begin to cover it. And their cultivation cycle was far, far, far, far, far too long. In the same amount of time, a Celestial Chosen of identical talent could ride the winds and cleave the waves on the path of Ascension or the Desolate Ruins, reaching all the way to Exaltation, while in the domain of the Eternal Gate, they might still be spinning their wheels in the Transmutation tier.
This was an inherent defect of the Eternal Gate.
Or rather, a defect of the Eternal Gate itself—
"Suppose you were a construction supervisor," Ye Xian had asked back when they discussed the matter. "You arrive at the site, only to find the entire building's foundation was backfilled from a garbage pit, the mortar was mixed with sea sand, the water used was saline-alkali brine, the rebar was well below specifications, and safety at the site was nonexistent. To make matters worse, several interior design firms had revised the layout through multiple drafts before abandoning the project halfway.
"The reconstruction blueprints were finally drafted with great difficulty two hundred years ago, only for half of them to burn up in a fire... while people from the rival firm spend every single day figuring out ways to drill holes into your load-bearing walls—
"In that situation, would your choice be to stay at this construction site, suffer through the grind, and wait for a promotion?"
Ji Jue hadn't even needed to hear him finish; his hair had stood on end, leaving him speechless.
If you didn't pack your bags and run for the hills right then and there, what were you waiting for?!
Yet the employment contract had already been signed, and running was out of the question, so what choice was there but to phone it in?
From that perspective, considering the Celestial Rail was the former operator of the Star Core Association, the fact that it still had a stray dog or two left was truly a miracle!
Not to mention the scene Ji Jue had witnessed within the memories of the Doomsday Express—that dark sun imprisoned within the deepest recesses of the Celestial Rail...
Just thinking about it made Ji Jue feel like tearing his hair out.
Why was it that the better life seemed to get, the worse it felt?
Solve one problem, and several more would immediately crop up.
Even if one pretended not to see them, some things didn't simply vanish just because you closed your eyes.
The longer he spent out in the world, the more absurdly tangled his roles became.
Left hand wielding the Non-Offensive matrix to destroy the Eternal Empire; right hand wielding the Imperial Sovereign's Hand to Make Eternal Great Again.
Left foot planted on the Mirror of Contained Forms, inheriting the sword smith's legacy; right foot stepping on the left, using the sword smith foundation to embark on total heresy.
Around his neck hung an employee badge for the Celestial Rail; over his back stretched a vest from the Evil Transmutation Cult; in his chest was a hole left by a sin fiend, ringed by a Wolf Blood Oath—
Ahead, his eyes were fixed on Embers, while Stagnant Rot chased closely behind.
He had completely cross-threaded every damn identity available!
Factoring in all the chaotic debts and responsibilities piled onto him, anyone with slightly weaker mental fortitude would probably have laid flat long ago, waiting for death to clear the ledger.
Still, after all this time, he wondered how the President was doing.
Even as Ji Jue sighed wistfully, a sudden jolt of alarm struck him. Dammit, it felt like his scoundrel boss had brainwashed him. He was actually starting to miss going to work—
Amidst his wild thoughts, he strode straight forward and pushed the door open.
Then he froze on the spot—
"Holy shit, who are you?!"
Inside Lou Feng's workshop, surrounded by countless shimmering phantasms of spiritus, an emaciated figure suddenly whipped around, staring straight at him in a full hundred-and-eighty-degree swivel.
Skin and bones, scruffy beard, disheveled hair, hollow cheeks, and eyes completely bloodshot.
Catching sight of Ji Jue's shocked expression, the figure flew into a rage, launching an attack on frame zero:
"I'll fuckin'—"
*Smack!*
A spiritus hand materialized out of thin air, interrupting the cast and clamping Lou Feng's foul mouth shut.
"That's enough of that. Don't push your luck."
Not waiting for Lou Feng to blow up, Ji Jue reached into his back pocket and pulled out a meter-long, slender parcel, diverting his attention: "Look what your daddy brought you! A local specialty from the White Nation—very nourishing!"
Lou Feng shot him a glare and sneered. Not bothering to bicker, he tore open the parcel, eager to see what kind of trash Ji Jue was trying to fool him with.
"What is—holy fuck!"
His hands trembled, and he froze on the spot, his eyes widening in utter disbelief: "What is this?"
From the unwrapped box, bursts of bloody light surged forth.
An entire segment of natural condensed light crystal, of exceptionally high quality!
A naturally superb conductor and vessel for spiritus, catalyzed internally by who-knew-what, with rancor, malice, torment, and despair completely solidified into physical form. Even left unattended, it could attract countless wandering ghosts and evolve them into peerless malicious spirits—
To anyone else, it was merely a rare material, but to artisans like the Lou clan who specialized in spiritus shaping and related crafts, it was an invaluable treasure worthy of being the core material for a masterwork!
Especially the essence of rancor within—
Wisps of blood-red hue snaked and curled, faintly outlining the silhouette of an infant. Like a quickening fetus, it squirmed, opened its eyes, and cast a glance outward.
Ravenous, ferocious, hungering to devour all in its sight.
Pure!
It was so damn pure!
Lou Feng's hands trembled once, then trembled again: "What kind of wicked sin did you commit this time?!"
Ji Jue rolled his eyes.
As expected of a pampered young master—how could he be so tactless?
Asking about its origin?
Could the origin of something like this ever be clean?
Actually, it was quite clean—Ji Jue had plucked the condensed light crystal from a Federation garrison base, and the ferocious, rancorous embryo within had been catalyzed by the despair and resentment of a Federation Celestial-Human before death.
You could say it was authentic, bona fide Federation merchandise, without a single impure speck of smelly outsider nonsense!
To ensure nothing could be traced, Ji Jue had even specially cleansed it five, six, seven, eight times with Profound corruption alchemy before coming over, making certain his little brother could use it with total peace of mind.
Who would have thought his good intentions would ultimately be spurned?
The guy actually suspected the goods weren't legitimate?
What a joke!
Could anything on him ever be legitimate in the first place?!
"Just tell me whether you want it or not!"
Ji Jue made a show of moving to take it back, only to watch the condensed light crystal vanish like a magic trick, stashed away who knew where.
Having finally managed to squeeze something out of Ji Jue for once, Lou Feng couldn't help but let out a soft huff, treating it as interest for the time being.
A bit of healthy color returned to his face.
"Fine. Come over and take a look."
He had originally intended to show Ji Jue a bit of goodwill, but the moment the topic turned to workshop business, Lou Feng couldn't muster a single pleasant expression. This scoundrel truly did provide materials and impart techniques, but when he acted like a bastard, he truly ceased to be human!
He genuinely treated Lou Feng like an unpaid graduate student on a research team.
After dumping a topic, theory, direction, and technical specs on him, Ji Jue would evaporate into thin air, only to demand first authorship on the paper once results were achieved—damn it, just thinking about it made Lou Feng grit his teeth in fury.
"Why aren't you dead yet?!"
"Right, so good to see you too."
Ji Jue smiled as he walked forward, looking at the finished product resting on the platform before him—the exact result he had requested: a wristwatch that appeared utterly unremarkable.
Lou Feng seemed to hesitate, his gaze instinctively drifting toward Ji Jue's wrist.
Toward that mechanical watch that looked equally unremarkable.
Wait—
Could this bastard's detailed specifications mean...
"Yep, pretty much the same thing."
Noticing his gaze, Ji Jue made no attempt to hide it, revealing the wristwatch on his arm—specifically showing off the [9] on the dial, which was already mostly filled with gold!
Lou Feng's pupils shrank instantly into pinpricks, frozen in a stupor even greater than when he had seen the condensed light crystal.
"You—"
"Almost done with the Regeneration tier."
Ji Jue made no secret of his progress. Picking up the wristwatch from the table, he scrutinized it carefully. The watch itself was merely a housing; the external casing could be swapped at any time, but the internal movement was the true heart of the matter.
It had actually succeeded?
Within a structure even smaller than the motherboard of a Riot Cat, the fragment of the spirit of the Lord of the Flies was perfectly fused with the intricate movement, as though crafted by nature itself!
As for the effect—
Ji Jue casually slipped it onto his right wrist and infused it with spiritus. The colors on the dial immediately began to shift. Unlike the piece tied to his Celestial Rail authority, the response of the watch on his right hand was noticeably slower.
Soon, the [9] on the dial faintly lit up, while the gold and crimson of the numeral swirled ceaselessly.
Unfortunately, it still couldn't match the pinpoint precision of his own piece down to the smallest fraction; it could only roughly divide progress into ten stages.
As for the gold and red hues across the dial—
Those reflected the Celestial Chosen's own aura of Supreme Good and their corruption index!
This was the brand-new product Ji Jue had tasked Lou Feng with designing and completing. Specifically, by modeling it after his own watch, utilizing the traits and spiritus of the Lord of the Flies, and supplementing it with the Lou clan's spiritus shaping, they had created a status display monitor for a Celestial Chosen's rank!
After experiencing the convenience and clarity of his own Cousin, how could Ji Jue, as an artisan, not have harbored ambitions of his own? The existence of the Lord of the Flies had conveniently provided the final missing piece of the puzzle.
And so, after tossing over the theory and tools, and through Lou Feng's relentless round-the-clock research and implementation, the product had finally been brought to life.
From this day forward, the era of a watch on every wrist was fucking arriving!
One had to understand that while Celestial Chosen had a general sense of their own condition, physical sensation and reality ultimately differed, not to mention the risk of illusions and errors.
Yet professional monitoring equipment was monopolized by major organizations and institutions. It was far too sophisticated, entirely uneconomical to purchase, inconvenient to use on a pay-per-session basis, and carried the risk of exposing intelligence and one's true condition.
In this field, other compact creations did exist, but none were as acute and streamlined as the Lord of the Flies.
Spirit-detecting paper could only provide vague indications of one's state and was a single-use consumable. The Round Light Mirror was too cumbersome to carry around, and its primary function was detecting consciousness and curses. The Rank-Distinguishing Needle could only register major tiers and specific grades; it lacked fine sensitivity and could not evaluate a Celestial Chosen's corruption index.
Just like right now.
With a shift of Ji Jue's mind, the dial's color instantly flushed a deep, vivid red, and then shifted back into a brilliant, dazzling gold—only, after playing around with it a few times, he seemed to have broken the fragmented spirit inside through overstimulation, causing it to lose responsiveness entirely.
"You fucking—"
Lou Feng erupted in fury.
Even though the principles and production had been ironed out and mass production was feasible, this was the very first piece he had poured his heart and soul into creating. Before it could even shine, Ji Jue had already played it to death.
You dog, what the hell are you messing around with?!
Chapter 663