Chosen: Beyond Fate

Just like that, the matter was settled. There was none of the usual indulgence or fun before an exam. He didn’t even get a last meal before being sent to his doom.

More than four hundred years into the Cataclysm Era, the world remained a dark and miserable place. All it had to offer was more studying.

Having missed nearly half a month of lessons because of his injuries, Ji Jue was promptly kicked into the workshop basement and once again plunged into a life of answering practice questions day and night.

He didn’t even dare guess blindly. Every question he got wrong would be marked by Professor Ye. If he made the same mistake twice on the same type of question or theory, she would generously add another relevant paper to his workload, complete with close-reading notes and analysis.

He ate when he was hungry, drank when he was thirsty, and slept when he was tired. The stronger soul he had gained upon reaching the Metamorphosis Realm, along with the physical recovery he had received from Zhou Zhong, would not even let him pass out on the spot. And with an unlimited supply of various alchemical medicines, even dropping dead from exhaustion was difficult.

At first, Ji Jue had been restless, whining and protesting. Then he grew accustomed to it and gradually became absorbed in the work. By the end, he was completely numb. He had turned into a question-answering machine, so much so that when Ye Chun pinched his nose and dragged him out of the basement a week later, he smelled thoroughly rancid and stared ahead with vacant eyes. He was even drooling, for goodness’ sake.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” Ye Chun raised three fingers and waved them in front of his face, but she received no response. She stared in shock. “Oh no, Auntie! He’s gone stupid!”

A calm voice came from the study. “Leave him alone. He’ll recover in a little while.”

But it was rare for Ye Chun to encounter something this entertaining. After a moment of careful thought and perfectly rational analysis, she smacked a fist into her palm and broke into a wicked grin. Then she pulled a marker from her pocket.

Runner-up of Cliff City’s 16th Friendship Cup Turtle-Drawing Championship reporting for duty!

By the time she finished drawing the fourth lifelike little turtle, Ji Jue’s eyes finally moved, but his gaze passed right over her fingers and settled on her face. Countless theories and formulas were still surging through his mind, firmly occupying every corner of his thoughts. His dark red eyes, dim as dying embers, narrowed slightly. Almost instinctively, he caught Ye Chun by the wrist and began analyzing her.

The subject was human, female, twenty-three years old. Her blood and qi were stable, and her spirit matter was weak. Her four-fluid index was abnormal, with signs of internal imbalance. Excessive interference from multiple blessings was suspected. The underlying structure was sealed too tightly to analyze.

Then, in an instant, everything he had sensed vanished, as though whatever lay within her had detected his scrutiny and withdrawn behind a thick fog, leaving him unable to see anything further.

Ji Jue only grew more confused. Acting on instinct, he tried to grasp at it again and probed repeatedly, but he could no longer find even the slightest trace.

That couldn’t be right. What was going on?

That strange composition of spirit matter he had never seen before, along with that enormous structure that seemed to have completely fused with her soul... surely he hadn’t imagined it?

Why is her temperature rising? About one degree. Blood flow elevated, heartbeat accelerating... Hm? Soft... and she smells nice. What’s that? Traces of some kind of plant oil? Wait... doesn’t this smell like that lazy-ass Ye Chun?

Wait. Ye Chun?

Ji Jue’s eyes flew open, and he stiffly raised his head. His unfocused pupils dilated, and his blurry vision gradually cleared until the familiar face right in front of him came into focus.

He looked down. His hand was wrapped around her slender fingers, her pale, glossy nails catching the sunlight from outside the window with a faint gleam.

Ye Chun tilted her head and smiled, asking curiously, “Seen enough? Aside from ‘doesn’t this smell like that lazy-ass Ye Chun,’ do you have any last words?”

Ji Jue released her as though he had been electrocuted. He immediately raised both hands in surrender, hoping to make one last attempt at survival before she hit him with a Skull-Splitting Strike.

Instead, a basket was tossed into his arms. A towel followed, then a toothbrush, soap, and shampoo. Finally, Ye Chun rummaged through the cabinet and pulled out a bottle of body wash as well.

“Here. You can use the same one as me. Lime and citrus...” She pointed toward the guest bathroom. “You stink. Go take a shower. Once you’re clean, I’ll help you commit seppuku[1] properly.”

“Okay.” Ji Jue nodded, meek as could be. Bowing and scraping, he clutched the shower basket to his chest and fled for his life.

More than half an hour later, freshly showered and changed into clean clothes, Ji Jue sat in his teacher’s study, waiting nervously for the verdict. The room was quiet save for the soft rustle of turning pages.

After a long while, Professor Ye raised her hand and removed her glasses. Instead of slamming the table in anger, she simply gave a slow nod.

Ji Jue immediately let out the breath he had been holding. He had almost broken out in a cold sweat.

Improving himself had been satisfying, but being force-fed lessons around the clock was still the stuff of nightmares. By now, even Ji Jue had lost count of how many practice papers and exam questions he had worked through that week, or how many papers and sets of notes he had painstakingly studied.

“At this point, you’re more or less at a passing level,” Ye Xian said slowly. “We’ll fill in the rest after the exam.”

Ji Jue’s heart nearly stopped, and he felt utterly hopeless. All will to live drained out of him. “There’s... still more?”

“At this rate, once the craftsman examination is over, you should be just about ready to begin—” She paused, lifted her teacup, and took a sip before slowly finishing, “—your study of the Treatise on Forms and Swords.”

A brief, heavy silence followed. A crimson gleam appeared in Ji Jue’s eyes. He was practically drooling. All his exhaustion vanished.

More lessons! Bring them on!

So what if there was more studying? He’d study while jumping up and down and spinning in circles if he had to! His entire mind had been taken over by those two words Professor Ye had just spoken.

Treatise on Forms and Swords! Treatise on Forms and Swords!! Treatise on Forms and Swords!!!

This was nothing like the fundamentals of Modern Alchemy Professor Ye had taught Ji Jue all along, nor the techniques and applications she had beaten out of countless craftsmen over the years and taken for herself. This was a secret art that belonged to Ye Xian alone. And unlike the Dissociation Technique she had developed herself, this was an authentic secret legacy of the Ye family.

Just looking at the Gan Jiang and Mo Ye matrices was enough to see how closely the Ye family’s legacy was tied to swords. The Treatise on Sword Appraisal that Professor Ye had tossed him before had only covered basic forms and concepts as an introduction. Treatise on Forms and Swords was where the true core of the legacy lay.

Despite its name, Treatise on Forms and Swords was actually divided into two sections: the first, Embodying Forms, and the second, Discourse on Swords.

The latter, Discourse on Swords, recorded the structures and analyses of many famed swords dating from the Age of Chaos to only a few decades ago, along with their blessing series, weaknesses and flaws, methods for countering them, and even ways to destroy them.

Meanwhile, the former, Embodying Forms, contained the many secret techniques the Ye family had distilled from more than a thousand years of swordsmithing.

Even though Ye Xian had already forged a path of her own and no longer followed the direction of her predecessors, one only had to look at the dusty, rust-covered rejects sitting in the warehouse—each of which could probably cut down Ji Jue several thousand times over without so much as nicking its edge—to understand just how valuable Treatise on Forms and Swords truly was.

Then there were all the Divine Creations among swords mentioned in the Treatise on Sword Appraisal, like Juque, Chunjun, Zhanlu, Yuchang[2]. If he really managed to learn all of this, maybe one day he could cross blades with that old bastard Jian Yuan and finally get his revenge. Then he’d let the old geezer have a taste of his own prized weapon.

Ji Jue’s motivation surged, soared, and exploded! Study! Study! Study! Study! STUDY!!!!

His eyes were so red that even Ye Chun found him frightening. Only after Ji Jue had run out of the workshop laughing maniacally and disappeared for quite some time did she cautiously poke her head out.

“Whoa, Auntie. What kind of hardcore stuff did you give him this time? I’m worried that when the association does a doping test before the exam, they’ll find more stimulants than blood in his veins.”

Ye Xian calmly turned a page of her newspaper. “Nothing much. I’m simply planning to teach him Treatise on Forms and Swords. It’ll do him some good to see what truly exceptional work looks like. That way, he won’t lose his mind over every random thing he comes across outside.”

“So soon?!” Ye Chun stared at her aunt in shock. Suddenly she realized something was off. “Wait. Shouldn’t you be teaching me that first?!”

Professor Ye folded her newspaper and fixed her with a deathly stare. “Yes. Why haven’t I, I wonder?”

There was a certain idiot who carried the title of family head, came from a long and distinguished lineage, and had even had a master practically spoon-feed her the family teachings since childhood, yet somehow hadn’t learned a single one of them. Utterly disgraceful.

Not that she was naming names.

The idiot guiltily ducked her head. “Auntie, you know me. I’m really just not cut out for this!”

Ye Xian sighed helplessly. Some people simply couldn’t be forced into becoming something they weren’t. Push too hard, and neither the person nor the teaching would survive the experience intact. You could drag a cow to water and shove its head down when it refused to drink, but do it often enough and the cow would drown, and your arms would get tired too.

The endless cycle of “Ye Chun, you’re the head of the family!” followed by “Auntie, you’re going to regret this!” had repeated more times than either of them could count, starting from the day Ye Chun first learned to read. Even someone as stubborn as Ye Xian had eventually been forced to accept that certain people were simply born incompatible with Ember. She had given up.

Fortunately, fate had not left them without a way forward. The fool of the family had somehow wandered around outside and, by sheer coincidence, brought back a Chosen One aligned with Ember. At least the blood, sweat, and legacy of their ancestors would not end with this generation.

Ye Chun poked her head out again, curious. “But he hasn’t even been studying for half a year. Can he really pass the craftsman examination?”

“You said it yourself. It’s a craftsman examination, not a master’s assessment,” Ye Xian answered without much concern. “No matter how reluctant Gustav might be, as long as he has eyes in his head, he isn’t going to argue with reality. With Ji Jue’s abilities, a little more effort and he’d already be good enough to do what I did and strike out on his own, as well as establish himself independently. How could he possibly fail a craftsman exam?”

Whether he passed had never been doubted. The only question was where he would rank.

Still...

Ye Xian turned toward the resident idiot of the family. “Send him a message from me. Tell him that if he ranks too low, he can look forward to a few extra spirit matter combat training classes when he gets back.”

Ye Chun nodded furiously. Yes, yes, exactly!

Workaholics like him only made life harder for everyone else. He deserved to be worked to the bone, beaten mercilessly, and made to suffer!

A moment later, Ye Chun poked her head out one last time. “Auntie, he’s asking what rank counts as ‘too low.’”

Bathed in the afternoon sunlight, Ye Xian looked up and thought for a moment. “Anything below first place.”

1. Seppuku is a historical form of Japanese ritual suicide. It was practiced by the samurai warrior class and is also commonly known as harakiri. In the context of feudal Japanese society, it was viewed by the samurai as a way to preserve honor or avoid the disgrace of capture and punishment. ☜

2. They’re four legendary Chinese swords among the famous swords traditionally associated with the ancient swordsmith Ou Yezi. ☜