Chapter 218

Boom!

It was as if, in an instant, the entire building was spinning!

As the central hub supporting the key nodes, the materials used certainly couldn't be skimped on; since it involved the grand plan for Quancheng, they didn't mind the cost, making it almost equivalent to a stripped-down workshop core.

Calling it a fully smart building was no exaggeration at all.

Air, temperature, water and power supply and maintenance, internal environment regulation, and external defense—it had everything, and even things it shouldn't have, it fucking had; it was even equipped with a self-destruct button.

Once activated, it would immediately extract the ubiquitous sin-tainted pollution within Quancheng, then refine and erupt it, flooding the interior; at that point, combined with the explosion, absolutely no living soul would be able to leave.

Facing such strict security, there was Lou Feng's lock-picking, Tong Shan's suppression, Ji Xue's acceleration, the teammates' protection and path-clearing, and Ji Jue's mechanical intervention and Disintegration Art.

And even this crucial ten seconds.

If even one item were missing, they would just be overestimating their abilities and delivering themselves on a platter.

According to Ji Jue's reading, once the hub's alarm sounded, at least four authorities would immediately descend remotely, and at that point, they would have to face the thunderous sweep of the Sin-Tainted Sect.

Upon realizing this, Ji Jue immediately locked down all functions and sequences related to the alarm, even manipulating mercury to drill into it, using Solid Alchemy to literally freeze that part of the functionality.

【Everything is normal, everything is fine, there are absolutely no problems at all.】

【The plan is proceeding in an orderly fashion!】

【Stable and improving!】

Operating the hub with one hand, Ji Jue distracted himself by responding to the inquiries that came every ten minutes or so using the tone customary to artisans from the records, while his other hand operated the mercury transformation...

——Pounding relentlessly at the Deep-Seated Artisan who was supposed to be operating all of this!

Boom!!!

The grenade Ji Jue casually threw exploded with a roar; amidst the erupting power of the gunpowder, the mercury injected into it also burst open, and thousands of strands of fragmented light, like fireworks, shrouded the entire hub.

Another layer of light film emerged with the impact; the artisan retreated a step in a disheveled state but remained unscathed, glaring at Ji Jue with green eyes and cursing incessantly in Imperial language.

Ji Jue didn't hold back, returning the favor in Imperial language.

A middle finger was raised and gestured.

Then, following the movement, the mercury underfoot rolled, and an iron wall in the shape of a middle finger rose from the ground, blocking the incoming bullets. The firelight of the explosion roared and spread, flames raging.

It was also an alchemical bullet.

The power was astonishing.

Even that huge raised middle finger showed a shocking gap, its 【Quality of Gold and Iron】 shaken.

"Radical Change?"

Ji Jue understood instantly.

An artisan from the Empire, Metamorphosis Stage, Sixth Stage; the matrix should be 【Red Anvil】, and the higher-level awakened ability is 'Radical Change,' which can thoroughly stimulate any material reaction process, specializing in weapon forging and quality transformation. With sufficient preparation, his own destructive power is not inferior to other types of Chosen Ones.

After all, any weapon that relies on physical reactions to increase power, as long as it is in the hands of the opponent, will have its power at least doubled after the catalysis of 'Radical Change.'

And the opponent was suffering because of this.

After all, next to the hub, this thing was more important than his life; he didn't dare to throw bombs to engage in mutual destruction, otherwise, even if he survived, he wouldn't have a good end.

He could only pray in his heart that reinforcements would arrive faster, trying hard to stall for time.

Relying on his own defensive equipment, after taking a wave of Ji Jue's output, he was already covered in dust; at this moment, he gritted his teeth and pulled a palm-sized 'toothpick bottle' from his chest, flicking out thin iron needles. Then, in the falling mid-air, the iron needles expanded rapidly, revealing crimson and ice blue, turning into sword blades of various styles and lengths, rising into the air to slash and pierce horizontally and vertically.

For a time, the sound of breaking through the air was incessant, and the sky was filled with whistling sword shadows.

It was as if, in an instant, countless fearless, intangible, and formless sword masters were besieging him with their lives; he wanted to see how long this scar-faced brat in the Invocation Stage could hold out!

Then, his expression changed drastically.

He only saw silver light rolling and rising; the originally unremarkable mercury instantly disintegrated into thousands of countless fine threads, disturbing, entangling, and wrapping around the sword blades one after another. One or two were negligible, ten or a hundred were nothing, a thousand or ten thousand were treated as usual, but after cutting through a thousand or ten thousand, there were still a thousand or ten thousand more. In an instant, under the wrapping of who knows how many layers of restraint, the foremost sword tip was already deeply mired, unable to move forward.

Having reacted, he still wanted to sneer.

The sword-shaped bottle was his proud work; even if he used such an obscure blessing as the Type of Ultimate Resilience to entangle one sword, he still had seventy-one!

Could you find seventy-one blessings of the Type of Ultimate Resilience?

Bang!

In that instant, all the remaining sword blades actually stuttered for a moment, as if wedged into iron and stone—【Quality of Gold and Iron】!

And before the Deep-Seated Artisan could infuse spiritual quality to catalyze destruction, his sneer got stuck in his throat.

——Because the very first sword blade entangled by the Type of Ultimate Resilience had actually lost its connection!

It was as if it had vanished into thin air.

From behind the gaps slashed by the other sword blades, he finally saw that heart-and-soul creation, held in Ji Jue's hand and played with casually!

"Average stuff."

Ji Jue used Disintegration Art to strip away all the spiritual quality composition inside, wiped it into a blank slate, and threw it into the toolbox. The material was not bad; he could rebuild it later.

The Deep-Seated Artisan felt as if he had seen a ghost.

What the fuck was this!

What happened?!

Before he could react, the Quality of Gold and Iron collapsed suddenly, the softness of thousands of threads reappeared, entangling another blade, and then, once again, the connection was lost!

It was gone!

Cold sweat seeped from the Deep-Seated Artisan's forehead, unable to stop.

The chill was bone-deep!

He couldn't grasp it at all, couldn't see it clearly; until now, he couldn't even distinguish the technique this brat used to control that piece of mercury, which was filled with strangeness and oddities everywhere.

If the occasion weren't wrong, he would even want to call a timeout and ask: How the fuck did you do it? How can the Type of Ultimate Resilience and the Quality of Gold and Iron coexist in such ordinary material as mercury?

Ji Jue's smile became increasingly mocking and malicious.

If a magic trick isn't exposed, it's a miracle.

It's like a magician mixing a cup of ice water and a cup of hot water in a glass, and it actually turns into water that is both ice-cold and hot!

In reality, Ji Jue's container had a partition in the middle, keeping each at its own temperature.

Two semi-finished products put together are still two semi-finished products.

They only look like a seamless whole, but in reality, the two are distinct from each other.

Now, in this seemingly complete silver light, there are actually two distinct layers of mercury overlapping. When resilience is needed, he mobilizes the Type of Ultimate Resilience; when hardness is needed, he mobilizes the Quality of Gold and Iron.

The technique of gathering and shaping can keep the two independent during operation, avoiding mutual interference.

It's just that the bonuses from Non-Aggression and Ingenious Craftsmanship make it fast enough, to the point of seamless switching and parallel operation, giving people the illusion of combining softness and hardness, and controlling them at will.

No wonder Young Master Lou was shocked by such a makeshift method.

It was too fucking makeshift, but it was also too effective.

This is a solution that only works for Ji Jue—as for the difficulty of operation, sorry, our mental primacy is like this.

If you're bad, practice more; in other words, as long as you practice enough and practice for a long time, you won't be bad anymore.

It's nothing more than multitasking; it's very simple.

Hmm? Don't you know how?

Bang!

A muffled sound erupted suddenly.

In that instant, the Deep-Seated Artisan's expression changed suddenly, his whole body diffused into a phantom, shattered, turned into flowing light and shot out, and then, crashed into the blockade of the hub, with no way to escape...

After being bounced back, he gathered himself in a disheveled state, fell to the ground, his face pale.

On the back of his neck, there was an extra wound, deep enough to see bone.

The wound was pitch black, completely unable to heal, and blood gushed out continuously.

If it were two points deeper, it would almost have severed his head...

If it weren't for the fact that a precious life-saving creation with preset conditions had self-destructed at the critical moment, he would have already been decapitated.

"Tsk!"

Two voices that were almost overlapping sounded.

Ji Jue sighed that it was indeed an Ember, lacking everything from head to toe, except for equipment; with so many life-saving gadgets, it was truly hard to kill!

And Ji Xue, who had just recovered a bit of state by taking spiritual quality supplements, lowered her head, looked at the bloodstain on the short sword in her hand, and was full of regret.

Unlike the difficulty of synchronizing with others' time, manipulating her own time was much simpler; as long as she was fully focused, a hundredfold acceleration was not a problem.

But now the enemy was on guard, and the next steps would probably be troublesome.

Immediately, more than fifty sword blades rose into the air, besieging her.

Ji Jue's pressure here was greatly reduced; he couldn't even bother to continue looting equipment, so he took out a bell and started shaking it wildly, and in an instant, three bell sounds continued to ring.

The Deep-Seated Artisan's hair stood on end again.

From the ringing of the bone knife, residual spirits gathered, like a physician's distorted evil spirit crawling out from the blood, its hands and ten fingers as sharp as knives, coming and going without a trace, ignoring all physical interference, constantly drilling out from between the walls and the floor, like a bone-attached maggot, harassing and attacking fiercely.

Then, a hardened mercury bead in Ji Jue's pocket fell into the mercury, and instantly an empty armor rose, waving four arms, hard-carrying the slashes of the sword blades, and charging over.

Not only that, Ji Jue's hand was still continuously pulling a handful of beads from his pocket and throwing them into the mercury, and immediately one rough mercury spider after another crawled out from inside, a dense mass surging toward the disheveled Deep-Seated Artisan.

Simply overwhelming!

In an instant, the original one-on-one fight turned into a gang fight, and the one being ganged up on was himself... Amidst the perilous siege, the reserve of alchemical bullets was being consumed at a speed visible to the naked eye.

He couldn't hesitate any longer.

If this continued...

Amidst an unprecedented sense of crisis, the Deep-Seated Artisan struggled to break free from the torment of being boiled like a frog in warm water, rose up, ignoring the blood-loss wound on his neck and the siege, shouting and roaring silently; on all the whistling sword blades, spiritual quality surged and contracted.

Like a hedgehog, circling and defending against the siege.

Then, he rushed out toward Ji Jue, or rather... the hub behind Ji Jue!

Now that things have come to this, with no reinforcements from outside the hub arriving, this stronghold will probably not survive; if that's the case, he might as well damage the hub, and when the other side discovers the abnormality, thunderous fury will naturally arrive in an instant!

Ji Jue raised his pistol expressionlessly, the exaggerated caliber aimed at his face, and pulled the trigger. The bullets whistled, hitting the defensive light film one after another, and bounced off.

Right under his feet, mercury kept rising, accurately intercepting the bullets and blades from the Deep-Seated Artisan, entangling them.

Just like this, blocking in front of the hub, without retreating at all.

It was like a duel with no way out.

The distance between the two was constantly closing, step by step, almost seeing the anger and coldness in each other's pupils, distinguishing the bloodshot eyes spreading silently within.

Amidst the roar, another bullet bounced off in front of the Deep-Seated Artisan.

He stared fixedly at Ji Jue.

Ten meters? At this distance, you still dare to block in front?

Then go to hell!

But instantly, his body shook violently, and a piercing pain came from his back, the chill spreading.

The defense on his back had actually been broken!

——Sniper!

Just in that instant, under Ji Jue's guidance, he had put all his defenses in front. When his back was at its weakest, a bullet that had shot in from outside the bank hit the center of his back!

It instantly broke through layers of floor slabs and walls, pierced through six layers of obstacles, broke through the obstruction of repulsive force, and drove straight in!

The alchemical bullet meticulously crafted by Lou Feng with Good Craftsmanship and Furnace, after the quality transformation of infusing spiritual quality shaping, naturally had power that went without saying.

The bullet hit the target instantly, and then, spread a chilling cold, almost freezing him into an icicle instantly.

Regrettably, besides the repulsive force field, the Deep-Seated Artisan actually had a layer of close-fitting protective soft armor, covering his upper body and protecting his vital points.

It's over!

The Deep-Seated Artisan grinned silently; it wasn't just Ji Jue who was calculating, and he wasn't the only one who knew how—at this distance, the sword blades under Radical Change were already enough to break through the defense of the Quality of Gold and Iron and damage the hub.

No, it was even enough to blow the opponent into smithereens.

Go to hell!

And before he died, his last thought was—just now, what exactly happened?

Without any warning, all the alchemical swords and blades soaring in the air instantly lost their power, clattered to the ground, and fell into the pool of blood along with their fallen masters.

No more sound.

Even Ji Xue was stunned on the spot, sluggish, hesitating, suspecting this was some trick of the opponent, gazing from afar at that body that was gradually losing its temperature, unable to understand.

"What exactly is going on?"

"Yeah, what exactly is going on?"

Ji Jue lowered his eyes and sighed, overlooking the pool of blood spreading to his feet, not intending to explain.

Behind the corpse that had fallen backward, the spiritual quality hand dissipated silently, as if it had never appeared.

Artisans are hard to kill.

An artisan who is prepared and on guard is even harder to kill.

Too much equipment, too much defense; who knows how many life-saving gadgets he had hanging on his body.

But artisans are also easy to die, because once their weakness is caught, there is no possibility of a comeback...

The moment the repulsive force field was broken by Lou Feng's bullet, along with the bullet breaking through the defense, there was also Ji Jue's third spiritual quality hand, which could gather and disperse at will and come and go without a trace.

The spiritual quality hand, possessing all the characteristics of Non-Aggression, instantly pierced into the wound Ji Xue had left on the opponent's neck, its index and middle fingers closing, pinching onto the opponent's carotid artery.

Solidifying blood, disrupting spiritual quality, interfering with blessings, wounding the soul; in an instant, after a series of smooth operations, seizing the opponent's weakest moment, Disintegration Art, activate!

Disintegrate matrix!

Finally, the force applied at close range directly shattered the opponent's brain into a mass of tofu!

After such a set of operations, let alone how thoroughly a Metamorphosis Stage artisan would die. In the same situation, even if it were Tong Shan, he would still be hard-controlled, then stabbed by the Compassionate Bone Knife, and left to be slaughtered—provided that Ji Jue hadn't been crushed into a uniform meat paste by telekinesis before that.

Only until now did Ji Jue finally let out a sigh of relief.

Seize the time to loot spiritual quality... process the materials!

Can't let it go to waste...

In terms of ability, the opponent was really not weak.

At least he was much stronger than those miscellaneous goods like Du Deng who were sent away so as not to be an eyesore.

Unfortunately, it was still not enough.

Who let Ji Jue be best at fighting his own kind?

What peers are best at is dealing with peers.

Not to mention other messy creations and works, and without relying on the sometimes-working, sometimes-not Blade of Reform, just with the Disintegration Art, he could steadily defeat those of the same stage; even when facing an opponent a major stage higher than himself, he was still enough to be a serious threat.

What's more, with the Non-Aggression matrix in hand, it's just like having a workshop with him; he has the opportunity to adapt to local conditions and target weaknesses when facing any opponent.

From the moment the Disintegration Art shattered the first sword, Ji Jue already knew the techniques, style, and changes the opponent was good at.

It wasn't that there weren't safer and more convenient methods just now; he could even have dragged it out until Little Niu Ma arrived to support, and then solved the opponent head-on in one go.

However, the offensive and defensive positions had changed; after the opponent decided to break the pot, it was he who had to prioritize protecting the hub.

Can't let the Sin-Tainted Sect discover that the people here had changed.

Otherwise, they would probably be wiped out in one go.

"Next, I can finally breathe a sigh of relief."

After finishing his work, Ji Jue pulled over a chair and finally sat down.

Viscous blood dripped from his fingertips, falling into the scarlet pool at his feet. The sound of water droplets in this silence set off the turmoil outside, making it appear even more peaceful.

But it didn't take long before he and Ji Xue couldn't help but change their expressions simultaneously.

An unmasked, violent aura appeared from outside the hub, rapidly closing in.

Crashing through the gate.

"I'm fucking grassed, where did the Sin-Tainted Sect pick up these retarded things?"

A restless voice sounded from the disturbed dust, full of displeasure: "In the time it took me to take a shit, how come it's almost been killed by someone?

Where's the artisan? Is the artisan still alive? Make a sound?!"

No one responded.

"I'm hanging—"

When the supporter saw the corpse in the room, he couldn't help but curse again.

Or, more accurately, when he saw the appearance of the intruder...

In the brief dead silence, only Ji Jue's eyebrows slowly raised, looking over; in the silence, his expression gradually became strange.

The intruding supporter was also silent.

The two gazed at each other, silent.

"Shi Misi!!!"

From the direction of the underground vault, an angry voice came, shouting, urging.

It was the priest who was struggling and unable to sustain himself under Tong Shan's suppression and fierce attack, roaring in grief and anger: "Shi Misi, Shi Misi, you son of a bitch, what the hell are you doing!"

'Shi Misi' didn't speak.

Ji Jue didn't speak either.

Looking at him.

In the curling smoke and dust, that familiar face, the so-called 'Shi Misi'.

"Long time no see, Old Tang."

Ji Jue greeted, "Did you run to Quancheng to pick up a job again?"