Chapter 217.2: Sweet Rain After a Long Drought Part 2

The pressure on Ji Jue eased considerably. He no longer had time to keep looting equipment, so he pulled out the Soul-Summoning Bell and shook it furiously three times.

Every hair on the craftsman of the Depths stood on end.

The Mercy Bone Blade shrieked as remnant spirits gathered around it. A warped, ghostly physician crawled out of the blood, its fingers sharpened into blades. It flickered in and out of view, passing through every physical obstruction as it emerged from the walls and the floor, clinging to the craftsman like a festering curse and attacking him relentlessly.

A hardened mercury bead fell from Ji Jue’s pocket into the mercury. From there a hollow suit of armor rose, swinging its four arms as it charged forward, weathering the slashes of the blades head-on.

That wasn’t all. Ji Jue’s hand kept reaching into his pocket, pulling out handful after handful of beads and tossing them into the mercury. Crude mercury spiders crawled from within until a dark, swarming mass charged toward the battered craftsman of the Depths. There were far too many of them!

What had originally been a one-on-one duel turned into a gang fight, and the one being ganged up on was him. In this perilous encirclement, his reserve of alchemical bullets was depleting at an alarming rate. He couldn’t hesitate any longer. If this kept going...

Gripped by an unprecedented sense of crisis, the craftsman of the Depths broke free from the torment of being slowly boiled like a frog in warm water. He erupted into motion, ignoring both the blood loss from the wound on his neck and the attacks surrounding him. With a furious roar, spirit matter rose from every whistling blade, then contracted.

Blades circled around him like the spines of a hedgehog, fending off the siege. Then, he charged toward Ji Jue, or rather, toward the central hub behind Ji Jue.

No reinforcements from outside the central hub had arrived yet. This stronghold was probably beyond saving. In that case, he could very well damage the central hub. Once the other side noticed something was wrong, thunderous wrath would surely descend.

Expressionless, Ji Jue raised his handgun. Its absurdly large barrel aimed straight at the craftsman’s face, and he pulled the trigger.

Bullets howled, crashing against the defensive film of light before being deflected away. At his feet, mercury continued to rise, intercepting the bullets and blades from the craftsman of the Depths with precision and tangling them in place. Just like that, Ji Jue stood before the central hub and refused to take a single step back. This duel left no room for retreat.

The distance between them steadily narrowed, one step at a time, until they could practically see the fury and cold resolve in each other’s eyes, and even the blood vessels spreading across them.

Amid the thunderous gunfire, another bullet ricocheted away from the craftsman’s face as he stared at Ji Jue. Ten meters? At this distance, the brat still dared to stand in his way? Then he could go die!

Just then, he felt violent tremors wrack his body. A piercing pain shot through his back, and an icy chill spread to every nerve. His rear defenses had been breached with a sniper shot!

Ji Jue had deliberately drawn all the craftsman’s defenses toward the front. At the precise moment his back was left most vulnerable, a bullet fired from outside the bank struck him squarely between the shoulder blades, piercing through every floor and wall. After punching through six layers of obstruction, it broke past the repulsive force and drove straight in.

The alchemical bullet had been diligently crafted by Lou Feng using Exquisite Work and Furnace. After being enhanced with the qualitative transformation of Spirit Morph, its power was naturally immense. The bullet struck its target, and a dreadful chill instantly spread through the craftsman’s body, nearly freezing him solid on the spot.

Unfortunately, the craftsman possessed more than just the repulsive force field. A close-fitting layer of protective soft armor also covered his upper body, shielding his vital organs.

It was over!

The craftsman of the Depths grinned. Ji Jue wasn’t the only one thinking ahead, nor was he the only one capable of doing so. At this distance, the blades enhanced by Catalysis were powerful enough to break through the defenses of Iron Essence and damage the central hub.

No. They were even enough to blow Ji Jue to pieces.

Die!

And yet, the craftsman’s final thought was, What exactly just happened?

Without the slightest warning, all the alchemical blades soaring through the air instantly lost their power. They clattered to the ground, falling alongside their master as he collapsed into a pool of blood. Like that, he was rendered completely silent.

Even Ji Xue froze where she stood, stunned and hesitant. Suspecting that this could be some trick from the enemy, she stared from a distance at the body gradually losing its warmth, unable to understand what had happened. “What exactly was that?”

“Yes. What could have possibly happened?” Ji Jue lowered his eyes and sighed, looking down at the pool of blood spreading to his feet. He had no intention of explaining.

Behind the corpse that had fallen flat on its back, a spirit-matter hand dispersed without a trace, as if it had never appeared at all.

Craftsmen were hard to kill. A craftsman who was prepared and on guard was even harder to kill. They had too much equipment and too many defenses. Who knew how many life-saving devices he had made and equipped?

But craftsmen also died easily. Once their weakness was revealed, there was no longer any chance for them to turn the tables. The moment Lou Feng’s bullet shattered the repulsive force field, something else slipped alongside it. It was Ji Jue’s third spirit matter hand, which was able to disperse and reform at will, moving without shape or trace.

This spirit matter hand possessed all the traits of Pacifier. In an instant, it pierced into the wound Ji Xue had left on the back of the enemy’s neck, and its index and middle fingers closed together, pinching down on his major artery. It coagulated his blood, disrupted the craftsman’s spirit matter, interfered with his blessing, and wounded his soul.

After a smooth, flowing series of operations, Ji Jue seized the moment when his opponent was at his weakest and activated Dissociation Technique. He had to disassemble the matrix!

Finally, from point-blank range, the spirit-matter hand unleashed its force directly into the craftsman’s skull, reducing his brain to pulp.

After an attack sequence like that, there was no question how thoroughly a craftsman at the Metamorphosis Realm would die. Under the same circumstances, even if it had been Tong Shan, he would have still been locked down by force, then stabbed with the Mercy Bone Blade and left at Ji Jue’s mercy. This was provided, of course, that Ji Jue had not already been crushed by telekinesis into a perfectly even paste of flesh.

Finally, Ji Jue let out a breath of relief. He hurried to harvest spirit matter—err, process the materials—since he didn’t want to let it go to waste.

In terms of actual ability, the other man really had not been weak. At the very least, he was many times stronger than a third-rate knockoff like Dalton, the kind of useless trash one would send away just to keep him from getting in the way.

Unfortunately, he was still not good enough. After all, the thing Ji Jue was best at was fighting his own kind. No one was better at killing craftsmen than another craftsman.

Putting aside all his other messy creations and works, and without needing to count on the unreliable Edge of Revolution, Ji Jue could crush anyone at his level with Dissociation Technique alone. Even against an opponent one major realm above him, he was still strong enough to be considered a serious threat.

More importantly, with Pacifier in his hands, it was as though he carried an entire workshop with him. No matter what opponent he faced, he always had the chance to adapt to the situation and target their weaknesses.

The moment Dissociation Technique shattered the first sword, Ji Jue had already grasped the techniques, style, and variations his opponent excelled at. It wasn’t that there had been no safer or easier methods. He could have even dragged things out until Horsey arrived as backup, then taken the enemy down head-on in one decisive push.

Unfortunately, once the craftsman abandoned all restraint and decided to take everything down with him, the balance between offense and defense reversed. Ji Jue was forced to prioritize protecting the central hub. He couldn’t let the Heretic Cult discover that someone else had taken over this place. Otherwise, they would probably all be wiped out in one clean sweep.

“Now I can finally catch my breath.” After finishing his work, Ji Jue dragged over a chair and finally sat down. Thick blood slid from his fingertips and dripped into the crimson pool beneath his feet. In this now silent place, the sound of falling droplets set off the turmoil outside, making everything seem even more peaceful than it already was.

But that peace didn’t last long. Ji Jue and Ji Xue suddenly paled. An undisguised, violent aura appeared outside the central hub and rapidly drew closer, blowing up the door.

“Fucking hell, seriously. Where did the Heretic Cult pick up all these brain-dead idiots?” an irritated voice full of displeasure rang out from the disturbed dust. “I step away to take a shit, and somehow almost everyone gets themselves killed? Where’s the craftsman? Is the craftsman still alive? Say something!”

No one answered.

“What the fu—” The newcomer saw the corpse inside the room. Or, more accurately, he saw what the intruder looked like.

A brief silence followed. Ji Jue slowly raised an eyebrow as he stared at the intruder, his expression growing increasingly strange. The newcomer who had barged in didn’t open his mouth either. The two simply stood there, staring at each other without a word.

“Smith!” someone shouted from the direction of the underground vault. It was the priest, who was being driven to the brink under Tong Shan’s relentless suppression and attacks, barely able to hold on. He roared with grief and fury, “Smith! Smith, you son of a bitch, what the hell are you doing?!”

“Smith” said nothing. Neither did Ji Jue. He merely stared at the man. Amid the slowly dispersing smoke and dust was a familiar face—the man the priest called “Smith.”

“Long time no see, Tom,” Ji Jue said. “Back in Spring City for another job?”