Even after everyone else had made their choices, Ji Jue was still leading his mule train through the rubble, picking and choosing as if he longed to cart away the very stones.
He had no choice—he was truly broke.
He refused to let even shattered fragments go to waste, to say nothing of all the decommissioned, scrapped contraptions.
The soul of a scavenger burned with a roaring flame!
For a moment, the others couldn't help sighing in quiet sympathy. How on earth had Ye Xian raised this apprentice? The poor kid was starved half to death... Ji Jue had already yielded so much ground on his own initiative, so none of them were about to fight him over garbage.
If the kid liked it, let him have it.
Except...
While clearing the final debris to verify there was no lingering taint, Ji Jue suddenly waved. "Hey, Captain, come take a look at this..."
There, inside the pit excavated by his pack mules, the indentation of a collapse had emerged, faintly bearing the resonance of the Eternal Gate.
It seemed that when the workshop shattered completely, something had been sent away.
The arrangement was far too covert, hidden exceptionally well.
Yet to Ji Jue, the trace left behind by the Eternal Gate was practically highlighted by the detection of the Doomsday Express; there was no way he could miss it.
More importantly, deep within the ruined pit lay a bizarre emblem.
It looked like an imperfect overlap of a square and a triangle. At first glance, it appeared indescribably strange, yet the longer one stared at it, the more harmonious it felt—as though pointing directly to the ultimate essence of alchemy, fraught with infinite subtleties. It compelled an onlooker to study it, to dwell upon it, to reach out a hand...
The moment his hand rose, Ji Jue yanked it back as if struck by lightning, cold sweat drenching his back.
Too sinister!
There was clearly no aura of spiritus or any other temptation, just a mere pattern. Yet in the eyes of an artisan, the more one studied it, the more it seemed to hold boundless truth.
It was nothing short of a trap crafted specifically for peers of the craft!
"Old Man Zhen?"
The Captain squinted, his expression stern and cold. "It's been centuries... How is that old bastard still not dead?"
Another Grandmaster of the Profound!
No, compared to Kanemoto—that arrogant fellow who disdained even to merge with the marrow of a Great Sin—this one was truly Stagnant Rot's chosen!
More than four hundred years ago, the instant Stagnant Rot manifested from chaos, this artisan had clutched the divine marrow of that Great Sin in his hands... If Great Sin Inc. had employee numbers, his badge in the heart of Stagnant Rot's crucible would be at least 0002!
Yet the fact that his emblem appeared in the Haze Workshop proved that the relationship between Haze and the Profound was by no means as simple as initially presumed.
The waters running behind this were likely far deeper than anyone thought...
"You've done a great service, Bricklayer."
The Captain clapped him on the shoulder without another word, chiseling out the iron stone inscribed with the emblem and sealing it away for safekeeping.
Ji Jue didn't ask further, nor did he even push for a reward.
Everyone else pretended not to see, casually looking around.
The water was too deep and too cold; nobody wanted to get their hands wet. Why should humble hired hands bother with an owner's mindset? Let whoever wanted to deal with it take the headache.
On the voyage back, no one spoke of what had just occurred, as though there had been no Absolute Sentence at all—just a simple offshore fishing trip.
It wasn't until the vessel docked that they went their separate ways at the harbor.
Yellowbeard was the first to wrap up his flamberge, turning and walking away.
Then came Hu Jian.
Finally, the Veterinarian, sporting youthful maiden makeup copied straight from a beauty vlogger's video, offered Ji Jue a sweet smile. She stood on tiptoe and patted his head with immense intimacy.
"Not bad, kid. Even better than little Aignu said. If you ever want to study life sciences, remember to look me up."
"Definitely next time."
Ji Jue nodded firmly, without a second's hesitation.
The old lady veterinarian chuckled softly and walked away, leading her dog on its leash.
Only after she had gotten far away did Ji Jue finally let out a sigh of relief.
He glanced back at the Captain.
The Captain sat on the deck, still puffing on his pipe, showing no reaction whatsoever.
No farewell either.
The part-time gig was over.
A healthy workplace relationship was supposed to be like this: cooperate as best as you could on the clock, and become complete strangers who never bothered each other off the clock.
Even if you crossed paths, you pretended not to see.
Ji Jue smiled and offered a final nod of parting.
In the quiet dawn of the wharf, the last mechanical mule, burdened with heavy bundles, trotted into the cargo truck he had rented in advance. The doors shut.
The truck started up. By the time it drove back to the rental company, the interior was already empty.
And on the driver's seat, aside from the agreed-upon rental fee, there wasn't a single ghostly trace of a person!
On this remote island, the incident became a local legend for a time, stirring up a storm of rumors that spawned several different versions—ghost story, sci-fi, suspense, classic whodunit, and cheating wife... Throughout the entire affair, no one was hurt except perhaps the rental owner's fragile nerves.
And even his nerves were fine.
More than five times the rental fee, paid directly in precious metals, was enough to make anyone grin ear to ear. Never mind a fierce specter; even if the renter had been Godzilla, who cared? The only thought lingering in his mind night and day was: *Brother, are you coming back next time?*
By this time, Ji Jue had already thrown himself into day-and-night labor!
For four or five straight days, he worked around the clock, patching, cobbling, and piecing things together.
Finally, it was done!
"I hereby declare—"
Ji Jue planted his hands on his hips and laughed wildly toward the heavens. "I'm fucking invincible! Hahahahaha!"
After hastily returning to Punabantu, he had tossed those raw materials and Blessings to Isis for cataloging without so much as a second glance.
Instead, he had plunged headfirst into the pile of junk he had brought back.
Forgetting food and sleep.
*This* was the greatest harvest from his part-time job!
Treasures, treasures, all of them treasures...
Before him stood a ruined crucible, cobbled together, patched and mended, finally forced into a single welded and reconnected whole.
It couldn't even be called intact, riddled with hole after hole. Yet every single structure had been successfully linked again, and even the control console was original stock that Ji Jue had painstakingly pieced together with all his might.
Authentic, through and through!
Sure, the flavor had soured a bit, but who said it couldn't be eaten or used?
Besides, who expected a crucible that had already exploded two or three times to keep working for real...?
As long as its spirituality remained, that was enough!
Six hours later, after a full night's sleep, bathing, changing clothes, lighting incense, and washing his face, Ji Jue stood once more before the assembled crucible. He inspected it thoroughly from inside out and top to bottom, expending more than tenfold the materials to reinforce it.
All to ensure that this crucible could run one more time.
Even just once!
Once was enough...
"—Deus Ex Machina!"
*Boom!*
Amid a dull, heavy thrum, the crucible shuddered, and shuddered again. In a violent shaking reminiscent of an old tractor, ancient flames faintly rekindled from the ashes.
Like a candle flickering in the wind.
It illuminated Ji Jue's eyes.
The dead soul had been pieced together again. Within this bestowed grace, it felt pain and life, letting out a drawn-out groan.
Like a great whale slowly sinking into the deep ocean—lonely and bewildered.
*So that is how it is... I understand.*
The Spirit of Creation nurtured and forged by generations of artisans fell silent for a moment before speaking slowly: *Please, give me your hand.*
Ji Jue didn't move. Instead, he looked at the projection beside him.
Silver radiance swirled, pressing like a gentle hand onto the console and interfacing with it.
Spiritus flooded in.
Immediately after, under the guidance of the crucible, the forging within began once more... It flowed with unbelievable smoothness, showing no sign of ruin whatsoever; in its vivid agility, it was even superior to the brand-new one Ji Jue had recently purchased.
From nothing to something, it systematically demonstrated the basics and foundations, then used the fed-in materials to tirelessly exhibit applications and variations across every facet. Finally, under immense pressure where the entire crucible threatened to completely melt and detonate, secret arts and techniques manifested one after another...
Even striving with all its might, this was all it could achieve.
Like an artisan climbing out of an ICU bed to radiate the last embers of his life, it poured forth everything it knew in this fleeting flash of revival, holding nothing back.
More untransmittable techniques, along with theories and expansions too complex to demonstrate, were transferred through the resonance between the Spirits of Creation.
From beginning to end, there was no superfluous chatter. Like an old man facing his end, having seen through it all, it defied the decrees and shackles inscribed into its core, liberating everything.
Just like that, the wisp of flame gradually dimmed.
It went out.
The crucible fell dead silent, cracking, collapsing, and crumbling into falling ashes.
Just as haze drifts into the air, only to settle once more.
It left behind only its final words and entreaty:
*From now on, the legacy of Haze is entrusted to you.*
"..."
Ji Jue remained silent for a long time, then nodded slightly.
A day later, compiled and organized by Isis, the entire legacy of the Haze Workshop lay spread before Ji Jue.
Though the core theoretical principles and foundational techniques spanned merely a hundred-odd thousand words, laying everything out in full on printed paper created a small mountain piled upon the desk.
It was breathtaking.
From ancient days to the present, accumulations spanning hundreds and thousands of years—the fruits achieved by successive generations of artisans, one following another—lay right before his eyes.
"Profound and vast indeed,"
Ji Jue remarked in heartfelt admiration after leafing through it briefly.
Unfortunately, the direction of Haze was not the same path he pursued...
The crux of Three-Phase Alchemy lay in the cycle among fluid, solid, and gas; in the final analysis, it revolved around the union and interference between spirituality and material properties.
Its focus was Purification and Integration.
Haze's domain, on the other hand, leaned toward the link between the 'Whole' and the 'One,' emphasizing uniting the many into one and dividing the one into many.
Its focus was Ascension and Transmutation.
Each had its strengths, offering Ji Jue endless inspiration. While stones from another mountain could certainly serve to polish his own jade, the points of true complementarity were disappointingly few...
It was like saying that just because both were means of transport, railways and airships were a match made in heaven.
From the very start, the two directions diverged entirely.
A complete academic lineage inevitably maintained an internal, top-to-bottom coherence. That strong interconnectedness meant that the essence was inextricably bound up with the dross.
If you wanted to discard the dross, you had to discard the essence along with it.
These days, not every hound could be named Tianlu; having your cake and eating it too was easier said than done.
Ji Jue could only use it for reference. It wasn't as if he had never tasted good food or seen the world—he wasn't about to abandon all his own research just for the Haze legacy, was he?
Besides, who ever said that all his painstaking effort to retrieve this legacy was meant for his own use anyway?
Chapter 681