BOOM!!!

Another distant tremor echoed from above.

In the narrow tunnel, dust fell in fine sheets, startling Horsey into freezing in place as it looked left and right in panic. Its headlights were turned up brighter than anyone else’s, as if afraid the world could grow any darker.

A shitty scooter like you being afraid of the dark is ridiculous.

Ji Jue kicked its wheel in annoyance. “Move faster. Scout the way ahead.”

“The earthquakes seem to be getting more frequent.” An Ran pressed a hand against the wall, feeling the vibration coming from afar. “It feels like the entire rift realm is collapsing.”

“A complete and healthy system must have its own mechanism for renewal. In addition to carrying out repairs when errors occur, once corruption becomes irreversible, everything must be destroyed and then rebuilt from scratch,” the Seer said calmly. “According to my calculations, the reset should have occurred eighty years later. The appearance of outsiders has accelerated the distortions within the workshop. It seems we need to move faster.”

The entire group fell silent. Even Horsey froze in place. Only Ji Jue coughed awkwardly twice.

“Uh... Seer, I get that explanations are important right now, but could you maybe, say a little less?”

“Hm?” The Seer tilted her head slightly. “Did I say something wrong?”

The head placed inside the scooter’s front basket slowly turned. Its pitch-black eyes, like glass beads, looked back toward them.

That just made it even more terrifying. This was getting more and more like something out of hell.

After the two sides reached a preliminary cooperation agreement, the usual “recruitment quest” found in RPG games was completed. If there were a UI prompt, it would now pop up, saying The Seer has joined the party!

If this were a mobile game, it could even let you temporarily use a powerful character first, then trick you into paying later in some filthy monetization scheme. Reality, however, was much more complicated.

The problem was that the Seer’s body was extremely old, so old that even the slightest movement caused parts to fall off. Touch it, and it would collapse into pieces. She was basically a completely immobilized ICU patient. She couldn’t walk at all.

But no one else in the group could lead the way either.

There was already someone with mobility issues on the team—An Ran. If they added another one, Ji Jue felt like this entire rift expedition was turning into some kind of disability association field trip.

To this, the Seer calmly suggested, “Don’t you have a vehicle? Just cut off my head and hang it at the front. A model like mine has no function other than navigation anyway.”

She said it casually, as if she were talking about someone else’s head.

Ji Jue wasn’t some psychopath who enjoyed decapitating people on a whim. Even if they weren’t close, they were still technically teammates. He couldn’t bring himself to do it.

In the end, the Seer simply swayed her shoulders slightly, and her head rolled off on its own.

Just like that, despite the bizarre configuration, two people, one scooter, and a head set off, this time downward.

Through the tangled passages of the sewer system, they reached the deepest part of the town. Then, by taking an elevator, they descended all the way to the lowest level as if on a spring outing.

The entire journey was smooth, and there was not a single guard in sight. The locals guiding them were a little too experienced, weren’t they?

“Isn’t this a bit too easy?” Ji Jue asked the ball in his arms.

The devil’s work ball calmly replied, “If I betrayed my master, you’d be able to walk through her workshop as easily as taking a stroll in the park. At those forks just now, if you’d taken even one wrong turn, you’d probably already be dead by now. Be more grateful, will you?”

BOOM!!!

Before it even finished speaking, a massive explosion erupted from the deepest part of the underground. The entire structure trembled violently, and faint sounds of gunfire and screams could be heard, making Ji Jue pause.

An Ran pressed a hand against the wall as if listening closely. “About two kilometers away. Four people. And something else I can’t identify. Very large. Very dangerous.”

The Seer lifted her eyelids slightly, completely unconcerned. “Someone triggered the alarm. The outer defense systems have been activated. The guardians have awakened. Relax. The maintenance passage isn’t within the quarantine zone. You have clearance. Those rigid tools won’t stop you.”

The moment she finished speaking, something resembling a small spider crawled across the ceiling. As it passed by them, its compound eyes seemed to sweep over them briefly. Ji Jue had the furnace’s authorization, and An Ran was shielded by the Seer while sitting on Horsey. The spider detected nothing unusual and moved on.

Ji Jue let out a small breath of relief.

“Be careful. The more beautiful the Divine Creation, the more deceptive they are. That woman is definitely trouble. Be careful, and don’t be deceived.”

“She’s a Divine Creation?”

“If it has cognition and rationality, can override its underlying commands and spirit circuits, and can still exist and grow independently after separating from its user, then it already meets the basic criteria of a Divine Creation. Anything else could still be called a puppet granted awareness. But her? Her level of completion is leagues beyond the rest. You didn’t forget that alchemy history lesson I gave you earlier, did you?”

It was referring to the brutally intense competition of the qualitative realm in ancient times, something Ji Jue practically had etched into his very bones. Who knew just how lively and lifelike the tools left behind by Mercury could be?

The more something resembled a human, the more dangerous it became. Although thinking this way felt somewhat unfair to the Seer, who was still doing everything she could to support them, one had to remain cautious. The closer something was to a human, the more it needed to be guarded against.

Right now, the Seer was just a head, hanging in Horsey’s basket. Ji Jue didn’t even need to give an order. If anything unusual happened, Horsey would devour her as a side dish on its own. But unless they had a complete falling-out, Ji Jue didn’t want to recklessly use his abilities to control the situation.

Deus Ex Machina wasn’t omnipotent, at least not yet.

The passage finally came to an end. Only a sealed door appeared in front of them, resembling something taken from a ship’s hull.

“We’re almost there,” the Seer said. “Once we open this, we should be at the core.”

She looked at Ji Jue, revealing her intentions without concealment, without saying anything further. An Ran leaned on his crutch, trying to get off the vehicle, but Ji Jue stopped him.

“Is there a password?”

Ji Jue bent down and examined the rusted sealed door in front of him. He tapped it lightly and heard a hollow echo. The moment he touched it, through the resonance of Deus Ex Machina, he sensed the structure of the whole thing.

There were no traps worth being wary of. It was just an ordinary door, nothing more. He grabbed the handle tightly with both hands and twisted it with all his strength.

A harsh, grating sound echoed through the darkness, stretching far into the distance. Rust flakes fell from the wheel-like handle as it slowly turned. Finally, after a dry, grinding rotation, the door opened a crack. Radiant, shimmering light spilled through the narrow gap and fell into Ji Jue’s eyes. He instinctively held his breath.

There were no ambushes, no traps. Only shimmering waves like a rising tide, dazzling and multicolored, rippling through the air. It was spirit matter.

Genuine liquid spirit matter surged endlessly within the vast space beyond the door like an ocean, so immense its end couldn’t even be seen. Through the crack, it poured in, flooding over their feet. Countless ripples of fractured light spread across its surface.

It was a genuine ocean.

Horsey turned its wheel and curiously leaned forward, peering at the boundless, unfathomable sea of spirit matter on both sides of the path, as well as the straight road half-submerged in liquid spirit matter. It extended all the way toward the center of the underground world, where a solemn cathedral-like structure stood, as large as half a city.

“Welcome to the deepest layer of the Mercury Workshop, the spirit matter circulation zone.” The Seer in the basket let out a sigh, gazing at the massive structure shrouded in rainbow light in the distance. “Up ahead is the core of the workshop.”

“You’ve been here before?” Ji Jue asked curiously.

“Yes. Many times,” the Seer replied with a soft laugh as she glanced toward the boundless sea of spirit matter beside them. “Everyone in the workshop has been here. More than once. This is where we were born.”

Like surging tides splashing into a violent sea, a massive vortex formed on the surface of the seemingly boiling water. An enormous amount of crimson spirit matter poured down from the vault above like a storm, splashing into the sea and staining it with shocking patches of red.

Within that shattered spirit matter, fragments of memory still flickered, gradually scattering outward. Even the wind seemed filled with faint wails.

Countless spirit circuits appeared, causing the vortex to rise from the sea, and forming a violent tornado that swallowed all those fragments. Those false souls were torn apart in an instant, then shredded into oblivion. All madness and suffering spiraled downward into the massive vortex beneath the cathedral, vanishing without a trace.

Then came severed remains. Heads, arms, legs, torsos, internal organs...

Like hailstones of flesh and bone, even mutated monstrous bodies fell from the massive opening above, pouring downward. They landed in the boiling sea of spirit matter, quickly dissolving. In the end, only ash-like dust remained, silently sinking to the deepest part of the ocean and accumulating into mountain ranges that stretched without end.

There was no visible boundary. The rainbow light still shone, as brilliant as ever.

Nothing about this seemingly celestial world revealed how many corpses and remains had been buried within it, nor could any cries or wails be heard.

Ji Jue felt a chill run through his entire body.

“Those damaged tools, those out-of-control puppets, are sent here after being recovered. Their spirit matter is shattered and filtered, purified into its most pristine state. Once their physical shells are broken down, only unusable residual ash remains,” the Seer said slowly.

“Soon, along the production line below, new empty shells will be manufactured. First comes the skeleton, then the flesh is attached. After that, spirit matter is bestowed to awaken them, and finally memories are implanted. A brand-new tool will step off the conveyor belt, continuing its new mission. Until it once again discovers what it truly is...”

She gave a soft laugh, full of mockery. “If tools have a world after death, then this is our hell.”

Hell lay right before their eyes, yet it looked like a kingdom of heaven.

Crack. Crack, crack...

Amid repeated tremors, a fissure appeared across the vault above, and dust fell like rain. They were in the midst of an earthquake.

“Prepare yourself, Ji Jue,” the Seer said at last. “This is the limit of what I can do. If you still wish to achieve what you desire after this, what awaits you... is probably a hard battle.”

Ding!

A clear, ringing sound echoed around them.