Having crossed countless ordeals far more easily than he had expected, Ji Jue examined his own creation and could no longer hold back his beaming smile. Alongside his excitement came a little regret and disappointment.
Even with Ji Jue's abilities, such a creation could already be called bizarre beyond belief, a fantasy straight out of the Arabian Nights. But compared with Professor Ye's operation that he had just experienced, it could only be described as full of mistakes and a clumsy imitation of beauty by ugliness.
They were on entirely different levels. He had been left so far behind that he could not even see the other party's exhaust.
But so what?
Ugly things could be cute too, and small things could be mighty!
During the absorption of Spiritual Substance after the fragments had self-destructed, he had not only used his own soul and perception to experience the process and reasons behind his fifty-one previous failures, but had personally experienced Professor Ye's terrifying skill, which seemed as though it had been created by Heaven itself!
It was as if he had transformed into a true creator.
Every change rose from the furnace... All he needed to do was reach out and pluck whatever he wanted; with a turn of his palm, he could recreate the universe.
That sudden epiphany was intoxicating.
More importantly, it was a precious experience even more thorough than being taught hand by hand. In that brief instant, it was as if a lighthouse had suddenly risen in the long night, illuminating the road and direction for Ji Jue, who had still been spinning in circles where he stood.
All he had to do was seize the memory of that light while it was still vivid in his heart, then advance and run forward with all his might!
Once again, he picked up a fragment.
Without the slightest regret for the work he had just completed, Ji Jue drew Spiritual Substance from the spare storage reservoir in his watch and began engraving again! With his other hand, he directly flipped the Bronze Giant Book beside the operating table to the back.
While his epiphany had not yet faded and his memories remained clear, this time he planned to try engraving the emblem and Totem of another of the Twelve Supreme Goodnesses.
The Supreme Goodness who governed the birth and annihilation of all energy, its silence and eruption, the elements and storms.
--[Entropy]!
And so it continued until half past midnight.
This was the sixth time Ye Chun had come to urge him to clock out and go home. Amid such heartfelt words as "You should rest," "Keep at it a little longer," "You're already good enough—more than good enough. A lot of big shots can't compare with you now," and "For fuck's sake, stop grinding," Ji Jue finally left the workshop on Little Cow and Horse, reluctant to part with it and looking back every three steps.
More than five hours of overtime felt as though he had gained even more than he had from all those previous hours of practice—perhaps dozens or even hundreds of times more. Before that thread of vivid insight completely faded away, Ji Jue had done everything he could to preserve a little of the experience and even more of the lessons from failure.
In the end, he still failed to completely draw Entropy's Totem.
Several times in the middle, he had felt as though he were only one final push away. But later, the harder he tried, the more wrong his direction seemed to become, leaving him with the awkward sense of having tried to draw a tiger and ended up with a dog.
He knew that grinding away any further might not yield much more.
After thoroughly digesting the experience package from Professor Ye, he hummed and whistled. He bought a bowl of fried rice noodles from a roadside stall, then without hesitation... set off for home.
Wash up and go to sleep quickly. Tomorrow, he would get up and keep grinding!
"Fuck!"
Meanwhile, in the distance, inside a van that was faintly following amid the traffic, the middle-aged man Qi Qin sat frozen, video camera in hand, watching Ji Jue return home.
Unbelievable.
What the fuck were you doing?
You went to the professor's factory and tightened screws until midnight. Wasn't anyone supposed to relax and have some fun afterward? Damn it, you were a college student who did not go clubbing, flirt with girls, or climb the rankings. Fine—but couldn't you at least hurry up and call the Big Sister behind you, ask her out, and have some fun?
I had even prepared my camera, and you gave me this shit about work-study?!
Was this what everyone had come to see?!
The man who had spent the entire day suffering behind Ji Jue was about to lose it. This was completely against common sense! The young lady selling fried rice noodles had such a huge chest, yet he had not even looked at her! When she had deliberately shaken herself, hoping to make an extra two yuan from him, he had not even let her add a single egg!
Were you even human?
Don't panic, don't panic. There was no need to rush. Patience would bring results, and staking out patiently would capture explosive material.
Qi Qin took a deep breath and soothed his agitated mood. After finally waiting until the light in Ji Jue's room went out, he got out of the van to take a piss, used the restroom, and bought a bowl of instant noodles.
All right. At least things had finally quieted down.
He could get a good night's sleep, at least.
He closed his eyes.
That same deep night, someone else was unable to sleep.
"I'm screwed--"
In the silent factory district, Ye Chun had finished washing up and was still drying her hair with a towel wrapped around her head while yawning and tidying the workshop. But when she reached out and picked up the fragment on the table, she suddenly froze in place.
It was as though she had been struck by lightning.
Ye Chun dared swear that she had never opened her eyes so wide in her life!
After that irregular fragment had been ravaged by Ji Jue, a faint crack had already appeared on it. But now, a nearly imperceptible layer of pure-white illusory light flowed across its surface, glowing dimly beneath the moonlight after the lights had been switched off.
What made her even more incredulous was that on that palm-sized surface, someone had used a level of maddened diligence and an obsession severe enough to warrant immediate hospitalization to carve more than twenty Supreme Goodness Emblems!
Every single one was an Ascension!
When she had come to inspect it that afternoon, Ji Jue had still been a complete novice who had only just come into contact with the furnace and knew neither how to use it nor what it was. Yet in four or five hours, he had trampled beneath his feet the progress that would have taken other apprentices years of day-and-night torment.
And what was even more terrifying...
Through the fine traces on it, she could faintly make out the style of her aunt from years ago.
Especially the final few Totem emblems. The curves at the very end were completely her aunt's distinctive signature... Even if he had copied her, there had been no need to copy that too, right?!
What had you come here to learn?
How to forge counterfeits?
"Auntie, come home quickly."
Suppressing the urge to scream, she dialed the phone. "There's a pervert here!"
"...Normal."
After learning what had happened, the other end of the phone fell silent for a long while. In the end, however, it calmly offered only that judgment, as though it had not been surprised in the slightest.
Professor Ye said, "Just let him continue. Don't bother with anything unnecessary."
The call ended there.
Only Ye Chun remained in the silence, staring at the fragment as it stared back at her.
After a long while, she turned around and looked at her tiny reflection in the glass. After putting down the fragment, she finally could not hold back a soft sigh.
"Damn. What a monster."
.
"What the fuck?"
Under the same night sky, in the old bedroom, Ji Jue suddenly sprang upright in bed just after closing his eyes.
He had finally realized that something seemed not quite right.
During the day, he had been too focused on the growth of his Alchemy to notice...
Under the moonlight, he raised his right hand and brought it before his eyes, carefully and solemnly examining the [1] on the Watch Dial, which seemed to have been faintly stained gold.
He narrowed his eyes in disbelief. "Did this lousy progress bar just move?"
If his memory served him correctly, that [1] had been almost completely devoid of any other color that morning. But now, at its upper edges and corners, it seemed that some unmistakable pure gold had appeared.
If he had to describe it, it was like one of those blue-icon apps that downloaded at a tortoise's pace suddenly starting to move.
It was still going at a speed of one or two kilobytes, but at least it was no longer saying "resource unresponsive" or "downloads unavailable under relevant laws"...
From 0% to 1%, it had once again achieved the great breakthrough from zero to one!
Tiny and feeble, yet so conspicuous.
"Yesss!!!"
Ji Jue could not help throwing up his arms and cheering. "Awesome!!!!"
But why?
Could his progress in Alchemy have driven the growth of his ability? That could not be right, either. When he had entered the field of Alchemy the day before yesterday, this watch had not reacted in the slightest.
He lay back down and carefully recalled everything that had happened throughout the day. The final scene that surfaced before his eyes was himself reaching out to extract the remaining essence and Spiritual Substance from the self-destructed fragment.
In the end, all the essence had been devoured by his ability!
"Wait, Eldest Brother, are you serious?!"
He sensed the emblem rotating lightly within his soul, unable to understand.
Could it grow only by absorbing the essence of alchemical items?
Why was this lousy ability just like a character in some gacha mobile game? Grinding dungeons and beating monsters was completely useless; he had to feed it other equipment and characters as fodder to level up?
After reaching max level, would he need to eat several copies of the same character to break through?
Could it please not give him equipment-destruction chances when he reached Enhancement +11 or +12?
Ji Jue was nearly driven to despair by this world where becoming stronger required spending money. He suddenly wanted to bang his head against the wall. Wasn't true Legendary equipment supposed to work differently?
But for some inexplicable reason... what surfaced before his eyes was the entire warehouse from that day, which had left him despairing, along with the absurdly enormous heap of waste and junk large enough to bury more than a dozen of him.
If he remembered correctly, Professor Ye had said that all that useless stuff was for him to practice with, right?
In that instant, Ji Jue's sleepiness vanished without a trace.
When he turned to look toward the workshop, blazing fire had already ignited in his eyes, as if he had seen countless young ladies dressed in very little, coyly beckoning him and inviting him to come over and play.
What junk heap?!
That was experience points that had already been washed clean!
Only one word remained in his mind.
--[Liver]!
From that day onward, the Watcher's nightmare finally arrived.
The man had only closed his eyes after finishing his report at around two in the morning. Then, at five-thirty the next morning, he discovered... that bastard Ji Jue had gone out!
He had not even changed his clothes or washed his hair. He had merely washed his face, brushed his teeth, and bought a steamed bun at the entrance.
Then he had gone straight to the Factory building!
That desperate look, as though he feared he would be late and miss out on free eggs, made Qi Qin feel that his worldview had suffered some kind of brutal assault. "No, what are you doing?"
Eldest Brother, you son of a bitch, sleep a little longer! If you don't sleep, I need to sleep too!
Why were you running to the factory so early? What were you after?
You even bought coffee. Were you really this eager to become a cow and horse?!
A voice drifted away on the wind...
Leaving the despairing middle-aged man standing there in a daze.
He was laughing maniacally!
With the throttle of Little Motorcycle twisted all the way open, Ji Jue grinned as he raced through the dawn light.
A new day, a new beginning.
He could happily tighten screws again!
Before you continue