Chapter 447: Freaking Out

She immediately tried to forcibly connect to the nearest extermination formation, intending to manually trigger it and interrupt this terrifying outburst.

But it was too late.

The shattered binding formations released chaotic torrents of energy, and right behind them came the living plane’s terrified surge of power.

The two extermination formations that were slightly closer and hadn’t yet fully charged were like small boats in a storm—they couldn’t even mount a proper resistance before being swallowed and torn apart by the incoming energy tide, reduced to nothingness and scattered fragments.

Viola herself bore the brunt of it.

Being closest to the center of the eruption, even with the protection of a sixth-ring wizard, she was like a leaf in a gale before this impact that felt as though the entire plane had “leaped up.”

Multilayered, multicolored shields flickered violently. Her whole body was ruthlessly hurled away by the irresistible energy flow, tumbling through the void.

She could only pour everything into maintaining her defenses and stabilizing herself—completely unable to control any formations anymore.

The last remaining extermination formation, being the farthest away and having had some of the impact partially blocked and dissipated by the three layers of formations in front, was fortunate enough not to be instantly destroyed.

But its surface energy barrier was already flickering unstably, the structure emitting dangerous creaking sounds, teetering on the verge of collapse.

“Jie Ming! Fire! Now!!” Viola forcibly steadied the comms channel while tumbling, her voice trembling from shock, rage, and the energy impact. “While it’s in the gap after the outburst! Open a breach! Give the old man a chance to get out!!”

Her gaze locked fiercely toward the warship, filled with absolute, unquestionable command and urgency.

Yet under her almost flaming stare, that warship, and that last extermination formation, remained utterly silent.

No attack beams lit up. No signs of energy focusing appeared.

“Jie Ming!! What the hell are you doing?!?” Viola’s voice suddenly rose sharply, brimming with incredulous fury. “It destroyed all the binding formations! It destroyed two extermination formations! It’s attacking! Can’t you see?! Fire! NOW!!!”

Over the comms channel, Jie Ming’s voice remained exceptionally calm:

“Senior Sister, stay calm. First look at the deep emotional spectral analysis data I just synced to you.”

Viola froze for a moment. Instinctively, she diverted a thread of attention to her terminal, where Jie Ming had forcibly pushed the real-time data stream.

It was a set of readings—parsed through special algorithms and extracted from the violent energy fluctuations—representing the plane consciousness’s “emotional state.”

After the living plane had coalesced its soul, it indeed gained far greater control over its power, but it also made it much easier for the warship’s equipment to read its emotional data.

On the chart, the deep red waveforms representing “malice,” “destructive intent,” and “aggression” did exist, but they were not dominant.

What had skyrocketed to the absolute peak, nearly breaking through the chart’s upper limit… was the bright yellow waveform representing “terror,” “fright,” and “extreme unease.”

Its intensity completely overwhelmed every other emotional indicator!

Rather than calling this a malicious attack, it was more like…

“This reading…” Viola’s eyes widened.

“This looks like… it saw a natural predator? Or something incomprehensible and terrifying, and it jumped out of sheer fright? A pure… overreaction from extreme stress?”

It wasn’t an attack.

It was simply the uncontrollable “startle reflex” triggered by something utterly incomprehensible that the soul had seen for the first time upon “opening its eyes” after birth!

At that moment, on the green plane that had just unleashed that terrifying strike, the terror waveform on its soul readings began to slowly decline.

In its place emerged something more complex: a mixture of bewilderment, confusion, pain, and faint traces of… grievance.

It seemed to have become “stunned” itself, unsure of what had just happened. It had only instinctively felt afraid, then instinctively used every ounce of its strength to “push away” the thing that scared it.

In the control room, Jie Ming watched the dominant “terror” waveform on the screen, along with the subsequent emotional feedback that was now turning somewhat “shrinking” and “probing.” He slowly unclenched the fist he hadn’t even realized he’d been clenching.

Viola’s figure transformed into a streak of light, cutting through the still-unsettled chaotic void left by the energy outburst, and swiftly flew back to the warship.

The moment the airlock doors opened, she stormed into the control room, still radiating lingering agitation and cold fury.

“What the hell just happened? That thing nearly buried us all!” she demanded without preamble, her sharp gaze stabbing toward Jie Ming while also sweeping out the viewport.

There, the last lonely extermination formation had just been struck by another instinctive aftershock from the still-rattled living plane.

Its already precarious structure finally gave way. In a burst of blinding light and silent explosion, it disintegrated into void debris.

Yet in the face of this scene of destruction, Jie Ming’s reaction was unexpectedly calm.

He didn’t even glance at the demise of the final formation. His eyes remained fixed on the deep emotional spectral data on the main control light screen.

“It was just scared out of its wits, Senior Sister.” Jie Ming’s voice was steady, carrying the clarity of someone who had seen through to the truth. “That earlier strike wasn’t an attack—it was an instinctive reaction to being startled. Like a person jolted awake by ice water in their sleep, or a wild animal suddenly seeing something incomprehensible explode beside it.”

He pointed at the screen, where the bright yellow waveform representing “extreme terror” still held absolute dominance. “Look—malice waveforms are very low, but the fear value is off the charts. And moreover…”

Jie Ming paused.

His cultivator’s perception was far more sensitive than any instrument when it came to the world’s reactions.

So his perception was telling him that the source of its extreme terror wasn’t the external bindings or threats they had imposed—it came from within its own “body.”

Of course, he couldn’t say that openly to Viola, so after a brief pause, he simply looked up toward the viewport. “Judging from the plane’s reaction, its attention isn’t focused outward. Whatever caused the change must be inside it.”

Viola frowned deeply and also looked at the data.

Indeed, the emotional spectral analysis matched exactly what Jie Ming had said.

“Inside…” she repeated the word, her mind racing. “You mean… Mentor Clark?”

“It can only be him.” Jie Ming nodded, a trace of amusement in his tone. “Think about it. A living plane that has just coalesced its soul and ‘opened its eyes’ to the world. The very first clear existence it perceives is a sixth-ring peak grand wizard of unfathomable strength, currently wandering around inside its body ‘exploring.’ If it were me, I’d probably be scared enough to jump up and throw every bit of power I had at first just to shove this ‘unknown dangerous thing’ away or stun it senseless.”