Chapter 236: Dream of Ashes

Imagine, when your back is so itchy that you can't reach it, and you finally find a backscratcher after rummaging through boxes and cabinets, only to find that no matter how you scratch, it doesn't feel right, the more you scratch, the more uncomfortable it gets, the more uncomfortable you get, the more you scratch.

Small itch becomes big itch, until the end, the seven-year itch.

Associated with the tragic reality, dying and living, unable to escape.

Finally, falling to the ground, clutching the backscratcher, tears and snot flowing, regretting the beginning.

The lethality cannot be said to be small, and the intention cannot be said to be not vicious.

And the effect cannot be said to be not useless...

So much so that Jian Yuan, at this very moment, just wanted to ask one question:

How did you do it?

The procedure is all correct, the steps are all correct, the thinking is all correct, but the answer is all wrong!

Clearly used so many materials full of fierce aura, adopted so many techniques to intensify deformity... Why is the degree of evil transformation so shallow and crude?

It should have been a fierce weapon that would take a life even with a slight scratch, but now it has become such a funny thing!

It's as if you had a whim to melt an old necklace to make a bracelet, but before sending it into the furnace, it was 24K gold, and after coming out, why is there only that layer on the outside left?!

Where is the rest?

Did you eat it for me?

"Where is the evil transformation?"

"I have no idea!" Ji Jue glared: "Isn't this just made normally? The theory you taught, the book you gave, your materials, and finally making such a thing, I want to ask you!"

"Don't blame others when things happen, shouldn't you reflect on your own problems?"

Ji Jue's smile gradually dissipated, and in the end, he no longer hid his indifference: "Or, can you be merciful and tell me... what exactly are you teaching me?!"

Jian Yuan didn't answer, just weighed the backscratcher in his hand and sighed with emotion.

—Calculatingly controlling the direction of evil transformation, persistently and seriously adjusting the effect and intensity, and finally, finally just right, turning the work into a piece of waste.

It is truly breathtaking.

He had already understood this long ago.

After all, this wasn't the first one...

Before this, there was armor that was mighty and ferocious but had no defensive power, and wearing it would cause eczema all over the body; a small red ball that would make you laugh uncontrollably after putting it on your nose; a letter opener that would be abnormally easy to poke yourself with when held in your hand and would cause tetanus one hundred percent of the time.

And this backscratcher that gets itchier the more you scratch...

All funny.

As the saying goes, when chess meets an opponent, the general meets a good talent.

Meeting such good material, being a teacher should have been a very easy thing.

What a refreshing lesson—originally he still harbored such a naive idea: the first time receiving a student with such good aptitude, the first time seeing someone progress so rapidly on the path of evil-transformed refining, two parts of happiness superimposed together... omitted below.

So much so that Jian Yuan suddenly wanted to open his skull and look inside to see if his rebellious bones were inserted backward into his brain—how the hell did you not learn well!

There is a saying, the master leads the door, and the practice is in the individual.

How precious the true transmission is, it goes without saying.

Jian Yuan, as a Grandmaster, naturally has a gold content verified by both the Association and the Profound. But now, he watched as he was already at the door, but Ji Jue jumped left and right at the door, and then drummed up some small movements for you.

Hey, I'm in~ Hey, I'm out~ Hey, I'm in again~ If you can't stand it, hit me~

Squandering talent so wantonly.

Truly a pity.

But it doesn't matter...

There is always a way.

"Very good, completed well."

He threw his hand casually, throwing Ji Jue's work into the Annihilation Furnace, too lazy to look at it again.

If a student can get a hundred points in an exam, they might only have a hundred points of level.

But when they can accurately get sixty points every time, it means that the current test paper has no difficulty for them at all, and it is purely a toy.

Theory, practice, conception, creativity, philosophy... no shortcomings!

Such good material, how can it be wasted and left idle?

"The basics are learned here." He said, "It's time to proceed to the next lesson."

"Alright, alright, I know."

Ji Jue reached out his hand indifferently, "Where's the book?"

"What a pity, this lesson is not taught in books."

Jian Yuan laughed, full of expectation: "You need to go, act physically."

Just waving his hand, it was as if an invisible force controlled everything, and then, he pulled everything within sight to one side.

Ji Jue's vision blurred, and it was as if he had traveled through layers of doors and corridors in an instant, arriving at a gloomy and decadent space.

Vast and desolate, dark and distant.

The earth collapsed, and the blue bricks were full of fissures.

The former palace was broken, the broken walls were tilted, and even the huge furnace in the center was incomplete, extinguished for years, and he didn't know when it happened.

And in the sky, the ashes drifted like gray-white snow, intermittently sprinkled down, mixed with some sparks, shining and extinguishing, and finally, piled up on the ground.

The wheelchair rolled over the ground, following Jian Yuan, leaving two long, thin tracks.

Forward.

Stopped in front of the furnace ruins.

All this looks like a broken... workshop?

"This is my residence before I left the Association. I had a fight with that guy at the time, and it was completely messed up, so I abandoned it... Although the fire of the furnace has been extinguished, after so many years of salary ash gathering, it can barely be considered waste utilization."

Jian Yuan walked in it, his black robe dragging on the ground, but not a single ash was stained.

In contrast, Ji Jue had gradually become gray-faced.

Wiping his face, smelling it, a familiar smell.

Ashes...

This is the ash of the furnace!

He looked up at the pitch-black top dome.

In Jian Yuan's workshop, the burning ashes of all artisans' furnaces were sent here.

A wisp of a thread is common, but after so many years of such a scale of ash accumulation, from countless smelting and creation, the aura contained in it has also become vast and magnificent.

Suffocating.

"Ji Jue, do you know why artisans are obsessed with fire?"

Jian Yuan stood in front of the broken furnace, waving his hand, and invisible force cleaned up the messy ruins around him.

Without waiting for Ji Jue to answer, he said to himself: "Developing to this day, artisans no longer need to rely on fire to make things; on the contrary, more and more tools have been introduced into alchemy—water, gas, dust, light, and even the human body and hands... but the furnace is still the mainstream of the mainstream, and even if a workshop does not have a furnace, it cannot be called a workshop, what is its significance?"

"Suitable? Convenient?"

Ji Jue answered casually: "The predecessors were used to it, many specifications were born because of this, and the successors continue to extend it, which is not surprising, right?"

"Besides that? Can't you witness the magnificence of the Embers Furnace?"

Jian Yuan smiled: "Have you never seen with your own eyes the glorious flame light when the Embers Lord descends, with the stars as the furnace?"

Ji Jue was silent for a moment.

"This is fire."

Jian Yuan raised his finger and blew a breath lightly, the dust disturbed, spread, but the soft breath echoed in the underground space, constantly expanding, turning into a raging hurricane.

In the end, all the countless ashes were lifted, dancing, trembling, and in it, the sparks that had been extinguished for who knows how long, actually burned again!

Thousands of threads of fire gathered at his fingertips.

The vast salary ash integrated again into a wisp of pure flame light, dancing, jumping, illuminating all darkness.

"See, Ji Jue."

In the reflection of the fire light, Jian Yuan's expression seemed to have faded away, without sadness or joy, solemn as a god or Buddha: "The earliest alchemy was born from it.

From the moment the earliest fire in the human world was lit by the fire-stealer among the kings, everything was doomed. The fire-igniter burns himself, the followers pass the fire, mark everything with fire, create everything, and at the same time, burn everything with fire.

The Embers path is born from this.

The evil of Stagnant Rot is formed because of this."

He said: "What you want to learn is in it—"

At that moment, an unprecedented high-pitched loud noise suddenly moved forward from the deepest part of the darkness, as if originating from all directions, but when they gathered together, it was as if it filled the soul, suppressing the will and soul.

Dispelling all distracting thoughts and echoes.

When the fire light at Jian Yuan's fingertips dissipated silently, the furnace's fierce light was ten thousand feet high, rushing out, spraying, spreading, covering everything.

Salary light and ash fire, manifested here.

Like a storm.

Ji Jue couldn't even react and dodge.

For a moment, he felt his form and soul drowned in that frenzy, collapsing, peeling off, flying piece by piece to an unknown place.

Broken into pieces.

Flesh, life, self, soul, everything faded in the tide of light.

But what is left here?

Countless phantoms and manifestations emerged from the fire light, filling Ji Jue's vision, forcefully pouring into his soul—the cracking sky, the broken earth, the flowing stars, and even the infinite creation.

The world operates here.

Revealing its true face.

At that moment, Ji Jue finally saw, at the end of the flame light, the origin of everything.

As if an emerald eye slowly opened.

Toward this place, toward Ji Jue.

Without sadness or joy, without surprise or worry, so high and distant, yet so indifferent, looking down at all the chaos in the world, the rotation of war and peace, the intersection of struggle and cooperation, witnessing the repetition of once-futile cycles.

What has been, will be again. What has been done, will be done again.

There is nothing new under the sun, the so-called change of all things is nothing more than a round of disputes and slaughter.

—Under the invocation of that secret ritual, the world's great evil, Stagnant Rot Furnace Heart, looked down!

At that moment, the uncontrollable painful scream erupted from the flames!

Ji Jue had been ignited by the flames.

Dust rose and fell.

Floating into Jian Yuan's palm, so fragile.

And was ground into nothingness by his expressionless face.

"All things have limits, hard to bear the mandate of heaven." Jian Yuan looked coldly into the furnace, "Let me see, this piece of material of yours... whether it is enough to receive the work of the mandate of heaven?"

Bang!

As if a cracking auditory hallucination sounded, filling his ears.

Perhaps, that was the sound of the soul cracking, or the world falling apart...

Ji Jue seemed to have fallen into an abyss without a bottom.

Only heard the sound of wind whistling in his ears...

His reason told him that he was still in place, bathing in light, but he couldn't feel any warmth.

His soul told him that he was falling, toward an abyss without an end, but he couldn't struggle.

Even, hard to think.

Consciousness had been filled and controlled by more vast and violent forces.

As if rain was rising to the sky against the earth.

In his memory, countless theories emerged like living things, out of his control, changing, overlapping, coupling, and metamorphosing on their own.

All the evil-transformed refining theories that Jian Yuan had forcefully imprinted in his memory these days, all the techniques and operations he had taught him, at this moment actually seemed like living things, extending on their own, connecting with each other... as if they were truly given life!

—Sublimation!

Inexplicably, such a thought appeared in Ji Jue's consciousness.

Turning stone into gold, giving dead objects spiritual quality, giving ordinary objects miracles, making mediocre objects shed their old forms, this is the first step of alchemy.

Then, it is extraction, so all techniques and theories intertwine, overlap, collide with each other, intensify, and emerge with one genius-like spiritual light after another, flashing, developing on their own, spreading...

Immediately followed by purification—

Countless scattered, expanding theories and reveries suddenly vibrated, intersecting with one another, pruning away the dross, correcting fallacies, and erasing defects.

Finally, it is integration!

When those flashes, inspirations, and many theories appeared on their own and connected in one place, a vast path forward emerged from Ji Jue's consciousness.

Twelve Great Evil Emblems, sixteen types of dyeing techniques in three categories, thirty-one types of spiritual quality structures, the truth and essence of seventy-seven types of life-killing things...

The exposition is exquisite and dangerous, the plain narrative points out the direction, and it lists all obstacles and doubts in great detail, he only needs to move forward step by step... The wonder of evil transformation is within reach, the depth of deformity is within reach!

The road to heaven is right in front of his eyes!

"Forward."

A voice said in his ear: "You just need to move forward."

But Ji Jue stood still.

Even, unwilling to look up.

He struggled, wanting to look back.

But couldn't move.

When he came back to his senses, he found that he had already been swallowed by blood, and wailing like a tide covered everything.

A deformed world operated in front of him, distorted stars ran in the sky, illuminating the cracks in the night sky and the broken earth.

He seemed to have turned into a god, looking down from the sky, everything was changing and flowing at a speed of billions of times, but in the end, it returned to a desperate cycle.

Once prosperous, once extinct, once revived, once declined.

Glory passed, full of scars; the change of the dynasty ushered in ruins; the great ambition poisoned the world; the dream shattered, leaving only emptiness.

All things in the world poured into his consciousness like a tide, but he had no time to remember and think, and could only witness all this sluggishly, and in the end, sluggishly, ushered in understanding.

Bitterness rises from the blood, resentment is purified from tears, after the so-called love and dreams are burned in the fire, only despair and emptiness are extracted from each other, the clutter and decay of the world are integrated in one place, turning into a sea of chaos.

Destruction after destruction, repetition after repetition.

When the path of change reaches its end, only this futile and ugly cycle remains.

In the end, everything, everything, gathered together.

When Ji Jue lowered his head, he saw those hands that had turned pitch-black from despair and curses.

Viscous blood fell from his fingertips.

Endless, inexhaustible!

All evil is created by this heart, all pain is created by these hands, all evil in the world is done by these ten fingers... this is the sin of Non-Aggression!

At the moment of realization, Ji Jue heard again the wailing that had been repeated countless times in the four-hundred-year cycle.

Non-Aggression rioted, furious, struggling in vain, but in the end, in the phantom light of tears, it returned to silence.

"The world is made by people, Ji Jue, and hell is the same."

An indifferent voice came from afar: "But where is your hell?"

Thus, everything gradually became clear.

Ji Jue raised his head, seeing the scorching red sky again, the pitch-black earth under his feet, the rain of ashes flying between the world, and the hallucinatory wailing and screaming coming from the wind in the distance.

So familiar.

From the flames and fire, those departed souls laughed, danced, bit each other, slaughtered, ravaged, tortured each other endlessly, eternal pain.

The flame light ignited from the end of hell, illuminating Ji Jue's pupils, filling all of his consciousness and soul.

"Isn't this exactly what created everything about you, Ji Jue?" The mocking voice sounded: "But if this world is hell, what are you?"

Hell laughed in his ear, confided and encouraged him, telling him:

From beginning to end, you have been in hell!

So, don't be silent, don't endure, don't stop in place anymore...

Hate, burn, destroy!

For a moment, Ji Jue couldn't wait to throw himself into it, embracing this natural mandate of heaven.

But in inexplicable hesitation, he couldn't help but look back.

Even if it was empty and void there...

Only from a distant place, came the singing.

So blurry, but it couldn't be covered by wailing and screaming, persistently continuing, as if echoing forever.

Just like the stars rising at the end of the night.

Shining with brilliance.

It was her looking at him.

Thus, Ji Jue smiled suddenly.

"Don't worry."

He raised his hand, wiped away his tears, and smiled at her: "I'm fine."

Just like that, he climbed up from the ground again.

Turning his back on the so-called hell and the truth of the world, he ran toward that void, without hesitation.

Even if futile, even if meaningless.

No matter how high and distant the road to heaven behind him is, no matter how many times it repeats, it doesn't matter.

—The place he is going is not here!

It seemed as if a furious roar sounded from the sky, infinite green fire sprayed, emerged, wanting to block his path.

But immediately after, the brilliant stars lit up again, operated, gathered, and in the end, the Heavenly Furnace overturned, and all kinds of salary fire sprinkled down like a waterfall, sprinkling into the world.

The two collided in one place and vanished into nothingness.

In the chaotic tide, a line of silver light suddenly crossed, like a sharp blade, cutting everything off!

At that moment, Ji Jue opened his eyes.

The residual light in the furnace dissipated silently.

Everything ceased abruptly.

In the silence, the drifting ashes fell, like snow, covering Ji Jue's shoulders.

His palm hovered in the air in vain.

As if only a little bit away, he could hold that hand again... after the bubble of the dream dissipated, in his palm, only emptiness remained.

"What a long-lost beautiful dream."

Ji Jue sighed vaguely, lowering his eyes, staring at the remaining wisp of residual ash in his palm.

"Thank you, Jian Yuan."

He turned back and expressed his gratitude sincerely: "May I ask, how should I repay you?"

Clearly smiling, but without any temperature.

In the silence, in those pair of pupils, there was only endless gloom, like an abyss.

"Congratulations, Ji Jue!"

Jian Yuan smiled, so gratified: "You have learned the first lesson of controlling evil transformation and dominating deformity—hatred and malice... no, I should say, you finally don't need to hide yourself anymore."

Just like that, he patted his rebellious apprentice on the shoulder, telling him:

"Tomorrow, we continue." ===== CHAPTER 237 =====