Chapter 401: The Reincarnation Plane

In the core laboratory of the Infernal Sulfur plane, Jie Ming stared at the third military department message displayed on the Netherweb Terminal, his brows slightly furrowed.

He did not immediately read the mission overview or plane data. Instead, as always, he first scrolled down to the casualty statistics section at the very bottom.

This had become a habit of his.

Before truly understanding the enemy, looking at the price one’s own side would have to pay often allowed the quickest judgment of the battle’s “nature.”

Then, his movements froze.

Current fatalities: 0

Zero.

A glaring, eye-catching zero.

Jie Ming stared at the number for three full seconds. Suddenly, he felt his temples throb painfully.

Having experienced all kinds of extremely high-difficulty plane wars, he had long since grown nearly numb to battlefields with “high death rates.”

In the wizard world, war was never child’s play. Casualty figures followed by several zeros were nothing unusual.

But “zero deaths”?

That sent a chill down his spine far worse than a ninety-percent fatality rate.

“Trouble…” Jie Ming murmured to himself, his fingers unconsciously tapping against the obsidian tabletop.

From his previous experience in the “Justice” plane, and from even more cases he had heard about, there was only one common thread among all the planes in wizard wars that exhibited “zero deaths” or “extremely low casualties”:

The enemy simply could not be dealt with by conventional means.

Either the wizards “couldn’t beat them,” or “couldn’t kill them,” or “killing them did no good.”

The worst case was something like the Justice plane—where they didn’t even give you the chance to fight them…

Jie Ming took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down.

Zero deaths usually meant one of two possibilities:

First: overwhelming superiority on our side, the enemy too weak to even inflict casualties.

But in that case, the military department would never mobilize “elite combat units” for support—any ordinary legion could steamroll them. Why waste resources?

That left only the second possibility.

“The other side… is one of those ‘mechanism monsters,’ huh.” Jie Ming rubbed the bridge of his nose as certain unpleasant memories from the past surged up.

He adjusted his breathing, then finally shifted his gaze back to the beginning of the message and began reading carefully.

Plane name: Provisional codename [Reincarnation Plane]

Plane rank: Large

Civilization type: Insect-class high-intelligence species

Primary hostile target: Sickle-Skull Clan (provisional designation)

Attached below was a three-dimensional projection.

It depicted a creature roughly three meters tall, its entire body covered in dark-purple carapace.

The head was a sharp triangle, compound eyes occupying two-thirds of the face, mouthparts consisting of four hinged saw-toothed mandibles—the overall outline indeed resembled a mantis.

But the torso was closer to the flat, oval shape of a cockroach, with six powerful segmented limbs and two pairs of translucent wing membranes folded on its back.

Detailed physiological and anatomical data scrolled beside the image:

Base individual combat power: Stable first-tier transcendent.

Social structure: Highly centralized hive-mind, individuals possess independent intelligence but obey collective will.

Technological level: Simultaneous development of biotechnology and basic energy manipulation; has already mastered cross-plane detection technology.

Special talent: Carapace possesses adaptive elemental resistance; rapidly generates corresponding resistance layers after being attacked.

Jie Ming skimmed quickly, feeling somewhat puzzled.

Judging from the paper stats alone, these were hardly some outrageous monsters.

First-tier transcendent individual combat power was completely inadequate in front of proper wizards.

He continued down to the force comparison:

“Enemy high-end combat power: Five eighth-tier creatures, more than one hundred seventh-tier creatures, uncountable sixth-tier and below; total estimated military strength exceeds one trillion.”

“Our side already committed: One eighth-tier Archwizard (‘Starforger’ Altreus), three seventh-tier wizards, approximately 1.2 million sixth-tier and below formal wizards, three hundred million auxiliary cannon-fodder legions.”

A very standard configuration.

One eighth-tier Archwizard leading the team was sufficient to suppress all of the enemy’s high-end forces.

Three seventh-tier wizards to sweep the mid-tier, over a million formal wizards to handle the transcendent insect swarms.

Although the numerical disparity was enormous, in terms of combat power, the wizards actually held the advantage.

By normal script, this should have been a textbook plane conquest: the eighth-tier wizard strikes to eliminate enemy leaders on the spot while guarding against the enemy triggering the plane’s origin for a self-destruct.

Seventh-tier wizards tear open the front lines, formal wizard legions command the cannon-fodder legions to advance steadily—three to five years at most to dismantle the core of the civilization, followed by long-term cleanup and resource extraction.

But since the military department had sent a reinforcement request…

Jie Ming’s finger slid toward the most crucial section.

“Battlefield Anomaly Records (excerpt)”

“First contact battle: Lord Altreus personally acted, killing all five eighth-tier Sickle-Skull Clan leaders within three seconds. Enemy command system collapsed, our forces advanced across the board. Four hours and twelve minutes later, the main defensive line of the enemy civilization collapsed; remaining resistance forces less than three percent.”

“Moment of anomaly: When the enemy civilization was on the verge of extinction (remaining individuals below one-thousandth of total population), plane-grade spacetime fluctuation detected. In the next instant, all participating personnel (except Lord Altreus) were returned to the initial moment of invasion. Memory scans show that, aside from the eighth-tier existence, no one retained memories of that timeline.”

“Supplementary confirmation: All fallen wizards fully resurrected, consumed resources restored to original state, enemy fallen units also resurrected. Preliminary determination: ‘civilization-grade time reversal’ phenomenon.”

“Second through seventeenth contact battles: Multiple tactics attempted, including slow attrition, rapid occupation of core regions after decapitation strikes, inducement of internal division, etc. Confirmed time reversal trigger condition: ‘Sickle-Skull Clan civilization main body on verge of extinction (remaining individuals below one-thousandth)’. After each reversal, enemy tactics clearly evolved; targeted anti-wizard combat methods have already appeared.”

“Current inference: This time reversal ability is the Sickle-Skull Clan civilization’s ‘near-death protection mechanism,’ likely randomly awakening in one of the remaining individuals upon meeting the condition. No usage cost detected (or cost likewise reset by time reversal).”

“Core issue: Ability effect limited to within the plane. External observers unaffected, but all existences inside the plane (including matter, energy, memory) are reset. Lord Altreus retains memory due to eighth-tier ‘law solidification’ characteristic, but is unable to prevent the phenomenon.”

“Reinforcement request: Wizards with experience in spacetime mechanism research, or those possessing ‘cross-timeline interference’ capabilities, needed to assist in breaking this civilization’s time loop or capturing an individual bearing the time loop ability.”

Jie Ming closed the screen and leaned back into the chair.

In the laboratory, only the low hum of the elemental pools remained, accompanied by the light tapping of his fingertips against the tabletop.

“Time reversal… civilization-grade protection mechanism…” he muttered, the relevant records from the Great Dao Book Pavilion flashing rapidly through his mind.

The cultivation world also had similar methods—certain “Sect Reboot Grand Arrays” left behind by ancient great powers that would forcibly reverse time when a lineage faced extinction, usually at the cost of consuming one side of the world’s origin or sacrificing billions of lives.

But those were “one-time use,” and the price was horrific.

Something like the Sickle-Skull Clan’s seemingly infinite looping ability with no visible cost…

“Either the cost is so well-hidden that even an eighth-tier wizard can’t detect it, or…” Jie Ming’s gaze sharpened, “…this simply isn’t ‘their’ ability at all.”

He thought of another possibility.

Some ultra-grade ancient relic, a dormant spacetime conceptual entity, or even the plane itself giving birth to a “self-preservation will”—treating the Sickle-Skull Clan civilization as “immune cells” that, upon detecting “pathogens” (wizard invasion), immediately initiate the reset procedure.

If it was the latter, the problem became far more troublesome.

You would not be fighting a civilization, but the underlying rules of an entire plane.

Yet judging from the current situation, the latter possibility seemed far more likely.

Because this time reversal’s scope of effect was simply too limited—confined to a single plane.

Though the plane itself was classified as large, compared to the endless chaotic void, it was utterly insignificant.

“And the most troublesome part is…” Jie Ming couldn’t help pinching the bridge of his nose, “…what wizards want is not destruction, but conquest and plunder.”

If the goal were merely to exterminate the Sickle-Skull Clan, there were actually many methods.

Even having a seventh-tier wizard strike from outside the plane could destroy the entire plane.

But that would be meaningless.

The wizard civilization waged war across the endless planes for resources, knowledge, and new understandings of laws.

A plane capable of infinite time reversal was itself an enormous treasure.

If its mechanism could be cracked, or even harnessed…

Its value would far exceed a hundred ordinary planes.

“That’s why the military department is being so cautious, and why there are zero casualties.” Jie Ming rubbed his temples. “It’s not that there are no casualties—it’s that, until this ability is cracked, any damage on either side is completely meaningless.”

He reopened the screen and pulled up the detailed information on the Reincarnation Plane, beginning to analyze it line by line.

From the seventeen existing loop records, the Sickle-Skull Clan’s rate of evolution was astonishingly fast.

In the first loop, they hadn’t even understood the basic structure of wizard spells and were casually crushed by Altreus.

Yet by the seventeenth loop, they had already developed “anti-magic field” technology capable of briefly interfering with seventh-tier wizard casting, as well as specialized resistance variants targeted at elemental spells.

“They’re learning.” Jie Ming stared at the data. “Each loop retains a portion of ‘experience,’ possibly transmitted through some pheromone system, or perhaps guided covertly by the individual who awakened the time ability.”

“The longer this drags on, the harder the enemy becomes to deal with.”

“But the key to breaking the time loop requires a sufficient number of ‘experimental samples’…”

A classic paradox.

Jie Ming closed his eyes and sank his divine sense into his own consciousness, beginning to inventory his various trump cards.

Qi Refinement methods, body forging techniques, rune-sealed wizard artifacts, black giants…

But against time reversal…

The only thing that might possibly work was his own Inner Cave Heaven—after all, that was another plane, and most likely would not be affected.

But…

“It won’t be of much use.” Jie Ming sighed.

After thinking it over, he realized that what he could actually do right now was quite limited.

Crack the time loop?

That was a problem even the eighth-tier Archwizard Altreus hadn’t solved after dozens of loops. He, a fourth-tier wizard, even with knowledge from the Great Dao Book Pavilion, could not possibly produce any breakthrough ideas in the short term.

Change tactics?

The military department had surely already tried every conventional approach; otherwise they wouldn’t have issued this kind of “special talent recruitment” directive.

So the only remaining option was really just one.

“Under the premise that it’s uncertain whether the Inner Cave Heaven is effective, the best thing to do is raise my own combat power as much as possible. No matter what, increasing combat strength is never wrong.”