From the moment the first Sea Locust beneath the waves transmuted into steel, to the mechanical colossus gradually transforming on the barren shoals, to the swarms of mechanical Sea Locusts gathering for their first hunt...
It seemed as though a great deal had occurred, yet in reality, barely a few minutes had passed.
Ever since the first cat had thrown its head back and yowled to summon its companions, the mechanical aberrations had begun in the second, third, and fourth Sea Locusts—an unbroken, unending procession.
More importantly, Ji Jue had not taken part in the rest of the process at all.
All he had done was topple the first domino. What it triggered was an unstoppable chain reaction, an ever-escalating tempest of crashing waves!
Amid the rotting fish pond, tales of disaster spread, met by a chorus of meows from every side.
In less than a minute, hundreds of mechanical Sea Locusts had already split into several distinct squads amid their meowing, romping and cavorting eagerly across Luo Island.
Their hunting was almost playful, imbued with the distinctive cruelty and ferocity of felines. They did not even bother to devour their prey, merely relishing their wretched state as they died.
One would pin down a terrified Sea Locust, savoring its frantic trembling, then loosen its paws to let it flee in panic—only for it to dash straight under the paws of another mechanical cat.
If one tried to take flight, its wings were cruelly torn away; if one ran too fast, a leg was ripped off.
A dozen mechanical Sea Locusts formed a circle. In the center, a mutilated Sea Locust scrambled frantically in despair until it bled dry and was torn to pieces.
It was entirely like a spring picnic, completely devoid of tension.
Yet for the Spirits of Creation, it really was no different from a spring outing.
Once the first batch of cats downloaded from Paradise into the shells of the mechanical Sea Locusts, the ones who hadn't managed to snag a ticket began queuing up in long lines. They meowed incessantly in urging, telling their fellow spirits laboring in the mandala to work faster and not let their own slacking delay everyone else's slacking off.
Naturally, the meowing Spirits of Creation inside the mandala grew annoyed. The two sides kicked up a racket, hissing and spitting at one another...
Until a gaze from afar was drawn to them.
Isis cast a cold, detached glance their way, as if inspecting them. Instantly, all hissing and commotion ceased; Paradise and the mandala fell deathly still, and everything resumed normal operation.
"If I may speak candidly, sir," the Spirit of the Workshop reminded mildly, "excessive leniency is likely not a sustainable approach. At times, a touch of strictness and cruelty is called for."
Ji Jue said nothing, but he could feel every single Spirit of Creation from Paradise to the mandala shudder simultaneously, as though cowering.
Isis had clearly never done anything to them. Was this the aura of an authority figure?
With just a single glance, the cats tightened bolts and turned screws with far greater vigor.
That was right: even Spirits of Creation had screws to drive...
The megastructure formed by the concentric rings of spiritus inside the Veil was less a mandala and more a workshop factory floor!
Every nested ring was an assembly line in the plant, and every Spirit of Creation singing its meows was a worker on the line.
When the mandala began operating, this industrial plant rising from within the Veil began running at full capacity as well.
As for the mechanical Sea Locusts now swarming across hill and dale, Ji Jue had barely expended any effort at all.
He had merely set a template for the other Spirits of Creation when processing the first Sea Locust, and the mandala that followed copied it step by step, setting the whole system into motion!
Once the Veil was linked into Ji Jue's Rebirth Form, it naturally became an extension of Ji Jue himself, allowing his soul and Blessings to operate unimpeded.
Since this mandala, which could tentatively be termed the Deus Ex Machina Mandala, took Non-Offensive as its primary deity, it could naturally channel the power of the Non-Offensive matrix, just as monks drew upon the essence of the Dharma.
While outwardly modeled after the structure of a mandala, at its core it utilized the framework of a workshop, turning the current Veil into a vast manufacturing facility.
The Spirits of Creation inside were now beast-of-burden apprentices at Ji Jue's disposal!
And the core theories and techniques that formed and realized all of this were none other than the secret art of Rivers Converging to Form from the Nanyun lineage, which Ji Jue had secretly acquired, as well as Master Zhou's prized specialty, the Convergence of Myriad Sources...
Even though he had only picked up scattered fragments of both, grasping at most twenty or thirty percent, once the underlying essence and concept were understood, the rest was merely trivial detail.
Besides, Ji Jue never liked adopting things wholesale; he preferred innovating atop existing foundations.
The core of Rivers Converging to Form was running two or more spiritus circuits of different systems in parallel within a single creation, preventing them from interfering with one another.
Master Zhou's Convergence of Myriad Sources, on the other hand, used apprentices to share the craftsman's burden, elevating the upper limit of the final product by increasing the number of artisans participating in the forging.
Yet the greatest strengths of both were completely discarded by Ji Jue!
Starting from the core philosophy of engineering alchemy, he reintegrated, compiled, and completed everything he knew and had figured out.
In the end, he succeeded in establishing the architecture within the Veil: dismantling the complete, intricate transmutation process into modular steps, entrusting them to countless Spirits of Creation born of the same origin, transmuting with identical spiritus and matrices, working under uniform specifications and standards, and executing precise tasks through fixed formulas derived from the Haze lineage—passing the torch layer by layer until completion!
Just like mass-producing mechanical Sea Locusts at this very moment...
As long as Ji Jue demonstrated once and recorded the process, the Deus Ex Machina Mandala could repeat it autonomously. Even if occasional anomalies and errors arose, as long as Ji Jue provided a solution and protocol, it could follow that precedent next time.
Truly replacing manual operation with automated scripts!
To the extent that—there was no innovation, only imitation; no progress, only replication!
Now, as the mandala turned, the Creation of Non-Offensive manifested once more.
Under the concerted efforts of thousands of Spirits of Creation, the smooth, flowing transmutations continued like gold-tier professional boosters working exclusively for Ji Jue, diligent, conscientious, and never slacking off.
And so, cycling through the four phases of Ascension, Purification, Extraction, and Integration, yet another Sea Locust was warped through transmutation into a mechanical monster, meowing away.
A Spirit of Creation that had finally reached the front of the queue in Paradise completed its download, chirping in excitement as it threw itself into the frolicsome hunt, scrambling eagerly ahead.
Spiritus extracted from incinerating Sea Locust souls was fed right back into the Sea Locusts—cooking the dumpling in its own broth. While the consumption was somewhat steep, it had already reached a conversion ratio of five to one. Given enough time and materials, Ji Jue could single-handedly convert the countless incoming Sea Locusts into an army of the Lord of the Flies.
A pity that such a shocking, earth-shaking accomplishment could never be reported to the Association, and utilizing it required constant concealment and masking behind the Veil...
Otherwise, the moment it was submitted to the Association and its philosophy formally expounded, what awaited Ji Jue would likely be a tempestuous deluge of denunciations from countless peers—toppled, discredited, and condemned to the very end!
Even Gustav would come down hard and ruthlessly purge such a black sheep.
This philosophy of de-crafting thoroughly defied the Association's foundational principles. Whether it qualified as the path of Stagnant Rot was debatable, but even if the Profound arrived, they would give him a thumbs-up—and then roll up their sleeves and beat him to death with clubs!
Tolerated neither by the righteous path nor by the demonic; setting aside how high the technical caliber of engineering alchemy was, its capacity to draw beatings was genuinely second to none.
Once brought into the open and stirred up, it would throw heaven and earth into chaos without end.
With Ji Jue's current scale, he could only shut his doors and secretly enjoy it in peace...
Unfortunately, the threat of Sea Locusts lay purely in their numbers. Once numbers ceased to be an advantage, the threat level plummeted, making replication and mass production far less valuable. After testing the waters, Ji Jue stopped spending spiritus on copying Sea Locusts. Keeping the current ones and capping each individual's playtime, he partitioned an area in the underground cavern harbor of Luo Island for the Spirits of Creation to hunt and frolic.
Playing games could wait. Time to attend to business.
He focused his attention on the Veil. Then, under the impact of the massive swarm of Sea Locusts, he controlled the Veil so that it began to tremble faintly.
At first, it was minuscule and hard to detect, but gradually, it seemed as though flaws had appeared, straining to hold on, and even...
"...The perimeter is shrinking!"
In the Pucheng conference room, the Governor of Yamen's eyes lit up as he leaned in toward the projection on the water mirror, unable to contain his schadenfreude. "That's right! The perimeter is shrinking inward! The outer mist has begun to disperse!"
Had it not been for the observations and analysis of the Aether lineage, it would have been nearly imperceptible to the naked eye!
Under magnified observation, the outermost layer of the Veil had grown gossamer-thin, curling like wisps of smoke, while the mist inside roiled as if boiling, stripped of its initial stillness.
The previously suffocating atmosphere gave way to a hint of cheer.
Several malicious smirks crept onto their formerly stiff faces.
Though unspoken, a silent consensus had formed among everyone:
*Go, Sea Locusts!*
*He can't hold out much longer! He's running out of steam!*
*All forces, charge!*
*Send in the general reserve!*
They could hardly resist rushing forward to pour oil on the flames themselves, all the better to demand steeper prices and greater rewards when the distress signal arrived.
Under the eager gazes of so many burning eyes, the tidal swarm of Sea Locusts devoured the dead fish floating on the surrounding sea surface, leaping into the air again and again to throw themselves relentlessly at the Veil.
The tremors of the Veil grew increasingly violent.
This time, a large swarm of Sea Locusts finally tore free and flew out from the other side of the mist!
In this battered tributary of locusts, every single creature was mangled and scorched, plunging crookedly onto the ocean surface, unable to flutter their wings.
Soon, sparks rekindled across their bodies, burning them all to cinders right in the midst of the sea water!
The purplish-gray flames billowing across the sea surface clung like maggots on rotting bone; once caught, there was no shaking them off.
After a long while, only when every infected locust had been reduced to ashes and the flames found no new fuel did they finally extinguish in the ocean.
The sight sent chills down everyone's spines: *He really is a craftsman; ghost only knows what kind of ungodly weapon this is. Bloody terrifying!*
And behind the shielding layers of the Veil, amidst the overwhelming invasion of Sea Locusts, the flashing detonations of roaring fire and the crisscrossing cracks of thunder finally sounded!
Within the drifting mist, it was as if a natural disaster raged.
Purple lightning jagged, firebursts erupted, and horrific blazing lights rising incessantly pierced the night sky, flashing without pause.
Beneath the thinning mist, immense swarms of Sea Locusts could be seen turning swiftly to dust, or struggling in panic and scattering in all directions.
The veil of truth had been pulled aside.
Such an earth-shattering display made everyone's hearts pound with trepidation, yet at the same time, brought them a faint sense of reassurance—the most terrifying thing was always the unknown, when no one knew what was happening behind the veil of mist.
Seeing such horrifying destructive power, everyone felt they finally had a grasp on things.
*Entropy lineage, of course. Nothing strange about that.*
The more exaggerated the destructive power, the more outrageous the expenditure. Even for an artillery battery, firing at full throttle for this long would consume an astronomical sum of shells and supplies.
The Lou family was truly willing to put down serious capital, and Ji Jue was truly daring in his spending!
Rough mental calculations showed that if such terrifying consumption had been maintained from the start until now, the evaporated spiritus was enough to purchase more than half of Luo Island...
This style of fighting was heading straight for bankruptcy; even if he won, the losses would be crippling.
"Too young, after all," the old woman from Macheng sighed softly, as if reminiscing, masking her gloating tone.
Getting hot-headed at the drop of a hat, suffering just to save face.
Walking his own path and refusing to assimilate into the Seven Cities—wasn't the price coming due right now?
"Hush, be quiet!" Callisto narrowed his eyes, closely scrutinizing the image in the water mirror, his expression turning grave. "The Sea Locust tide... is it retreating?"
Before his words had faded, a colossal pillar of crimson light rose from the mist!
Resembling a torrent woven of countless blood-red flames, it linked heaven and earth. Within the flames stood a blurred yet magnificent figure holding blades, unleashing a tangible, savage aura and piercing killing intent.
As though letting out a thunderous roar, it blasted ripples upon ripples outward, shredding untold numbers of Sea Locusts pouncing toward Luo Island wherever it passed, and throwing the locusts swarming between sea and sky into instant disarray.
A chaotic roiling ensued.
Having suffered gruesome casualties and now cowered by that terrifying aura, the scattered locusts actually showed signs of retreating.
What truly turned the tide was a fleet darting out from the mist. Over a hundred cargo vessels of varying sizes gathered together, packed with rotting meat, putrid fish, and bones, charging forward at full throttle toward the Endless Sea.
Lured by the scent of food, a massive split formed in the dispersed swarm, sweeping along another faction of disordered locusts to chase after the convoy.
With no scent of food left on Luo Island, and driven off by thunder and fire, the remaining locusts dispersed in all directions.
In an instant, the swarm that had blotted out sky and sea actually withdrew.
What a pity...
It was nothing more than drinking poison to quench a thirst.
At this moment, a trace of pity surfaced in every gaze cast toward the island.
Was he throwing in the towel?
Sea Locusts were indeed brainless; with a little bait, they could easily be lured away... but the crucial problem was precisely that brainlessness. These beasts didn't know how to adapt; they were single-minded, driven only by eating and seeking food.
Luo Island was now marked as a food-rich zone by the locusts that had visited. Once they dispersed, their pheromones would spread the news far and wide.
Soon, even greater numbers of their kind would be drawn here.
Under the spur of the noxious wind, swarms large and small across the Endless Sea were beyond counting, more than enough for massive disaster beasts to eat like candy.
Once word spread and they coalesced into a tide again, the scale would be far more monstrous!
With every step up in the locusts' numbers, their thorniness multiplied severalfold. Once it reached an Extinction-grade catastrophe, they would probably strip every last rock on Luo Island bare!
Even the mastermind watching from the shadows could no longer suppress a cold sneer.
*He's courting his own death!*
"You wretched dog, what mess are you cooking up again?!" In the workshop, Lou Feng's very first words were an onslaught of accusations: "You're fucking fishing again, aren't you?!"
"Fishing? What fishing? I have no idea what you're talking about!" Ji Jue's eyes turned crystal-clear and innocent in an instant, brimming with childlike guilelessness. "I only wanted to defend Luo Island. Could that possibly be wrong? This was merely an expedient measure; I had no choice!"
And so Lou Feng gave up speaking.
Once this creature started barking like a dog, there was no shutting him up. The louder he barked, the deeper his teeth sank into his victims; the more bait he chummed into the water, the more ruthless his harvest when drawing the net.
He was too good at it, entirely too practiced... so much so that Lou Feng couldn't fathom where this damned habit of chumming and angling at every turn had come from!
*Everyone's living under the sun just fine; can't you act like a human being? Damned sly bastard!*
But looking at it from another angle: no matter what, as long as he wasn't the fish on the hook, it was fine.
And if he could even get a bite of the catch, then letting him go fishing didn't seem so bad after all!
He gave a final reminder: "At any rate, this is all the spiritus reserves we have. If you burn through it, over such long distances we'll have to ship more over from Haizhou. Go easy."
"Are you crazy? What spiritus reserves?" Ji Jue asked in shock. "Didn't we burn through practically everything today? Hurry and send a letter for aid—bring tens of thousands of tons of spiritus crystals, and better bring a few extra people too!"
"..." Lou Feng stared blankly. He turned his head, glancing at their spiritus reserves that were so bursting at the seams they urgently needed to squander some, and gave an exhausted chuckle in total speechlessness.
*Fine, fine, fine, that's how you want to play it?*
He turned back, fighting down the urge to smirk. With a taut face, he strained to muster a grave, solemn expression. "I'll go send the letter right away."
"As soon as possible!" Ji Jue urged one last time. "We're completely at the end of our rope. Make it quick!"
In the quiet of the night, messages radiated outward from Luo Island in an unbroken stream. Ji Jue's distress letters had already been dispatched to Haizhou and the Mid-Continent... Alas, with the noxious wind raging, distant water could not extinguish a nearby fire. Even if reinforcements were sent, it would likely be a mere drop in the bucket, past all hoping for.
When the flurry of tasks finally wound down, Ji Jue sat in his office, feeling once more the surges of impulse transmitted from his vile fiend avatar.
The Fire of Non-Fate rose in savage fury!
Ever since the Sea Locusts gathered that afternoon, the surge and wrath of the Fire of Non-Fate had grown ever more violent, operating autonomously and almost beyond restraint.
It had caught the scent of an enemy, caught a glimpse of a mortal foe.
It felt... an irreconcilable enmity gradually manifesting from the distance!
In the dead silence, Ji Jue lifted his teacup and lowered his gaze.
His sight seemed to pierce the earth's crust, landing in the deepest earth veins beneath Luo Island.
He saw a shadow so faint it was barely perceptible, creeping from afar along the earth veins, silently spreading toward all of Luo Island, sprouting in secret.
Unhurried, neither rash nor proud, it even carefully bypassed every form of detection and perception, meticulous to an extreme.
Even while knowing its intrusion was already this stealthy, it still used the momentum and pressure of the Sea Locust invasion as cover, rendering it utterly undetectable.
—The Tyrant of the Tower had invaded!
And so, the corners of Ji Jue's lips could no longer suppress their upward tilt.
*Hold it in!*
*Must hold it in!*
*Can't laugh now. Absolutely cannot laugh out loud!*
There was no rage, no gloom—only the ecstasy of seeing a prize piece of uncut jade fall right into his lap.
*Right, how could I have forgotten? Such a profound bond between us...*
*A person of importance, a person I don't want to forget, a person I must never forget.*
*Turns out there was still you!*
"Isis..."
"Hm?"
Ji Jue closed his eyes and laughed soundlessly.
"Now, I have everything I need."
Chapter 750