Pillar of Yita

A soft ’click’ sounded, and a door in the distance opened by itself.

But within his vision, the prompt above the hovering Dragon Knight System left Fang Hong stunned for a moment:

’Artisan’s Gate—’

’Character Artisan Skill (basic affix, alchemy related) has been upgraded by one level, perception increased by 5%.’

’Character has gained 18,350 points of cognitive experience.’

This prompt made Fang Hong suddenly stand upright.

It turns out that the Red Gate mentioned by the Tower Guard meant this, where danger also symbolizes opportunity. Passing through each Red Gate yields corresponding rewards. No wonder they say that the Hall of Thousand Doors is an essential path for top-tier artisans, with a Red Gate after every hundred doors. How many Red Doors does the legendary Hall of Thousand Doors have?

Suppressing the shock in his heart, he walked towards the next door.

If before, Fang Hong was only participating in this trial out of curiosity, at this moment, he couldn’t help but form some ambitious plans: How far could he go here? What lies beyond the second Red Gate? And the third?

Could he surpass others’ records?

How far had the one known as the leading figure of the new generation, Loofah, gone?

He even had a somewhat daring thought, could he stand shoulder to shoulder with Loofah?

With these restless thoughts in mind, Fang Hong pushed open the ajar gateway—after seemingly passing a hundred doors of trials, the world beyond the door had begun to acknowledge this young Alchemist, no longer playing guessing games with him.

Thus, as soon as Fang Hong entered, he heard a mechanical voice in his mind, neither male nor female, with a metallic tone:

”Single Coordination Structure—”

Upon hearing this, Fang Hong immediately understood what it meant.

If the first level was the basics of basics in Alchemy: characters and single arrays.

The second and third levels were the first steps for an Alchemist to become a craftsman: extraction and purification.

Then this level was the first step an Alchemist took towards becoming a Combat Artisan: coordination structure.

What people refer to as ’coordination structure’ is actually quite simple, as traditionally, resonance crystals are a part of the coordination structure. The so-called coordination structure is a device that translates every intricate movement of the Alchemist’s control gloves into actions of a flexible construct.

Different flexible constructs naturally have different coordination structures. Among flexible constructs, the simplest practical construct is the Clockwork Fairy—but the Clockwork Fairy is actually a flexible construct with multiple coordination structures.

It has five coordination structures, consisting of two pairs of Fairy wings formed by four single wings, and a visual coordination structure. If there are other functions within the Clockwork Fairy, like the Type II Clockwork Fairy’s voice component, and Fang Hong’s Fire Giant, they all possess additional coordination structure components.

Generally speaking, the coordination structure is the most basic control unit of a flexible construct, and the more of these control units there are, the more calculative power they occupy.

In the general sense, a single coordination structure does not exist in practical flexible constructs, but it does exist as training aids for Combat Artisans—training constructs. These constructs have no practical value; they might be a single foot, a single wing, or a single motion structure.

As a flexible construct, such a structure is inherently valueless, but its only purpose is training.

Honestly speaking, Fang Hong had never seen a single coordination structure. He was not a professional Combat Artisan; professional Combat Artisans are specially trained within the Artisan Association or a Grand Guild, and only those individuals may have seen a single coordination structure.

Fang Hong himself started with the Clockwork Fairy, which is also a necessary path for most wild Combat Artisans.

However, he had never seen it, which didn’t mean this door was difficult for him; quite the opposite, after proficiently controlling so many flexible constructs, a mere single motion structure was not challenging to Fang Hong.

Of course, out of respect, he still gave it his all. This level did have some difficulty, as it not only required the Combat Artisan to control the single motion structure but also imposed a series of motion requirements and time limits.

But after all, a single motion structure is still a single motion structure, and Fang Hong cleared the level in less than a minute.

Then came the next green door.

It was only just before pushing the door that Fang Hong suddenly realized—a change had occurred in the assessment content.

From the previous simple Alchemist assessment, it shifted to an assessment for Combat Artisans, because Alchemists don’t actually need the ability to control flexible constructs. This discovery invigorated him, as he came precisely for the Combat Artisan challenge; although he had some understanding of the artisan part, he was far more adept in this area.

At last, it has come.

Fang Hong thought, and then pushed the door open and entered.

The second level was dual coordination structure, and the third was multi-coordination structure. The world beyond the door seemed particularly cautious in assessing Combat Artisans, with difficulty increasing gradually rather than leaping forward as in the prior artisan assessments.

Fang Hong didn’t know if it was because, after a hundred doors, the difficulty level was naturally limited, or if being a Combat Artisan was inherently a challenging task. However, the first few levels weren’t challenging for him at all.

The hardest level took him less than five minutes.

It was as if it reflected what Loofah had mentioned to the Nether before: