Boom!
The hand of steel had already wedged itself into the stone surface, clenching tight as its five fingers contracted. Under the impact of Jingzhen, fractures abruptly rippled outward from where the fingertips had driven in.
Even though the massive stone sphere appeared intact on the outside, countless voids and fissures opened within its previously rock-solid spiritus matrix...
Instead of forcibly annihilating every structure in one fell swoop as he had done before, he expended several times more effort and energy, carefully keeping the force he applied strictly at "just enough."
Not dismantling, but separating.
He brought the gathered "Haze" to the very brink of dispersion!
After all, this was merely a makeshift creation cobbled together from the workshop's internal environment. It had never undergone a thorough integration within the fires of a crucible. While it excelled at flexibility, it was fatally loose!
In Ji Jue's hands, the brutal shockwave of Jingzhen shifted into something quiet and subtle, an unbroken hum that neither completely shattered the stone sphere's structure nor afforded it any chance to knit back together.
He forced it to remain suspended in a state of being neither fully gathered nor fully scattered.
Atop the sphere, the dull, aged stone face seemed to finally comprehend. Yet before it could even attempt to fight back, it was already too late.
Boundless silver light cascaded from Ji Jue's hands. Flowing along the fissures bored open by Jingzhen, it drove deep into the stone sphere, spreading and corroding every crevice until it permeated everything!
First came reading the overarching architecture, followed by parsing the individual functions, and finally, the assimilation of the entire sphere...
Right in front of his adversary's face, he began reverse-engineering the stone sphere and the entire Haze legacy on the spot, dissecting, understanding, and unraveling the meaning and mechanics behind every single transformation from the outside in!
He was acting completely like a madman.
The shackled stone face twisted into a mocking, vicious sneer—*Overestimating your own strength!*
*A true legacy is taught in a sentence; false doctrines fill ten thousand books.* No matter how much one reverse-engineered, it was nothing more than trivial details. All the deductions and trials in the world would never grant him entry; he would never reach the core of the legacy, let alone cross its threshold!
Yet Ji Jue could not have cared less.
Who cared about that? He would memorize everything first. He would read whatever he could, learn whatever he could. And then... flip straight to the end to look at the answer!
The moment Isis completed the assimilation, Ji Jue's fingers closed ruthlessly.
Dissociation Art: Jingzhen!
Boom!
Everything Isis had assimilated, along with the internal structure of the stone sphere, was reduced to ash. Right up until the very last instant, Isis continued recording every nuance of the shift. In the end, Ji Jue reached out, sweeping up and devouring all of the Sovereign Virtue essence in a single gulp!
Countless phantom lights burst before his eyes. An endless deluge of fragments, fractured memories, and records swallowed him whole like a roaring torrent.
Ignoring the convulsive agony born of conscious overload, Ji Jue did not overlook or lose a single shred, preserving every last detail. Then, he pulled a notebook from his pocket and slapped it against his forehead.
He sealed that entire stretch of memory away, saving it to analyze at his leisure once he got back.
Finally, when he turned his gaze back toward the workshop, he no longer hid his excitement and hunger.
He was fired up!
These weren't opponents at all. They were textbooks!
"Isis."
Ji Jue raised a hand and wiped away a trace of blood oozing from his nose, completely unbothered. "We need to pick up the pace. Tag me out—"
*Understood.*
Regeneration Form engaged. Within his spine, the matrix relic Isis flared with blazing light, taking full command of everything.
Immediately after, Three-Phase Alchemy unfurled at full power!
Streams of shifting radiance erupted from Ji Jue's back, spreading wide like wings, bringing everything around him under the interference of Non-Offensive.
Defying gravity, his mechanical body rose out of the darkness and hovered within the workshop. The sheer repulsion generated by pure material property interference was enough to erase the drag and tether of gravity.
Silver radiance surged, spread, split into layers, and continually expanded. In a flash, boundless silver light burst forth without reserve in all directions, like innumerable reaching hands, piercing through heaven and earth.
It plunged straight into the workshop, no longer concealing any trace of its presence.
The invasion had begun!
Fracturing sounds crackled continuously like firecrackers. Beneath wave after wave of the Dissociation Art's concussive blasts, every defense shattered at the touch. The destruction rippled outward, granting him insight into the entire layout!
Ignoring the workshop's furious retaliation, Ji Jue read its operational status and cast his eyes toward the upper right.
Workshop core locked on!
The boundless silver light snapped back together as Ji Jue raised his hand and reached toward that direction—Zhanlu, detonate!
Amidst a deafening roar, Ji Jue's arm blew apart into fragments, only for countless components to converge from all around, swiftly reassembling in an instant.
As flames and shockwaves billowed outward, a massive breach tore through the wall, gushing thick black liquid like a spurting wound.
"Pardon me, Grand Artificer,"
Ji Jue called out, glancing back. "Just remembered I've got somewhere to be. I'll take the lead!"
With a sonic boom and the roar of engine thrusters, Ji Jue bolted forward at the vanguard!
He left Yellowbeard standing dumbfounded where he was.
Utterly baffled, he couldn't make heads or tails of what was happening.
Wait, what?
What just happened?
What the hell blew past just now?
How did a guy who was slacking off and dragging his feet a second ago suddenly turn bloodthirsty and berserk, like he'd just popped some pills?
He was like a rabid dog unleashed!
In merely a dazed breath, successive explosions thundered in rapid succession. Amidst violent tremors, gaping holes were blasted straight through the ancient fortress one after another.
Like a red-hot iron ball dropped into a glass bottle, he pushed straight ahead at full throttle against the workshop's suppression and retaliation!
He opened with Zhanlu in a barrage of wild bombardment. Whatever survived, he struck with Jingzhen to dissociate. Simultaneously, through the quicksilver, Isis continuously interfered with and cracked the workshop's operations, disrupting its systems.
Even though the workshop's lockdown prevented him from seizing full control, he drove steadily forward through the arteries toward the heart like a lethal blood clot!
In less than half a minute, the final iron wall disintegrated under the directional demolition of Jingzhen. Ji Jue breached the core—even faster than the Veterinarian, who had been drilling and carving a path the entire time.
What greeted his eyes were countless conduits and cables tangled together like roots, encircling an uncanny crucible shaped like a beating heart at the very center.
Linked to the vaulted ceiling above and anchored to the foundation below, the crucible pumped and pulsed like a living organ amidst the nest of intertwined cables, circulating vast reserves of spiritus and an eerie liquid...
"It's already completely corrupted, huh."
Ji Jue paused for a brief instant, letting out a soft sigh.
To be frank, he had never seen what a corrupted workshop looked like.
The small-fry artificers he'd run into either lacked a workshop entirely, or were masters like Kanemoto, who held Great Sins in such utter contempt that they dared to turn around and exploit them...
Only now, seeing the corrupted Haze laid bare before him, did he realize that an artificer's corruption didn't just show on the surface. By the time visible abnormalities manifested, the corruption had already seeped deep into the marrow!
With each pulse and contraction of that grotesque heart, stone faces embedded across its surface wailed, sobbed, wept, or cursed.
Artificers—every single one of them had once been an artificer!
Yet could they even be considered remnants of their former selves anymore?
Even if their original consciousness, souls, and instincts had been preserved to the greatest extent possible, when humans were treated like tools—stripped of excess limbs and functions, then forcibly welded together—how much of their former utility truly remained in those stone faces?
Then again, to the culprit pulling the strings from behind the curtain, none of that mattered at all, did it?
A tool was just a tool so long as it worked; a component was just a component to be replaced once damaged...
Merely by observing the scene before him, Ji Jue understood the true objective of Haze Workshop, and the research project they had been pursuing...
To completely remedy the flaws and shortcomings of the Haze legacy. To eliminate all friction between gathering and dispersing, so that when united they became truly one, and when scattered they possessed infinite flexibility!
That way, they would never again have to fear techniques like the Dissociation Art. They could even take it a step further, elevating their theoretical foundation to an entirely new height!
To be fair, what lay before him was indeed an effective solution.
It was practical, and it worked!
Treating the head when the head ached, treating the foot when the foot hurt, patching whatever was lacking... Since they were too loose, they enhanced aggregation. Since Haze lacked spirituality, they amplified its spirituality, over and over again!
And since variations tended to fall into rigid formulas and become stiff, why not fuse the artificers directly into it?!
Thus, just like the haze itself, all the artificers of Haze went from dispersed to gathered... Stripped of everything nonessential, they were thoroughly integrated into one right here!
Putting aside the opposition between Embers and Stagnant Rot, and judging strictly by results—Haze's greatest mistake had probably been letting some clue or whisper leak out, catching the attention of Jiang Tongguang.
Had they succeeded, had their theory reached completion, Haze would undoubtedly have ascended further. After washing away their past deeds, they might have led the craft for centuries to come!
What a pity...
"You took completely the wrong path, Master Berzuna,"
Ji Jue remarked with a sigh, shaking his head.
"Presumptuous!"
The stone faces abruptly flared with rage, morphing into the likeness of an old man, snarling in reprimand: "A bastard whelp taught by Ye Xian dares to parade around before me just because he's clad in the skin of the Absolute Sentence squad?! We have already become one out of many; don't dream that your bullshit Dissociation Art will run rampant here any longer!"
"Setting aside whether I'm presumptuous or whether I'm running rampant..."
Ji Jue tilted his head, asking in confusion, "What kind of 'one out of many' is this supposed to be? Where is the 'one'? And where are the 'many'? You wanted both, but haven't you ended up with neither?"
If you were "one," why speak through your own face? Weren't you just one of the many? Weren't you merely using yourself to forcibly annex and bind everyone else together?
And if you spoke of the "many," where were they? After being turned into identical parts and stone faces, how were they any different from pieces stamped out of the same mold?
Ji Jue shook his head. "Even if you're splitting hairs, this isn't how you do it, is it?"
"Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit!" Berzuna sneered. "Are you going to preach that righteous nonsense now? Are your own skirts clean?! Why is there no room for me!"
"Huh? I'm not criticizing you,"
Ji Jue said, shrugging innocently with genuine sincerity. "My point is, either don't do it at all, or go all the way—if you've already annexed everyone, why not duplicate yourself several hundred times and overwrite them completely? That way, everyone would be you: turning one into many, gathering and dispersing at will. Wouldn't that be magnificent?
"Or, the other way around: wipe out everyone's consciousness entirely, assimilate them completely, and refashion them into auxiliary components and tools according to their different functions. Wouldn't that be turning all into one?
"Right now, your artificers have been turned into tools, but the tools aren't tools and the artificers aren't artificers. It's an utter eyesore..."
Dead silence fell. In that brief hush, Berzuna was left completely dumbfounded.
*...What?*
Chapter 678