The Final Step

Lou Feng turned a deaf ear. After listening to dog barking for so long, he had gotten used to it. In fact, hearing it again after a couple of days of withdrawal even felt strangely comforting... Only after catching himself did he realize he was acting like a total lunatic. He could hardly resist the urge to slap himself across the face. Yet with his hand halfway raised, he froze in place, remembering Ji Jue was standing right in front of him. Looking up, he met Ji Jue's utterly shocked gaze. "Old Lou, what's wrong?" Seeing that his nuclear-powered pack mule had encountered a bug, Ji Jue instantly grew anxious. "Are you feeling unwell? Do you need to see a doctor? I still have a consultation voucher for Hope Hospital. You're still young—don't avoid the doctor out of stubborn pride! If it ends up delaying the project..." "I fucking—" Veins bulged on Lou Feng's face, his fists clenched, and he couldn't hold back his verbal barrage. Instantly, the familiar refined dialect of the Federation and vocal gymnastics washed over him, setting Ji Jue's mind right at ease with a soothing sense of relief. Now that was more like it. If you didn't curse a bit, I'd worry you were slacking off on the job! In any case, Director Ji was broad-minded and didn't care about these minor offenses. Once Lou Feng finished venting, Ji Jue even patted him on the shoulder, sighing in appreciative encouragement: "The little beast of burden is sickly and frail; thou must exert thyself to spur it on." Spur on my ass! Now, it wasn't just Lou Feng—beside them, Little Niuma couldn't hold back either, blowing its whistle and honking its horn. Amidst the violent shuddering, fissures even opened beneath the scale patterns along the hull. To the sound of groaning, scraping steel, a colossal claw extended from the plating and thrust its middle "thumb" straight at Ji Jue. "..." Lou Feng was struck speechless, unsure whether to feel contempt or admiration. In a sense, Little Niuma was an old acquaintance of his. From a little scooter, the Little Sheep, step-by-step to the monstrous ten-thousand-ton freighter it had become today, he could practically claim to have witnessed the entire journey from start to finish. A perfectly good creation of dragon blood, turned into something like this by Ji Jue—Lou Feng truly found it hard to judge. If Little Niuma had possessed any less spirituality, it never could have harbored such a rich range of emotions; yet if Ji Jue had possessed even an ounce of decency, he never would have tortured Little Niuma to this extent! He sighed from the bottom of his heart. "This is the first time I've ever seen such a bizarre relationship between a creator and his creation." "Bah, this is nothing. You haven't seen—cough, cough, cough, cough—indeed, the child has grown up, entering a rebellious phase. Scandalous! As an old father, my heart aches with grief!" Under the gaze of the surveillance camera in the corner, Ji Jue smoothly changed the subject, inspecting the "thumb" Little Niuma had stuck out and marveling with a clicking tongue: "Leave it to Old Lou, your progress is blazing fast! If only there were a few more talents like you, who knows how wonderful the world would become!" "No need to go to such trouble. I have an even simpler solution," Lou Feng informed him expressionlessly. "If only there were one fewer bastard like you, the world would become even better than that!" For four or five straight days, he hadn't even had time to blink. Though this dog-thing was ridiculously generous when it came to teaching, when it came to making demands, he wasn't human in the slightest! I was wondering why you taught me Three-Phase Alchemy so thoroughly and so quickly—turns out you were just grooming yourself a pack mule, weren't you?! Just hearing that pile of nonsensical requirements had nearly given Lou Feng a brain hemorrhage. What did he mean by "it must preserve the properties of Juque while recreating the previous Dragon Mountain mode without compromising stability"? What did he mean by "I want it to be a ship, but I also want it to adapt to Deus Ex Machina so that it can transform into a super-giant mecha at crucial moments"? And what the hell did he mean by "the foundations have already been laid for you; all that's left is the final push"? Does your family measure a final push from the starting line?! Just like that, after dumping the newly founded Project Juque, the remnant spirit of the Azure Jiao, and a design sketch that was purely in the conceptual phase into Lou Feng's lap, Ji Jue had dusted off his hands and walked away. If profanity had physical form, Lou Feng would have gifted Ji Jue the world's highest mountains and deepest oceans. If anger had temperature, Lou Feng could have launched this dog-thing straight into manned spaceflight. Worse yet, if it had been completely unfeasible, Lou Feng could have simply rolled his eyes and thrown it back at him. But infuriatingly... this bastard's train of thought was genuinely viable, and immensely so. The main problem was that it was outrageously troublesome! The sheer volume of work was enough to completely break the mind of any craftsman, and on top of that, the processing difficulty was absurdly high! Adding vast numbers of spiritus circuits onto a spine like Juque, whose material properties had been reinforced to the limit, was like carving micro-sculptures into mind-bogglingly hard tungsten carbide. Delicate precision and pinpoint accuracy were essential, placing astronomical demands on both craftsman and tools. At the same time, throughout this process, he had to steadily slice apart the remnant spirit of the Azure Jiao to increase the completion of the dragon blood. Yet out of everyone Ji Jue knew, Lou Feng was literally the only one who fit the bill. The Matrix: Deft Craft excelled above all else at handling such extremely precise and minute demands—performing grand rites inside a snail shell, accurate down to micrometers or even nanometers without a hitch. Furthermore, under the spiritus focusing of [Mirror Transformation: Star of Bethlehem], he could maintain extreme spiritus transmutation and control during micro-scale precision work. He was even skilled in spiritus shaping! Just thinking about it had moved Ji Jue almost to tears: My god, what a heaven-sent pack mule physique! I choose you, Lou Feng! You are my absolute favorite workhorse! As it turned out, he had chosen entirely right, and Lou Feng had done a truly phenomenal job. In a mere two days, he had brought a design that had existed only as a concept into preliminary reality, with astounding progress! Under Lou Feng's precise control, the spiritus focusing of the Star of Bethlehem successfully penetrated the outer layers. Deep within the indestructible Juque keel, he had carved out a nested spiritus circuit structure of thirty-two layers, inside and out. The complex modules and frameworks covering the entire hull guided the flow of spiritus like threading needles, establishing a brand-new cycle. This feat was tantamount to carving out an entire set of delicate arteries and veins around dragon blood as their core, running smoothly and without flaw. Throughout this process, the dragon blood continuously devoured the remnant spirit of the Azure Jiao, replenishing itself and expanding its scale until it broke past the boundaries of the keel to encompass the entire hull. Even though it was not yet fully complete, it was already capable of partial autonomous transformation, growing ever more agile and alive. Though crafted from dead matter, it was vividly lifelike. Just like a living creature. Lou Feng took pride in this, yet felt disheartened because of it. No matter how Ji Jue praised him, he could hardly suppress the sense of loss and melancholy. "It's just tedious, grinding labor, nothing more." All he had done was hard labor. The foundation Ji Jue had laid was simply too good—so good that even though Lou Feng had received only a rough sketch, as long as he followed that line of thought, nothing would go wrong. No matter how high the degree of completion, it still remained within the trajectory Ji Jue had charted. Throughout the entire process, Lou Feng had not found a single flaw, let alone an opportunity to improve upon it or take it a step further. Everything seemed already perfected. The more he threw himself into the work, the clearer the feeling grew in his heart: It was alive to begin with. It was always meant to be like this. This is what it was always supposed to look like! The dragon blood, Juque, and the bridging and maintenance of Three-Phase Alchemy had forged it into a raw blank of limitless potential. All Lou Feng had done was grind away and strip off the outer shell to reveal what it was always meant to be—nothing more. He had pushed himself relentlessly to catch up, slaving day and night without a moment's rest. Why, then, was he being left further and further behind? He let out an exhausted sigh and pulled back his gaze. Then he felt a weight on his shoulder. Ji Jue's hand rested there, his tone uncharacteristically solemn and sincere. "Old Lou, you really did an incredible job. If it were me, I definitely couldn't have done it this well." That earnest look took Lou Feng aback for a moment before he instinctively sneered. "Like I need you to tell me that?" Lou Feng shook his head and flicked his sleeve, brushing Ji Jue's hand away. "I'm not so fragile. You don't have to put on an act. In the end, my skills just aren't up to par. What does that have to do with you?" "Haha, good, good. I thought you were upset." Ji Jue smiled in relief. "Actually, I just had another new idea. It's just that the workload is a tiny bit..." Silence. In the prolonged silence, Ji Jue looked at Lou Feng, brimming with anticipation. And Lou Feng stared back at him intently until he couldn't hold it in any longer and smiled. A smile radiant and bright beyond words, as though he had reached some final resolution. "Ji..." Lou Feng rolled up his sleeves. "One of us dies today!" Either you or me! All one could say was that communication between colleagues was sometimes just this unpretentious and simple. The solution to ninety-nine percent of conflicts and problems between product managers and programmers was actually written right inside Federation Combat Boxing for Beginners. Seeing that Lou Feng was ready for mutual destruction, Ji Jue had no choice but to let it drop. What else could he do? He couldn't actually beat Lou Feng to death, could he? The job wasn't even finished yet. If the man self-destructed, wouldn't Ji Jue be the one taking the loss? At worst, he could just slip the requirements into future tasks quietly, right? Make him produce several versions of the design, and then pick the first one... Amidst his daily furnace-exploding routine today, Ji Jue idly pondered what was to come, his movements and operations growing increasingly rough. Flames rose and erupted time and again, yet in the midst of violent tremors, the Crucible miraculously held firm, without the slightest spread of the cracks upon it. It was as though that final sliver of durability was locked in place, refusing to budge! Only when Ji Jue pulled a hissing blade from the Crucible did he look down, scrutinizing it with a silent sigh. If appraised by the Association, the creation in his hand would unquestionably rate as Grade A, but the issue was that his progress had once again begun to plateau! For days on end, the growth granted by Heaven Moves Vigorous had dwindled to a negligible trickle, growing smaller by the day. Shortcuts always reached their end eventually. Now, no matter how deliberately Ji Jue sought error and failure in his transmutations, it hardly produced any effect. Having made so many mistakes, Ji Jue had grown so thoroughly versed in them that even when teetering on the verge of a crucible blowout, he would instinctively apply remedies, ensuring the final product safely met the passing standard. Practicing techniques in reverse worked, and after accumulating a vast collection of mistakes, he had mastered all sorts of bizarre solutions. Yet the lack of time and experience was something talent alone could not bridge. If he had settled for second best and pursued other Blessings, it would have been effortless. But if his goal was a milestone achievement like [All Things Self-Transform], he would need something far heavier. Even though only the final step remained. Yet across this final stretch, the cruelty of Embers laid itself bare! It was like a harsh judge passing verdict on him. Like a stern, cold gaze looking down from high heaven, waiting quietly, telling him: Not enough. Not good enough. There should be more—give me something better! Either grind through the door bit by bit with patient wear, or go all out and kick it wide open in one breath! "Unfortunately, still just shy of it..." Ji Jue sighed softly, gazing at the pitch-black crystal in his hand—the Celestial-Human essence, still glowing beneath layers of seals. Yet mid-thought, his movements froze slightly. The lights overhead flickered, and his phone beeped with an earthquake warning. Immediately following a faint tremor, the entire room returned to calm. Ji Jue sighed in resignation. Another earthquake. He had lost count of how many had struck over the past few days. The moment the noxious wind blew in, all sorts of chaotic disasters surged without end... But then, Ji Jue froze. He felt a warning from Juque! Juque linked to the earth veins below and answered the morning star above; its bond with the earth was inherently inseparable, and through resonance and harmony between matter, they could practically be considered one. At this moment, through the faint ripples coursing first through the earth veins, what he sensed was a world-shaking tempest erupting in the distance! Thousands, tens of thousands of kilometers away, a violent shockwave erupted. It was as if a slumbering dragon deep within the earth veins had suddenly snapped its eyes open, struggling with all its might to break free from the shackles entwined around its body... The Earth Dragon was turning over! Ji Jue rose in terror. A megaquake!