Supreme Wisdom and Utter Folly

Life and death, advance and halt. A mere flyer, a single thought, an impractical daydream, a negligible wisp of longing and hope... The moment living souls sprouted the will to ascend once more, the foundation of sinking was utterly undone. High in the firmament, a dazzling blaze had replaced the lighthouse, illuminating the entirety of the Seven Cities! Those rotting stars gradually dimmed, fading into nothingness. In their stead rose countless prayers and hopes drifting up like fireflies, flickering specks coalescing into a winding river that surged toward Chixiao. When these countless sparks layered together, they became a sun. The sun shone upon all creation once more. Chixiao shuddered violently, tally-standards ringing in resonance as the Heavenly Constitution turned, manifesting Tianyuan once again. With merely a fraction of Tianyuan's effortless, natural weight, the roiling Seven Cities stabilized anew. The blazing light of Stagnant Rot rapidly dwindled, and the all-consuming emerald fire dissolved away. Flowers bloomed everywhere, spreading across all. As massive swarms of sparks gathered without pause, the blazing sun climbed higher. Under its radiant glow, the Celestial-Human projection behind Fernand grew increasingly battered—even beginning to fracture once more. Irresistibly hurtling toward collapse. Right before Fernand's eyes, seventy years of grand endeavor fell apart, and the wondrous work that had consumed half his life was reduced to nothingness. Sinking was no more. *Boom!* Everything collapsing so swiftly ground to an abrupt halt. The scattering flames of Stagnant Rot roared upward once more with manic fury, even though the tide had turned, even though his foundation was gone. The unfinished phantom of the Celestial-Human roared at the top of its lungs, forcing its body upright again as countless beams of eerie light reached out in all directions like hands, clenching around everything. Forcibly arresting all change. *Halt!* By the strength of one man alone, he forcibly suppressed the ascension of the Seven Cities. Like drinking poison to quench a thirst, he cast aside without hesitation any chance to start anew, abandoning everything he had ever possessed. Erupting without reservation, burning his life and even his soul, he wagered everything to wrestle against this surging, unstoppable tide! Yet when Fernand raised his head, he saw them—the fluttering snowflakes, the shredded flyers drifting right before his eyes. A single page had brought ruin to all those years of torment and painstaking labor. To think... he had been brought this low. In that negligible split second, during a brief lapse of concentration and trance, Fernand instinctively turned his head—and felt a stinging pain across his cheek. A minuscule cut bloomed on his face, thin wisps of purplish-black light drifting out like blood. To think he had actually been injured. For the first time... "Where are you looking, Fernand? Our duel isn't over yet." Ji Jue's voice rang out right beside him, telling him: "Don't lose focus!" He had not even pressed the advantage. Instead, with immense magnanimity, he paused for an instant, leaving a crucial opening and waiting for Fernand to rally himself. Such pity. It stung more than any venomous insult or mockery ever could! "...Have I really sunk to something so pathetic?" Fernand raised his hand, wiped across the wound, and gazed at the speck of pitch-black illusory light on his fingertip, letting out a soundless, self-deprecating chuckle. Utterly disgraceful. "Fine. Very good." He looked up at Ji Jue once more, as if looking at a child who did not know his own limits, his malice twisted and hideous: "Come!" Though the Seven Cities had slipped from his grasp and his Celestial-Human form could hardly be realized, as a craftsman, as a master who had long walked this path through countless rises, falls, and struggles, was he supposed to fear the challenge of a mere junior? Things having reached this point, life and death no longer mattered. All that remained was the simplest, purest matter of victory and defeat. The capable shall reign supreme! And you are nowhere close! A brittle, crackling sound rang out once more, pervasive and inescapable. Across Pucheng's entire central district, every building shattered at the sound, disintegrating into dust. In his grasp, an ordinary-looking pouch revealed its true form—pennies make pounds, grains make a harvest—*Sound of Grains*! Countless tiny wounds accumulated relentlessly, gathering amidst crisp echoes, suddenly compounding into severe trauma impossible to ignore and detonating completely. It was not even limited to physical injury. The drain of spiritus, the strain on the flesh, the sheer accumulation of fatigue, even the tiniest scratches he had never noticed himself—all were stacked together. Every single straw laid upon the camel was gathered once more, crashing down from above! *Boom!* Ji Jue's body blasted apart again, thunder and fire dispersing and spreading outward. Yet right before Fernand, those countless shattered fragments actually came together once more. This time, he did not rely on Isis and the cycle of the three phases. Awkwardly, sluggishly, and riddled with flaws, he pieced himself together again. It was not even complete—at best a slapdash heap of half a body. Yet even progress like this was hundreds of times better than his initial state, when he could barely even use Non-Offensive! Half his body was shattered and twisted, and even the spiritus blade in his hand had snapped in two. Yet the break remained razor-sharp. Its jagged contours were even fiercer than before! Now, utter folly, overestimating its own meager strength, stood in defiance of supreme wisdom. Piercing through layer upon layer of interception, the blade of utter folly thrust forward with irresistible momentum, unswerving and aimed straight for Fernand's face, now mere inches away. *Only supreme wisdom and utter folly do not change.* If utter folly was unyielding, then supreme wisdom was equally unmovable! Fernand remained where he stood, neither dodging nor parrying, completely unflinching, without taking a single step back. In his other hand, the One-Foot Rod manifested once more, locking onto Ji Jue and the blade in his grip to sunder them again! Yet just before that, right beneath his very eyes, Chunjun and Ji Jue... detonated again! Fernand's pupils contracted. The lock-on failed! The flaw had already been uncovered... The ability of the One-Foot Rod was inherently to break the whole into parts; therefore, it had to act upon a cohesive whole to maximize its effect. But if the opponent dismantled himself before it took effect, an error of judgment would arise within the Masterwork's mechanism, requiring manual recalibration. It required only an instant. But now, in that all-important instant, the countless shards of Chunjun's detonation came hurtling forward like a torrential squall, crashing into his face. They obscured Fernand's vision and masked Ji Jue's true intention! The fragments cast aside during the previous reassembly surged back toward Ji Jue's ruined frame, and the discarded half of his body reformed in a breath. It was barely even half a torso—only a portion of his chest, spine, heart, head, and... having gathered all the fragments, a mechanical hand abruptly shot forth, fingers spread wide. It slammed down toward Fernand's face! —*Dissociation Art: Jingzhen!* After countless attempts and course corrections, the heavily flawed Dissociation Art emerged from Ji Jue's hand once more. Pan Ying, Chunjun, Zhanlu, Juque... their radiances overlapped and erupted! Unfortunately, it produced no effect whatsoever! The One-Foot Rod had already been swapped out of Fernand's hand for a small crystal sphere: Pure Lie. Having been calculatingly specialized from the start to counter fellow craftsmen and target Embers, it could well be called the *Craftsman's Lie*. Its core foundation was a paradox: *Every word spoken by every craftsman is a lie!* Its effect was to turn the theoretical underpinnings of the targeted spiritus technique into a lie, temporarily erasing it from existence so that its effects could not hold. In that instant, the foundational concept and theory of the Dissociation Art were negated by Fernand. The mechanical arm lunging toward him burst apart in midair and collapsed of its own accord before it could even touch him. Countless blossoms surged out of nowhere, swallowing every shard of Ji Jue, pulling them together and forcibly reconstructing him once more to obey his command and go again! Yet right before him, Fernand's expression darkened as he slowly lowered his head, looking toward his own chest. A gaping, transfixing wound. Erupting from the inside out! There was actually... A third hand? In the instant before Ji Jue had detonated, a third spiritus hand—concealed from the very beginning until now—finally materialized inside Fernand's internal organs, clenching around his heart and unleashing pure destruction! A grievous wound! Yet as the flames of Stagnant Rot burned, everything reassembled once more. As long as his Celestial-Human Foundation endured, he was indestructible, just like Ji Jue under Isis's protection. Yet the implications behind this made Fernand's expression turn ever more grim. Since the start until now, after breaking Ji Jue countless times, he had suffered such a massive blow for the very first time. One could even say... "Mutual destruction, eh? How does it feel, Master Fernand?" The reconstituted Ji Jue looked up, refreshed and invigorated, drawing his blade again as he charged forward: "Again!" And then, once more, he was covered in fractures, predictably dealt catastrophic damage, barely clinging to life in utter disarray. Before a Profound master going all out and even surpassing his usual limits, he was completely fragile! Yet despite this... he lasted longer and longer with every exchange! From clumsy at first to less clumsy, from riddled with mistakes to scraping together a passing grade under the margin of error, and now, even occasionally pulling off maneuvers that could be called brilliant! Like a heavy, rough stone that, after repeated impacts and grinding, began to refract dreamlike crystalline facets from its cleaved faces once more. This specimen of utter folly, who should have been mired deep in sinking, was under Fernand's crushing pressure slowly revealing the facets of a diamond, like coal compressed within the earth's crust. He was even making Fernand miscalculate again and again, leaving him at a loss for where to strike. *Loss of Control!* Beneath those clumsy moves, it was not only Ji Jue who could not foresee the final result; even Fernand could no longer anticipate it. The suppression of sinking had been turned on its head and exploited, causing Ji Jue's performance to fluctuate wildly like rolling random numbers. Sometimes a blow would be bafflingly weak, while other times a strike would be bafflingly potent! Chaos countering chaos. Like a drooling idiot clutching a club with both hands, convulsing and crawling across the ground before a grandmaster of swordsmanship, flailing his weapon with zero method and not a trace of pattern. Yet at its deepest core, the essence remained the same. Seemingly disordered yet not disordered, seemingly precise yet not precise. To think he had actually blazed a trail... Regardless of whether it would work, Ji Jue forged ahead without the slightest hesitation. Striding forward!