Law of Two Blossoms

Kang De studied the watch in his hand.

When he focused completely, fixing his mind on the watch, he saw many things.

Elements... there were elements inside the watch.

Elements of different kinds stretched into lines, crisscrossing and intertwining in intricate patterns. They filled the entire watch, and seemed to form the principles and foundation that allowed this fantastical object to exist in the world.

The elements formed something resembling a magic array.

No, it was far more complicated than a magic array.

As Kang De gazed at the complex lines, a thought occurred to him.

His intuition told him that if he collected these elements, replicated an array according to their pattern, and attached it to another watch... he would obtain a new tranquilizer watch.

But...

"It's too complicated..."

As a civil engineering grunt, he had naturally taken CAD drafting classes, but the array formed by the elements in this watch was far, far more complicated than architectural blueprints. And it was so damn tiny.

Completing a task like this by hand... probably even a level-eight fitter couldn't do it.

Then he noticed something else.

This watch was truly faithful to the "original." Specifically, the tranquilizer gun contained only one needle.

And he had just fired it.

"...Fuck."

Kang De was depressed. This black-tech tranquilizer needle had been made by Professor [beep] Kasa. Leaving the materials aside, the tranquilizer on it was supposedly capable of knocking an elephant out for thirty minutes, and that was something Kang De couldn't make either... In other words, the watch's greatest use was already gone.

"Seriously..."

He turned it over and examined it, but there was nothing he could do. Then a thought occurred to him.

"Elements, extract..."

He tried extracting the elements from this enchanted product of his "ten-pull."

He only tried it in the spirit of putting waste to use, but unexpectedly, he actually succeeded.

The array formed by the elements in the watch collapsed with a rumble, then regrouped at a dizzying speed, forming more than a dozen clusters of elements visible to the naked eye. He narrowed his eyes and examined them closely.

"These..."

If he had to guess, the more conspicuous elements were probably things like "measurement" and "transmission." Kang De wasn't quite sure, but he thought he could identify the largest cluster.

That cluster was pitch-black, with wisps of dark air emanating from it. It was very unsettling.

"...I get the feeling this is something dangerous."

It didn't seem to have much use right now.

If he had to think of a use for it, he could probably attach it to an accessory and carry it around, then go undercover and infiltrate the enemy. After that, he wouldn't have to do anything but sit back and wait for an effortless victory.

Kang De hesitated for a while, then chose another cluster of elements.

Element: deep sleep.

What the fuck—that's an element too?

Not knowing whether to laugh or cry, he stood up and went back to the store beside the residential compound. He took a bottle of iced black tea from a shelf and casually smeared the deep-sleep element into it.

"What the hell is this..."

He took a mechanical watch off the shelf as well.

Kang De wanted to test another of his guesses.

Focusing, he summoned the vast torrent of elements remaining in his body and poured it into the watch.

As the vast quantity of mysterious elements left his body, the world changed once more. The undercurrents of energy in the white fog reappeared, though they were no longer as violent as before. They flowed into Kang De's body without end, replenishing what he consumed. It seemed that in this world, these mysterious elements were inexhaustible.

The vast quantity of mysterious elements poured into the watch in an endless stream.

Kang De sensed that after the mysterious elements, with their complex composition, entered the watch, they began to differentiate and transform. They flowed according to certain rules and began constructing an intricate array. He held his breath and concentrated, intending to memorize the process, but it was simply too complicated.

A minute passed, and the watch exploded with a bang.

The parts inside scattered. Some had undergone extremely bizarre changes, becoming incomplete and broken. They flew to the ground and rolled everywhere.

"A dud, a dud..."

Kang De's expression didn't change. What did failure on this level amount to for a modern-day pay-to-win warrior?

He picked up another watch and did the same thing.

A minute later, bang.

Again.

He went through more than twenty watches.

"So there really is a success rate, and they don't just turn into tranquilizer guns..."

Several successes and even more failures lay before him.

During his recent "ten-pull," he had successfully obtained three tranquilizer watches, but because of their godawful ammunition capacity, he had only gained three shots.

Aside from those, there were several products that hadn't exploded and had completed their transformations.

"They don't seem to be anything special..."

Kang De picked up one of the watches. It had an imposing dial and an opulent design, but it didn't seem to contain any supernatural power. He muttered to himself, "Going by the tranquilizer gun, has this watch turned into some watch from a work of fiction? Although it played a very important role in the story, it doesn't have any strange functions... Is that it?"

He checked several finished products in succession, and they were all the same.

"How did this wristwatch show up too..."

He picked up the wristwatch and looked closely.

"Current world: unknown error."

"Mission objective: unknown error."

"Mission reward: unknown error."

"Reward points remaining: unknown error."

Kang De froze for a moment, then shuddered. He hurriedly flung the godforsaken thing away, grabbed a fire axe, and smashed it more than a dozen times until he had chopped the wristwatch into a little pancake.

"Fuck, that scared the shit out of me..."

For fuck's sake.

This goddamn two-way world-hopping situation was already giving him more than enough trouble, and now this.

Would this shit ever end?

Besides the successful products and the failures that had exploded on the spot, there were also incomplete products that had made it halfway but couldn't go any further.

For example, there was a green watch with a wrist guard that seemed capable of letting someone transform into ten very questionable-looking forms, but it was incomplete.

There was also an extravagantly shaped and colored thing that had gone beyond the definition of a watch but still had a dial. It had the toy-like feel of "I'm going to mass-produce this as merchandise for the work and trick the audience into buying it."

I get the feeling this sort of thing would make suspicious lights and sounds and have its wearer say embarrassing lines while transforming into some powerful tokusatsu warrior or something... But it was incomplete too.

"These that failed halfway through... was my ability insufficient, did I not put enough in, or was there some other reason?"

When the vast quantity of mysterious elements absorbed into his body was attached to an object, there was a chance of producing various things that existed only in fantasy worlds. These items all had the marvelous functions they possessed in their "originals," and the principle behind it was highly unscientific.

Don't ask. If you do, the answer is magic.

"Enchanting a watch can turn it into a tranquilizer gun, or into watches from other works..."

"When I do this with other objects, they should also turn into other corresponding things."

"Like this thing..."

Kang De picked up the fire axe. "Maybe it'll turn into the Pangu Axe... Though before that happens, I'll probably have to enchant more than a billion axes to have a chance of getting it. Maybe even more..."

This sort of enchanting had to follow some basic rules too.

The more powerful an item was, the rarer it would be, and the harder it would be to produce successfully.

It surely followed rules similar to some kind of law of conservation of energy...

As for the principle behind it...

Kang De thought it over and decided that the principle behind this ability could probably be named the "Law of Two Blossoms."

For example, when someone mentioned a watch, it brought to mind the tranquilizer watch from Detective [beep] Nan... and so on.

It was an association built upon "fantasy."

"In that case..."

Kang De murmured, "Is the fantasy here my fantasy, or... everyone's?"

Thinking about that question made him inexplicably a little sad.

"Forget it. Let's try something else... No more wrestling with watches."

He scanned the store for new heavy-construction materials, when suddenly his expression changed.

"Damn, time's up..."

Kang De gave a wry smile.

He could only stay on Earth for a short while each day, even though this was his home.

"I forgot to bring my diary today... I'll do it all tomorrow."

The transmigrator muttered to himself, then turned into a streak of black light and vanished from this world.

PS1: My editor asked me to limit my daily word count so I don't go premium in two weeks. (Gazes into the distance.)

PS2: After spending so many years following someone's example and roaming the webnovel world, I never imagined the day would come when an editor would tell me, "Bro, sorry to trouble you, but please write a little less each day."

PS3: So, as for the ideas everyone suggested about the possibilities and specific uses of the cheat, they're all very good. I've read them, and some of you even guessed what I had in mind. Please keep the ideas coming.