Come on, give her something to work with!

The long, rectangular base was covered in complex structures resembling circuits, extending all the way from the hollows where the hands were placed into the spherical crystal.

It had an unfamiliar form and structure, inexplicably strange.

"Professor, is this one of those things that lights up after you put your hands on it?"

Like the things described in ancient stories, where magic academies tested aptitude by having people install a light bulb and watching it flare brightly.

Ji Jue did not hesitate. He placed both hands directly on it, and just as he had expected, a faint glow suddenly lit up inside the sphere.

Unfortunately, it was not even bright enough to reach two watts. Sticking a potato between the two electrodes would have produced roughly the same result, and it left him faintly frustrated.

Then he felt the Spiritual Substance inside his body begin to stir restlessly, as if it had sensed some kind of attraction, giving him the urge to let it flow out.

"Do not resist the circulation of your Spiritual Substance. Feed it in, step by step and layer by layer, moving inward. You can go slowly. Take your time.

"The base is called a Simple Spirit Essence Probe. It can help a Chosen One maintain a stable structure and state for their own Spiritual Substance inside matter. The probe establishes a constant Spiritual Substance pathway, Rune, and imprint within the material. That is the foundation of Modern Alchemy."

Professor Ye spoke slowly. "Stabilize your own Spiritual Substance, place it in a fixed form, keep it contained, and maintain its stability."

As she spoke, wisps of light rose inside the Crystal Ball, like flowing Copper Light carrying restrained, dazzling radiance. They entered through the Spiritual Substance pathways from his ten fingers. Ten fine threads of Spiritual Substance glided smoothly through the crystal, following her instructions as they converged at one point and wove themselves into a stable ring.

"Now, you can let go."

At Professor Ye's words, Ji Jue slowly lifted his hands.

In the silence, neither of them spoke. They only stared as the ring woven from Ji Jue's Spiritual Substance slowly revolved inside the Crystal Ball. Its hazy glow gradually dimmed, until, ten minutes later, it finally collapsed from the center and dissipated.

"Next, use your Spiritual Substance to spread out and fill the entire sphere. Keep it even." Ye Xian suddenly asked, "Can you feel anything?"

"It seems that inside..." Ji Jue hesitated. "The material inside the Crystal Ball seems to be shifting between liquid and solid states?"

"That is normal. What has been infused inside is a High Spirit Essence Reaction Crystal. After Spiritual Substance is injected, it liquefies. Next, you must control the ratio between liquid and solid—mobilize it, guide it, and make it move."

Professor Ye's voice was slow and solemn, each word distinct as it echoed in his ears.

Soon, when Ji Jue released his hands again, a golden Vortex had appeared inside the sphere. It was Ji Jue's Spiritual Substance guiding the liquefied crystal into motion and rotation.

Professor Ye watched the stopwatch. It continued for thirteen minutes and sixteen seconds before the Spiritual Substance dissipated and the rotation stopped.

Next, following Professor Ye's instructions, Ji Jue partially liquefied the crystal inside the sphere while keeping the rest solid, forming standard hexahedrons, dodecahedrons, prototypes, or nested structures.

After trying several times, Ji Jue gradually grew excited. With the probe extending his Spiritual Substance, it felt as though he were using a carving knife to shape all kinds of contours.

He even figured out how to successfully perform turning, milling, planing, grinding, and other processes, carving the image of a Little Lamb inside the crystal.

Good heavens, was there really something this wonderful in the world?!

Ji Jue became increasingly fascinated.

Wasn't this much simpler and more convenient than a CNC machine?!

There was no need to program anything. All he had to do was move a thought.

"Is this Alchemy?" he murmured unconsciously. "It feels like it's even..."

Pretty simple.

That was what he had wanted to say, and that was indeed how it felt. It was not as troublesome or difficult as he had imagined. It was easy, simple, and effortless to pick up.

No, he could not let his guard down!

Everything started easy and became difficult later. He was only at the kindergarten level of learning the basics now. The later stages might be difficult enough to make him vomit blood.

He was afraid Professor Ye would tell him: This is running, this is rolling, this is attacking. Good, now let's go slaughter those laughable enemies called Soul of Cinder, Orphan of Kos, and Malenia... What difference was that from entering an online game where dying when a certain character died meant discovering that the overseer was Hidetaka Miyazaki?!

"Very good. Maintain the state."

Professor Ye remained expressionless as she took a thick, enormous book from the box beside her. Every page was actually made of sharp, heavy copper foil. She opened the cover and pointed to the first Yin Script symbol at the very top.

It was intricate and strange, like a blurred flame surging upward.

"Use your Spiritual Substance to reproduce this symbol in the crystal as precisely as possible. Start from the left. The first stroke goes from top to bottom. Do not restrict yourself to a plane—it is three-dimensional. Follow your own sensations. Your Spiritual Substance will complete its structure on its own. What you must guarantee is absolute stability. Yes..."

Smack!

Ji Jue felt as though he had been shocked and instinctively let go. He had lost control of his Spiritual Substance for just a moment, and the symbol that had only been one-third complete inside the sphere silently exploded and vanished completely.

He could not help wanting to slap himself twice!

Why did you have to say it was simple, you idiot?! The difficulty shot up immediately!

"Failure is normal. Continue."

Professor Ye's expression remained calm and unchanged. "Do not doubt yourself. You need to merge your perception and will into your Spiritual Substance. Do not let your Spiritual Substance lead you. It is a part of you. Yes, that's it..."

Smack!

He made another mistake soon afterward.

"Again."

And so, another mistake followed soon after. Ji Jue was sweating profusely, but Professor Ye still showed no reaction. She only said, "Continue."

"Keep going."

"You made a mistake at the very end just now. The density of your Spiritual Substance changed. Recall what you felt earlier."

"Spiritual Substance is not a knife. It is more than a knife. It is also the very substance that forms the imprint. They are one whole. Continue."

"Again. Hold it steady, then contract it a little more."

He started over again and again. Only the crisp ticking of time remained. Ji Jue's face gradually paled, his breathing grew heavy, and dizziness swept over him. Yet in his daze, the stability of his Spiritual Substance rose once more. Under the probe's guidance, it gradually changed, circulating bit by bit within the crystal.

Until a dreamlike light bloomed from beneath Ji Jue's hands.

After Ji Jue's Spiritual Substance dissipated, the Rune left inside the crystal actually began to move as though it were alive. It released soft colors that flowed with breathtaking splendor, illuminating Ji Jue's eyes.

He forgot to breathe.

It was as though, in an instant, his Spiritual Substance had become a bridge connecting him to that moving Rune. Some inexplicable comprehension welled up from his heart.

The soul was a flame, burning without end and soaring without pause. Thought, sensation, comprehension—the world's every philosophy and essence flowed from the source of this miracle and spread everywhere.

So, its name was...

—Ascension!

This was the emblem and Totem of the Twelve Supreme Goodnesses!

And then, darkness filled his vision.

A drop of blood suddenly appeared on the Crystal Ball, followed by a second, then a third...

Scarlet blood dripped from the tip of Ji Jue's nose and splattered across the workbench.

He staggered back a step and tried to catch hold of something, but fell onto a chair and cushion instead, breathing heavily. Only after a long while did he recover and stare at the gradually blurring Rune inside the crystal.

"Professor, does this count as a success?"

Professor Ye did not speak.

She stood where she was, looking down at the crystal, seemingly lost in thought.

She merely wiped away the bloodstains, then reached out and placed one finger against the crystal. The Rune that had been on the verge of dissipating suddenly stabilized, becoming even more dazzling than when Ji Jue had finished writing it.

It blazed with boundless light!

It was as though a spotlight had suddenly switched on directly in front of his eyelids. Countless fine branches extended from the Rune. Solemnity and magnificence surged forth, a hundred times greater than before—no, a thousand, ten thousand times greater!

That was the absolute gulf between their understanding and comprehension of the Path of Ascension.

It was like the distance between heaven and an abyss.

"Not bad."

She suddenly spoke.

Not only had he been able to use the Spiritual Substance Probe upon his first contact with it, but his control over his astonishingly powerful Spiritual Substance was also...

Stability, endurance, precision... To a Master, it was full of flaws and far too immature, but for an apprentice, it was already practically flawless.

What if this apprentice had been encountering all of this for the first time?

What if he had not possessed even the slightest foundation in Alchemy before this?

What if he had spent only half an hour successfully creating the Superior Virtue Rune imprint?!

If someone had told her all this yesterday, she would have sneered at them. Yet even after witnessing it with her own eyes today, she still felt that it was completely...

A fairy tale!

Skillful use of the probe, controllable manipulation of Spiritual Substance, the development and maintenance of an Alchemy Circuit, the use and mastery of Rune imprints... Someone had actually completed the entirety of standard apprentice training in a single half-hour?

Back then, she had taken a week to complete her introduction to Alchemy. Her progress and efficiency had ranked at the very top among all her peers, and even her teacher had been amazed.

She had thought it ordinary and paid it no mind, no matter how fearful or jealous the gazes behind her had been.

And now, more than twenty years later, she had finally experienced the frustration of her peers back then, along with the astonishment her teacher had felt at the time.

And even... relief that Ye Chun had not followed along to observe.

If she had seen this, it would probably have been another devastating blow, wouldn't it?

"You did very well, Ji Jue."

Ye Xian finally raised her eyes and looked over. "Even better than I expected... Does this have something to do with your ability?"

"Uh, it does seem somewhat similar, but some parts are a little different."

Ji Jue scratched his head and gestured for a long while, unable to figure out how to describe it. In the end, he simply raised a hand and pointed toward the Dragon Gate Machining Center in the distance. "More or less like this."

[Buddy, get moving! Give me something to work with!]

The moment the command was issued, the enormous CNC machine suddenly shuddered. Its power came on, the program started, and one indicator light after another lit up. Amid the low hum, the machining center cheerfully responded: [ojbk!]

Then, a piercing grinding sound rang out from the worktable!

The strange Dark Gold Strange Cutter Head that Ji Jue had never seen before flared with dazzling light and suddenly descended, causing the enormous Titanium Alloy Octagonal Ingot to jolt violently.

Amid the sprays of cutting fluid and coolant, countless strands of metal shot out from beneath the cutter head.

It was practically like a hot knife through wax!

In the past, machining something with such explosively high hardness, such brittle fragility, and such atrocious thermal conductivity had been a nightmare for Ji Jue. But now, he felt as though he had accidentally wandered into some kind of barbershop.

At that moment, the once-defiant ingot had been forced under the barber's hand by the scruff of its neck, being wantonly ravaged, cut, and styled. Amid the rotation of the five-axis linkage, it danced with graceful lightness.

It was like a foolish young man who had lost himself beneath a barber's honeyed words!

Fast—far too fast.

No assistance was needed, nor was there any advance preparation. He simply started on the spot and went all out. Amid the machine tool's delirious, maniacal laughter, the ingot was shaped and recreated at will, shedding one burdensome outer layer after another. Fine strands flew everywhere, yet not one could wind itself around the cutter head, which moved with the grace of a fitful convulsion.

In less than four minutes, a half-length statue of Professor Ye had emerged from the original ingot. It stood raised up, facing its counterpart through the glass from afar.

It was like looking into a mirror. Not a single hair or wrinkle was flawed.

Even Professor Ye's movements stopped dead.

Her eyes widened.

After a long while, her slightly trembling hand rose to adjust her glasses, as though she were suppressing her emotions. "Ji Jue..."

"Mm."

Ji Jue grinned, his proud dog head held high. "How do you feel, old lady?"

"...Very bad."

Professor Ye slowly exhaled, ultimately refraining from punching his dog head into oblivion. "I originally planned to use that custom ingot to make an engineering prototype of an Armored Transmission Spine. I was almost done programming it."

"Ah, this is..."

Ji Jue's smile stiffened on his face.

An awkward silence descended without warning. Only Ji Jue's dog head was bent down by an invisible Formless Power. Several times, he wanted to speak but stopped himself. In the end, he finally mustered his courage. "Um, is it... expensive?"

"It's fine. Only two hundred and sixty thousand." The professor consoled him. "We can just deduct it from your salary."

Ji Jue was even more shocked. "I have a salary?!"

Professor Ye finally turned back to look at him. She studied his astonished expression for a long while, then slowly nodded.

"You did."