Ascension was easy to begin but incredibly hard to improve. Purification was tedious and required extreme precision. Harmony demanded full-system control to ensure every component was properly aligned, cooperating without interfering with one another.0

These all shared one thing in common: when one failed, one just had to be careful and try again. As long as you followed the procedure, you wouldn’t go too far wrong. If you messed up, you just needed a couple of slaps to make you remember next time.0

But Transformation was a vicious dead loop for apprentices. Without money to buy materials, you couldn’t practice; without practice, you’d make mistakes; mistakes ruined materials and earned you punishment and deductions; after deductions, you had even less money to buy materials.0

Thinking about this, Ji Jue, as a veteran of poverty, immediately felt a chill down his spine. He clutched the little over a million that hadn’t even had time to warm in his pocket, silently hoping that Chen Yubo, that shameless deadbeat, would quickly transfer the remaining payment to him.1

“You don’t need to...0