Chapter Summaries

Ji Jue and Lou Feng developed a wristwatch that could store extra Spiritual Substance, then devised a plan to market it through a prestigious watch brand. They set the flagship model’s price at 18.88 million.

• Ji Jue proposed turning the wristwatch’s environmental warning function into a paid upgrade while using its growing spirit to give users extra Spiritual Substance reserves.
• Lou Feng agreed to the plan, raised his commission share, and explained the limits on daily Seeds of Spirituality production and the week-long watch assembly process.
• Ji Jue asked Lou Feng to arrange the purchase of an old watch brand so they could market their product through its history and reputation.
• Lou Feng offered to take over a watch company his father had invested in, and he and Ji Jue agreed to inflate the watch’s price together.
• Ji Jue and Lou Feng named their flagship the Supreme Gold Collection Edition and set its price at 18.88 million.

Ji Jue and Lou Feng’s Sundial watches sold steadily, while the Association’s artisans and competitors struggled to understand how the mass-produced, blessing-free devices worked. After the Association received complaints about Ji Jue’s pricing, he defended it as a permitted modification of antique goods and accepted the challenge of an Inquiry Meeting, confident it would never take place.

• Ji Jue donated all proceeds from church consignment sales to the Chongguang Church orphanage in exchange for the children’s education and future employment contracts with Coast Industry.
• Lou Feng questioned the watches’ weak sales, but Ji Jue said he was waiting for the Sundial to build a reputation and reach the right opportunity.
• An Aged Craftsman failed to reverse-engineer the Sundial and was stunned that the Association had awarded the blessing-free Creation an A+ rating.
• The Association contacted Ji Jue about more than seventy complaints over his pricing, and he argued that the Sundial was registered as a modified antique and priced within the permitted increase.
• Ji Jue agreed to an Inquiry Meeting and told the Association that if it could actually be held, he would consider the matter his loss.

Andre and the Old Dragon recognized that the Sundial Wristwatch could give ordinary people access to Spirit Essence and Blessed Creations, while the Association’s Inquiry Meeting drew Sun Shicheng into a factional struggle. Ji Jue prepared to exploit the political tension and the sundial’s new popularity, ending by arranging a staged killing to reveal another use for the Premium Edition.

• The Old Dragon corrected Andre’s reading of the Sundial Wristwatch and explained that its real market was ordinary people seeking access to power.
• Sun Shicheng realized that the Inquiry Meeting had pulled him into an Association struggle, then accepted a faction leader’s offer and prepared to gamble on his long-awaited opportunity.
• Ji Jue and Lou Feng discussed the Association’s opposition, and Ji Jue admitted he had deliberately exposed a weakness to draw out his rivals.
• Ji Jue learned that Chosen Ones especially valued the sundial’s level display, and sales of the Premium Edition rose as users began showing off their ranks.
• Ji Jue told Lou Feng to prepare a paper claiming the Premium Edition resisted mind control and curses, then called Chen Xingzhou to arrange a staged killing to demonstrate it.

Yue Miao survived an ambush by the Corpse Beast and Chaos Transformation brothers, while the Sundial’s protective effects were demonstrated to the Association’s review panel. The panel rated Lou Feng and Ji Jue’s paper A+, but the Inquiry Meeting applications were not withdrawn because Ji Jue refused.

• Chen Xingzhou ordered Yue Miao’s death, and the Corpse Beast and Chaos Transformation brothers attacked Yue Miao’s convoy with corpses, poison, curses, and vengeful spirits.
• Yue Miao shed the poisoned layer of his skin, discovered the brothers’ hiding places, and killed the disguised attackers before his Sundial’s spirituality finally went out.
• Chen Xingzhou placed another order for Sundials as buyers and officials across several cities celebrated their growing success.
• Lou Feng and Ji Jue submitted a paper describing the Sundial’s curse- and mind-control resistance, and Aignu and the review panel tested its effects against multiple curses.
• The review panel unanimously awarded the paper A+, while Hu Jian reluctantly approved it and ordered twelve Workshops to withdraw their Inquiry Meeting applications.
• The Association rejected the withdrawal requests because Ji Jue did not agree.

Ji Jue’s Sundials and protective alchemical accessories became a runaway commercial success, and he launched emergency rescue and lifetime upgrade services that helped fund the King of Flies. After the Artisan Association tried to cancel its Inquiry Meeting, Ji Jue insisted it proceed, and Jiang Tongguang arrived at his office.

• Ji Jue restocked the standard and upgraded Sundials after warning resellers not to manipulate the market, while Chen Xingzhou celebrated Yue Miao’s survival at the hospital.
• Lou Feng’s mass-produced protective accessories filled the stores, where ordinary customers bought them in bulk and shoppers sought scarce Premium and Signature Editions.
• Ji Jue promoted the Signature Edition’s special protections, driving its resale price higher, while Chen Yu Bo learned Coast Technology had made a profit and invested more money back into it.
• Ji Jue launched Coast Technology’s emergency rescue service and permanent upgrade program, using customer equipment and its Spiritual Substance to support the King of Flies.
• Ji Jue refused to let the Association cancel the Inquiry Meeting and insisted it be held, then welcomed Jiang Tongguang when he arrived at the office.

Jiang Tongguang mediated between Ji Jue and Hu Jian, asking Ji Jue to let Hu Jian finish his educational project and promising to deal with any renewed trouble himself. After giving Ji Jue and Lou Feng Gold Ribbons and access to the Transformation Faction’s stock, Jiang Tongguang offered Ji Jue a part-time position in the Excommunication Squad, which Ji Jue eagerly accepted.

• Jiang Tongguang revealed that he had come to discuss the Inquiry Meeting and warned Ji Jue that escalating the dispute with Hu Jian could split the Association.
• Jiang Tongguang explained Hu Jian’s contributions to the Association’s alchemy texts and asked Ji Jue to let him finish the project with dignity.
• Ji Jue agreed to show restraint after Jiang Tongguang promised to handle Hu Jian if he caused trouble again.
• Jiang Tongguang gave Ji Jue and Lou Feng Gold Ribbons and offered Ji Jue a list of the Transformation Faction’s stock.
• Jiang Tongguang offered Ji Jue a part-time position in the Excommunication Squad, and Ji Jue accepted while Lou Feng protested.

Ji Jue joined the Association’s secretive Excommunication Squad while Lou Feng used the Inquiry Meeting as leverage to force fourteen workshops into technology and patent deals. Their joint workshop gained official recognition, but Ji Jue later hit a frustrating bottleneck while working in the Workshop of the Doomsday Train.

• Jiang Tongguang added Ji Jue to the Excommunication Squad’s candidate list and promised him priority deployment if the current investigation progressed.
• Ji Jue gave Lou Feng a list of fourteen workshops to confront over their technology and patents, and Lou Feng began with Yuanjian Workshop.
• Lou Feng secured agreements from twelve workshops over three days, while one negotiated through Kong Qingyan and another went bankrupt before he arrived.
• The Association canceled the Inquiry Meeting, fined both sides fifty points, and listed Ji Jue and Lou Feng’s unnamed joint workshop as a first-class entry in the official Catalog.
• Master Hu withdrew from most Association projects and devoted himself to revising the Eighth Edition of Basic Principles.
• Ji Jue disappeared from public view, then broke down in the Workshop of the Doomsday Train as he repeatedly failed to overcome a bottleneck.

Ji Jue struggled to improve his Juque Engineering design, and Ye Xian told him his lack of experience with failure was holding him back. He tried to make a deliberately flawed creation but still made an excellent sword, then ended up bickering with Ye Chun over snacks and dinner.

• Ji Jue tore up his designs and asked Ye Xian for help understanding why his work fell short.
• Ye Xian explained that Ji Jue had taken too many successful paths and lacked the insight gained from mistakes, then told him to make a thousand defective Alchemical Creations.
• Ji Jue tried to deliberately make a flawed sword in Ye Xian's Workshop, but the Ember Set made it excellent instead.
• Ji Jue complained to Ye Chun that he could not even get a wrong answer right, then fought her over the chips.
• Ji Jue and Ye Chun stopped arguing long enough to decide to use his red packet for fried chicken.

Yan Fei delivered supplies and an arsenal of weapons from Ji Jue to Inayat’s settlement, where they prepared to put captured enemies to work. Meanwhile, Ji Jue kept producing successful Alchemical Creations in his Workshop and complained that his talent left him too few failures.

• Yan Fei met Inayat at the settlement and offered supplies, generators, and help with its needs.
• The convoy’s crates spilled open, revealing enough firearms, explosives, drones, and blood-sacrifice weapons to arm thousands; Inayat tested a blade and saw it cut across the lake.
• Yan Fei joined Inayat’s operation as an apprentice intern and urged him to focus on recruiting talent, while Inayat showed him the chained prisoners in the dungeon.
• Yan Fei explained that the prisoners would be made to face reality and contribute to the world, and the old man mocked the plan as mercy.
• Ji Jue pulled another successful Alchemical Creation from his furnace after more than ten days of experiments and complained about his high success rate.

Ji Jue explored natural success and failure through uncontrolled alchemy, using black flame and Non-Aggression to discover a new way to understand transmutation. His experiments repeatedly damaged furnaces and Coast Technology, and he ended the chapter dragging Lou Feng over to show him a resonant prototype Juque.

• Ji Jue realized that success and failure were both natural outcomes of transformation, and that he needed to understand failure as well as success.
• Ji Jue tried combining black flame with Non-Aggression in a furnace, causing an explosion and earning a reprimand from Isis over the damage and repair costs.
• Ji Jue continued experimenting at Coast Technology, where repeated furnace explosions angered Lou Feng and left the office building damaged.
• Ji Jue began to sense the patterns behind chaotic transmutations and drew a failed but functional prototype Juque from a ruined furnace.
• Ji Jue swung the prototype Juque and amplified material resonance throughout the office building, making Lou Feng rush downstairs to confront him.
• Ji Jue seized Lou Feng and gleefully promised to show him something good.

Ji Jue demonstrated to Lou Feng how he could raise an alchemical creation’s rank through repeated destruction and reconstruction, then spent weeks flooding the market with cheap creations. He joined an Excommunication Squad mission in the Thousand Isles and discovered that its target was Dust and Haze Workshop.

• Ji Jue forged a broken sword whose rank rose from C-level potential to B+ through repeated clashes and reconstruction, leaving Lou Feng stunned and unable to reproduce the technique.
• Ji Jue’s high-volume production drove down Haizhou’s alchemical market prices, and Chen Xingzhou helped distribute the creations across the provinces and the Thousand Isles Empire.
• Ji Jue received a coded invitation bearing Jiang Tongguang’s signature and traveled to an island fishing port, where Captain took him aboard for an Excommunication Squad operation.
• At the briefing, Ji Jue reunited with Yellow Beard and unknowingly sat across from Hu Jian, then learned that the mission target was Dust and Haze Workshop, recently commended by the Association.

Hu Jian submitted to the Association’s disciplinary proceedings and revealed what he knew about Dust and Haze. The Excommunication Squad found the workshop hidden in a sea reflection and forcibly dragged it into reality, beginning its assault.

• The captain ordered Hu Jian to account for his ties to Dust and Haze, and Hu Jian accepted the Association’s control bracelet and answered his questions.
• Hu Jian explained that his knowledge was outdated and recalled that Belzuna had vanished after inviting him to join a breakthrough project six years earlier.
• The captain revealed that the real Dust and Haze workshop had moved two years ago and was concealed within a reflection on the sea.
• The captain and his team prepared to attack, and their fishing boat deployed anchors and chains to pull the hidden workshop out of the reflection.
• Dust and Haze’s defenses emerged as the Association’s countermeasures bound the castle-like workshop and pinned it in place.

Ji Jue and the others broke into Belzuna’s Workshop, but Belzuna activated its defenses and scattered the group. Ji Jue and Yellow Beard fought through the castle toward a hall full of brainless artisan puppets as Isis prepared to attack.

• Hu Jian failed to open the Workshop’s gate, so Ji Jue found its weak point and Yellow Beard shattered it while Ji Jue consumed the gate’s essence.
• The captain confronted Belzuna over his past actions and presented an Absolute Punishment order, while Hu Jian used the Fixed Light Mirror to pin the Workshop in place.
• Belzuna activated the castle’s mirror defenses, splitting the group and flinging Ji Jue and Yellow Beard into a dark corridor.
• Yellow Beard summoned heroic giants with his Circle Realm and cleared the corridor while Ji Jue scavenged the Workshop’s creations.
• Ji Jue and Yellow Beard reached a hall where brainless masked puppets made from missing artisans attacked them.
• Ji Jue called on Isis to subdue the puppets while preserving them, and she unleashed silver radiance across the hall.

Ji Jue and Yellow Beard fought through Dust and Haze Workshop as its Stone-faced Craftsmen escaped his disintegration and the workshop revealed its living, modular nature. Ji Jue struck the transforming stone sphere at its blink destination and seized its face with Disintegration Art.

• Ji Jue flooded the hall with mercury threads, but the Stone-faced Craftsmen abandoned assimilated parts and escaped before they could be disintegrated.
• Despina offered Ji Jue half the haul for helping her pick a lock, but he refused and stayed with Yellow Beard.
• Ji Jue and Yellow Beard battled gargoyles as the workshop shifted, and Ji Jue used Zhanlu and Isis to disrupt its transformations and map its structure.
• A stone sphere assembled from gargoyle fragments transformed rapidly among different blessings and creations, revealing how Dust and Haze Workshop gathered and scattered its modular parts.
• Ji Jue identified the sphere's core, unleashed Zhanlu's Blazing Light, then intercepted it when it blinked away and clamped its stone face in his hand.
• Ji Jue activated Disintegration Art: Scene Tremor against the captured stone face.

Ji Jue reverse-engineered Dust Haze’s inheritance, then tore through the Workshop to reach its core and confront Grandmaster Belzuna. He discovered the Workshop had fused its craftsmen into a sin-corrupted furnace and challenged Belzuna’s claim that they had truly become one.

• Ji Jue used Scene Tremor to fracture the stone sphere, had Isis analyze it, and absorbed the Supreme Goodness Essence while preserving the resulting memories.
• Ji Jue switched to the Rebirth Form and unleashed Three-Phase Alchemy, breaking through the Workshop’s defenses and locating its core.
• Ji Jue blasted through the Workshop and reached a heartlike furnace made from tangled pipelines and stone-faced craftsmen.
• Ji Jue realized the Workshop was trying to overcome Dust Haze’s limitations by forcibly integrating its craftsmen into the tradition.
• Belzuna raged at Ji Jue, who argued that the fused craftsmen were neither truly one nor truly many and suggested Belzuna should commit fully to one approach.

Ji Jue and the others fought Belzuna after his workshop transformed into a calamity beast. Hu Jian resolved to kill his former master to preserve the Dust Haze Lineage, and Ji Jue struck Belzuna as the beast attacked Hu Jian.

• Veterinarian unleashed his monstrous flesh throughout the workshop, while Ji Jue charged his Inheritance Sacrifice and attacked Belzuna’s embedded face.
• Ji Jue carved through the Workshop Core and exposed a refined solution made from processed minerals and disaster beast blood.
• Belzuna’s collapsing workshop transformed into a living calamity beast, and the Captain, Hu Jian, Yellow Beard, and Ji Jue worked together to bind and wound it.
• Hu Jian told Belzuna he would preserve the Dust Haze Lineage but insisted that his former master had to die.
• Belzuna succumbed to madness and lunged at Hu Jian, but Ji Jue knocked Hu Jian aside and raised Pan Ying to strike Belzuna.

Ji Jue and his companions destroyed the Dust and Haze Workshop, completing Absolute Punishment and claiming its Material Repository. As they divided the spoils, Ji Jue chose materials and Blessings for his own project, while Hu Jian quietly added a box of materials to his haul.

• Ji Jue drained the aberrant calamity beast’s blood into Pan Ying, completing the Blood Wrist emblem and revealing the remaining Six Evils as Dead Soul, Wild Hunt, and Devourer of Death.
• Ji Jue used Disintegration Art to destroy the Workshop Beast and the Workshop, then absorbed so much Essence that he nearly lost control.
• The captain declared Absolute Punishment complete, and the dachshund disgorged the Material Repository from its belly.
• Ji Jue opened the Repository with Isis and traded his claim to the crafted items for first choice of its materials and Blessings.
• Ji Jue collected a large haul from the Repository, and Hu Jian silently placed a box of materials on his mechanical mule.

Ji Jue uncovered evidence of a connection between Dust Haze's Workshop and Deepdark, then rebuilt its ruined furnace to awaken its Creation Spirit. The spirit passed Dust Haze's legacy to him before dying, and Ji Jue began reviewing the inheritance as a source of reference for his own research.

• Ji Jue found an insignia and traces of the Eternal Gate in the Workshop ruins, prompting the Captain to identify it with Anvil Elder and seal it away.
• Ji Jue left the island with the salvaged debris and spent several days rebuilding the ruined furnace.
• Ji Jue activated Deus Ex Machina, and the Creation Spirit demonstrated Dust Haze's techniques before entrusting its legacy to him and fading away.
• Isis organized Dust and Haze Workshop's inheritance, and Ji Jue compared its focus on Elevation and Extraction-Transformation with his own Three-Phase Alchemy research.

Ji Jue discovered that Dust Haze’s vast collection of adaptable formulas could complement Isis and the King of Flies, giving his Engineering Alchemy plans a major boost. As Isis began adapting the formulas, Ji Jue immediately proposed scrapping and rebuilding Juque Engineering, prompting her to curse him.

• Ji Jue studied the Dust Haze Tradition and realized its complex fixed patterns could provide a rich source of customizable formulas despite being difficult to master.
• Isis reported that she had adapted six percent of the Dust Haze formulas in one day, with a projected final yield of twelve to fifteen percent unless Fluid Alchemy’s underlying architecture changed.
• Ji Jue revealed that he had acquired Dust Haze to supplement Isis and the King of Flies, and imagined using its formulas to build adaptable Alchemical and Blessed Creations.
• Isis estimated that the preliminary theory could be applied within one to two months, unless Ji Jue started another project.
• Ji Jue suggested scrapping Juque Engineering and starting over, and Isis told him to die along with the project.

Ji Jue passed the Dust Haze Tradition to Hu Jian, who responded by asking him to correct and write a preface for Hu Jian’s major alchemy manuscript. Ji Jue added a preface and new techniques, and Hu Jian expanded the manuscript in turn, setting off an escalating exchange of contributions.

• Ji Jue wondered why Deepdark pursued calamity beasts and asked Isis to watch for related news while he finished organizing the Dust Haze Tradition.
• Ji Jue sent copies of the Dust Haze inheritance to Lou Feng and instructed him to deliver an extra copy to Hu Jian.
• Hu Jian received the inheritance, confirmed it was genuine, and asked Lou Feng to thank Ji Jue and bring him Hu Jian’s draft of the Annual Compilation of the Four Foundational Discussions on Alchemy for corrections and a preface.
• Ji Jue wrote Hu Jian a preface and added six beginner techniques to the Purification section, then sent the manuscript back through Lou Feng.
• Hu Jian added Dust Haze applications and Transformation Faction foundations to the manuscript, prompting Ji Jue to take up his pen and add more.