How could anyone be this unlucky?
Just imagine spending an ordinary person's lifetime—sixty or seventy years of preparation, renouncing omnipotent power, craft valued above life itself, and cherished pride, pouring in countless amounts of painstaking effort, humbling oneself to the dust to play games with fools.
Biding your time, enduring endless torment, weathering countless trials and tribulations, crossing mountain after mountain, finally catching a glimmer of light with only the final step left...
And suddenly someone pops up to tell you: "Sorry, this event has been canceled. We've been a bit busy and didn't have time to let you know earlier. Our sincerest apologies."
"All right, don't dawdle. Pack your things and go home."
"The prize? Oh, the judges already split it among themselves. You didn't actually think you'd get it, did you? Hahaha, what a great joke! I have to share this with everyone later."
At this moment, even the most cold-hearted person witnessing such a scene would probably shed a tear or two in sympathy, wouldn't they?
Yet Ji Jue could not stop laughing.
Right before his eyes, that towering silhouette, propping up the heavens and earth like a colossus, had finally manifested into form... Unfortunately, no matter how one looked at it, it was utterly pathetic.
Missing a leg, lacking half a head.
Fractured and incomplete, like a jigsaw puzzle missing a giant chunk or a smashed second-hand model kit—at best, an empty, hollow shell.
No matter how wondrous or ingenious the original grand vision was, now one could only drool over it in vain.
Sometimes, even a hair's-breadth discrepancy in the crucial Divine Essence was enough to ruin the final product entirely—let alone the achievement of becoming a Celestial-Human!
The magnificent creation that was supposed to be forged through the perpetual damnation of the Seven Cities had turned into a defective reject. The artisan who was supposed to ascend to Celestial-Human through it was stuck halfway, foiled at the final hurdle...
Over sixty years of forbearance, enduring again and again, enduring right to the end, until there was nothing left to endure.
If he had known, he might as well never have held back.
Just look at what all that patience got you!
*Click—*
A soft sound; the click of a camera shutter came and went in a flash.
"Sorry, force of habit."
Ji Jue awkwardly put away his phone, apologizing earnestly: "Your case is just too classic. I couldn't resist gathering some data. I'll be sure to get this published in the Association's journal later, so everyone can study this cautionary tale from the Profound..."
Fernand cast a cold glance over, unable to resist a derisive, soft sigh.
As if completely oblivious to the shadow rapidly expanding overhead.
A transparent distraction.
Still, the boy had some skill after all.
Using the shutter click to draw his attention while quietly cloaking such a colossal object and maneuvering it directly above his head.
And then... dropping it from the sky!
At that instant, without the slightest warning, Fernand raised his palm toward the sky.
Five fingers spread wide, aimed from afar at Dragon Mountain plummeting down!
*Boom!!!*
The falling Dragon Mountain stopped dead in its tracks, suspended midair.
Yet Fernand's head exploded with a deafening roar... staggered shock and disbelief still lingering in his shattered pupils.
Jingzhen!
Jingzhen had erupted from within his cranium!
It was the fragment left behind by Chunjun!
The fragment that was supposed to have vanished after its initial detonation had inexplicably reconstituted itself with the subtle flow of spiritus, detonating once again!
Caught off guard at a vital spot, it shook his soul and disrupted his consciousness, causing his awareness to freeze for a fraction of a second.
And in midair, Dragon Mountain had already broken free of its restraint, its mass skyrocketing once more!
Over the span of several hundred meters, as its mass climbed rapidly, it truly transformed into a meteor plunging from the heavens. The steel Mechanical Colossus spread its fingers, releasing a searing glare nurtured for so long straight at Fernand!
Zhanlu!
Purple lightning and black flame converged, transforming into a four-edged, spinning sword of thunder and fire. Pure light and heat carried pure destruction, stabbing downward.
After the shutter click, Dragon Mountain, and Jingzhen...
This was the true, ultimate killing blow!
A soft sigh sounded.
Filled with pity.
Even under Jingzhen's interference, that headless corpse actually reached out its hand, slowly clenching its open fingers into a fist.
And so, the formless, incorporeal sword of blazing light, thunder, and fire screeched to a halt.
As if gripped by an invisible palm.
No—gripped by the entire world... or rather, by all of the Seven Cities!
"Unpredictable and ever-changing indeed."
An emotional voice detached itself from Fernand's physical vessel, echoing from the void on all sides.
Atop the mangled corpse, flesh reunited and bones grew, revealing Fernand's features once more.
Like a marionette on strings, vivid and lifelike.
Under unseen manipulation, through this shell that served merely as a vessel, he offered words of admiration to the opponent before him: "Truly worthy of being an Embers prodigy favored by Elder Zhen! Leaving aside your lofty talent, this ingenious mind for cunning twists and stratagems borders on the miraculous.
"Whereas I..."
Fernand mused, utterly blind to the Swords of Chunjun screaming in from every direction. "Decades without fighting anyone has left me dull after all."
*Snap!*
The moment he raised his hand and snapped his fingers, a ripple diffused from his fingertips, effortlessly erasing every last Sword of Chunjun.
Not even a speck of dust or fragment remained.
As if they had never existed at all.
At that instant, Ji Jue felt a chill unlike anything he had ever known.
Without a second thought, he flashed backward.
Nothing happened where he had just stood.
No sound could be heard, no anomaly seen.
Yet a straight fissure had already appeared across his body... As though slashed by an invisible blade, even his Regeneration Form, bolstered by Earth Bears and Sea Embraces, had been severed with overwhelming ease.
Like a hot knife through butter!
Had he hesitated for even a fraction of a second, he would have been hacked to pieces!
The Three Phases cycled, fissures sealing up, and Ji Jue's mechanical frame repaired itself in an instant. Yet his body jerked as if electrocuted, constantly weaving left and right to dodge invisible blades.
Shattering sounds rang out without pause.
Arms, heart, legs, head... fissures constantly opened and swiftly sealed shut, as if he were besieged by countless unseen foes.
Nothing lay before his eyes; he couldn't spot a single omen or trace of alchemy.
Yet in the reflection of the Mirror of Contained Forms, dazzling flashes erupted one after another, crisscrossing and hemming him in.
In what should have been empty void, countless invisible blades were already laid bare... The reason he could neither detect nor guard against them was that the entire process was simply too fast!
From initiating aim, locking on, conducting alchemy, to unleashing destruction—the whole sequence happened faster than a single thought could turn.
If not for the Wolf's malice sensing and neural reflexes, Ji Jue would have already been sliced into tens of thousands of pieces...
And this was merely Fernand's casual counterattack.
With one hand, he fended off the ferocious assault of the Dragon Mountain giant and the sword of blazing light; with the other, he tapped casually, dividing his mind effortlessly to press an unremitting offense, driving Ji Jue to the edge of the cliff.
Effortlessly!
Completely different from that impostor monkey from before, this was a true Master who had achieved renown in the Association sixty or seventy years ago, someone who had dared to contest the Crown of Glory against the Cast Plowman in his prime!
No matter how rapidly his thoughts turned or how nimbly he countered each move, Ji Jue still felt a belated sense of suffocation.
The day had finally come; his turn had finally arrived...
This was, without exaggeration, an absolute hierarchy suppression!
Not just the gap in rank, nor merely talent and ability—experience, mastery, everything firmly suppressed the current Ji Jue!
There was no helping it; hierarchy suppression within the Embers path was just that absurd.
The slightest difference in accumulated mastery manifested outwardly as an impassable gulf. Sometimes, being merely half a step ahead was an insurmountable chasm, like a sheer cliff dropping into an abyss!
He had ground his way through cutthroat competition in the Association to become a generational Master, fought life-and-death battles in the Profound to become Elder Zhen's direct disciple, and bided his time in the Seven Cities until this desperate endgame.
Talent, skill, temperament—all were near flawless.
What was more, he currently possessed the empowerment of the entire Seven Cities...
Even with an obstacle and stumbling block like Ji Jue, and even if total success eluded him, all those years of endurance had still yielded tenfold, a hundredfold returns.
Not only had he reclaimed his peak strength with ease, but he was also endlessly approaching the realm of a Celestial-Human, even faintly touching the Divine Essence...
At this very moment, Fernand was at the absolute peak of his life!
Stronger than ever before!
*Boom!!!*
Yet feeling this endlessly climbing power brought no joy to his heart; instead, his fury grew harder and harder to suppress.
In his perception, Luo Island and Xiangzhou remained isolated on the outside.
In fact, they actively resisted the Lighthouse's call, no matter how the flames of Stagnant Rot encroached...
After such prolonged endurance, he could have succeeded in a single stroke, only for it to be reduced to a fleeting trial pass. Powerless to stop the situation from deteriorating, the empowerment resting on his shoulders would ultimately run dry.
It could not hoist him across the final summit.
No matter how maddeningly close it was!
A single rat dropping had ruined the whole pot of soup...
With an expressionless flick of his finger, Fernand nonchalantly suppressed the Six Kinds of Vibration: Mahasthamaprapta. Pervasive dark light swallowed the Golden Body, and in the span of a finger flick, Badanta's Golden Body was covered in fissures, losing all response.
Another flick, and the Veil violently shook, the mandala shattering!
Vast numbers of Spirits of Creation turned to ash in the flames of Stagnant Rot before they could react.
The thick fog that had just risen dissolved into nothingness in an instant.
Yet Ji Jue once again narrowly escaped being shattered to pieces... slick as an eel, impossible to pin down.
Even though he was thoroughly battered from start to finish, Fernand simply could not deliver a decisive, crushing blow!
It was as though the boy had boundless experience.
And how could he not!
Anyone who had a mentor like Ye Xian strung them up for an idle thrashing whenever she felt like it would eventually learn a lesson or two and gain some experience—let alone Ji Jue.
With Chunjun's accelerated perception, the Wolf's malice sensing and neural reflexes, and a steel body continuously increasing its load... perception, reaction, and evasion were all maxed out!
From his debut until now, he had barely ever played an easy match; nightmarish starts had practically become daily routine. The resilience forged through countless uphill battles was more than enough for him to dance leisurely upon the blade's edge and cling to life.
What was more, Juque, with its defense stats maxed out, was tanking in front. It was an unbreakable, uncrushable tortoise shell that couldn't be shaken off.
Sorry about that—when you've got so many cheats, that's just how it is!
Chapter 779