The Life of a Garbage Collector

"My aunt is busy with a military project recently and has no time to look after you, but the materials and textbooks are all prepared. You can study on your own."

Early the next morning, when Ji Jue arrived at Professor Ye's workshop, what he saw were three entire cabinets filled with various documents and classics, the warehouse at the back of the factory building that Ye Chun had opened, and the mountain of scrap piled up inside!

Heaven knows how many years it had been since anyone cleaned up in there.

There were all sorts of objects, large and small, that couldn't even fit on the shelves; various boxes were stacked so high they nearly reached the ceiling.

This included, but was not limited to, all manner of inexplicable machinery and parts, a Bronze Giant Tree three times as tall as Ji Jue, hundreds of swords and blades that looked like they could hack ten Ji Jues to pieces without dulling, strange pottery urns that seeped blood from their cracks, hideous masks with eyeballs that seemed to move, incomplete armor, bronze statues melted into puddles by fire, and countless fragments beyond counting...

Ji Jue was choked by dust after taking only two steps inside.

Ye Chun, standing to the side and gloating, said, "My aunt said you can use whatever is inside to practice. If there's anything you don't understand, look it up yourself. If you have questions, she'll be back between five and six in the afternoon if she's free, and you can ask her then.

Don't worry, although these are all scrap and offcuts, they have all been processed and rendered completely harmless. They're just right for a beginner like you to practice with.

According to my aunt, once you've finished using up this pile of stuff, you'll be just about ready to stand on your own two feet."

But the sheer scale of it was, frankly, a bit too exaggerated!

Ji Jue held his breath and poked his head in for a look, only to be shocked by the terrifying quantity—enough to drown him ten times over. At this rate, was he going to spend his entire life stuck in here?

The first hurdle blocking Ji Jue's path was the Bronze Great Book he had seen yesterday.

It wasn't thick; once you removed the front and back covers, only twelve pages remained... twelve Supreme Goodness emblem totems!

All relevant materials and indices were in the cabinets.

The first step of Ji Jue's alchemy training was to re-engrave these twelve Supreme Goodness emblems onto any material within one month.

This not only meant he had to master the Twelve Supreme Goodnesses from scratch, but it also required him to meet standards in various materials, spirit essence engraving methods, and all fundamental techniques.

Yesterday was easy mode—learning to sing, dance, and rap—but today was hell difficulty; he was going to fight the Cinder King!

Life was becoming impossible.

"Something's not right. Doesn't the book say beginners should start with basic runes and the engraving of spirit essence circuits?" Ji Jue, covered in grime, flipped through the books for an entire morning before sensing that something was off.

Why had the difficulty spiked so suddenly?

He immediately felt a headache coming on: "If it goes on like this, I'll never finish even if I work until I die."

"Sigh, young men these days, always looking for the easy way out..."

Ye Chun, lounging on the sofa and watching the show, shook her head with a feigned air of maturity, sighing in an old-fashioned way: "When I was your age, where would I have had such conditions?

You shouldn't be ungrateful for your blessings, little Ji! Almost every apprentice out there is working while paying off loans, paying to learn, and in some places, you even have to be a star slave to your master just to learn how to stir-fry. Someone like you, who doesn't spend a cent, has things to learn, has a job, and has so much free scrap to practice with—you've got it good!"

Ji Jue wanted to roll his eyes: "I understand the logic, but could you stop acting like my elder?"

"Don't you know that an elder sister is like a mother? By that logic, aren't I half an elder to you?"

Ye Chun rose in indignation, clutching her cat pillow: "I know, you've become a Chosen One, you have a bright future, and my aunt thinks highly of you, but you won't even call me 'Senior Sister'... Go on, get the potato chips next to the fridge for your sister!"

Ji Jue rolled his eyes as he grabbed two bags of chips, unceremoniously taking half for himself, and even grabbed a chilled Happy Water from the fridge. After taking a long, hard gulp, he turned and walked back toward the center of the workshop.

That massive furnace was still running in silence, with thousands of spirit essence circuits extending from it like a giant web, overlapping, constricting, and converging beneath his feet.

This was the tool he used for practice.

There are countless ways to process materials and objects in alchemy; flames and temperature are merely the most common and widely applied.

Under high temperatures, the physical properties of most materials are stimulated, and their spirit essence affinity is further enhanced, making them more suitable for alchemical operations.

For a beginner like Ji Jue, he was really not worthy of such a high-end model, but aside from the simple probe set from yesterday—which was only for entry-level work and offered little help for skill improvement—the entire workshop only contained this high-end set that Professor Ye usually used.

It was so high-end that Ji Jue couldn't understand most of its functions and didn't dare touch them. Even though most settings were locked to apprentices who hadn't undergone Spirit Essence Verification, the basic functions alone were enough to keep Ji Jue occupied for months.

A master-level High-Temperature Reactor was simply too extravagant for a novice like him. And even more extravagant were the scraps, offcuts, and trash that Professor Ye had already pre-processed.

Even if it was trash, it was trash left over by a master. Even if it was scrapped, most of it had been discarded after being decisively ruined because its strength or functionality didn't meet requirements or had some flaw.

After carefully studying the classics, Ji Jue discovered with sorrow: if this 'trash' thrown in the warehouse were actually in perfect condition and sold on the market, a poor person like him probably couldn't afford a single set even if he sold his blood and kidneys.

But looking on the bright side, if he were lucky enough to become a master in the future, wouldn't selling any random piece of scrap be enough to live in luxury for years?

Thinking of this, he was once again full of motivation.

Thinking of his student loans, the shitty job market in Yacheng these past few years, the cost of living, and the white cut chicken his Little Lamb had to eat every day, he couldn't wait to spend twenty-four hours a day hunched over the furnace.

With such good conditions and such luxurious equipment, if he didn't work hard now, he would truly deserve divine retribution!

Bang!

After a muffled sound, Ye Chun looked up from the sofa, watching Ji Jue's grime-covered face. She sighed and looked away, not at all surprised.

Just this afternoon alone, he had already failed dozens of times.

An alchemist's work is delicate; it doesn't consume much spirit essence, but Ji Jue, being a complete novice, had failed so many times in a few hours that he was nearly drained dry.

He gritted his teeth, put on his fireproof suit, and used tongs to fish the copper plate out of the furnace. Only after it cooled did he realize where the problem lay... in fact, it was exactly the same as most of his previous failures.

Spirit essence conflict.

Using spirit essence to simulate circuits in metal and engrave the Supreme Goodness emblems is a technical job.

Having lost the theoretically isolated environment of the crystal ball from yesterday, practical application was full of pitfalls. Every detail was a trap, and if you weren't careful, you lost everything.

One's own will, control of spirit essence, and even emotional fluctuations had to be kept within range, and one had to maintain absolute stability and focus. More importantly, one had to know how to handle the changes in the material's physical properties and various different situations.

This was a task of pure, grinding experience; there were no shortcuts to be taken.

"If only I could extract it."

Ji Jue slumped on the sofa and sighed wearily.

"Huh?" Ye Chun looked at him, puzzled.

"I mean, if only I could extract the other Spiritual Substances or impurities before the Spiritual Substance conflict occurs," Ji Jue said. "That way, it wouldn't be such a hassle."

"...Do you even hear the nonsense coming out of your mouth?" Ye Chun didn't know whether she should laugh or not.

"Is it that hard?"

"..."

Ye Chun sighed, climbed up, picked up the small blackboard again, adjusted her non-prescription glasses, and said solemnly, "First of all, you need to understand that Spiritual Substance is a very complex and volatile thing. Although its properties are generally the same, there are hundreds of major classifications, and the differences between them are sometimes greater than the difference between a human and a pig."

"Theoretically, absolutely pure Spiritual Substance that doesn't conflict with anything almost exclusively comes from Time Sand, which isn't something someone at your current level should be coveting."

"Secondly, even if the Spiritual Substance is absolutely pure, it will undergo different changes after being subjected to Material Property Interference and processing."

"It's like mixing paint and dipping your brush to paint on a canvas. Before you put brush to canvas, you have to understand the consequences of how different colors and brushstrokes will blend, rather than regretting it after the stroke is finished and wanting to peel every drop of turpentine and every molecule of pigment back off the canvas."

"The level of control required to extract Spiritual Substance after it has been fused into a material is so absurd that, while it might not be theoretically impossible, it is a complete pipe dream in practice."

"Such an inconceivable feat is something that even the contemporary Grandmaster, Heavenly Furnace, might not be able to achieve."

Before putting down the small blackboard, she delivered her final conclusion: "Instead of dwelling on this, it would be more realistic to dream about every person in the Federation giving you a dollar so you could become rich overnight."

"Is it... that absurd?"

Ji Jue was dumbfounded, struggling to maintain his composure.

He wasn't shocked by the difficulty of the task, but rather horrified by his recent discovery... If it were so difficult to strip away the reacting Spiritual Substance from a carrier, then the fact that he could return to his original state after being eroded by Dragon Blood was surely as absurd as turning back time, wasn't it?

He slowly bowed his head and looked at his watch; it was still ticking away, as if it would never stop.

To be able to precisely strip away all the Sin Corruption structures and components just as he was about to succumb, and to restore him to his original state without any lingering side effects... what exactly was this thing?

No wonder Wen Jie's expression was like she had seen a ghost after she discovered he could reverse Sin Corruption!

Perhaps it would have been easier for her to accept if he had actually claimed he could turn back time.

Faced with such an outrageous situation, the fact that Wen Jie hadn't crushed him to death without hesitation to study him was truly an act of great mercy and a Compassionate Heart!

Ji Jue couldn't help but want to set up a Longevity Tablet for her at home.

However...

He stared intently at the time, and the more he looked, the more he felt that this watch was no simple object; it was likely even more incredibly powerful than he had originally imagined, or even what he thought now.

That raised the question: if the watch alone was this formidable, how absurd must its creator be?

After much deliberation, he finally gathered his courage. While Ye Chun was scrolling through her phone, he peeked at her expression and asked with feigned casualness, "Senior, do you know about the Sky Rail?"

"I do."

Ye Chun nodded without hesitation.

As she spoke, she was munching on potato chips, her cheeks puffed out like a hamster.

A hamster capable of scaring Ji Jue until his heart stopped.