Chosen: Beyond Fate

Ji Jue finally remembered what he wanted to say. He looked at the devil’s work ball suspiciously. “What was that move just now? You never pulled that trick back in the rift realm. I’ve been treating you like a brother, yet you’ve been hiding things from me?”

The devil’s work ball exploded in outrage. The manipulation tactic had finally been turned on it, and it wasn’t having any of it.

“Bullshit! I’m here to keep you alive, not be your slave! My preset directive is to keep you from dying. No one said I had to be your personal heavy weapon! Besides, you’ve got to give me something usable! But no, you kept pulling out... whatever the hell that was. It was so absurd, it was off the charts! What else was I supposed to do except play dead?”

It was the first time the devil’s work ball had ever encountered such a bizarre user.

The moment they’d entered the rift realm, the Seer had nearly fried its core with a sneak attack. After that, every enemy they ran into turned out to be a complete monster. Either they were small fry Ji Jue had already dealt with on his own, or they were terrifying heavyweights like the corrupted Mercury.

The devil’s work ball had gotten beaten up almost the entire time in the rift realm. Although Ye Xian had not lent it to anyone else since it had been forged, the devil’s work ball was certain of one thing: even among Ember Chosen Ones, Ji Jue belonged to the absolute strangest breed.

And just look at the kind of messed-up stunts you keep pulling! Ember users already set the bar ridiculously low. How were you still trying to dig underneath it?

After furiously cycling through its entire profanity database, the devil’s work ball could only offer one heartfelt blessing. “May you die a truly miserable death, you bastard!”

“Are you done?”

Professor Ye was having breakfast in the motorhome. When she saw Ji Jue come in, she gestured toward an empty seat. A moment later, someone brought over a tray with cutlery, freshly baked toast, hot tea, ham, char siu, and a side of greens. Everything looked so appetizing it instantly stirred the appetite. It only made Ji Jue even more determined to come here and freeload meals for the next few days.

“It’s not finished yet. I don’t have any particularly good ideas for the next step either, so I’ve only done some preliminary processing. The effect of merging the blessing with the mercury turned out pretty good, and it can be refined further later,” Ji Jue reported. “That said, aside from the main materials, the process used up quite a lot of supplies.”

“They were just spare consumables. It doesn’t matter.” Professor Ye dismissed it with a wave. The devil’s work ball had never been stingy with ordinary supplies, anyway. As for the truly rare and valuable materials, it wouldn’t dare take them out without her permission.

After setting down her teacup and wiping her hands, she picked up the devil’s work ball and appeared to skim through its records before hanging it back on her thermos. She merely gave Ji Jue’s work a slight nod of approval. “Not bad.”

Ji Jue paused for a moment. The corners of his mouth curled upward despite himself before he lowered his head and resumed eating.

After the meal, someone came to clean up. There was no need for him to fuss around trying to be helpful.

Professor Ye picked up her thermos. “Alright, let’s go. It’s been long enough. Time to go through the registration process. Otherwise, our colleagues might think I’m looking down on them.”

Truth be told, she absolutely was doing just that.

The camp remained bustling even after daybreak. People came and went, with many military vehicles shuttling back and forth. Patrol teams returning from duty carried faint exhaustion on their faces.

A few people who had just finished breakfast walked out of the dining hall. When they spotted Ye Xian and Ji Jue in the distance, their expressions changed subtly. Quickly, they lowered their heads and hurried away. A few of the older veterans noticed them and paused mid-step, only giving a slight nod in greeting without coming closer.

Ji Jue couldn’t help scratching his head. It seemed his lineage didn’t have a particularly friendly reputation in the industry. But that was understandable. If Professor Ye ever spoke to someone in a warm and pleasant tone, Ji Jue would probably think he’d wandered into some kind of supernatural horror scenario governed by bizarre rules.

Now that he was finally here, he couldn’t resist looking around. His gaze drifted beyond the camp, toward the Spring City ruins. Unfortunately, all he could see was an impenetrable blanket of dense white mist. Faint silhouettes of buildings seemed to loom within it, but none of them could be made out clearly.

Without turning around, Professor Ye said calmly, “Don’t waste your time. Over the years, we’ve put too many layers of engineering into the place, from subconscious repulsion signals to Origin-based isolation and Ember seals. It’s impossible to see anything from the outside.”

“I thought the city had fallen,” Ji Jue said curiously. “Shouldn’t there at least be signs of earthquakes or massive rifts?”

Professor Ye replied, “It’d be stranger if there were. The term ‘fallen’ is relative to our world. It doesn’t refer to physical space or distance in the conventional sense, but to how close something is to the Supreme Benevolence. The closer it is, the more it becomes a sanctuary. The farther away it is, the more it becomes a corrupted domain.

“Right now, Spring City is probably already very close to detaching from the world and drifting toward the vortex. Although it still maintains some connection to reality, it’s practically like a rift realm. No one would be surprised if it finally detached completely.”

If all it did was fall into the vortex, that would actually be the better outcome. The problem was that Spring City was simply too large. If it truly collapsed entirely into the vortex, it could tear a massive hole in reality. That would be a disaster with consequences beyond measure.

For all these years, they had been unable to pull it back, yet they couldn’t allow it to fall completely either. It remained suspended in limbo, hanging over everyone’s greatest weakness. It was a real headache.

If this operation could settle everything once and for all, it would be an enormous blessing. But the question was, could this dilemma really be solved? No one had an answer.

The more Ji Jue followed Professor Ye, the more at ease he felt. And yet that sense of calm struck him as strange, as it was an instinctive reaction rather than something rational.

It was as if he had stepped into a sanctuary. Even with the Spring City underground cavern right before him, he instinctively felt reassured. Not just his mind, his very spirit matter had also settled down. Even the spirit matter that would normally leak from his body was completely contained, flowing docilely within him instead.

It felt as though he were wading through deep water, able to sense an unseen resistance all around him. An invisible force permeated the air, suppressing all chaos and conflict while establishing order and boundaries. Everything suddenly seemed clear and traceable, governed by rules that could be understood and followed.

It seemed as if an unseen eye hung high in the sky, watching over and witnessing everything. It made no attempt to hide itself, yet it somehow inspired neither resistance nor revulsion.

Within this domain, every flow of spirit matter could be tracked, and every ability and blessing fluctuation was contained. It wasn’t that they couldn’t be used; they were like weapons being returned to their sheaths. Every change could be seen and made known, and, if necessary, suppressed.

Ji Jue had no doubt that such an overwhelmingly high-level power wasn’t just for surveillance. If anything out of the ordinary happened, it would probably be crushed the moment it appeared.

What astonished him even more was that, no matter how far he extended his perception, he couldn’t sense the edge of the domain. It felt as if the entire surrounding region of Spring City had been enclosed within it. The scale of it was unbelievable.

Ye Xian walked ahead, calmly stating, “This is exactly why I tell you to get out more. Staying cooped up in your little corner of Cliff City all the time won’t broaden your horizons. Stay tucked away in some forgotten corner for too long, and you’ll end up narrow-minded and obsessed with petty gains.

“This is a domain of the Origin lineage. If a Transcendence Realm Chosen One possesses a sufficiently powerful matrix and blessing, then once they unleash their full strength, they can create a vast domain capable of influencing reality itself. You’ve probably seen something like it before, haven’t you?”

Ji Jue nodded. He recalled the crystalline domain that had frozen Mercy Hospital in place when Ms. Wen and Lawrence had fought at full power. Ms. Wen had used her will to overwrite reality and replaced phenomena with the soul, reshaping the world with her existence alone. At that level, it was like splitting open an uncut gem to reveal the peerless brilliance hidden within.

Curious, Ji Jue asked, “But, wouldn’t it be exhausting to keep a domain this enormous active every single day?”

Ye Xian shook her head. “Who knows? To a Celestial Being, perhaps it's no more than a minor inconvenience. Or perhaps... he simply doesn’t care.”

Ji Jue’s breath hitched. A Celestial Being.

The sense of reassurance he’d been feeling suddenly grew even stronger.

A Celestial Being was someone who had crossed the boundary between mortality and godhood, a being who had truly touched the Divine Mandate. Their power and abilities are beyond ordinary imagination. If a Celestial Being was personally taking action, then resolving the Spring City crisis could actually be possible.

His confidence soared.

Walking ahead, Ye Xian seemed to sense something. She glanced back at him with an almost pitiful look but said nothing. Ten minutes later, Ji Jue wanted nothing more than to slap his past self across the face.

What the hell was I thinking? Possible, my ass! We’re completely screwed. I’d better pack up and go home already while I still can!