So What?

"Did you buy your title or something?" If this were in the Association, any Master who heard that wouldn't let the matter rest without rolling up their sleeves and wiping out the speaker's entire family. It was no different in the Profound! You could attack my morals, my character, or my motives, but you could not question my competence. That was hitting way below the belt. There was no helping it; you couldn't blame Ji Jue for making personal attacks—Fernand was the one who had started it! His intellect had merely been dialed down; he hadn't actually turned into an idiot! Had it been anyone else listening to such a mountain of twisted sophistry and perverse doctrine, they might well have bought into a little bit of it. Yet right now, under these conditions, the moment one's sense of self wavered—even a fraction—one was as good as dead. This was Fernand's true goal: by showcasing the power and philosophy of the Path of Sinking, he sought to relentlessly wear Ji Jue down, stopping at nothing to shake his resolve. Even the slightest sympathy for the ideals of the Path of Sinking would leave him ensnared in the quagmire Fernand created, sinking into its depths. After losing everything in futile struggling, he would be picked clean to the bone, turning into a stepping stone for his enemy's advancement. This was the erosion and assimilation of Embers by Stagnant Rot. A man could deceive others, but never himself. The original sin of the Embers lay in the craftsman's own deep-seated arrogance and self-righteousness, yet what truly mattered stemmed from that very same wellspring. If a craftsman could not even believe in his own convictions and maintain his sense of self, being reduced to a mere tool was only a matter of time. In all fairness, Fernand's methods were nothing short of brilliant, his intentions nothing short of malicious, and his execution nothing short of ruthless... The only problem was, he had picked the wrong topic. All Things Self-Transform? Bringing that up to Ji Jue was enough to wake him right up—where in the Seven Cities of today was there any such thing as self-transformation? That so-called self-transformation had vanished long ago! This was complete data fabrication! From the moment he realized Ji Jue was shaking his foundation, from the moment he resolved to get rid of Ji Jue and artificially manipulate the results, the nature he desired was already gone! No, even earlier than that... From the very moment he personally entered the game to drive all this forward, it had ceased to be natural. Perhaps without Fernand, the Seven Cities would still have decayed, still have rotted away, still have reached this exact point... But the moment he threw himself into the fray to play that crucial role, natural evolution had been artificially distorted. Put it in a laboratory, and the entire damned experiment had been faked from start to finish! What's more, there was the source of interference known as Ji Jue. Everything Ji Jue had built across the Seven Cities in just a few short months, and Ji Jue himself! If left unchecked, once the Blightwind blew over, what awaited the Seven Cities was the Luo Island fleet, already primed and champing at the bit. Unifying the Seven Cities and thoroughly converting them into Haian's territory would only be a matter of time. By then, the foundation of Sinking would be wiped out entirely, and everything Fernand had worked for would merely serve as a bridal gown for Ji Jue. He had dispatched Xiuyan to cause trouble for Ji Jue and rallied so much manpower not to sweep across the Seven Cities, but simply to bottle Ji Jue up—even if he couldn't kill him, he had to keep him from meddling in the Seven Cities' shift at that pivotal juncture. After interfering once, he interfered a second time, until finally he abandoned evolution altogether and took direct manual control. What kind of "All Things Self-Transform" was that? "The kind of trash I look down on most is someone like you!" Ignoring the erosion of the flames of Sinking, Ji Jue pointed right at Fernand's face and let fly: "You're the biggest stumbling block in the Seven Cities yourself, yet you concoct excuses claiming this was how it had to be, that they're just worthless mud that can't stick to the wall... Wasn't the quagmire they fell into dug out by your own hands? You slacked off and decayed your entire life away, only to get outworked and crushed by me in two months flat, and you still have the gall to talk about self-transformation?!" "Do you not see them as tools as well?" Fernand sneered. "You haven't even remembered a single one of their names. Are you trying to tell me you genuinely see those people as suffering compatriots, as your brothers in arms?" What answered him was a booming retort: "So what?!" Ji Jue raised his head and fired back decisively: "I never claimed to be a savior! When did I ever say I came to the Seven Cities to do good deeds? You're from the Profound, and you're expecting an arms dealer from the Federation to have a conscience? Which of us has lost his mind?!" From the very beginning, Ji Jue had never disguised his ambitions. First Xiangzhou, then Luo Island, and ultimately his push into the Seven Cities. What he wanted was to clutch it all in his grasp, turning the entirety of the Seven Cities into Haian's factories, making it the wellspring from which he reaped wealth, influence, and power to expand and ramp up productivity! If possible, he'd chain everyone to an assembly line, working three shifts around the clock for him... Every cent they earned would be spent in company stores; wives and children alike would become his workforce. Born, they'd attend Haian's schools; grown, they'd work in Haian's plants; and dying, they'd breathe their last in Haian's own hospitals! Ideally, no one would ever be able to leave Haian—working for him their entire lives! "You're right about one thing, Fernand. I've never cared about anything you made, nor have I ever viewed them as brothers. All I need is tools." Ji Jue sneered contemptuously. "But who said tools can't retain their value? Who said tools can't accomplish great things?" Fernand fell silent, staring at him. Intently. He tried to search that face, those eyes, for even the faintest trace of deceit or hypocrisy. But there was none. None at all. He could even sense that from start to finish, beneath the erosion and shackles of the Realm of Sinking, even now with all his gifts and talents stripped away, Ji Jue had not wavered in his conviction in the slightest! A man could never deceive himself. What he spoke was the absolute truth... This was an out-and-out monster, an unmitigated anomaly who didn't view them as human—and didn't even view himself as human... As a matter of course, he treated everything as a tool, quantified the value of every person, brought them under his control, and commanded them as he pleased. Stopping at nothing to achieve his goals! But how the hell was this the Embers?! If he closed his eyes, he would almost suspect that standing here was another Master from the Profound! In fact, something far more sinister than the Profound... He could sense the coiled malice held in reserve within the youth—a hidden yet razor-sharp presence that had prickled at his back from the very beginning. Something that not even the Profound could contain, something not even craftsmen who had fallen to the Great Sins could endure! In that split second, Fernand smiled silently. He chose to give up. No, not merely giving up on dragging Ji Jue into Sinking—he had made his resolve. No more hesitation, no more delay. With all his might, he would crush the opponent before him into utter dust! Otherwise... A cold, sinister premonition clung to his spine, bringing him to a stark realization: the one who lost might very well be himself! In that instant, the stars across the sky abruptly shifted, opening one by one brimming with venomous malice, reflecting the Dragon Mountain giant and Ji Jue below. The Realm of Sinking from across the Seven Cities converged, bearing down entirely upon Ji Jue to forcibly strip away every effect of alchemy and suppress his circulation. Immediately following, the unremarkable short rod in his hand—Masterwork: One-Foot Staff—silently broke down and expanded, revealing its true form. Two eerie phantasmal lights, bound within layers of seals and colliding violently, seemed to send tremors through the entire world with every impact. The manifestation of a paradox, the clash of theory and reality, was triggered once again. In the span of a finger snap, it overlapped thousands, tens of thousands of times. Lock-on complete! Then, with everything Fernand had, a paradox capable of breaking Ji Jue and Juque into infinite fragments in an instant materialized out of thin air. Exponential division occurring thousands, tens of thousands of times engulfed everything. Even the mere shockwaves reduced entire city blocks to dust, yet not even the dust could remain; beneath the unending division, it was returned to void. Only a dreamlike expanse of pale white surged, rising and spreading. Alongside the limitless downward division, it madly swelled and proliferated... Countless petals soared into the sky amidst the gale, drifting gently downward even as they divided, blotting out the shattered vault of heaven and blanketing the burning earth. Phantasmagoric. Dressing hell in the robes of heaven, yet within this heaven lay only this boundless sea of pale white, pure to the point of instilling dread and despair. Suffocating. Blossoms. Flowers bloomed and withered in endless expansion, negating the exponentially surging division with an incomprehensibly vast scale and an operational complexity defying even theoretical possibility. Quantity against quantity. At the very same time, it effortlessly mended the ruptures and scars across Dragon Mountain. The suppression brought by the Realm of Sinking was entirely pointless. Even if dividing herself more brought stronger erosion and suppression, from start to finish there was not the slightest change, not a hint of wavering. She had never been within the target scope of the Realm of Sinking to begin with, nor did she care in the least about the mutation and burning inflicted by the flames of Stagnant Rot. Amidst the endless birth and destruction, a pair of indistinct eyes seemed to emerge beside Ji Jue. Looking down with lowered gaze upon her creator's battered state, scrutinizing him closely. "You took your sweet time, Isis," Ji Jue sighed softly. Disengaging the preheating of the Myriad Phenomena Engine and canceling the emergency transit jump, he finally breathed a sigh of relief. [You ought to examine whether the demands you make are far too unreasonable,] Isis replied serenely. [Fortunately, I have not failed your mandate. Five days ago, the new project you initiated—the full-scale infiltration and control of the Seven Cities—was accomplished.] In that instant, it was as if a crisp snap of fingers rang out. Snap— Like a torrential downpour, countless minute sounds engulfed the Seven Cities, echoing between heaven and earth... Amidst the flames, amidst the ruins, in the desolation and chaos, in every corner of the Seven Cities, the seeds buried within every ensouled being took root and sprouted. From hands reified into tools, from bodies fused with machinery, from every rigid mask of a smiling face, from those mutated eyes and beating hearts... Pale blossoms quietly sprouted and grew, blooming upon every single person distorted by reification. The brilliant blossoms covered their deformed bodies, draped over their hollow eyes, and concealed their numb smiles, as if adorning those battered, broken figures until they were breathtaking to behold. Even if beneath this pure beauty lay a ruthless dominance surpassing even the Path of Stagnant Rot; even if this adornment was by no means a gift from heaven. It was as though, for a fleeting moment, this dark, dreary world had finally shown a touch of gentleness.