T5

Ji Jue had no time to react, and there was none of the shock, bewilderment, or wariness he had expected.

It was as though she were casually discussing how fine the weather was today or what she had eaten that morning—completely natural, utterly unconcerned.

It nearly scared Ji Jue right off the sofa.

He instinctively picked up a can of Happy Water and offered it with both hands. "Young hero, have some tea. Tell me all about it."

Ye Chun gave his eager expression a puzzled look, then raised her hand and pointed at the bookshelf behind her. "It should be in the cabinet on the left, the middle row. Have a look. There should be an encyclopedia from the Encyclopedia of Universal Knowledge Series."

It was a tome as massive as a dictionary. Judging by the back, it had been published in 388 of the Calamity Era—older than Ji Jue himself. Following Ye Chun's instructions, he found the entry on Sky Rail in the index.

It was an abbreviation that left him completely baffled.

--[T5].

The name referred to five large corporate organizations that had already existed before the Calamity Era, during the Central Era—in other words, the period of the Eternal Dynasty in Central Earth.

Apparently, even before Supreme Goodness, the King's Advent, they had already been active throughout history, playing indispensable and pivotal roles in the Eternal Dynasty.

Although they held no actual position in the imperial court, they had nonetheless received authorization and respect from the emperor.

Then disaster descended, the various lands shattered, and heaven and earth turned upside down. The Calamity Era arrived, the Eternal Dynasty fell apart and vanished like smoke and ashes, and Central Earth changed from the heavenly Holy Land it had once been into a muddy pit wracked by endless war.

Yet these five companies still remained. They had even participated in rebuilding the world and order after the Calamity Era, making immense contributions and sacrifices.

Whether it was the Federation in the north, the Southern Continent Empire, Central Earth, or all the islands drifting across the Endless Sea, every legitimate regime acknowledged their transcendent status and authority above the secular world.

At the same time, to prevent the disaster from recurring and suppress the trend of Rift Worlds falling to the greatest extent possible, all sides had gathered together and signed the T5 Protocol, restricting the five companies' authority, business operations, production, and even scope of activity.

With vast resources gathered around them, backed by the accumulation of history and countless secret studies that had never been interrupted, the five companies each occupied absolute dominance in their respective fields.

Their areas of operation were, respectively, medicine, communications, manufacturing, finance, and transportation...

Among them, the company engaged in manufacturing and construction had split apart and become two colossal entities monopolizing most of the industrial markets in the Federation and the Empire: Cosmos Heavy Industries and Great Creation!

Holy shit, Cosmos Heavy Industries!

Ji Jue felt terrible all over.

Just as no Imperial citizen could possibly not know Great Creation, no Federation citizen could have failed to deal with Cosmos Heavy Industries. For some people, everything from birth, aging, illness, and death to eating, drinking, defecating, and urinating was within its sphere of business.

Ever since Ji Jue had started learning auto repair, he had seen those four words countless times. The parts were produced by companies under Cosmos Heavy Industries, the motor oil was refined by them, the gloves came from their chemical plants, and the helmets, uniforms, and fuel were all theirs. Even the local Coast Automobile Factory in Yacheng had received investment from them and was under their control. Lu Ma's Continent Auto Repair Shop could not even be considered one of their peripheral businesses—it was nowhere near qualified.

Boundless United Communications Group, in the communications field, was a behemoth directly occupying eighty percent of the global communications market. In this world where earthquakes ran rampant and calamities struck without end, Yacheng residents could not call people in Central City without going through them. Ji Jue was still paying eighteen yuan a month for one of their plans.

Hope Hospital, in the medical field... Ji Jue seemed to have heard of it somewhere, but he had no impression. Perhaps it was simply too high-end for a commoner like him to reach. Or perhaps they had already spread throughout the world through shareholdings, and he simply had no way of knowing.

Perpetual Bank, in the financial field, had no detailed description beyond its name. With the two pennies in Ji Jue's pocket, he feared he would never have anything to do with them in this lifetime.

As for the last one, it was the undisputed overlord of transportation—Sky Rail Transportation Group!

The book said that this group not only operated everything from airships and trains to ships and cruise liners, but had also constructed a transportation network capable of reconnecting the Present World.

Ji Jue read on, his blood running hot and his chest swelling with pride.

A company this awesome had to be strong, badass, and heroic. The pay had to be incredible too, right?

Unfortunately, Ji Jue could not find the slightest trace of its existence. Even its introduction was absurdly brief. Aside from a simple sentence stating its name and business scope, only one line remained.

--[Due to poor management, it has now gone bankrupt and closed down].

Closed down?!

Ji Jue nearly glared a hole through the tattered page. "Closed down? Are you serious?"

Although he had genuinely wished for that from the bottom of his heart, the other four were all so spectacularly powerful. How had only this one managed to be such a useless wreck?

A company that sounded so badass it was practically capable of reaching heaven and entering the earth... No, it was completely capable of reaching heaven and entering the earth—how could it just disappear?!

And when he looked at the date of its closure, he nearly went berserk again. "Year 198 of the Calamity Era? It's been gone for over two hundred fucking years!"

Then what did that make his situation?!

He had only just become a full-time employee last month, for crying out loud!

Forget not having a big tree to shelter beneath—looking at this, he might have to become the legal representative on his very first day of employment!

Smack!

Ji Jue closed the book without hesitation, put it back in the cabinet, and carefully shut the door.

Whoever wanted to work for that lousy Sky Rail company could go ahead. It had nothing to do with him!

Goodbye!

In any case, he had not signed a contract, and in any case, they had already gone bankrupt. Even the watch's own system could not contact its operator. No matter how powerful Sky Rail had been, it had still been bankrupt for over two hundred years. It was not as if some leader had turned into a ghost and would come knocking in the middle of the night to make him work overtime, right?

And so, having made up his mind, he tossed Sky Rail completely out of his thoughts.

Didn't know it, hadn't heard of it, had no idea what it was. He had picked up this watch and thought nobody wanted it!

After suffering that unexpected fright, Ji Jue spent the entire afternoon immersed in the study of alchemy, forgetting himself so completely that he did not even notice time passing.

Until the familiar sound of shattering emerged from the furnace once more.

Failure number fifty-one.

Cause: material property imbalance.

Ji Jue used the tongs to lift and examine the copper fragment that had endured an entire afternoon of torment. Feeling the Spiritual Substance spreading out of control within it, he analyzed the cause of failure once again.

But then he saw a fissure suddenly appear across the cooled copper sheet. Then came a second, a third, and countless others... In the end, right before Ji Jue's eyes, it cracked and collapsed into a pile of searing copper sand.

"Oh, congratulations, congratulations."

Ye Chun poked her head over. Seeing the fragment completely ruined, she clapped her hands. "You've finally completed the first step in clearing out the garbage pile!"

Spiritual Substance overload.

After an entire afternoon of tempering and engraving by Ji Jue, the fragment—which had already been scrapped—could no longer endure any further processing or engraving. It crossed its tolerance limit and collapsed from within.

The simpler a material's properties were, the more fragile they were, and the lower the limit they could withstand. The reaction after self-destruction was also smaller.

If the material had been something dangerous, then after being infused with a massive amount of Spiritual Substance and Supreme Goodness Essence, it might have lost control and exploded right inside the furnace. The entire workshop could well have been razed to the ground and turned into a Big Pit. Furnace explosions had always been the eternal nightmare of alchemical artisans.

This was Professor Ye's educational plan: if it could not explode, then keep working it until it did.

The warehouse was full of useless scrap and offcuts anyway. They had no value, so they might as well be used to let Ji Jue practice.

Even a dog could become an artisan if it used its own alchemical skills to refine all the scrap in that warehouse until it overloaded and self-destructed. How much more so a Chosen Summoner?

At that moment, having finally completed the first step of a journey of ten thousand miles, Ji Jue should have been cheering with delight.

Yet for some reason, he fell into a daze.

He lowered his head blankly and looked at the copper fragments underfoot, as well as the Spiritual Substance slowly rising from the scorching copper sand and rapidly dissipating. The accumulations and traces left behind by dozens of rounds of processing and engraving were volatilizing at astonishing speed.

But why did he feel... so hungry?

Hungry, hungry, hungry, hungry, hungry!

Like a starving ghost that had not eaten a single grain of rice for several dozen days, an indescribable thirst and hunger emerged from Ji Jue's soul and consciousness, rising until it almost transformed him into a vicious dog.

He reached out instinctively, as if grabbing the rapidly dissipating Spiritual Substance and Essence and trying to stuff them into his mouth.

Only after coming to his senses did he let out a helpless laugh.

Trying to seize intangible Spiritual Substance and Essence with nothing but his hands, then digest the remnants—mixed with who knew how many rounds of forging and processing—with his mouth and stomach was simply too insane.

The next moment, he froze where he stood.

Because his hand seemed to have actually caught something... Not only the Spiritual Substance and Essence rapidly vanishing from the air, but even the Essence remaining in the copper sand seemed to be drawn in, controlled, and tugged by an invisible force, gathering in Ji Jue's palm.

On his right hand, strands of silver light resembling the circuits on a circuit board slowly lit up. They were so familiar—every time Ji Jue used the watch to extract Spiritual Substance, he saw them. But now, with no more than a thought, those complex Spiritual Substance circuits, dizzying to behold, emerged from his hand.

It was as if his hand had also become an alchemical item.

Gathering from thin air, extracting, and then, as his five fingers closed, the ability emblem within Ji Jue's soul suddenly rose up, absorbing, devouring, and digesting all the Essence.

The dizziness came without warning!

Ji Jue twitched. In that brief instant, shorter than a blink, what surfaced in his perception was actually fifty-one rounds of engraving and processing!

He seemed to become the copper itself, enduring the flames' burning and hammering while feeling the flow of Spiritual Substance. Yet at the same time, he seemed to become the Spiritual Substance itself, leaving circuits and imprints again and again, encountering failure after failure... And before that, even earlier, he seemed to have become part of some colossal entity.

It was the fragment before it had collapsed. Within the furnace's flames, countless Spiritual Substance circuits circulated through its body, originating from the hands of a blurry figure.

It was as if creation itself were being cast, forging the myriad forms of existence!

Rune after rune was born and extinguished amid the flames and molten copper. Complex circuits ran through everything like the Giant Tree. And at the very core, Supreme Goodness Essence emerged from collision and fusion.

A magnificent creation beyond Ji Jue's imagination manifested from the furnace. Under that figure's control, the unruly properties of matter were like a faithful hound, while the ever-changing Spiritual Substance was like flowing water, forming brand-new transformations in a sweeping, effortless motion.

At last, the flames parted like a tide on both sides. From the violently shaking furnace, a massive engine more than two people tall slowly rose. Brilliant light shone across its complex machinery, while Supreme Goodness's Blessing flowed through the Copper Light. It was solemn and majestic!

Yet what greeted it was a gaze tinged with disappointment.

"Elevation is sufficient, but Purification is lacking."

Professor Ye withdrew her gaze. "Another piece of scrap."

With a snap of her fingers, the magnificent engine that had just been completed instantly fell apart, turning into countless fragments.

All that remained was the thunderous boom echoing through Ji Jue's soul.

Boom!

Ji Jue's vision went black, and he staggered back a step.

But the moment he recovered, he had already seized the tongs, picked up another fragment, and tossed it into the furnace. Racing against time, he pressed it onto the workbench again without even waiting for the material to heat up and its properties to change.

Taking advantage of the experience of becoming Professor Ye and the fragment itself before it had time to fade, Spiritual Substance surged forth!

The feeling had come!

All his former awkwardness was gone, as was his previous trepidation. Ji Jue's consciousness and perception traveled through the fragment along with the flowing Spiritual Substance, moving forward with effortless exhilaration, completely ignoring even the layers of interference.

Rough and bold, like cursive script flowing as freely as drifting clouds and running water, he swept out the conception rising in his chest in a single stroke!

In less than a few seconds, the process that Ji Jue had once performed cautiously over more than ten minutes was already complete. What he felt was an unprecedented, unrestrained exhilaration.

He picked up the tongs and drew the fragment from the furnace, gazing at the sole success he had achieved after an entire afternoon of failure—the Supreme Goodness Totem!

It rose like an intangible flame, ascending endlessly and never going out.

It was the beginning of the Twelve Supreme Goodnesses, the foundation of truth, transcendence, and Insight, the source of all thought and soul in the world.

--[Ascension]!

After leaving the interference-free simulated operating environment, Ji Jue had taken less than six hours to cross a hurdle that other apprentices needed countless failures and accumulated experience to overcome. He had completed his first true Supreme Goodness engraving...

He raised his hand and wiped away the nosebleed caused by Spiritual Substance depletion, then could no longer hold back his excited smile.

This was only his first step!