Chapter 262.1: Hello

Ji Jue turned around in confusion. “Was that a dog barking?”

Through the iron door, the sound was faint and muffled, too indistinct to make out clearly. He almost wondered if he had imagined it.

By all rights, the person who had assigned him the repair job was effectively part of the examination staff. So why was the guy outside screaming like he’d just seen a ghost? Had Jian Yuan finally mastered some terrifying new technique and led the forces of the Depths in an invasion? If so, did Ji Jue still have time to change his identity, sew a black banner overnight, and pretend he’d been eagerly awaiting their glorious arrival all along?

Boom!!!

The earth heaved, curling like a rolled carpet. The ceiling of the basement cracked, showering dust down from above.

Beyond the narrow window, something like a bolt of lightning tore across the sky. A momentary flash illuminated an enormous silhouette behind the dense curtain of rain. It resembled some grotesque giant insect crawling atop the clouds, its limbs writhing and spreading as they descended toward the earth, scattering black rain in their wake.

Amid the pitch-black downpour, shrill noises rang out without pause. A deafening, high-frequency alarm began beeping inside the room. On a dust-covered detector mounted nearby, the readings shot upward like a rocket, saying, Warning: aberration levels rising.

Ji Jue didn’t even need the instrument to tell him something was wrong. His body had already begun reacting violently to the contamination.

Even though Ji Jue was certain that everything before him was an illusion, everything he saw, touched, and even felt through his soul and sense of self seemed completely real. The early symptoms of aberration contamination were already setting in, such as dizziness, shortness of breath, and an accelerated heartbeat.

Soon, a faint stinging sensation spread across his skin. Drowsiness followed, his reactions slowed down, and strange voices started whispering in his ears. If he let this continue, the next stage would bring severe symptoms such as delirium, hallucinations, and psychosis.

The workshop’s spirit matter seal had sprung a leak, allowing the aberration contamination outside to seep in and spread. He had to act immediately. Now Ji Jue finally understood why they had given him so many gray tiles!

Ignoring the screams and wails outside the door, he moved quickly. Flawless Craft and Pacifier were unavailable, but no one could take away the instincts, experience, and practical skill he had already built up.

Without hesitation, Ji Jue pulled on the protective suit he had yet to finish repairing. He cobbled together components from two different suits, barely managing to seal himself inside, then patched and reinforced the joints and other vulnerable areas with material-reinforced tape. After that, he grabbed the gray tiles that had just come out of the furnace, still hot to the touch, and rushed toward the narrow window.

The nail gun jammed almost immediately, so he tossed it aside, grabbed a hammer and nails, and used planks salvaged from the dismantled wooden crates to board up the window. Then he reinforced it with gray tiles before grinding the remaining fragments into powder to pack into the smaller gaps.

He was far too familiar with this sort of work. Ji Jue had never imagined that his masonry skills would actually come in handy during the Ember craftsman examination.

Once the window was sealed, he patched the ceiling, filled every crack and gap in the walls, then hurriedly began dismantling the pile of scrap equipment, sorting through it for anything useful.

Throughout the entire process, the screaming outside the door never stopped. It grew closer and closer.

Finally, someone seemed to collapse against the door and began pounding on it desperately. “Help! Help me! Hel—”

“Coming, coming! I’m almost done! Just a second! I’m nearly there. Just hang on a little longer...”

Ji Jue gave halfhearted replies to the voices outside, unable to tell whether they were hallucinations or real. Meanwhile, he filled the fuel tank at his feet with diesel, yanked hard on the starter, and the generator sputtered to life, belching thick smoke.

“Hold on! I’ll open the door for you right now!”

Dragging a long cable and several iron bars behind him, he made his way over to the door. He wiped the sweat from his brow. Then, with endless patience and gentleness, he soothed the person begging for help outside. With a completely expressionless face, he picked up the welding torch and stepped on the pedal.

A searing jet of spirit matter surged from the furnace, raced through the alloy hose, and burst from the torch like a blade. The aluminum-powder flux Ji Jue had spread over the iron bars melted instantly, welding the gaps around the door shut. Then he added iron bar after iron bar across the entrance, crisscrossing them to reinforce the structure.

Outside, the person calling for help seemed to hear the faint sounds of what he was doing. Their patience finally snapped. They shrieked and sobbed as they demanded, “What the hell are you doing?! I’m your teacher! I-I-I’m—”

“Sorry, who are you? Never heard of you.” Ji Jue took a step back and admired his handiwork. “I don’t have a teacher who doesn’t even know the association’s emergency regulations. Once an emergency occurs, the workshop is to be sealed, and the doors must remain closed until the crisis has passed. The rules are posted right there on the wall. Don’t tell me you’ve never read them?”

“You lied to me! You lied to me! You lied to me!!!” A vicious shriek rang out from behind the door. The sobbing and wailing grew increasingly louder, accompanied by that garbled voice.

Suddenly the iron door buckled inward, almost taking on the vague outline of whatever stood on the other side. Something enormous seemed to be hurling itself against the entrance again and again. The screech of grinding metal went on without pause, as if the entire iron door could be torn from its frame at any moment.

Unfortunately for whatever was outside, it accomplished nothing. Ji Jue had not merely reinforced the door physically. His other hand remained pressed against it as he continuously drew on his meager reserves of spirit matter, manipulating the material and strengthening its weaker points.

For a while, the sounds outside died away. Heavy footsteps gradually receded into the distance, as though whatever was out there had left in frustration.

Then, without warning, something slammed into the door with all its might. It had apparently been waiting for Ji Jue to lower his guard before making another attempt to break in.

Unfortunately, that attempt was just as futile. During the brief lulls between thunderclaps and the pounding rain, Ji Jue heard a succession of sharp slams from overhead, as though something were moving through the walls and pipes.

The pounding against the door continued. In one of the brief stretches of silence between impacts, Ji Jue heard another sound behind him. It was a noticeable, persistent scratching noise coming from inside the furnace!

Ji Jue was almost amused. “Seriously? You just can’t stand to see me catch a break, can you?”

What kind of stress test was this supposed to be? First came the aberration contamination, then the emergency repairs. After that, some monster tried to trick its way through the door, and now he was getting attacked from both sides?

The faint scratching grew more obvious. Under the relentless corrosion and contamination of the aberration, the battered furnace had finally reached its limit.

The vast amount of debris and ash that had accumulated inside it over the years began to squirm. Slowly, the fragments gathered together and took shape. Nurtured by the flames and spirit matter, something was on the verge of completing its birth and breaking free.

Despite this, Ji Jue ignored the searing heat and pressed his palm against the furnace. He sighed regretfully and told it, “Sorry, buddy. You picked the wrong place to be reborn. You’re not getting out of here.”

His flesh scorched and sizzled against the metal while a horrific wail suddenly erupted from inside the furnace. The aberrant creature, which had been rapidly growing and mutating, froze. It felt something cruel begin to happen within its own body as its mutation came to an abrupt halt. The shell it had condensed around itself contracted inward, caging it. Like iron walls closing in from every direction, it compressed the creature’s internal structure, threatening to crush it completely.

“Solid Alchemy, Lockdown!”

In an instant, Ji Jue sealed the half-formed aberrant creature inside the shell of mutated metal that made up its body. Spirit matter resembling countless hands descended without mercy, correcting and reshaping it by cutting away any excess material, crushing everything that did not fit, and reconstructing the creature from the inside out.

Boom!

The furnace shook violently, and a crack split across its surface.