Chapter 228: Playing Tricks Right Under the Old Man’s Nose

Before the shockwave struck, the entire workshop had been operating in perfect order. Like a wound-up clock, every department had worked together with smooth, methodical precision, but the instant the alarm sounded, all those tightly coordinated parts seemed to come loose. They spun out of control, worked independently, or simply ground to a halt.

The crowd scattered in every direction. People collided and trampled over one another as they rushed toward the doors, quickly clogging every entrance and exit. It wasn’t only the apprentices who were panicking. Even the craftsmen had been thrown into disarray.

The Security Bureau is attacking?

Damn it. This soon?

What are we supposed to do?

Where’s Master Craftsman Jian Yuan?

Where did the Master Craftsman go?

For a time, while the apprentices desperately rushed for the exits, quite a few craftsmen forced their way toward the upper levels instead.

After the initial shock passed, the chaos spread through the workshop like wildfire, made worse by the explosions erupting one after another throughout the building. An elevator plunged down its shaft amid terrified screams. Fuel tanks exploded, and the electrical systems failed. The power went out, and the lights died. Beneath the dim glow of the emergency lighting, every face was stunned and filled with unease.

A craftsman in a black robe burst through the doorway, his face twisted with fury as he took in the chaos in the corridor. “Quiet! Quiet! All of you, be quiet! It’s nothing more than a minor tremor! Everyone return to your stations immediately! Out of my way!”

With a violent shove, he sent a panicked apprentice sprawling across the floor. This was Lian Yun, Jian Yuan’s fourth apprentice. He roared, “Get back to your stations! No one is to cause trouble! Or would you rather have the Master Craftsman come down here and deal with you personally?”

A deathly silence fell over the hall. Everyone froze where they stood.

Under Lian Yun’s icy stare, the managers were the first to step forward, barking orders and shoving their subordinates back to their posts. The crowd soon thinned, and the remaining apprentices gradually dispersed as well.

Once the initial disturbance had passed, nothing else happened. It really had been nothing more than an earthquake.

“What a bunch of useless rabble.” Lian Yun snorted, unable to understand why the Master Craftsman had recruited such a pathetic collection of incompetents.

Even if the Security Bureau had really launched an assault, the workshop was perfectly secure. Not even a Celestial Being could break through its outer defenses. If things truly took an ugly turn, they could tear through space and escape. There was never any real danger.

Only these worthless fools, who could barely do their jobs in the first place, would panic at the slightest disturbance and throw the whole place into chaos. Should they disturb the Master Craftsman, every last one of them would face petrification. Once it was over, they would be thrown out along with their stone limbs.

The disorder along the way worsened Lian Yun’s mood. He spotted an apprentice crouching beneath an access panel around the corner of a corridor, apparently fiddling with something, and his anger flared even higher. “Worthless trash! What do you think you’re doing?”

“Huh? M-me?” The apprentice looked up in alarm, a tool still clutched in his hand. “I-I wasn’t... I mean... the alarm just went off... The workshop’s authentication system was damaged, so I... I was checking where the fault was...”

Lian Yun paused. “Move.”

Impatient, he shoved the apprentice aside, opened the panel himself, activated the circuits, and began inspecting them. The longer he looked, the angrier he became.

“What exactly is broken?” he barked over his shoulder. “Everything looks perfectly fine!”

“Huh?”

The hideously scarred apprentice froze for a moment, then leaned over for a look and reached inside.

Crack!

With a sharp snap beneath his hand, the identification and authentication module embedded in the workshop’s underlying circuitry came apart, dissolving into streaks of light, as though it had never existed at all. The alarm, which had only just fallen silent, immediately began blaring again, louder than before.

The apprentice smiled. “There. Now it’s broken.”

“You...” Lian Yun turned around stiffly, but all he saw on that scarred face was an eerie smile. A chill pierced his back, and blood burst from his wound.

Lian Yun’s spirit matter fell into disarray, his blessings spiraled out of control, and his matrix convulsed. A blade seemingly forged from faint light, neither fully tangible nor entirely illusory, slid into him, passing through his defenses without the slightest resistance.

The moment the blade’s glow pierced him, it spread through him in a rush. The physical blade dissolved into countless invisible particles that flooded every corner of his body, clogging the circulation of his spirit matter, smothering his blessings, and forcing his matrix to grind to a halt.

He opened his mouth, only to vomit a great gush of blood. Convulsions wracked his body as he tried to fight back. The apprentice pulled a bone blade from thin air and drove it straight into Lian Yun’s skull. After that, Lian Yun stopped moving altogether.

“Whew.” Ji Jue wiped the sweat from his brow. Glancing down the corridor and confirming that no one dared approach there, he let out a sigh of relief.

The Radiant Blade was a single-use Blessed Creation supplied by Young Master Lou. They resembled daggers, except that the blade extending from the hilt was translucent and ethereal, like a streak of flowing light.

In reality, they were crystallized constructs born from spirit matter after undergoing a qualitative transformation. Inside it was an Origin blessing called the Veil of Concord[1]. Its original purpose was to reduce conflicts between the other blessings within the body, acting as a buffer to ease the friction between the self and the rules imposed upon it.

After Master Kong’s meticulous modifications, however, it had become an extraordinarily vicious weapon for surprise attacks. The Lou family’s Spirit Morph rendered the dagger’s edge almost intangible, allowing it to slip past the mechanisms of many defensive creations. Once the blade pierced someone, its spirit matter would collapse on its own, carrying the blessing of the Veil of Concord throughout both soul and flesh.

At that point, the victim’s consciousness would come under the blessing’s influence. The boundaries between the ego, superego, id[2], and stray thoughts would rapidly blur until they became indistinguishable. Under several times the normal overload, the soul, body, matrix, and blessings would also lose their individual integrity and be forcibly harmonized and layered over one another.

It was like deleting every delimiter in a database—removing all paragraph breaks, wiping out every annotation and identifier—until everything merged into an unreadable mass, stopped responding, and crashed completely. The victim would then be reduced to an ordinary person, helpless and at the mercy of others.

Of course, someone on the White Deer, Swarm, or Ruins Path could only be slowed for a split second. But if the victim also followed the Ember Path... Now, that would be interesting.

Sure enough, no one wanted a rival dead more than someone of the same path. This really was a vicious weapon, but damn, was it useful. It bypassed defenses, dealt true damage, disabled abilities, and immobilized its target. After using it once, the rush was so addictive that it was hard to stop. Ji Jue had risked his life and worked this hard, surely he deserved to get a few more daggers from Young Master Lou later.

As he watched the craftsman lying on the floor, convulsing and unable to get up, Ji Jue calmly reached down, removed the man’s protective talisman, and pinned it onto himself.

The Pacifier emblem appeared over his hands. Under the craftsman’s despairing gaze, Ji Jue deftly extracted the workshop access credentials attached to the man’s matrix and transplanted them into his own soul.

“Thank you, Mother Nature, for this generous bounty.” Ji Jue pressed his palms together, offering his sincere thanks. Then, smiling, he reached toward the man’s twitching face.

Three minutes remained, which should be more than enough time to harvest the materials.

***

In reality, it was nowhere near enough time.

Ji Jue had expected the workshop to remain chaotic for at least another ten minutes before order could be restored. Yet less than five minutes later, the unrest had already been ruthlessly suppressed. The entire place fell deathly silent, and no one dared wander around anymore.

It was too soon, far too soon. Under Master Craftsman Jian Yuan’s watchful eye, there was hardly any room to pull tricks.

Despite the unexpected attack, the workshop’s emergency procedures remained highly efficient. The situation was stabilized as quickly as possible, after which they began searching for hidden threats.

They found a corpse in the corridor, the mangled mass of flesh so badly ruined that its identity couldn’t even be determined. Everyone gasped in shock.

Cun Ling, who had temporarily assumed control of the workshop, issued an order with a grim expression. “Every department is to inspect its area and verify its personnel roster. Anyone absent from their post or behaving suspiciously is to be detained immediately! Understood?!”

His subordinates nodded frantically. “Yes, sir!”

Among the crowd, Sun Ci, who had just been promoted to supervisor of the scrap heap, looked especially anxious. The more he thought about his assistant’s mysterious movements over the past two days, the more uneasy he became. He could barely keep his expression calm.

After exchanging a few casual words with his colleagues, he hurried back underground and cautiously knocked on the office door. An impatient voice came from inside. “What is it?”

“N-no, it’s nothing.” Sun Ci breathed a sigh of relief and forced a smile. “There’s been a problem in the workshop. They’re carrying out an emergency inspection.”

The door opened, revealing the familiar, ugly face behind it. It looked thoroughly annoyed. “What? Do you need my help?”

“No, no!” Sun Ci shook his head firmly, finally able to put his mind at ease. “I was only worried that you...”

“Worried I was the one behind it?” the scar-faced apprentice sneered. “Relax. I’m not bold enough to pull a stunt right under the Master Craftsman’s nose.”

“Of course not! I’d never think that!” Sun Ci smiled, relaxing. The door slammed shut and nearly struck him in the nose, but he didn’t care in the slightest. The weight on his chest was gone, leaving him completely at ease. Everything was fine. That was all that mattered.

Behind the door, the mercury puppet covered with Aether correction sheets gradually lost the color of its skin and stopped responding. It fell completely silent.

***

Meanwhile, on the third floor, the warehouse inspection and inventory count continued at a feverish pace.

As the outer reserves were gradually accounted for, the bald woman’s expression began to relax. Even the look she cast toward the spacious chair beside her grew noticeably less tense.

“It looks like there’s nothing wrong with the materials or reserves here.” She breathed a sigh of relief as she reviewed the reports that had been compiled for her. “Everything is accounted for. Would you like to inspect them, Mr. Lian?”

“They’re nothing but scrap material. What is there to inspect?” The craftsman, “Lian Yun,” sat with his legs crossed as he waited for the inventory results. He waved a hand indifferently. “If I were the thief, I wouldn’t have broken in for this pile of second-rate junk. Are you certain there’s nothing wrong with the valuable materials in the inner storage?”

“W-well...” The bald woman stiffened, visibly nervous. “The outer seal is intact, but I don’t have the authority to open the inner vault on my own. I only have one of the keys. That’s why they sent me.”

Lian Yun glanced at her and raised a hand. The spirit-matter authorization sequence granted by the workshop appeared above it.

“I have the other key. You still remember the emergency management procedures, don’t you?”

“Yes. Of course.” The bald woman nodded hurriedly and led the way.

In an emergency, opening the valuable materials storage room required two separate verifications, one from warehouse management and another from someone granted special authorization, as well as two keys. The only exception was Master Jian Yuan himself.

Even after the room was opened, at least two people had to remain present at all times, and no materials could be withdrawn, moved, or otherwise altered. She had managed the warehouse for so long that she knew the rules by heart.

Yet the farther they went, the more uneasy she became. She couldn’t explain why. It simply felt as though she had overlooked something. Her mind kept returning to scenes from films where the warehouse staff opened the vault, only to discover that everything inside had vanished.

At last, the innermost door slowly opened. The familiar interior came into view, completely unchanged. She breathed a sigh of relief, though sweat was pouring down her back. Thank goodness. It had only been a false alarm.

“The Level Two valuable materials and the newly delivered high-priority items are all stored here.” She expertly retrieved the inventory list and handed it to the craftsman beside her, but the moment she turned back, a chill swept through her entire body.

“Hmm?” Lian Yun looked at her in confusion, clearly not understanding what was wrong.

The bald woman’s face twitched uncontrollably. “M-Mr. Lian, your... your face... Your face...”

He smiled. And as the smile stretched, a thin line of blood emerged on his forehead and dribbled down. Half of the thin layer of skin peeled away and dropped into the dust. The severed face still held the despair and terror of its owner’s final moments.

“Oh, it’s fine. This one’s new. I didn’t attach it properly.”

“Lian Yun” bent down and picked up the half-face. He pressed it back onto his ruined face, but he did so in the wrong spot. It rested over the half that was still attached, leaving part of it hanging loose. Beside it, the exposed muscle on the other half of his face looked absolutely grotesque.

Under the stark white lights, blood slowly seeped from the torn edges and dripped down, tracing a mocking curve across his face.

The bald woman swallowed nervously. That monstrous face was inches from hers.

Smiling, the man asked, “What was it you were saying about my face?”

1. The blessing’s original name, “和光同尘” is a Chinese idiom meaning to blend into the ordinary world without displaying one’s talents or drawing attention to oneself. I chose “Veil” to convey how the blessing obscured distinctions and blurred the boundaries between separate elements of the self, while “Concord” as it reflected its original function of harmonizing conflicting blessings. This preserved the concept behind the name without relying on a literal rendering that would have sounded awkward or unclear in English. ☜

2. The id, ego, and superego are three parts of the mind in Sigmund Freud's theory of personality. The id is the primal, instinct-driven part, the ego is the rational decision-maker, and the superego is the moral conscience. Together, they work and fight to shape how humans think, feel, and act. ☜