Chapter 290: The Childhood Sweetheart Loses to the New Arrival

Above Leafway Island, at an altitude of 10,241 meters, high in the stratosphere, Ji Jue stood above the heavens, looking down upon everything below. Dark clouds surged like a tide far below, rolling endlessly past beneath their feet. Above, the sky was pitch-black, with the vast darkness of space stretching beyond it.

“This altitude...” Ji Jue sighed. “No matter how many times I see it, the view never gets old.”

“Blargh!”

A horrifying retching sound came from beside him.

It was Lou Feng. He had already collapsed onto the hardened mercury under his feet, blood pouring from every orifice as he vomited violently. Capillaries all over his body had ruptured, and blood streamed from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.

In just a few short seconds, they had gone from ground level straight into the stratosphere. Unlike Ji Jue, Lou Feng had not merged completely with the Myriad Hands Form. On top of that, he still had to mobilize his remaining spirit matter reserves to keep up with Ji Jue’s relentless consumption.

Now he lay sprawled across the hardened mercury, his entire body convulsing. His lips, frothing with bloody foam, moved with great difficulty.

Unfortunately, the air was so thin that Ji Jue could not hear a single word of what was surely Lou Feng’s heartfelt praise. What a shame!

“Ah, sorry. I forgot.”

Ji Jue waved a hand. Fluid mercury immediately wrapped around Lou Feng, pierced his body, took over the function of his internal organs, and stabilized his basic vital functions.

Lou Feng rolled his eyes. He could no longer speak.

Forget talking, Lou Feng barely had any intact alveoli left. The only reason he had not suffered a cerebral hemorrhage was that Ji Jue had released the pressure quickly enough and forcibly stabilized his blood pressure through the crudest form of artificial intervention, which, incidentally, was much like the way Ji Jue had gotten them up here in the first place—by pure brute force!

By using Molten Forge, a blessing of Ember, to increase the furnace’s output, he had forcibly converted an enormous amount of spirit matter within a short period. After vaporizing half of the Myriad Hands Form, he used the resulting torrents of high-pressure steam to literally blast himself into the sky!

At the same time, he had used the Origin-type blessing Gravity Lock to eliminate the effects of gravity, keeping himself suspended more than ten kilometers above the ground in the stratosphere. One of those blessings was normally used to boost efficiency when processing materials and stripping away impurities, while the other was meant to eliminate gravitational interference and hold a target at a fixed altitude. Both were absurdly niche blessings.

In other words, that bastard had planned this from the very beginning!

What was happening now was almost exactly like the scenarios Ji Jue and Andrei had tested in the earlier simulations. One was on the ground blowing apart the earth’s ley lines, and the other had launched himself into the sky by sheer force.

As Lou Feng thought about what was unfolding before him, a chill ran through his entire body. Back when everyone else had still been floundering around in the mud, had those two already been planning this far ahead?

Ji Jue shook his head and sighed. “What a shame. We were still one step too slow. We’re still missing quite a few materials.”

If he had been given just a little more time to prepare, none of this would have been necessary. Before the duel even started, he could have simply launched his entire workshop straight into the stratosphere. At that point, what would there even be left to fight? If he had the high ground, he could rain attacks down on the idiots below at will.

At such a terrifying altitude, far beyond the reach of ordinary creations, height alone was a decisive advantage. Even simply throwing garbage down from up here could kill someone!

Now, Ji Jue no longer had any reason to pretend he had morals. He raised a finger. “Time for some aerial littering.”

The myriad hands spread open like a blooming lotus. Countless streams of mercury and spirit matter crystals intertwined and reconstructed themselves, forming razor-sharp, hiltless blades in their palms.

It did not matter that he could no longer use Pacifier for bare-handed alchemy. As long as he carried his workshop with him, he could do whatever he wanted wherever he went!

Blood-red radiance flowed across the blades. As the saying went, “The childhood sweetheart always loses to the new girl.”

At Ji Jue’s command, the myriad hands released their grip, and a crimson downpour spewed from the heavens. Numerous Ex-Wives and Stepmothers came crashing down from the sky. There was no need for preparation or charging whatsoever. Gravity alone was enough. With more than ten kilometers of distance, the fall itself became the most terrifying form of acceleration.

The battered and ravaged earth shook violently once more. There was simply no way to defend against it!

Within the myriad hands, blood blades were reconstructed without end and released in wave after wave. The barrage from above showed no sign of stopping. As streak after streak of crimson pierced the earth, scarlet blossoms bloomed across the ground.

Even if the blood blades missed their targets, it hardly mattered. The moment they struck the ground, they exploded, scattering countless fragments along with the aberration contamination Ji Jue had violently extracted from the atmosphere high above.

The dark clouds surging around him were the perfect source material. Those dense clouds that had spawned countless rounds of black rain contained such abundant aberration that with only a little processing, Ji Jue could extract an enormous amount of aberration from them, far more than he could ever hope to use up.

In the blink of an eye, cracks appeared across the remaining workshops under the torrential barrage of blood blades, leaving them on the verge of collapse. But then projections of dragon scales appeared over the workshops, shielding Andrei’s so-called “allies” within and trapping them there at the same time.

“Andrei, what are you doing?!” the Imperial trueblood asked furiously.

The only response she received was, “Stay out of the way.”

A bell rang out, its chime echoing across the island. Suddenly, columns of dust rose from the ground. Swept up by violent winds, sand and debris spiraled skyward.

In an instant, the formless gale was somehow infused with spirit matter. It stirred as if alive above the earth, spreading until the entire island was engulfed.

Accompanied by a shrieking howl, the storm surged toward the heavens. A silhouette like a giant serpent emerged within it, rising higher and higher as it lunged at Ji Jue. Unfortunately, after climbing only a few thousand meters, it could go no farther. It was still far too short.

The fading outline of the giant serpent was casually blown apart by one of Ji Jue’s blood blades, but a moment later, he sensed something was wrong.

No. That had only been a smokescreen. It was meant to blanket the ground and block Ji Jue’s view while concealing whatever was happening below.

Without warning, the Myriad Hands Construct spread wide. Steam arose from a mass of hands on its left side, propelling the entire construct sideways.

A blinding streak of light missed Ji Jue by a hair. A massive hole tore through the storm. In that fleeting moment, Ji Jue caught sight of an enormous obelisk rising from another workshop below. Then came a second, a third, and a fourth!

One towering obelisk after another rapidly rose from the earth. They drained spirit matter and resources from Andrei’s “allies” and their workshops, converting it all into their own realm before launching a furious assault on Ji Jue more than ten kilometers overhead.

“Wonderful. Just wonderful.”

Impressed, Ji Jue dodged left and right, all while continuously waving his hands and raining another barrage of blood blades down upon the earth, the workshops, and the obelisks below.

Lou Feng rolled his eyes. “What the hell is wonderful about this?! Which part of this looks good to you?”

“The teamwork, of course!” Ji Jue burst out laughing and pointed below. “Look! No matter which side wins, it’ll be a victory for friendship, passion, and the bonds between comrades!”

Lou Feng struggled to gather spirit matter while still vomiting and suffering from diarrhea. Right now, he wanted nothing more than to cough up a mouthful of blood straight into Ji Jue’s face.

Friendship? Bonds? These two bastards were just wringing their “allies” dry, using them like disposable tools, and tossing them aside the moment they had nothing left to give! And he had the nerve to call it passion?!

You two have completely killed whatever passion I had left!

Without looking back, Ji Jue continued weaving and darting through the air. “Sit tight and hold on. I won’t be able to look after you from here on out.”

Time to speed things up!

With a flick of his finger, liquefied mercury wrapped around Lou Feng, secured him in place, and flung him toward the rear.

High above, the myriad hands accelerated abruptly, overlapping until countless fingers emerged from the flowing mercury and layered over one another. Streaks of scarlet shot from their fingertips. This one was no longer a simple bombardment from high altitude. A continuous strand of mercury stretched across the massive distance and dropped all the way to the earth below. It looked like a blade ten kilometres long, connecting heaven and earth instantly.

With a thrust, the blade punched straight through the concealing cloud of dust. Even after crossing ten kilometres, its edge still moved like a flash of lightning, slipping precisely through a gap between the dragon scales and plunging into the workshop.

The blade struck and withdrew in a flash, causing torrents of blood-red light and contamination to erupt from the wound like a geyser.

Boom!

One of the obelisks split cleanly down the middle and collapsed. Additionally, the enormous amount of aberrant spirit matter injected into it had already corrupted and eroded one of its crucial nodes beyond recognition.

However, Andrei seized the opening to attack. A blazing beam shot into the sky and raced straight toward Ji Jue, only to be blocked by a shield of hardened mercury.

A chill ran down Ji Jue’s spine. Thank goodness he hadn’t tried to block that head-on. The moment the detached mercury shield took the beam head-on, it rapidly cracked. It slipped free of his control and fell toward the ground.

The operation of Fluid Alchemy had been interrupted. No, rather, it had been erased! This was not merely a matter of separating physical matter from spirit matter. There was some even stranger effect hidden behind it, and it was a threat every bit as terrifying as Professor Ye’s Dissociation Technique.

Realization struck Ji Jue. It’s more like... regression?!

The processing and effects he had applied to his materials were being rolled back under his opponent’s interference, returning them to their original state. It was like rewinding a recording, or more accurately, like hitting “undo” in a document!

No matter how complex a creation was, under Andrei’s interference, every modification and refinement imposed upon it afterward would be stripped away, forcing it back to its fundamental state. In the case of the Myriad Hands Form, that meant the mercury controlled through Fluid Alchemy was being completely reverted, returning to nothing more than the purified mercury it had originally been.

Another question popped up in Ji Jue’s mind. With such a terrifying effect, how did Andrei prevent it from affecting himself? It was just like that age-old problem in alchemy: if you really did create a solvent capable of dissolving anything, what could you possibly use to contain it?

Unless...

Andrei had already shown him the answer in the technique he had demonstrated earlier—Stasis. These were two entirely different spirit matter techniques and applications. First, he used Stasis to keep himself fixed and unchanged, then he applied Regression to force his opponent’s creations back to their original state.

The way those two techniques complemented each other suggested that, just as Ji Jue had imitated Pacifier and Mercury’s workshop, they could originate from Andrei’s matrix and ability. It was stasis against motion, and regression against dissociation. At that moment, two utterly different legacies and techniques collided head-on!

“Now this is getting interesting.” Ji Jue smiled and reached out once more. “It’s not often I get a chance this good... so let’s try this!”

Once again, memories of the past surfaced in his mind.

Back in the darkness of the hospital, the Sage’s Remnant Shadow had risen before him as an invisible sword took shape under the grasp and control of countless hands. It had been one of the profound transformations that Sage Mercury’s spirit had once revealed to her successor.

Pacifier, Universal Harmony, Universal Love, Heaven’s Will, Spirit Insight—countless traces of divine essence and transformations far beyond Ji Jue’s reach had flowed across that blade and manifested before him. Even now, he could scarcely understand or master the smallest fraction of them.

Another memory surfaced. He recalled the feeling he had experienced back in Spring City, when everything had fallen under his control through Total Network Control.

As the two experiences overlapped, a vague sense of understanding dawned on him. He could not tell whether it was right or wrong, nor what he could gain or lose from it.

Under the pressure of reality, all those tangled thoughts and fleeting insights vanished from his mind. A faint, almost illusory afterimage appeared before his eyes.

The silver radiance of Reformation rose from Ember’s flame!

Maybe...

Perhaps...

Possibly...

Surely...

This is it!