The chicken had finished the rice, the dog had eaten the flour clean, and the lamp flame had burned through the lock.
The unlucky kid had wept all his tears dry, yet reality remained utterly unchanged.
An hour later, in a specially cleared "classroom" tucked away in a hidden corner of the oasis, Yan Fei—drifting along like a wandering phantom—once again laid eyes on Ji Jue.
Out in the open clearing, Ji Jue was stretching and warming up with absolute concentration, meticulously loosening every joint in his body.
Preparing for class with all his might!
*No, wait, is that really necessary?! This kind of setup would be enough to kill an Exaltation!*
*What did I ever do to deserve this treatment?!*
Yan Fei's eyelid twitched violently, and his vision went black.
Why did things turn out like this?
Finding a teacher who could guide him toward the future for the first time, finding a place where he could thrive and showcase his talents for the first time... when these two joys overlap—and so on and so forth.
Right now, Yan Fei's mind was still completely blank, stuck in a frozen, dazed crash.
*Wait, me fight Mr. Ji?*
*Are you serious?*
*I'm dead for sure!*
"Mr. Ji, I—I'll double my homework! I promise I'll finish it all!" Yan Fei was still clinging to the faintest shred of wishful thinking. But hearing this, Ji Jue only offered a helpless, doting smile.
"To cut class, you'd even go so far as saying you'll double your homework?" He sighed with deep feeling. "This is no longer an ordinary bad student. A stern correction is in order!"
At this moment, a hundred thousand question marks popped up over the boy's head, jostling one another.
He truly couldn't fathom why!
Yet what "why" could there be? Does a teacher need an excuse to beat his student?
The sensation was indescribably delightful.
At the thought that he would actually have such a day himself, Ji Jue's expression grew exceedingly stern and solemn, tense, as he worked hard not to burst out laughing.
"Relax. A spiritus offense and defense class isn't a dragon's den or tiger's lair."
Standing in place, Ji Jue waved a hand. "To ensure the educational results, I won't use any creations. As for my level, I'll suppress it to roughly the same as yours."
*Easy for you to say!*
Yan Fei's tears were on the verge of spilling over.
The high crushing the low makes you look like an idiot—was the higher-tier suppression of the Embers lineage a joke?!
Even without alchemical creations and suppressing his tier to the same level, was the difference between master and apprentice merely hardware?
"How about this? I'll give you an extra concession."
Ji Jue sighed helplessly. "I won't ask for anything else. If you can force me to use a blessing or alchemy, or make me take a single step back, that counts as a pass. How's that?
"No matter what, you ought to have at least this much confidence, right? If you keep rambling and whining, I'll have Isis come have a talk with you."
"R-really?" Disbelieving, Yan Fei's eyes lit up.
No alchemy, not taking a single step back, no creations, not even blessings—didn't that mean he actually had a sliver of a chance?
Ji Jue rolled his eyes. "Of course it's tr—"
Before his words fell, a deafening blast erupted.
*Boom!!!*
In the blink of an eye, right in front of him, Yan Fei ruthlessly threw a punch straight at the face of Mr. Ji—the man he most respected, loved, and admired!
The instant Ji Jue spoke, the ground behind Yan Fei exploded without warning. A terrifying blast of air and shockwave propelled the leaping boy forward at breakneck speed, slamming in like an artillery shell.
Midair, he expertly twisted his waist, swung his arm, clenched his fist, gathered strength, and unleashed a ferocious strike.
He had come prepared!
Better than anyone, he understood the terrifying gap between himself and Mr. Ji. Even with so many handicaps, his odds of winning were still dismally low. If he wanted to win, he had to use whatever means necessary!
Just like Ji Jue had once done!
Unfortunately—
"You're still dreaming too big."
Ji Jue sighed softly with wistful emotion. With a casual reach, he caught the incoming fist in his hand, which made Yan Fei all the more ecstatic, unable to suppress a grin.
It worked!
Right within Yan Fei's clenched fist, an explosion surged, spraying toward Ji Jue as his fingers spread open.
The Red Anvil matrix's Activation combined with Yan Fei's innate ability made whatever he touched explode. Even the air itself, once injected with spiritus, could easily become a bomb.
At such close range, attempting to defend was too late; one had to dod—dod—dodge?
There was no dodge.
Ji Jue did not budge. He merely lowered his gaze to glance at the grinning Yan Fei. Inside his grip, the clenched fist gave only a faint tremor; the explosion never went off, dying in the womb.
Before the spiritus could activate, it was interrupted by an almost imperceptible wisp of spiritus.
Just like a single rat dropping ruining an entire pot of soup, an impure trace of spiritus interfered with the explosive reaction, reducing the activation to mediocrity and snuffing out its surge.
This wasn't alchemy at all; it was nothing more than the crudest application of spiritus.
Immediately afterward, Yan Fei's vision blurred.
The world spun.
*Boom!*
As though snapping a rag, Ji Jue swung the dazed boy through the air in a perfect arc, and with a wet smack, slammed him into the soft dirt.
The waterlike power was controlled to absolute perfection, not even penetrating his body. Apart from the sharp pain of the impact, it didn't damage a single bone or muscle.
Instead, it made him bounce up like rubber, land again, and roll back the way he had come, tumbling head over heels until he slammed right into the crater he had just blasted out.
Meanwhile, Ji Jue remained rooted where he stood, not moving an inch, calmly beckoning to him.
"Nice idea, but you still thought too little."
He said, "Again."
Disheveled and covered in grime, Yan Fei climbed to his feet, panting hard.
Incredulity washed over him.
Yet all he saw was Mr. Ji's half-smiling expression.
Playing tricks before him was completely useless; Ji Jue had likely seen through his petty schemes from the very start, clear as day.
If he wanted to win, he had to do it fair and square.
At least there was a sliver of hope that way.
He said nothing, grit his teeth, and drew two short batons from behind his back. No longer daring to harbor any flippancy or wishful thinking, he treated Ji Jue as a formidable foe.
He now stood before him with the genuine resolve that even if it meant injuring his opponent, he had to win.
*This is good.*
Ji Jue nodded, growing increasingly cheerful.
*That way, I can hit him even harder—wait, was that what my teacher thought back then too? Crap, doesn't that mean I suffered all that pain for nothing and took all those losses in vain?*
In the brief moment he drifted off into memory, a huge roar erupted once more, and a scorching gale blasted his face.
His eyes lit up.
"Creative."
In Yan Fei's hands, the two meticulously crafted detonating batons clashed, throwing sparks. The moment they rubbed against each other, the iron rods—imbued with different transmutation spiritus—triggered an explosion through the impact.
The flying sparks struck the ground, blowing out crater after crater.
How were those mere batons?
They were clearly two sticks of solid spiritus explosive that could be detonated inexhaustibly as long as spiritus was infused!
The little brat still had a bit of a conscience, specially showing off his weapon beforehand out of fear of causing some irreversible damage—
*Ha, you didn't actually think I'd believe that, did you?*
Ji Jue chuckled.
Sorry, but once spiritus offense and defense class begins, this teacher doesn't have an ounce of mercy in his heart!
As an artisan, he instinctively analyzed the creation before him: a product of Fluid Alchemy. One could tell Yan Fei's execution was still somewhat unrefined, but he had already adapted and altered it according to the characteristics of Red Anvil. He knew how to apply what he had learned and adapt to circumstances—very good, at least his mind wasn't rigid.
The two short batons were actually a matched pair, cast from two completely different alloys to grant distinct transmutations, forming an opposition like yin and yang. When they clashed, they temporarily imparted different transmutations to each other. Once the balance at the tips of the batons was broken, it would trigger an explosion like dynamite.
Therefore, one couldn't block them head-on.
The drawback, however, was that the transmutation was only temporary; once an explosion was triggered, they had to be clashed and exchanged again to perform the "enchantment."
It was a creation whose strengths and weaknesses were both glaring, yet maximized his personal capabilities.
In a flash of thought, Ji Jue glanced at the incoming Yan Fei and couldn't help smiling. The two batons, enveloped in a faint purplish-red glow, thrust toward his vitals one after the other.
He had indeed grown a bit of a brain and wasn't as foolish as before; he knew how to exploit the rules.
*I can't meet or block them head-on, or that would surely exceed the handicaps I set. If I want to dodge, I have to move my feet, and the moment my position shifts, without question, I lose.*
*Nicely thought out.*
*And nicely dreamed.*
Ji Jue stood where he was, doing nothing more than stomping his foot.
A dull thud sounded from the ground as crushed stones burst outward, shooting through the air. Yan Fei's face shifted slightly, but it was already too late. Dozens of flying gravel bits, entwined with Ji Jue's own spiritus, slammed right into the batons.
*Boom!!!*
Explosions!
If an explosion couldn't be endured head-on or dodged, why not just detonate it early?
Midair, the rigid Yan Fei had no time to change posture or alter course—relying on the explosive blast wave to accelerate was indeed a fine tactic, but by the same token, once a bullet left the barrel, how could it change direction?
He could only push through the mistake, continuing to swing his weapons toward Ji Jue.
And then, he tried hard to conceal his grin.
*I won!*
*...Did I?*
At that moment, what he saw was Ji Jue's calm expression, completely unruffled, save for a slight curl at the corner of his lips—so mischievous.
*Playing the blind-spot game in front of me?*
*Kid, you're eight hundred years too early!*
Just as he expected, in the instant they were practically touching, the two batons in Yan Fei's hands drastically expanded in size!
Like expandable batons snapping out, the internal mechanisms instantly unfolded, extending the forearm-length batons to the length of longswords.
Even more terrifying was the force unleashed within them.
Right within the batons' grips, quicksilver surged and flowed, gushing out like hydraulic pistons extending tier by tier, rising, piercing mechanisms, flooding pivots, triggering the transformation.
This was an explosion confined within the two batons, acting upon the quicksilver to cause the two batons to surge in size. Not only that, the reaction occurring inside was a chained detonation!
In the snap of a finger, three explosions went off. What expanded was far from just size; what empowered the batons was force entirely converted from the explosions, instantly turning an unremarkable, sturdy baton into an impact drill capable of cleaving mountains and shattering boulders.
Without any shockwaves or waste, every ounce of power was converted entirely into physical impact as the two batons chopped straight down toward Ji Jue's torso!
Seeing that Ji Jue didn't put up any obstruction whatsoever, what flooded Yan Fei's heart this time was genuine ecstasy!
*I won, I really won!*
*This time I—*
*Wham!*
Off to the side, Ni Lin turned his head in sympathy.
He couldn't bear to watch any longer.
The world spun, plunging into darkness.
Yan Fei stared blankly with bloodshot eyes, blinking in vain: *Who am I? Where am I? What the hell just happened?!*
*No, that's not right... my trump card... how did it...*
Clutching his throbbing head, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't recall what had happened in that lightning-fast instant. Ji Jue crooked a finger, and a chore cat crouching nearby that had filmed the whole thing trotted over, holding up a screen.
Slow motion.
Captured by the ultra-high-speed camera, the split-second transformation replayed at hundreds of times slower—
Faced with the incoming batons, Ji Jue had neither blocked nor fled.
He simply reached out.
In reverse, turning toward Yan Fei, his hand traced a slight circle, dodging the baton's downward trajectory, and flicked a finger, tapping Yan Fei's wrist.
With an insignificant tap, his fingertip slipped between nerve and fascia, causing the tightly clenched fingers to loosen for an instant. The baton in his grip, bursting like an enraged dragon, immediately lost control and flew from his hand, whirling and howling through the air before dropping right into Ji Jue's backward-extended palm.
As if it had offered itself right into his hand, effortless.
He gripped it tight.
In reverse, he aimed at the second baton following right behind in Yan Fei's other hand and struck down!
A loud crash rang out. That baton was knocked from Yan Fei's grasp and slammed into the dirt. As for the lunging Yan Fei, both of his hands were out of commission and his defenses were wide open, offering himself up like a head of cabbage right to Ji Jue.
In that brief instant, Ji Jue glanced down at the baton in his hand and seemed to sigh silently. *Can't use this thing. What if I break my workshop's beast-of-burden employee?*
So he turned sideways and gave a slight nudge of his shoulder.
Yan Fei flew backward!
Right back where he came from!
"The weapons are strong, but unfortunately, you're weak. Power you cannot control and master isn't power. Carve that into your mind, and don't spend all day blowing things up until your brain gets blown to bits.
"Also, your intent was too obvious, and your acting was overdone. Remember: when you push too hard, you get half the results for twice the effort."
While Yan Fei was sweating bullets, Ji Jue looked down and examined the baton in his hand, finally arriving at the answer he had suspected from the start—
From the very beginning, Yan Fei deliberately demonstrating its function hadn't been to warn Ji Jue to be careful at all.
It was Ji Jue's favorite blind-spot trick.
What Yan Fei wanted to conceal was the true function of the pair of weapons.
Unfortunately, that brief demonstration couldn't answer Ji Jue's doubts, nor could it fool an artisan's instincts—there was an unhideable fallacy in the functional design of these weapons!
There was only one question: why short batons?
Weren't there countless forms far more suitable than that?
"You figured it out from the very start?" Yan Fei asked, drenched in cold sweat.
"If the goal was purely to trigger explosions, wouldn't a powdered consumable be far more convenient? In an enclosed space, a dust explosion would be far more effective than one triggered by short batons," Ji Jue critiqued calmly. "The day before yesterday, I added a paper on an application of Vapor Alchemy—using spiritus to overdrive and catalyze matter, achieving the effect of trace amounts of matter self-replicating in a short period, which then undergoes material decay and self-annihilation once the effect ends. The paper is in the workshop's system; go read it yourself later.
"The form of a short baton has flaws that are too glaring. There are far too many designs more suitable than this. If a peer had a bit more experience, they'd likely see through the fact that you were hiding something with a single glance.
"If it were me, I wouldn't hide it. I'd display it openly as a deterrent, and prepare an entirely separate set of traps."
He paused, held the baton in his hand, and casually swung it twice. A scalp-numbing whistle cut the air as a furious gust blasted forth.
It was even fiercer than Yan Fei's catalysis.
Yan Fei's eyelid twitched violently.
"Testing it is simple enough. Remember to add a self-destruct mechanism to this pair of weapons to prevent the risk of someone else using them. It's no trouble, just a trivial addition. When you run out of ammunition and supplies, you can even toss them out like sticks of dynamite."
He appraised it casually, brows arching, a faint smile finally emerging. "If nothing else, at least your physics is pretty good. Does it have a name?"
"Det—detonating batons."
"Fair enough."
Ji Jue nodded and tossed the two battered batons back, telling him, "Your personal handling still leaves something to be desired, but at this level, your advanced studies can begin."
"Really?" Yan Fei froze, overjoyed.
"Before that, fix up your creation first. Treat it as an exam." Ji Jue pointed to the creation in Yan Fei's hands that teetered on the brink of falling apart. "I've pointed out all its flaws. Have you thought of how to improve it?"
"I actually have some ideas," Yan Fei hesitated. "The materials aren't enough."
"Whatever you need, go apply to Isis for it."
Ji Jue waved a dismissive hand, not caring in the least. He merely told him, "If what you make still fails to meet the standard, you know what the consequences will be, right?"
Yan Fei instantly snapped out of his wild joy, nodding like a woodpecker.
At that, Ji Jue smiled.
"Very good."
He waved his hand. "Continue."
"Huh?!"
Yan Fei went utterly blank, eyes wide as he stared at the eager expression before him, his face twitching uncontrollably again.
*What are you smiling about!*
*Did I say class was dismissed?*
*Continue!*
Ji Jue still had some decency, after all.
Meaning, he hadn't beaten the kid for nothing; he had at least provided lessons and guidance so the boy knew why he got thrashed.
There was no helping it: people teaching people never works, but life lessons teach someone in a single go.
If you didn't want to read your textbooks, the teacher still had spiritus offense and defense class to wake you up—in a short forty-five-minute session, Ji Jue corrected every bad habit Yan Fei had developed from goofing off recently from top to bottom, conveniently leaving behind a gorgeously shaped trauma.
Ensuring he would never dare make the same mistakes again.
The results were outstanding.
Unfortunately, the only drawback was that it was rather hard on the student.
After class, Yan Fei lay sprawled on the ground bruised and swollen, unable to get back up, just like Ji Jue had once looked when he had overestimated himself.
Still, a silver lining in the misfortune—
Yan Chang's previous wheelchair came in handy!
Watching his student being wheeled away with a crooked mouth and drool trickling down, Ji Jue slowly exhaled, feeling thoroughly refreshed!
Yes, yes, yes, this was exactly how it was supposed to be!
These spiritus offense and defense classes had to be held!
Monthly, weekly, daily!
Too bad there weren't enough students for him to beat up. Why not ride the wave of enthusiasm from open-sourcing Three-Phase Alchemy and recruit more beasts of burden to relieve his stress?
If word of this got out... who knew how many would weep tears of gratitude!
After all, personal instruction from a master—and such high-level spiritus offense and defense at that—without charging fees or requiring membership cards, purely to scratch his itch while casually guiding you out of confusion.
In any other workshop, if an apprentice didn't bust their ass for months, how could they ever score such a golden opportunity from a craftmaster?
Compared to such invaluable gains, what did a mere beating matter? Even if Ji Jue truly didn't hold back, as long as he left the recipient with a breath of life each time, it would count as an act of charity on his part.
Alas, fine talent was rare, and unpolished gems were nowhere to be found.
Those who suited his taste were always too few; he could only leave it to fate.
He let out a sigh, put the thought out of his mind, and looked up at Ni Lin by the edge of the grounds. "Thanks for waiting."
"Think nothing of it, sir."
Ni Lin smiled faintly, about to speak, when he heard Ji Jue's voice.
"No, what I mean is, I'm finished warming up."
Ji Jue said slowly, "Inayat, my purpose in coming here—aside from educating my student—was mainly to find you—"
Amidst Ni Lin's momentary astonishment, the Embers artisan raised his hand, offering an eager invitation:
"Care for a round?"
Chapter 830