Chapter Eighty-Eight: The Broken Blade and the Box

Ye Chen was not the kind of man who wasted time on hesitation; once he decided to act, he acted.

Under everyone’s eager gaze, he took out the broken blade he carried on him.

The instant it appeared, You Ya, seated in the chief chair, spoke up. “Is that your awakened artifact?”

Last time You Ya and her brother had met Ye Chen in the reception room, they had been too absorbed in discussing the abnormal test results to ask about his awakened ability.

But any expert could tell at a glance what was what. You Ya was precisely the sort of person who dealt with awakened artifacts.

Ye Chen gave a low assent and said no more, his expression solemn.

With the box held steady in one hand and the broken blade in the other, he prepared, fully focused, to drive the point into the keyhole.

There was no point in hacking at the box itself; destroying the lock mechanism would be enough.

Besides, for some reason, Ye Chen felt complete confidence in the broken blade’s sharpness.

Somewhere deep in his instincts, there was no doubt at all that the lock could be broken.

That confidence felt as though it had been passed to him by the blade itself.

The instant the tip touched the box, Ye Chen vaguely felt it tremble for no apparent reason in his palm.

It seemed almost as if it wanted to spring free from his grasp.

Ye Chen let out a soft breath and tightened his grip. What was this supposed to mean?

The box’s reaction just now made him feel as though it feared his broken blade, as though it wanted to flee.

Heh. So there was something to this after all.

Come, foul thing, taste my blade.

Just as the tip was about to pierce the keyhole, a familiar voice suddenly rang in Ye Chen’s mind.

[Temporary Mission]

[Do not open the box by destructive means]

The sudden mission startled Ye Chen so badly that his hand jerked; the box almost slipped free, and the motion of driving the blade into the keyhole came to an abrupt halt.

You Ya’s delicate brows knit together. She did not understand it either. Was he frightened by the box?

Ye Chen immediately closed his eyes and sank into his own inner world, hurrying toward the mission board.

Only when he drew near did he see that a new mission slip had indeed appeared on the board, which had not seen a new task for a long time.

Another temporary mission?

Ye Chen did not immediately leave his inner world. Instead, he entered a state of thought, pondering the purpose behind this mission’s appearance.

Do not destroy the box. That means my broken blade really can force the lock. Thinking of this, Ye Chen felt a faint thrill.

This mission from the Transcendent Manor had been posted for quite some time already. Since the lock mechanism could be damaged, then among the people who had come to try, there must have been awakeners too. Why had they failed?

Wait. Could it be that my awakened artifact is special?

Ye Chen suddenly recalled the night when Qiao Mulv had touched his broken blade and, startled, could not hold it steady.

No, that was not it.

The greatest difference between me and other awakeners is not the blade, but the breath-control art I possess in addition to it.

It is the inner energy stirred by the breath-control art that sets me fundamentally apart from others. Ye Chen’s eyes lit up at once, as he seized on the key point.

Yet with that delight came another trouble.

If I am not allowed to pry it open with the blade, and I cannot break it by force, then what other way is there?

...

The researchers in the conference room looked from one to another, each more baffled than the last.

They watched Ye Chen, who only moments ago had produced his awakened artifact, now with his eyes tightly shut, as though he were meditating on something no one could fathom.

Everyone turned their gaze back to Director-General You Ya. After all, he was someone you had personally brought in.

But the response they got was a cool, sharp glare. Why are you looking at me? I have no idea what medicine this brat is brewing in his gourd either.

Just as someone was about to urge him on, Ye Chen, who had been standing there, opened his eyes again, and light flashed in their depths.

If his expression before had held a trace of bewilderment, then now You Ya could actually sense within his bearing a seriousness and confidence.

The sort of confidence that comes from having the matter well in hand.

As he withdrew from his inner world, Ye Chen had already formed a faint suspicion in his heart: this potentially workable method should be connected to the reversal breath-control art he had mastered.

When he first learned how to condense diamond-shaped throwing darts, he had once discussed it privately with Qiao Mulv.

He had asked whether, beyond turning touched objects into rubber through his gloves, Qiao Mulv had any other abilities.

For instance, could he release the inner energy within his body outward, or even give it physical form?

Back then, Qiao Mulv had looked at him as though staring at a monster and answered that inner energy was merely energy, only the kind of power awakeners used to activate their skills.

It was like eating food: after digestion, food is converted into the energy the body needs.

It allows you to walk, run, breathe, and so on.

But could you project that energy outward? How would you project it outward?

As for materializing it, that was even more far-fetched than a fairy tale.

So do not blindly believe the skill-development experiences of other awakeners; you will only learn the wrong thing.

That had been Qiao Mulv’s warning at the time.

Yet Ye Chen had silently overturned those words in his heart, because he discovered that the breath-control art was precisely the reason his own inner energy differed from everyone else’s.

And the reversal breath-control art he had recently mastered could make his inner energy project outward and change shape.

That, too, was something no one else could do.

In the conference room, Ye Chen still held the same posture as before: the broken blade was lightly pressed against the keyhole, while the thumb of his other hand quietly rested on the knob.

He did not set the blade down because, if the next step succeeded, it would only become harder to explain.

Since he had already admitted that the broken blade was his awakened artifact, he might as well let it remain there as a matter of course.

He could feel the gazes of everyone in the room, each one sharp as a needle, while You Ya in particular stared at him fixedly with deep suspicion.

Deep breath. Close eyes. Open again.

The next moment, his back-eye perception awakened.

This was the first source of confidence Ye Chen had in opening the box.

The structure of all things could not escape the sight of my back-eye perception.

As expected, in the very next instant, the box’s internal structure was laid bare in Ye Chen’s black-and-white field of vision, every detail visible.

Yet what disappointed him was that the box held nothing at all inside; it was an empty box.

The gears glimpsed through the hollow sections were gathered in the lid, linked together in a chain and connected to the knob.

But then Ye Chen abruptly discovered that the knob concealed an entire hidden world.

The passage connected to the keyhole was spiral-shaped, and extremely narrow.

There were five nodes along the spiral passage, each spherical in form, and at the very end of the spiral was a larger sphere.

A total of six spheres.

Ye Chen believed no key in the world could possibly be shaped like this.

Even if one were forged successfully, it still would not be able to enter; structurally, it was plainly unreasonable.

Unless your key could change shape.