The Steam Age: Gears and Bones

Chapter 34

The Jade Record analyzes all things and deduces possibilities. The core ability of the All-Knowing Eye is never just to see through the essence of a thing, but to deduce unknown possibilities based on the known.

At this moment, Perfit is using this ability to do something that no alchemist has ever dared to do before: not to repair an item, not to decompose one substance and recombine it into another, but to complete the seal of an ancient god that has been lost for at least thousands of years.

The crimson light of the Philosopher's Stone emanated from her hands, spreading outwards along the ground and into the ruins on both sides of the street.

The charred bricks, the broken paving stones, the overturned iron lampposts, the half-collapsed wall ruins—all these things began to move on their own the moment the red light touched them.

Instead of being roughly dragged by mental force, they are decomposed, recombined, and shaped in a way that is precise to the millimeter.

In the red light, the bricks and stones shattered into smaller particles, then reassembled into stone slabs engraved with sealing runes; the iron lampposts were twisted, stretched, and bent into spears engraved with array patterns, which were driven into the frozen soil one after another, forming a ring-shaped outer array base around the direction of the divine abomination.

Two complete alchemical arrays unfolded simultaneously on the ground—one inside and one outside.

The inner array consists of ancient sealing runes she recorded in the cellar, which were restored to their original sealing logic after being supplemented by the Jade Record; the outer array is her own creation, a cage structure nested around the ancient runes, used to withstand the physical impact of the divine abominations.

These two alchemical arrays, when combined, constituted the largest and most complex alchemical array she had ever drawn since her transmigration.

The moment she finished replenishing the sealing runes and connecting the outer array, the Jade Record turned a new page in her mind.

A flood of alchemical runes, array deductions, and nested spell theories poured into her consciousness like a burst dam.

Each rune deconstructs itself into deeper variations, and each variation creates new theoretical connections with the basic structure of alchemy.

Perfit felt as if his brain was an engine that had been suddenly filled with steam, every gear was working overtime, and every nerve was throbbing.

That wasn't a surprise, it was pain.

Pure pain.

The pain was so intense that she almost bit her tongue off.

The divine calamity is already upon us.

With each wriggling movement of its body, the fragments of ruins suspended inside the black slime collided with each other, producing a dull sound, like bones being crushed.

Countless faces were embedded in its body, their dark purple eyes fixed on Perfit.

It recognized her—this insignificant mortal in the cellar had gazed directly at its sealed origin with its all-knowing eye, and her soul's aura had already been marked by it.

The divine evil will not let go of any soul it marks. Once a soul is swallowed by it, it will be trapped in its body forever, which is a more terrible end than the withering disease.

Perfit pulled the cane from the ground, gripped the handle tightly with both hands, and aimed the red light from the two Philosopher's Stone fragments at the direction of the Divine Abomination.

The Jade Record: All-Knowing Eye locked onto the irregular core structure at the very center of its massive body, and lines of emerald green analytical data scrolled rapidly at the edge of her field of vision.

She didn't look at the data—she didn't need to.

Her mental energy is being drained by the two Philosopher's Stone fragments at an unprecedented rate.

Each rune consumes several times the mental energy required to convert ordinary matter, and she is activating dozens of such runes simultaneously.

The inner formation was completed first.

The sealing runes rose from the ground, using stone slabs and iron spears as carriers. The lights that lit up one by one reflected each other, forming a huge cage of light that enveloped the massive body of the divine abomination.

When the ancient runes inside the cage came into contact with the black slime on the surface of the abomination, they burst out with blinding purple-white lightning. The abomination let out a silent roar—not a howl, but a shockwave that exploded directly at the soul level. Everyone standing at the street corner felt a violent dizziness at the same time.

Immediately afterwards, the outer array was activated.

The stone slabs on the outer side of the street were turned over by the red light, and the bricks and stones spontaneously combined to form a ring-shaped solid barrier, layer upon layer of bricks and stones completely sealing off the flanks and escape routes of the divine evil.

The ground shook when the divine monster struck the inner wall of the cage.

The impact force was transmitted to the surface of the permafrost, and Chertzov, who was standing a little distance away, was so shaken that he knelt down on one knee.

The runes on the cage walls flickered violently, and several bricks that formed the seal cracked from the inside, with black viscous liquid attempting to seep out from the cracks.

Perfit didn't wait for it to succeed—she raised her left hand and gripped the Alchemist's Rod, and another beam of red light precisely injected into the bricks next to the crack, pushing the seeping slime back in the runic light.

The runes began to dim again.

She infused it with more spiritual energy.

My hands started shaking, then my shoulders, and then my knees.

Her vision began to darken at the edges, a sign that her mental energy was nearing exhaustion, but before her consciousness finally collapsed, Perfit raised her cane again to complete the last runic structure at the top of the cage.

All the bricks, iron spears, and rune slabs at the top converged towards the center at the same moment, together with the sealing runes on the ground, sealing the entire Divine Abomination within the Cage of Light.

The cane slipped from her loosened fingers, tapping lightly on the frozen ground. She could barely feel the pain when her knees hit the ground.

"Run." With her last ounce of will, she forced the word out of her throat. "Run south, to Holy Romulus."

Then consciousness ceased.

The last thing she felt was not the ground hitting her face, but a pair of arms that reached under her body and pulled her steadily up from the frozen ground.

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Perfit's consciousness was sinking.

This feeling was not unfamiliar to her.

Four years ago, in the underground laboratory of Brandlis Manor, less than fifteen minutes after she transmigrated to this world, she was faced with the Philosopher's Stone transmutation circle left by her parents, which had gone berserk.

At that time, she wasn't even an alchemist apprentice, yet she had to use her fourteen-year-old body to endure an uncontrolled alchemy attack that could raze the entire manor to the ground.

She activated the Emerald Book: All-Knowing Eye, using the last vestiges of composure remaining from her transmigration to suppress the rampaging alchemical array and reassemble the Philosopher's Stone—at the cost of completely exhausting her mental energy, sinking her consciousness into the depths of her heart, and opening that giant emerald book for the first time, gaining the ability to discern all things.

At this moment, she stood once again on that tranquil water surface.

Beneath my feet was colorless water, above me was no sky, and all around me was boundless chaos.

Not far away, the enormous book carved from a single piece of jade still floated on the water, its cover adorned with gold patterns radiating a constant and gentle emerald green light amidst the chaos.

It only turned one page.

The first page granted her the ability to recognize all things, allowing her to see through the essence of all creation.

At this moment, the second page was slowly turning in front of her, the page densely covered with emerald green text. The text was not static—it was flowing, reorganizing, and shuttling between different paragraphs, like fireflies that had been trapped in the pages of a book for too long and had finally found a way out.