Chapter 428: Chaos and Action

After his conversation with Wizard Altreus, Jie Ming had remained constantly vigilant for any signs of trouble.

But he never expected the enemy to move so quickly.

Just one month later, the calm routine of research was shattered by an emergency order.

Commander Frost’s voice, transmitted through the mana-net terminal in an unusually grave tone, echoed across the entire army:

[All units, attention. Effective immediately, enter maximum surface and subsurface alert status. Large-scale, high-precision excavation operations by Sickle-Skull variants have been detected in the deep strata beneath and around the perimeter of the encampment. The objective is suspected to be… severing the connection between the geological and ley-line structures of the ten-million-kilometer area surrounding our encampment and the main continent. I repeat—maximum alert!]

Attached to the order was a portion of the detection data.

Jie Ming quickly scanned it, his heart sinking.

The images showed countless specialized “Burrower” variant Sickle-Skulls constructing a vast and intricate underground network thousands to tens of thousands of kilometers beneath the encampment.

The purpose of their operation was not to dig assault tunnels.

Instead, they were excavating a series of encircling “isolation belts” centered on the encampment.

These isolation belts were gradually severing the mechanical connections of the crust and siphoning away the ley-line energy flowing through the region.

Because the work was conducted at sufficient depth, its concealment was near-perfect.

It was only when the encampment’s large-scale protective arrays began experiencing periodic fluctuations due to unstable energy supply that the wizards traced the anomalies back and uncovered this astonishing conspiracy buried deep underground.

“They want to physically and energetically ‘sever’ our foundation?” Jie Ming frowned deeply.

The tactic seemed crude, but considering its execution depth and scale, it was genuinely difficult to stop in a short time.

Unless one resorted to super-grade sorcery capable of triggering localized geological disasters—or even damaging the plane’s origin itself—in a blanket bombardment, it would be impossible to interrupt the near-completed project.

But the real question was: what was the point?

Even if they succeeded in “severing” this region, causing a decline in the encampment’s protective array efficiency and altering the terrain, the overall impact on the war situation would be limited.

The wizards did not rely solely on fixed fortifications; their greatest strength lay in their mobile forces and transcendent technology.

In open-field combat, wizards had never known fear.

Unless…

A flash of insight crossed Jie Ming’s mind. His gaze swiftly shifted to several key nodes marked on the encampment’s internal deployment map.

There lay the “Fundamental Law Anchoring Arrays” and “Anti-Spatial Disruption Generators” responsible for maintaining the spatial-temporal stability of the entire encampment.

Though these facilities could not oppose plane-scale time reversal, they were more than sufficient to block conventional spatial teleportation, time slowing, localized time loops, and other small-scale spacetime manipulations—ensuring absolute stability for internal command and research systems.

“Chaos…” Jie Ming murmured to himself. A clear intention crystallized in his mind.

What the hidden entity truly desired was not to inflict heavy damage through the excavation itself.

What it wanted was the brief but comprehensive “chaos” that would sweep across the entire encampment the moment the project was completed—caused by the violent upheaval of geological structures and the violent disruption of ley-line energy!

In chaos of this magnitude, the encampment’s precision spacetime protection systems would inevitably suffer instantaneous fluctuations—an overload or a fleeting window of failure.

Though that window might last only a fraction of a second, or even less, for an entity capable of manipulating time, that tiny sliver was more than enough.

This method was the optimal way for it to bypass conventional defenses and launch a “super-conventional elimination” against a specific target.

And who was the target?

There was no doubt.

Jie Ming remained silent. He did not share his deduction through any channel, nor did he display any unusual vigilance.

Without knowing the extent of the enemy’s information surveillance, any abnormal reaction might startle it into hiding.

He continued his research as usual and participated in tactical discussions.

Time passed in a deceptive calm, beneath which dark currents surged in tense anticipation.

One day later, the omens began.

First came faint, continuous tremors rising from the soles of their feet—like the stirring of some colossal beast deep in the earth.

Monitoring instruments requiring extreme precision started showing drifting readings. Elemental concentrations in the air fluctuated irregularly.

Commander Frost issued continuous orders, adjusting the output modes of the protective arrays and reinforcing key facilities.

Combat wizards entered full battle readiness. Cannon-fodder legions were deployed to the encampment’s edges, prepared for any possible direct assault from below.

The tremors grew stronger, shifting from steady rumbling to intermittent violent shaking.

Above the encampment, the light of multi-layered energy shields began flickering erratically, emitting overburdened buzzing sounds.

Cracks appeared in the ground—first thin as hairs, then rapidly widening into shocking chasms.

“It’s here!” someone shouted over the communication channel.

The next moment…

BOOM—!!!

A vast, apocalyptic sound of rupture rang out, as though an entire continental plate was being torn apart.

Centered on the wizard encampment, the ground within a thousand-kilometer radius suddenly arched upward like the edge of a cake sliced by an invisible giant blade—then collapsed!

Countless enormous fissures, each hundreds of meters wide and bottomless, spread across the region like ferocious scars in an instant.

Ley-line energy erupted from the cracks like floodwaters breaching a dam, carrying scorching magma and toxic gases skyward!

The encampment itself, thanks to its powerful protective arrays and prior reinforcements, did not collapse immediately—but it rocked violently like a lone boat in a storm.

More than a third of the rune towers went dark. Temporary structures collapsed in swathes.

Under the dual pressure of drastic physical restructuring and energy shockwaves, the energy shields flickered at a dangerous frequency.

Almost simultaneously, from the countless abyssal fissures, came a dense, skin-crawling sound of wings beating and claws climbing!

A black tide—a tide made of flesh—surged from every crack!

It was the long-prepared, astronomical army of Sickle-Skulls.

Taking advantage of the chaos of the tearing earth, they ignored the perimeter defenses that would normally have cost them dearly to breach, pouring directly from the fissures inside and along the edges of the encampment—like black volcanic eruptions—swallowing the entire wizard encampment in an ocean of insect tide in an instant!

Combat erupted in a heartbeat!

Wizards’ roars, Sickle-Skulls’ shrieks, the thunder of energy explosions, the crashes of collapsing structures—all fused in an instant into a frenzied symphony of death!

Everything happened in the blink of an eye.

Chaos, noise, chaotic energy currents, visual obstruction… reached their absolute peak.

In the initial violent quake, Jie Ming had already risen to his feet. A faint protective spiritual light shone around him as he prepared to take to the air, assess the situation, and join the fight.

Just as his feet lifted less than half a meter off the ground, his body poised to move, his attention drawn by the enemies surging from all directions and the tragic state of the encampment…

He vanished.

It was as though, in a moving scene, a figure had been gently erased by the painter with a rubber.

The nearest wizards around him were fully engaged with the enemies lunging from the ground fissures. Violent energy explosions and shockwaves masked every subtle anomaly.

No one noticed that one person was missing from the laboratory.