Chosen: Beyond Fate

Blood rose into the air like rain, accompanied by weak wails and mournful sobs.

This time, even the ghostly howls had taken on a tone of grief and indignation. As the crimson flow gradually thinned, the family members no longer had the strength to struggle or glare in defiance.

They could only cry quietly. The soft sobs mixed with whispered pleas, barely audible. It was hard to comprehend what they were whispering about.

Everyone had come here expecting to attend a feast, yet before they had even seen the banquet, they were on the verge of becoming the meal themselves. Tears welled up in all the crimson eyes. The creatures were almost choking with emotion.

Stop taking our blood, stop taking it! Our lives matter too, damn it! Does your hospital only care about the patient? Do you not care at all whether everyone else lives or dies?!

Unfortunately, reality was often disappointing. Indeed, it was as they thought.

“Bad...”

The moment Ji Jue spoke again, Mr. Qian didn’t even wait for him to finish. He immediately waved his hand and said, “Transfuse!”

On his blood-covered, stitched-together face, a trace of relief and admiration appeared within the exaggerated smile that had once been filled with malice. As he watched the figure fighting tirelessly at the operating table to save both mother and child, it was as though he were witnessing a radiant future rising before his eyes.

With doctors like this, how could any supposedly incurable disease remain unconquered? How could any patient fail to be healed? This was the kind of fighting spirit a doctor should have!

Mr. Qian could barely contain himself. He was already letting out sinister cackles of delight. If not for his position and the setting, he would have been pumping his fists in the air and shouting words of encouragement.

“She’s all good to go, sir!” Ji Jue announced.

“More blood!” Director Qian demanded with yet another wave of his hand.

But just as he was about to completely drain the family members of their blood and souls, he finally realized something felt off. He frowned. “She’s good to go? You’re sure? For such a complex procedure, it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

“Yeah, she’s fine. We’re basically done.”

Ji Jue tilted his head, signaling for Tong Hua, who had long since gone completely numb with shock, to wipe the sweat from his brow. His eyes were glowing with the radiance of spirit matter.

At this point, everything else had completely faded from his awareness. All of his concentration was on the living furnace before him. The invisible hand and the tangible hand seemed to intertwine within the flames, overlapping until they became one.

Through repeated trials, errors, and reconstruction, the two monster fetuses had been transformed beyond recognition. Because of that endless cycle of torment and refinement, their ferocity and madness had entirely vanished. Now, the two pairs of eyes were filled with tears, as pure and innocent as freshmen stepping through the gates of a university for the first time.

After being thoroughly slapped around by Ji Jue, they no longer dared resist in the slightest. If he told them to stretch their limbs, they stretched. If he told them to roll over, they rolled over.

Ji Jue’s fingers hovered motionless in midair. He no longer needed to move as countless strands of vibrating spiritual energy extended from his fingertips. Thin as silk threads yet sharp as blades, they wove together in an intricate web, completely enveloping his creation.

For a brief moment, he felt as if he had touched the very essence of Spirit Primacy. The core of Ascension lay in the soul’s never-extinguished desire to transcend, but the foundation of the spirit’s existence was the presence of will and thought.

Having forgotten everything else and immersed himself completely in the agonizing process of creation after countless attempts and reconstructions, Ji Jue suddenly felt it again—the existence of his soul, the existence of his self. Or rather, the existence that defined the person known as Ji Jue[1].

As spirit matter surged through him, his thoughts, calculations, and will seemed to expand along with it. They gathered in his hands before spreading outward. Through those countless threads of spirit matter, they became real, formless hands.

There was no longer any need to search painstakingly or struggle to perceive these hands. Everything had become vividly real. He only needed to think, and the spirit matter would shift according to his will, extend according to his intent, and take shape.

And so, he reached out and truly grasped those two completely different souls in his hands.

The old world shattered, the sound echoing within his consciousness, and a new world emerged before his eyes. Within the ever-present waves of spirit matter, everything became incomparably clear. Everything was now within his control.

Inside Ji Jue’s soul, centered on the matrix and guarded on either side by the two blessings Flawless Craft and Spirit Primacy, a completely new spirit circuit and structure appeared, linking the two together.

It worked!

Ji Jue’s eyes lit up. This was exactly what Professor Ye had mentioned. This was the synergy between blessings!

It was only a thin line of fusion between Ruins and Ascension, yet it allowed the effect of Spirit Primacy to extend into Ji Jue’s hands. The complete integration of will and body caused Flawless Craft’s interference with spirit matter to undergo a qualitative leap.

At the same time, the synergy between blessings made the tempering of the Pacifier faster and smoother than ever before. The blessing and the matrix began working together with a level of smoothness and efficiency never seen before. It was as if all the dust had been washed away, the shackles had been broken, and everything had finally returned to the way it was always meant to be.

“Operation complete!” Ji Jue shouted with joy as he raised both hands high.

Beneath the sacred glow of the operating lamp, the newborn, finally freed from all the torment and rough treatment it had endured, let out a clear, loud cry at last.

Neither the mother lying beneath the lights nor the family members collapsed on the floor around her, too exhausted to even stand, ‌could hold back their joy and emotion any longer. Tears instantly welled up in their eyes.

Still, looking at Ji Jue holding the baby aloft like a baboon presenting a lion cub, Tong Hua couldn’t help thinking that, if the situation weren’t so inappropriate, she ought to start singing Circle of Life[2] in the background.

It really hadn't been easy. A surgery that physically tortured the patient while mentally traumatizing everyone else had finally come to an end.

When Tong Hua focused on the newborn in Ji Jue's hands, the corner of her eye twitched uncontrollably. The mother had been carrying twins, so how come there was only one baby in his hands?

No, there were still two, but Ji Jue had stitched them together!

Under Ji Jue’s reckless modification and refinement, the two ferocious spirit monster fetuses continued tearing and devouring each other. If he finished working on one of them, the other would never let the matter rest. In that case, he might as well treat them as a single baby!

Of course, part of the reason was also Ji Jue’s crude handiwork, which had caused him to waste quite a lot of material. Still, looking at the result now, the bizarre infant covered in black stitching at least seemed to be in one piece.

The problem was that the stitching looked uncannily similar to Mr. Qian’s handiwork. Because of the delighted smile on Mr. Qian’s face, one could seriously question whether the two were related by blood.

“Excellent, truly excellent. For your first time performing surgery, that’s an outstanding performance!”

The eerie doctor stepped closer and examined the baby in Ji Jue’s hands. The left half of the monster fetus’s face was filled with rage and misery, while the right half wore a hungry, crazed smile. As its expression constantly shifted, semi-transparent spirit heads occasionally bulged out from the flesh and pushed into view, making the whole thing even more grotesque.

Even now, the two forces were still fighting within the same body like two colliding whirlpools, but they could no longer damage the already completed vessel. On the contrary, no matter which side consumed or grew, it would all become shared nourishment and spirit fuel. The more they ate, the stronger they became; the stronger they became, the hungrier they grew, never to be satisfied.

Under Pacifier’s transformation, they had been transformed into something half living creature and half crafted object. One half was a monster born from the Time Ruin, while the other was a deranged spirit alchemical construct.

“Hm, five kilograms. Mother and child are both safe!” Mr. Qian nodded in satisfaction. “The operation was a complete success!”

Tong Hua, numb with exhaustion, thought, Yeah, sure. Completely safe. They're all still breathing, after all. If you can still draw breath after ending up under Ji Jue's scalpel, doesn't that already count as a perfect success?

As for Ji Jue, he was busy playing with his new creation. With a casual squeeze of his hand, the monster fetus suddenly spat out a blood-red frost wind, causing the temperature in the entire room to drop sharply.

“Wow, baby, you’re a hairdryer!” Ji Jue exclaimed in amazement.

He gave it another squeeze. All four eyeballs lit up at once, releasing a spreading cloud of gray mist. The baby’s cry was loud and clear, shaking the soul and filling anyone who heard it with instinctive terror.

“Wow, baby, you’re a smoke grenade!”

And as the remaining spirit matter was completely devoured by the monster fetus, it actually grew two more arms. Its split, incomplete faces stretched open, revealing gaping maws with strings of thick saliva dripping down.

Ji Jue called out in delighted surprise, “Wow, baby, you’re a double-door refrigerator!”

Mr. Qian nodded approvingly. “Mm, not bad, not bad. Since you personally delivered them, then you’ll also be responsible for taking care of the newborns. Get along well with the patients, alright? Hehehehehe...”

Along with that eerie laughter, the stitched doctor melted into the darkness and disappeared. When the operating room doors finally opened, the remaining family members scrambled out on all fours, crawling and stumbling over one another in their desperation to escape. None of them wanted to spend even one more second breathing the air in this hellish place, lest they suddenly be forced to donate blood.

After seeing off the bizarre nurses who wheeled the mother away, Tong Hua, already drenched in sweat countless times, finally let out a breath of relief. But when she turned around, she saw something that nearly made her vision go black.

The “newborn” that had just been delivered was now crawling all over the floor at incredible speed with a metal chain around its neck pulled tight in Ji Jue’s hand.

Ji Jue dragged it around like a pet, marveling at it. “Tong Hua, look! It’s so weird! C’mere, c’mere! It’s so lively now that it’s been tied up!”

“Are you sure it’s the weird one?! You seem weirder to me!”

Tong Hua backed away, dodging to the side. But the more frightened she looked, the more excited the ghost infant seemed to become. It kept crawling toward her, babbling and screeching. Watching the usually carefree young lady run around in shock and panic, desperately trying to avoid it, was actually pretty entertaining.

Still, considering Tong Hua’s limited mental fortitude, Ji Jue eventually decided he’d had enough fun. He tightened the chain and hoisted the squirming abomination into his hand.

“Whew, that was close. We barely made it through that one,” Ji Jue remarked with a sigh. “I've worked up a sweat. What about you?”

“What do you think, you bastard?!” Tong Hua rolled her eyes, carefully keeping as much distance as possible from the thing dangling in Ji Jue's hand.

“Anyway, did you figure it out?” Ji Jue asked, expression suddenly turning serious.

Throughout the entire surgery, Tong Hua had been watching. Ji Jue had noticed her handling quite a few objects, including the surgical instruments, and she had secretly activated her Aether Eye several times as well.

The specialty of the Time Rewind matrix was reading the records and traces left upon objects, retracing their history and uncovering their past. When it came to gathering information, few systems were more convenient than the ones belonging to Aether Chosen Ones.

Tong Hua nodded. “I figured it out. They’re all dead.”

For a moment, Ji Jue actually stood there stunned. He hadn't expected her to uncover something so significant. After a brief pause, he let out a sigh of admiration. “Excellent observation. Next time, don’t bother looking.”

Who the hell couldn't tell they were dead?! Anyone could see that!

“I mean, before the Time Ruin formed, they were already dead. To be precise, they've been dead for at least several decades.” Fighting off a wave of dizziness, Tong Hua’s face grew paler. “They died horribly. I can’t even describe it.”

It was as if they had fallen into an endless hell. After enduring torture straight out of purgatory, they had eventually faded into nothingness. Only their shells remained, wandering through the Time Ruin after death, now transformed into ghosts.

“See for yourself.” She reached out and pressed a finger against Ji Jue’s forehead. In an instant, the remnants of the past enveloped him with a roaring tide.

1. the original Chinese is not simply repeating the same idea in different words, but stacking three progressively more concrete layers of identity. “灵魂的存在” refers to a very abstract, metaphysical sense of being, as in the fact that a soul exists at all.

“自我的存在” then shifts closer to psychological identity, the sense of an “I” that perceives itself as a self.

“名为季觉的存在” narrows it further to the specific, named individual Ji Jue as a distinct person in the world.

So instead of all meaning the same thing, it is describing a rebuilding or re-awareness of identity from the most abstract level down to the most personal and defined one. ☜

2. This should be referring to the song from Lion King. Check it out here. ☜