Chosen: Beyond Fate

Dear Mr. Ji,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into our hospital’s standardized residency training program. Enclosed is a list of the required books and equipment.

The program is scheduled to begin on November 1. We await your reply by October 31.

Yan Xueqian

Director of the Medical Affairs Department and Attending Physician of the Infectious Diseases Department

Hope Hospital

In the workshop’s living room, Ji Jue stared blankly at the letter in his hands. He flipped to the second page, his eyes skimming past miscellaneous items like “three plain white work coats” and other supplies.

He read it over, then a second time, and then a third time. When he finally came back to his senses, he was drenched in cold sweat. Professor Ye, sitting on the sofa opposite him, slowly lifted her teacup for a sip and then cast him a meaningful look.

Ji Jue had never expected this.

He had only been on break for two days. First, he’d been tortured half to death in the Time Ruin, then subjected to one medical examination after another at the Security Bureau. After finally managing to take the kids on a trip to the beach, he’d barely returned to the workshop before finding this nightmare waiting for him.

Professor Ye sighed. “Well now. You’ve only been on holiday for a few days, and somehow you’ve already come up with a new stunt. For Hope Hospital to come and try to poach one of my Ember students... If word gets out, it’ll certainly make me, your teacher, look rather distinguished.”

Ji Jue crumpled the damned invitation letter into a ball and shouted at the top of his lungs, “Professor, this is a setup! I’m being framed! My loyalty to Tidesound Workshop is absolute! You’re the only sun in my heart!”

He shot Ye Chun a desperate look, silently pleading for backup. “Right?”

Ye Chun, who thoroughly enjoyed watching the drama unfold, sat behind the table, stroking Xiao Jiu’s metallic feathers as she let out a melancholic sigh.

“Oh? I wouldn’t be so sure about that... I know you’ve been stirring up trouble out there. You have the Security Bureau and the Tong family protecting you now. You don’t need a friend like me anymore. But now you’ve come to me saying, ‘Ye Chun, hurry and put in a good word for me.’ What exactly did I do to deserve such disrespect from you? You won’t even call me your senior anymore.”

Clenching his fists, Ji Jue glared at Ye Chun’s smug, gloating face. Throwing all restraint aside, he thought, Thirty years on the east bank of the river, thirty years on the west. Never underestimate a poor young man[1].

Without another word, he reached into his backpack and pulled out a freshly printed stack of papers. “Professor, I managed to write a paper over the past couple of days titled A Brief Discussion on Related Spirit Matter Manipulation During the Separation of Form and Matter. I’d be grateful if you’d take a look and offer some pointers. Oh, right. Ye Chun, have you submitted your thesis yet? If I remember correctly, you were still revising it the last time we talked...”

The smile on Ye Chun’s face dropped instantaneously. She shot the shameless academic try-hard a murderous glare.

Under her aunt’s teasing gaze, Ye Chun’s fists began itching. Seizing the chance to kick Ji Jue while he was down, she immediately started fanning the flames. “Auntie, don’t let him fool you! He’s trying to change the subject! Hurry up and expel this two-faced traitor! Otherwise, once this scoundrel makes a name for himself, he’ll become a permanent stain on your reputation in academia!”

After enjoying the workshop’s weekly featured program, Two Rookies Pecking at Each Other, Professor Ye took the paper and skimmed through it. She gave a slight nod, then set it aside.

“Enough, enough. I’ve already heard from the Security Bureau about what happened in the Time Ruin. You did well. Those clowns from the Heretic Cult aren’t fit for the big leagues, but they're good enough for sharpening your skills. Don’t worry about me. I’m a teacher, not a babysitter. Once you leave the workshop, what you do is your own business. As long as you know where to draw the line, that’s enough.”

Just like that, she brushed aside all the trouble as though it were nothing. She didn’t seem to care in the slightest. When she picked up the opened envelope on the table and glanced at the hospital’s emblem, she let out a cold laugh. “As for those Vortex Path lunatics at the hospital, you don't need to worry about them. They’re not in any position to set their sights on my apprentice. Relax. I’ve already declined on your behalf.”

Something translucent and blurry slowly emerged in the sparse rain outside the window. The blood slowly washed away from its face beneath the falling rain. Only the half-devoured arm protruding from its mouth remained, leaving it a ghastly corpse-white as it swayed gently in the air.

Then, amid a series of crunching sounds, it vanished.

Ji Jue swallowed hard. For a moment, he almost wanted to say, Professor, isn’t your way of “declining” people a little... direct?

But the moment Professor Ye looked over at him, he instantly straightened up in his seat, as docile as a baby chick.

Direct? Not at all. That was incredibly tactful. You truly are the picture of magnanimity.

“Those people at the hospital are like chewing gum. Once they stick to you, you can’t shake them off. Be careful around them in the future. When you need to be blunt, don’t hold back. Otherwise, you’ll only give them room to push their luck.” Professor Ye shook the envelope, and a card slipped out. “Take it. It’s for you.”

Ji Jue curiously accepted the card and looked it over repeatedly. There was only a phone number printed on it. The card itself was crystal clear and even had a big heart drawn on it.

“What’s this?”

“The hospital’s Diamond VIP Card. If the day ever comes when you think you're about to die, call that number. The hospital will arrange a specialist consultation for you unconditionally. Of course, you’ll still have to pay, so try not to use it if you can. Sometimes, being alive but buried under a mountain of debt you’ll never finish paying is even worse than dying.”

Ji Jue’s hand trembled, and he nearly dropped the card. What the heck is this?

The whole thing felt incredibly ominous. It had the same vibe as voluntarily delivering yourself to your doom, like some idiot willingly climbing onto an Ember’s operating table.

Still, Ji Jue carefully put it away. Whatever the catch or the price that came with it, it was still a promise from Hope Hospital. At the very least, it was a life-saving charm.

It seemed that the materials he had handed over to Mr. Zhang had been genuinely useful after all, with real potential for practical application and innovation. If they could be put to use in the future, they’d surely bring at least a measure of comfort to the doctors in the Time Ruin.

“Is that all? Is there anything else?”

After setting the irrelevant matters aside, Ji Jue rubbed his hands together and looked at Professor Ye, his eyes sparkling. Now, this was the real reason he’d come.

Professor Ye glanced at his barely contained impatience and shook her head. Back when she was a student, nobody had ever said that a teacher’s duties also included appraising treasures. Besides, they had never come across so much bizarre stuff in those days, nor had they ever seen anything this absurd. Every single item Ji Jue brought back made her wonder whether modern alchemy was on the verge of becoming obsolete.

She reached out and tapped the table. A bone knife more than forty centimeters long emerged from behind the workshop’s layers of esoteric wards and returned to Ji Jue. Its glass-like blade shimmered with flowing luminescence, looking dreamlike and unreal.

“It’s a natural creation.” Ye Xian lowered her eyes and sighed softly. Her fists itched more and more. She very much wanted to give her apprentice a serious beating.

How is this bastard’s luck so ridiculously good? How in the world did you even stumble across something like this?!

Perhaps staying locked up in the workshop doing research was pointless. Maybe she should go out and wander around someday. Why was it that someone could just lie peacefully at home and the Time Ruin would somehow deliver itself to them, along with this kind of fortune?!

She lifted the bone blade and gazed at the flowing luminescence and its perfectly unified form without the slightest flaw. No matter how harsh her standards were, there was only one possible judgment in her mind. This was a genuine, unmistakable natural creation.

With Ji Jue’s account, she could now piece together exactly what had happened.

By sheer coincidence, the power of Supreme Benevolences and the Nine Abominations had fused together. Built upon the creation and intervention of Pacifier, they had circulated and transformed within the Time Ruin.

The blessings of Ascension, the essence of the Absolute Abyss, the corruption of the White Hall, the witness of the Ember, and even the doctor’s obsession and compassion had all merged into one. After passing through the four stages—Elevation, Purification, Transformation, and Integration[2]—it had finally taken form in Ji Jue’s hands.

The Time Ruin was the furnace, and fate was the craftsman. With Ji Jue as the fuel, all impossible conditions converged, and everything aligned. At last, what emerged was this bone blade.

It could not be replicated nor reproduced. No method could ever fully uncover its underlying principles or essence. It was a one-of-a-kind creation. In the entire process, the craftsman’s presence was not even strictly essential.

The key point was this: as the central conduit where the Supreme Benevolences, the Nine Abominations, blessings, and spirit matter all converged, the changes it underwent, the essence that flowed through it, the experience it accumulated, and the insights it produced were enough to drive any craftsman to madness. Every single natural creation was enough to make a craftsman’s skill and ability leap forward dramatically, turning them into a completely different person.

The absurd part was that opportunities other craftsmen could only dream of, opportunities that they would wait for their entire lives, landed in Ji Jue’s hands like they were nothing more than a common vegetable like cabbage. Counting Horsey, this was already the second time this had happened.

Even more absurdly, Ye Xian felt that such incidents would become a common occurrence in the future. Wasn’t this getting a bit too bizarre?

Compared to that, even the bone blade started to feel normal.

“There are no drawbacks or side effects. You can use it with confidence. For you alone, it’s completely harmless.” Professor Ye handed the bone blade over. “It won’t respond to anyone else’s commands or summons besides yours, and it won’t even accept other people’s spirit matter.”

That was actually the most regrettable part. Otherwise, given the blade’s quality and achievement, it would have been more than enough to be easily rated as a Divine Creation.

A craftsman without even a formal license personally completing a Divine Creation? That kind of spectacle would have been enough to publicly embarrass plenty of so-called “experts.”

In Ji Jue’s hands, the bone blade that had only briefly left him now resonated softly, without resistance or separation. Within the flowing luminescence, the glass-like blade became increasingly dreamlike and ethereal, almost unreal, as if it was an illusion.

The remaining Absolute Abyss divine essence left behind by the Abomination was a pure spirit-matter construct. The doctor’s Ascension intent was an equally subtle and immortal will. After the fusion of the two, the blade had become something that existed between physical matter and spirit matter. It was half physical, half spiritual.

Because of this, it could dissect and destroy both physical matter and spirit matter, while also exerting an extremely strong suppressive effect on all living beings. When holding the blade, the user would instantly gain access to the knowledge, experience, and instincts left behind by the physicians through the exchange of spirit matter, effectively becoming a top-tier surgeon in an instant.

It was practically the natural enemy of all Vortex-type creations. If enough spirit matter was infused into it, it could even pierce someone like Mr. Zhang in his full Golden Body state and leave a huge wound on him. Of course, by that point, Ji Jue would have probably been completely drained dry.

If used for killing, it would truly be a divine weapon.

Unfortunately, the downside was that the user restriction had been set specifically to Ji Jue. Because of that, it couldn’t unleash any real destructive power. It also couldn’t kill anything. Yes, this blade could not kill anything. Not just humans; no living thing could be killed by it.

It actively resisted all killing intent. Even if Ji Jue thrust it straight into someone’s forehead and twisted it around for a long time, the blade’s illusory edge would not cause any harm. Even when piercing the soul, aside from necessary operational adjustments, it would leave no lasting injury. It was purely a surgical blade meant for treating illnesses, removing contamination, and performing emergency operations.

“I’ve already tested it,” Professor Ye told him. “Its recognition and judgment system is very flexible, so don’t bother trying to find loopholes or exploit it. Accept its drawbacks and use it as a support tool. Even if you deliberately try to use it for killing, it probably won’t resist, but if you do, you may end up damaging its essence and spirit. That would be far more trouble than it’s worth.”

Ji Jue was stunned for a long time after hearing this.

“Anything else?” he asked curiously. “What exactly did you mean by the ‘drawback’ you mentioned just now?”

What drawback? What did I miss? Aren’t these all advantages?

1. 三十年河东，三十年河西，莫欺少年穷 is an idiom made famous by xianxia/xuanhuan novels (especially Battle Through the Heavens). The saying means fortune changes with time. Don't look down on someone just because they're down today; they may rise above you tomorrow. The "thirty years" isn't meant literally; it's an idiom for the ebb and flow of fate ("the wheel of fortune turns"). ☜

2. The fourth element was first written as 协律 in previous chaps, which I translated as Harmony. But here, the author changes it to 统合, which means Integration. ☜