Chapter 286: The Easy Targets and the Hand

Everything that had happened so far and everything that followed had gone completely beyond everyone’s expectations!

Ji Jue had made no preparations, offered no resistance, and hadn’t even tried to do anything before it was too late. In a matter of seconds, under the combined assault of more than eight workshops, the entire workshop carved into the mountain had been smashed to pieces along with the mountain itself!

It was unbelievable, yet somehow perfectly logical. What else could have happened? What other outcome could there possibly have been?

Concord Workshop had deployed the Kunwu Lock[1] at full strength, drawing upon the power of heaven and earth to seal off the inside from the outside. The Earth-Axis Instrument of Five Flora had rooted itself deep within the earth’s ley lines, summoning an endless torrent of magma that burst through the crust in towering eruptions.

Within Dragonheart Workshop, many knots came undone, unleashing boundless winds of decay, while from Seven Rivers Workshop came a thunderous clamor like the heavens shifting as the Ruins Path manifested, calling down an endless barrage of meteors.

Everyone had acted with almost uncanny coordination. No one held anything back. They went all out, pushing everything from crowd control to raw firepower to the absolute limit.

On top of that, craftsmen of the Ember Path were practically taught from the cradle how to demolish other people’s workshops. They knew how to counter their peers from every possible angle and hit them where it hurt most.

Forget Ji Jue. Even ten of him wouldn’t have stood a chance. And if he somehow survived, once his workshop had been blown apart, what could a Chosen One with nothing left but his powered armor possibly accomplish in a battle this chaotic?

That was how it should have gone. Or rather, that was abso-fucking-lutely how it should have gone!

The instant the detection sequences confirmed the complete collapse of Ji Jue’s workshop, everyone let out a breath of relief. But before they could even draw their next breath, it nearly caught in their throats.

A deep rumble came from beneath the Ninefold Earth. Vast torrents of silver light surged upward, spreading in every direction. Vaporized mercury blasted out from the shattered mountain like a storm. It was almost like the slow exhale of some monster finally freed from its restraints.

Booming tremors rolled through the mountain. From under the scorched debris, shattered rock, and twisted remains of the framework, an enormous hand slowly pushed its way out of the ground. Then came a second, a third, and a fourth.

Colossal hands formed from endlessly shifting mercury rose from the scorched earth toward the sky. Their fingers spread wide like branches growing from massive trees. Countless corpses of evil creatures hung from them like heavy, ripened fruit. When the wind swept past, those grisly fruits swayed gently. Blood as thick as syrup dripped from them, while the cloying stench of decay seemed almost unreal as it spread beneath everyone’s noses.

Suddenly, horrifying wails and screams swept across the island.

Inside Dragonheart Workshop, Lin Ke broke out in a cold sweat. “What the hell is that?!”

Years upon years of studying and mastering Knotbinding Hexcraft had long since made Lin Ke intimately familiar with curses and vicious forms of spirit matter. Yet at that moment, it felt as though a torrent of despair was unleashed.

Spirit matter steeped in despair, so dense that it had nearly congealed into pure darkness, surged skyward like a tidal wave. It rolled in vast torrents, swallowing almost everything in its path.

As the giant hands swayed in the wind and their fingers curled, the unprocessed evil creatures caught in their grasp were crushed like fruit in a hydraulic press. Their blood, bone, and soul were all drained away, leaving only shriveled husks. They dropped from the branches, fell onto the scorched earth, and broke into pieces, utterly devoid of value.

Before everyone’s eyes, Ji Jue had drained every last bit of his spirit matter reserves in one go!

A horrifying heartbeat began to throb from beneath the Ninefold Earth. Endless streams of corrupted spirit matter flowed across the mercury like black and crimson veins, dispersing it in a flash. The contamination was so terrifying that it could have transformed the entire island into a hellscape in moments, yet it could not alter the fundamental nature of those giant hands in the slightest.

This was where Ji Jue’s unmatched mastery of Purification through Fluid Alchemy truly shone. Back during the endless cycles of the rift realm, even more than five hundred years of gradual erosion and contamination from the Putrefied Furnace had failed to alter the essence of the sage. These impure, chaotic evil creatures were nothing by comparison!

Now, the giant hands intertwined. Having shed their former shells, they cast an enormous shadow across the land, blotting out the sky. Innumerable palms gathered, contracting and expanding like a vortex. Their shapes shifted and flowed, never settling into a fixed form for even a second.

With another deafening howl, the heavens shifted once again. Blazing streaks reappeared high above the dome of the sky, while dozens of brilliant meteors plunged toward the earth once more, all locking onto the Myriad Hands Form.

But those meteors never even had the chance to land. The moment they appeared, enormous hands reached toward the sky. Their fingers spread wide, then closed around the falling meteors with effortless ease, as though plucking fruit from a branch. Their wrists twisted. Each hand gripped a meteor hotter than molten rock and flame, then hurled it straight down at the workshops nearby!

Explosions occurred as scorching shockwaves swept the area. The workshops’ defenses were smashed in an instant, torn open as easily as the wrapper on a snack.

Then the giant hands reached inside without mercy. They rummaged, picked through, and stripped everything they could find. They seized the cores in their palms, then ripped them free like pulling radishes from the ground, dragging all the shattered spirit circuits out along with them. Furnaces, spirit matter reserves, defensive systems, weapons, armaments, and even puppets were all torn out.

As the massive fingers tightened, explosions followed in quick succession. Vast quantities of spirit matter burst from the shattered furnaces, only to be ravenously devoured by the giant hands without leaving a trace.

Only one raised hand remained clenched around something else. From within it came a craftsman’s wails and screams, echoing across the entire world. A wet squelch followed, and blood sprayed between the fingers.

Less than half a minute had passed since the real battle began, and the first contestant had already been eliminated by Ji Jue’s hand. And now, displayed before every remaining contestant, was Ji Jue’s ultimate creation!

“Who says a workshop can’t be armor?”

At the heart of the swirling mass of silver hands, two enormous hands rose slowly, their fingers interlocked. They parted to reveal a sinister seat resembling a cockpit, and the craftsman seated upon it.

Living mercury had burrowed into every part of Ji Jue’s body like tree roots. It took over his heart, organs, and blood vessels, connecting him directly to the entire workshop.

Like a sacrificial offering, everything he had, including his life, his spirit matter, even his soul, had merged with the workshop itself! He had transformed his workshop into an extension of his hands, bringing everything within sight under his control.

To accomplish this, he had spent every last one of his points and completely abandoned all the auxiliary facilities and creations he had built over the course of the exam. Even Assault Horsey had been fully dismantled and recycled.

Taking the structure of Mercury’s former workshop as his reference, Ji Jue had rebuilt its framework around the structure of the Sage’s Remnant Shadow. Then, using Fluid Alchemy and Solid Alchemy as its backbone, he had recreated a mere fraction, or more precisely, one ten-thousandth of that magnificent power at its absolute pinnacle!

Even that tiny fraction was enough to decide the outcome of this entire battle in a single stroke.

“You didn’t actually think I was buying time to charge something up, did you?” Ji Jue sighed softly and extended his hand once more. “Sorry. I just made that up to mess with you.”

The true creation had already been completed before the battle even began!

As soon as Ji Jue moved, one of the many hands shot forward, plunging deep into the battered, hole-riddled mountain. Its fingers closed around the workshop’s main support shaft, which had been rooted deep beneath the rock and soil.

As grinding metal shrieked across heaven and earth, the load-bearing pillar, which was hundreds of meters long, was ripped out by the roots, sending clouds of dust billowing into the air. Dozens of hands seized it at once and forcibly straightened the bent shaft.

Then they raised it like a colossal club, lifting it high overhead. Mercury surged along its length, wrapping around it layer by layer before rapidly hardening. Spirit circuits shifted and reconfigured, transforming the shaft into a blood-red double-edged blade.

One edge gleamed with a brilliant scarlet radiance, while the other flickered like a shadow, elusive and almost impossible to track. As blessings circulated through it, the ferocious aura of Ex-Wife and Stepmother manifested once more.

Then the blade came down toward another workshop!

A gray-black wind of decay howled toward him, slipping through every opening and engulfing the Myriad Hands Form. Wherever it passed, the silver radiance rapidly dimmed, corroded, and lost its physical properties.

Inside Dragonheart Workshop, Lin Ke’s face had gone deathly pale. He was already giving it everything he had.

In one breath, he released more than sixty Knotbinding Hexcrafts at once. Various curses, each transformed from the spirits of evil creatures, took shape and converged into a terrifying tide of decay. It was as though millions of years passed in a single second, aging everything caught in its path.

Yet even that decay failed to shake the outline of the Myriad Hands Form. For a brief moment, its surface dimmed and rust bloomed across it. Then the flowing silver light swept through, renewing everything in the snap of one’s fingers!

It was as though the passage of time were tempering the mercury. If anything, the corrosion and pressure from the wind of decay only drove Fluid Alchemy’s refinement even further.

Under the relentless erosion and pressure, the mercury, already refined to an extraordinary degree of purity, was purified yet again. Rust and dust sloughed away in an instant, along with the remaining traces of aberration contamination. Its overall mass shrank by only the slightest amount, yet the brilliant light blazing from it became even more intense!

Inside Five Flora Workshop, the enormous Earth-Axis Instrument ran at full power, manipulating the earth. Its craftsman intended to tear open a massive fissure with an earthquake, bury the gigantic construct beneath the earth, and crush it to pieces.

But before the first tremor could even spread, a single hand slowly extended from the hovering vortex of countless palms and pressed against the ground. With the lightest touch, a force even more violent than an earthquake followed.

The earth groaned, and a tremendous shockwave spread in every direction, whipping up yet another storm. Before the ground could even begin to shift, the sheer force of the impact disrupted the earthquake.

Inside Five Flora Workshop, the Earth-Axis Instrument let out a mournful wail. Its intricate structure, formed from numerous interlocking copper rings, warped. And throughout it all, the sound of shattering continued to echo through the air.

The suppression of the Kunwu Lock was torn apart layer by layer by the many outstretched hands. It simply could not restrain the movements of such a massive construct!

Thus, everyone could do nothing but watch as the colossal sword swept in a wide arc across the sky, heading straight for another workshop. It was as if Absolute Judgement had descended from above!

Boom!

With irresistible power, the sword smashed through all layers of defense and force fields in the air and plunged straight through the roof. From the vortex of myriad hands, multiple arms extended forward. Fingers spread wide, then clamped down around the sword’s hilt and blade. Then, as casually as if turning a valve, they twisted it.

A torrent of spirit matter erupted from the victim’s workshop along with flames and billowing smoke. Blood-red mercury flowed along the blade and plunged into the workshop like a straw, rapidly sucking every last bit of its spirit matter reserves dry. Only when the ruined workshop let out the awkward hollow gurgle of an empty milk carton did the blade slowly pull free.

And then, just as one might crush an empty carton, the giant hand clenched into a fist and beat the workshop to a pulp without mercy. Fragments and flames burst alongside the contestant’s final screams and wails.

That was the second one down!

The Myriad Hands Form braced itself against the colossal sword and slowly turned around as though glancing back over its shoulder. Every remaining contestant felt a chill run straight through them.

Ji Jue’s regretful sigh echoed across heaven and earth. “What a hassle. They say you should always pick on the easiest target, but you all look equally easy to me. So how about this—”

Amid earthshaking tremors, the scarlet greatsword was pulled free once more. Ji Jue swung it around, sweeping the blade before everyone as he issued one final invitation.

“Clock Tower, Dragonheart, Five Flora, Seven Rivers, Concord, Silverflow, Nine Seals, Mirage. Well, since you’re all already here anyway...” Ji Jue looked down upon all of them. Behind him, countless hands spread open like a blooming lotus. “Why don’t you all come at me together?!”

1. In Chinese mythology, Kunwu (昆吾) is recorded as the legendary inventor of pottery manufacturing and ceramics. According to ancient texts like the Lüshi Chunqiu, he was a descendant of the emperor Zhuanxu and lived during the Xia Dynasty. ☜