Amid hysterical shrieks, a severed head flew into the sky. Blood and fire erupted, incinerating the vicious spirit along with the many venomous preparations embedded within its body before they could even be put to use.
A grinding friction abruptly sounded by Ji Jue's ear as a box materialized out of thin air onto the deck.
From the opened box, a cold, pale hand reached out toward his face.
As the hand unfolded, the entire world seemed to plunge into darkness. Between its five fingers, a mouth slowly gaped open, calling Ji Jue's name in a voice that shook the soul.
That hand stretched forward inch by inch toward his face, his flesh, and his soul, intent on clutching everything he was into its grasp. But in the next heartbeat, Ji Jue reached out and caught it in his palm, gripping it tight.
"You finally learned how to shake hands," Ji Jue chuckled.
The silver radiance of the Non-Offensive matrix flared to life inch by inch across his fingers and the back of his hand. In reverse, treating the bizarre hand as crafting material delivered right to his doorstep, the alchemy began!
Pale fire ignited between his fingers and spread inch by inch along the spasming hand, plunging down into the pitch-black box. Immediately, shrill, agonizing wails echoed from the bottomless gloom. Fissures swelled, then detonated in an instant.
A colossal worm covered in arms and faces writhed convulsively out of it, only to be burned into charred cinders in the flick of a finger, completely silenced.
Next, what was cleaved to pieces was an antique, dust-caked funhouse mirror, shattered before it could even capture Ji Jue's reflection...
In the crisscrossing clashes of mere heartbeats, the sound of breaking never ceased. The fierce shifts unfolded so rapidly that even the naked eye could barely track or perceive them.
Yet what could be seen was beyond any shadow of a doubt.
A young man who had been an artisan for less than two years was actually utterly suppressing and battering the prized creations and crowning achievements tossed out by a pack of old Profound ghosts.
This was simply absurd beyond belief!
Even many of the gazes cast from the Association went blank in stupor, wondering if they were hallucinating.
Faced with completely unknown creations, he not only handled every situation with effortless ease, but he also didn't suffer the slightest disadvantage; not a trace of the anticipated ambush kill could be seen.
It was practically precognition!
Everything that took place, every shift set in motion—every single factor was held firmly within his grasp!
"Apotheosis, or aether?"
Scavenger turned to Tianlu with curiosity. Tianlu shrugged. "Probably both... Like I said, Ah Xian truly treasures this student of hers. She handed over her ancestral Hanxiang Mirror without hesitation and taught him the Nine Forms down to the bone. Now, whenever I want to show off and offer him a little guidance, I can't even find an opening."
"Heh."
Scavenger smiled faintly, casting him a meaningful glance. "Perhaps she just wanted to save you the trouble."
*Drop the act! She was guarding against you, you little rascal!*
Tianlu acted as if he hadn't understood, continuing to shake his head with theatrical sighs of helplessness.
Didn't know, wasn't clear, had no idea!
The bond between Ah Xian and him as master and disciple was the absolute best under the heavens—peace and prosperity in the household, one big happy family. How could anything like that ever happen?!
*Boom!*
Ahead of the speeding *Prosperity*, a towering colossus of iron and stone abruptly rose from the boiling sea, dominating sky and brine like a mountain.
Gravitational force erupted, pulling all creation toward it.
It smashed down toward the *Prosperity*!
Yet under everyone's watchful eyes, the beat-up ship that should have shattered into splinters didn't tremble in the slightest; not a single crack appeared.
A strike powerful enough to blow a massive crater into an entire island couldn't shake the *Prosperity* by a hair.
Beneath the peeling paint of the hull, a wisp of faint light flickered quietly, as if in mockery.
*Is that all the strength you've got?*
*Didn't you have breakfast today?*
In that instant, the colossus flew into a frenzy.
Across its divine, Buddha-like visage, its glaring eyes bulged wide. Raising both hands, it drew a several-hundred-meter-long greatsword from the void, stirring up a storm once more.
It cleaved downward!
Amid the storm ravaging sea and sky, a deafening crash exploded. A fracture finally splintered across the hull.
Along with it came an uninterested, weary sigh.
"That's about enough of that."
Accompanied by that scalp-numbing voice, the iron colossus Dragon Mountain raised its eyes from beneath the hull, its massive hand slowly extending to block the sword blade.
Trampling the frozen sea, it rose from the deep.
It drew its blade.
Amid the convergence of purple lightning and black flames, a sword of radiant heat shot forth, mercilessly thrusting straight into that face twisted with fury and horror.
Thunder and fire erupted from the back of its skull, slanting wildly toward the sky in an overwhelming torrent.
Then, like splitting bamboo, it cleaved downward.
Amid Zhanlu's burning and cleaving, from head to toe, the entire colossus was evenly split into two halves, trampled beneath its feet and ground into dust.
This time, before anyone could react, Ji Jue finally extended his hand.
The Dragon Mountain colossus roared to the heavens.
Within the mechanical colossus's grasp, the phantom of a war banner seemed to unfurl against the wind. The mist of the Veil reappeared between sea and sky, the mandala rose from the deep, and countless Spirits of Creation sang their hymns of praise.
Like an assembly line springing to life, rings of silver light rippled in all directions; the barehanded transmutations of the Non-Offensive spread over everything. All the shattered earth, stone, and iron were completely transformed, thoroughly hollowing out the broken colossus.
Right under everyone's noses, in just the span of a finger snap, countless bizarre structures converged out of thin air, forming a lifelike, fully articulated metal Sea Locust.
With a hum of four delicate iron wings, the Sea Locust soared into the sky!
*What is that...*
In a moment of bewildered confusion, two more Sea Locusts completed their transmutation, letting out excited chirps.
Then two became four, four became eight... An exponential surge began. In less than three seconds, the soaring Sea Locusts converged into a towering pillar, and as the expansion began anew, the space between sea and sky was flooded with nothing but a vast tide of gleaming iron light!
Sea Locusts! Sea Locusts! Sea Locusts! Sea Locusts!
Countless metal Sea Locusts gushed from the Veil like a waterfall, multiplying faster and faster, as if someone had kicked over a hornet's nest of locusts.
Quite literally blotting out the sky and covering the sea!
Inside the mandala, sparks erupted like fountains along the assembly line formed by the spirits of the Lord of the Flies. In that furiously accelerated production, even the assembly process left blurred afterimages. No distinct clinks could be heard—only a deafening roar formed by a deluge of mechanical noise.
Even so, production could barely keep pace with the rate at which the Sea Locusts surged forth.
Most of them were pre-made stock that Ji Jue had crafted along the way from the endless disaster beast flesh and scrap iron he had gathered...
The consumption of quintessence was of no concern at all.
He had killed so many beasts beneath the Blightwind that he couldn't use up all the flesh and remnant spirits he had accumulated. This was nothing less than recycling waste and dumping excess inventory!
From a negligible glint of silver light to a torrential tide blanketing the entirety of sea and sky took merely a dozen seconds.
Now, when Ji Jue raised his hand once more and pointed toward the Shadow of the Profound, the boundless tide of Sea Locusts surged forward, shrieking like thunder!
Between the gloomy sea and overcast sky, a surging wave gathered from specks of dull iron light, and the countless Sea Locusts blotted out the sky, completely swallowing and submerging the Shadow of the Profound.
A cold snort rang out,
as if mocking such an insignificant effort.
Beneath the boundless tide, from within the Profound, a rust-covered broken blade was casually tossed upward into the sky.
The blade vibrated violently, shedding countless phantoms. The phantoms rapidly solidified into fresh blades, vibrating once more.
In an instant, between sea and sky, countless broken blades rained down, endless and all-encompassing, on a scale even greater than the swarm of Sea Locusts!
*Masterwork · Rainbow Splitter!*
When a crisp snap of fingers sounded, the boundless blades had already shot into the sky as if operated by tens of thousands of distinct souls. Tracing intricate trajectories through the air, they cleaved down upon the massive horde of metal monsters!
It seemed utterly effortless!
The seemingly rust-pitted blades were actually so sharp that mortal crafts couldn't hope to match them. Even the Sea Locusts, slightly bolstered by Earth Bears and Sea Embraces, couldn't withstand a single blow.
It was as if an exquisite master of the blade was sweeping leisurely across the battlefield in that instant. Every strike was flawless, finding the spaces where there was no thickness, cleanly severing every grotesque, rampaging Sea Locust to pieces.
Fragments rained down from the clouds like a storm.
The seemingly grand swarm of Sea Locusts dissipated swiftly like an illusion, even though more locusts continued to surge forward in unending waves.
Wiping them all out was merely a matter of time.
Paltry parlor tricks!
Yet, for some reason, the falling shards appeared to flicker faintly... The shattered iron pieces falling through the air seemed as though their safety pins had been pulled, flaring with eerie, hallucinatory flames of light.
Then, stirred by the howling wind, colliding with the seawater, and even rubbing against one another...
*They detonated with a roar!!!*
Countless sparks suddenly burst into view, then rapidly swelled. Even a fragment the size of a thumb unleashed destructive force far surpassing an equivalent weight of phlogiston explosives!
Explosions! Explosions! Explosions! Explosions! Explosions!
No one could count how many fragments had fallen, nor could anyone see clearly.
What the detonations unleashed at this moment was a genuine tide of destruction!
The moment the blazing light flared, the first things blinded were the rapidly contracting pupils, followed immediately by unprotected, fragile eardrums battered without mercy.
The countless blades trembled one after another, fracturing and shrieking amid the erupting blast before scattering apart. Beyond the explosions, even more Sea Locusts scrambled forward, lunging straight for the Shadow of the Profound!
Those weren't metal monsters at all—they were greeting gifts painstakingly prepared by Ji Jue: countless disposable quintessence bombs!
Yet did this not also come from the gifts of the Profound?
Ever since the Blightwind had blown, countless disaster beasts had been slain across Luo Island and Punabantu, yielding vast amounts of materials. By now, such scrap, utterly worthless for anything other than squandering, had completely filled the warehouses to bursting!
Just dealing with these spoils of Isis had given Ji Jue a headache for ages. For the first time in his life, he had realized that having too much stuff could actually be a damned nuisance.
Still, since he was heading out, there was no need to be polite.
It was festive season, and since he was already here... he might as well haul it all along as greeting gifts for his "friends and family" in the Profound!
It had been years since the Association and the Profound had met like this. When everyone gathered to make dumplings together, how could they not set off some fireworks to liven up the mood?
*Boom!!!!*
Ji Jue clenched his fist, and another surging wave of explosions erupted above the Profound. Everything between sea and sky flickered continuously like corrupted code, shifting erratically.
Wave after wave of blazing light pressed forward inch by inch like living creatures toward the Shadow of the Profound.
No matter how the sky full of blade silhouettes continually rose and cleaved down, within the darkness beneath the eerie glow, someone was already drenched in sweat. The broken blade gripped in his hand had turned scorching red, hissing with heat.
Under an unprecedented magnitude of pressure, a crack actually fractured along its surface.
With every burst of blazing light, a spark drifted from the fissure. The blade vibrated violently, wailing ceaselessly.
Not until the rampaging tide of destruction broke through layer after layer of void barriers and finally died out before an uncanny, monstrous eye...
In his hand, the Rainbow Splitter Masterwork was covered in cracks, four whole inches shorter than before!
There was barely anything left of it except the damned hilt!
When he furiously prepared to strike once more, he discovered that the iron colossus had long since crossed the boundary between the Association and the Profound.
It was as if he had merely stepped away to use the restroom, strolling leisurely on his way.
Completely out of reach!
"That's enough making fools of yourselves for today. Those of you still waiting in line needn't be in a rush... Tomorrow, this 'junior' will come knocking to 'seek your guidance' again!"
In the sea wind rushing against his face, Ji Jue looked back with a smile, glancing at the Shadow of the Profound beneath the Pillar of Ruin.
He waved goodbye,
no matter how many gargantuan silhouettes rose in fury within the shadows on the other side.
"Elder Zhen truly has great patience. You can even stomach this?"
Before the crucible, the gaunt old man heard a voice drift from the void—a familiar, irritating bark. "Now, I'm not one to stir up trouble, but if I were in your shoes, I certainly wouldn't take this lying down..."
Elder Zhen remained indifferent, not moving a muscle.
He didn't even bother to respond with a sneer. He merely lowered his gaze, watching the jade-green flames within the crucible.
Quietly waiting for the heat to peak.
Chapter 793