"Goodness, each generation surpasses the last."

Jiang Tongguang sighed: "Ah, Old Gu, I think this child is suited for Absolute Prison!"

Gustav remained silent.

After witnessing Ji Jue nearly hammer the Mutant to death, repair the door, and then... toss the Mutant into the furnace for waste utilization, Gustav had nothing to say.

Fortunately, Ji Jue was the only absurdly freakish candidate.

He could look at other projections to stabilize his blood pressure.

.

At this moment, within the workshop, the intense work continued unabated.

After reinforcing the workshop, Ji Jue operated the nearly scrapped exoskeleton, persistently folding and crumpling the dying Mutant until it was a compact mass that he forced into the Melting Furnace.

Amid the burning flames and the reconstruction of spiritual materials, the overloaded furnace shook violently, fissures appearing continuously, only to be patched up by Ji Jue using various materials.

As long as it didn't explode, it was still usable.

Besides, wasn't it running just fine now?

From within the furnace, familiar wails and screams echoed once more, while in a corner, the freshly forged blood-iron hammer shivered, not daring to make a sound.

Explosive sounds kept coming.

Numerous redundant structures and tissues turned to ashes during the burning, thick blood slowly leaking from the cracks and spreading in a pool on the ground.

What a pity.

Ji Jue sighed, quickly gathering the blood in a basin, adhering to the principle of not wasting anything.

In terms of quality, this Mutant was stronger than the one that crawled out of the furnace, but ultimately still scrap material—just a few Chosen One corpses aggregated into a Mutant after undergoing mutation.

Make do with it.

In such dire times, no one could afford to be picky.

In these trying times, cooperation and unity were imperative; only by working together could they move forward.

What is this?

This is called mutual tolerance for the greater good!

"Don't worry, it will be fast."

Ji Jue patted the furnace reassuringly, "Once you finish counting the scratches inside the furnace, you'll transform into the useful Mickey tools!"

The piercing screams escalated with the intensifying heat.

Ji Jue stepped in the blood pool, dragged a chair over, and sat by the fire, enjoying the warmth amidst the thunderstorm and eerie sounds outside the workshop.

Whistling and singing, he was at ease.

.

For all the examinees, the night, full of endless suffering and torment, finally ended with unprecedented fear and anxiety.

It was almost like a nightmare.

The nightmarish mutation erosion at night, monsters constantly prowling outside the doors, mutants crawling out of the furnace, unknown entities sneaking through pipes in the dead of night, and even the violent tremors and collapses come dawn.

Each ordeal had drained the candidates, leaving them terrified and yearning for death.

Yet when the black night finally ended, the sun did not rise.

When the first candidate mustered the courage, fully prepared and stepped through the invisible barrier that had disappeared unnoticed, they found wreckage and ruins.

Old but somewhat intact buildings were now on the verge of collapse.

In the buildings and gardens outside the basement, corpses lay everywhere, their rotting bodies in the dampness attracting eerie insects.

Flies buzzed, the stench spread.

And upon seeing the sign on the wall and the words 'Luye Frontier Observation Center', their hearts sank to the depths.

Only now did they understand the source of this exam scenario...

——[Lightless Disaster]!

One hundred and forty-one years ago in the extreme west of Endless Sea, at the edge of civilised society, the terror of the [Lightless Disaster] ravaged.

Due to budget cuts and years of neglect, the head of Luye Frontier Observation Center abandoned his post, overlooking numerous omens. Ultimately, in that heavily polluted sea area, a creature evaluated as a [Final] level Disaster Beast emerged and hatched.

Upon its birth cry, an unprecedented mutant tide covered thousands of miles of sea area.

A dense fog followed, spreading even further to cover dozens of islands including Luye Island. For three and a half months, that contaminated sea area never saw the sun.

Everything living in the paths of the so-called 'Nether Sea Worm' Disaster Beast was utterly eroded, the world turning into a Demon Realm. Had it not been for the scarcity of inhabited islands, it might have caused one of the most catastrophic disasters in recorded history.

Three and a half months later, the joint fleet of the Empire and Federation finally utilized weapon Heavenly Artisan to annihilate the Disaster Beast completely.

Even now, those pollutions have not dissipated. According to calculations, a natural recovery would take at least two hundred years.

Surprisingly, when the association's post-disaster survey team arrived at Luye Island to retrieve data, they discovered... an unexpected survivor.

An apprentice whom no one had paid attention to.

During the mutation erosion, he was thrown into the workshop to do menial tasks and thus escaped the disaster.

Over the next three months, this apprentice, who had failed the craftsman exams several times, hid in the observation station, relying on near-expiry food supplies and his barely adequate skills to survive until the investigation team arrived.

After such a severe disaster, this surviving apprentice gave up crafting, instead assisting the association with their promotions and living the rest of his life as a mascot, earning a good sum and living out a quiet life.

From the ether records extracted from him by the association, the scene reconstruction and analysis revealed that this seemingly miraculous survival was actually not difficult.

Luye Island was not within the core of the mutant pollution, and the Mutants and evil creatures born on the island were not particularly interested in the scant blood and spiritual materials on living beings.

Sometimes being too weak has its advantages.

At the very least, those little scraps of flesh and spirit do not attract attention... and those who do, cannot find or kill him.

As long as they survived the initial impact, relying on careful maintenance and repair of the observation station, survival was not impossible.

The process was fairly simple, really, just needing hands!

But peering back through history, everything seems easy.

Knowing what needs to be done does not make it easy when facing brutal reality; everyone feels an overwhelming darkness.

Especially when they climbed to the top of the broken observation tower and looked down upon the whole island.

Under the dim twilight, massive shadows moved silently, swarms of mutants howling constantly. The tremendous evil creatures rooted on the desolate island, extending their tendrils.

Rotten giant birds opened their wings in the fog-filled skies, calling hungrily.

The world had fallen into a Demon Realm, Luye Island an almost nightmarish Hell.

In the simulation of the Tower of Transformation, this three-month-long survival ordeal had not even begun, yet countless hearts were already filled with despair.

Except for Ji Jue.

"Seriously? Is this really an exam?"

He set down his binoculars, rubbed his eyes, picked them up again, and looked carefully.

Incomprehensible.

"Why, everywhere is filled with beautiful materials!"

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