Tick-tock—
At some unknown moment, the hands on the dial silently overlapped as time flowed on.
Six thirty and thirty seconds!
At that moment, the hour, minute, and second hands pointed in perfect alignment at the [6] mark, and a brilliant golden radiance emerged above the number.
The gauge that had been no more than ten percent complete when Chunjun was "finished" now began to skyrocket along with Chunjun's collapse!
Twenty percent, thirty, forty, fifty...
It was practically like riding a rocket.
But Ji Jue had no time to spare for anything else.
Crack.
The second fissure appeared once more amid the sound of a bubble bursting.
Like an ordeal and torment marching toward destruction.
In the daze of pain and exhaustion, Ji Jue had already forgotten who he was, where he was, and what exactly he was doing.
His consciousness, thoughts, and soul were utterly empty.
The only thing he did was follow that increasingly surging, violent instinct, raising the Invisible Hammer once more—as though lifting his own soul high—and bringing it down!
BOOM!!!
A soundless impact, almost like an illusion, suddenly spread outward, breaking through the Workshop and echoing across New Spring and the Wilderness, ringing in everyone's ears.
Like the sound of chains coming loose and iron shackles shattering.
The instant the hammer fell, amid the dark tremors before his eyes, Ji Jue saw countless fleeting scenes emerge before him.
[Memory]
At that moment, everything the person named Ji Jue had seen, thought, learned, known, and felt since the instant of his birth rose from his soul!
A third crack appeared upon Chunjun, completely shattering its perfection.
They spread and extended across the sword's immaculate blade, yet they did so with such natural inevitability, like a brush dancing across paper in strokes of dragons and snakes, unending