Chapter 481: After the Battle

Chapter 481: After the Battle

Approximately fifteen kilometers behind Fortress No. 7 lay a temporarily leveled “rest area.”

Calling it a rest area was somewhat generous. There were no shielding tents—only a stretch of gray-white ground forcibly compacted by alchemy techniques, and thousands of metal recliners haphazardly arranged across it, also conjured on the spot with alchemy.

Jie Ming sat on one of those recliners.

In his hands he cradled a cup of warm potion that glowed with faint green luminescence.

He stared blankly at the sky for a while, then absentmindedly blew on the warm magic potion before taking a small, tea-like sip.

【Soul Spring】, a third-grade potion. Its primary function was to soothe a soul agitated by excessive mental power consumption and assist in stabilizing the sea of consciousness.

The taste was like mint mixed with rust—not particularly pleasant—but once swallowed, a refreshing coolness spread through the brain.

Feeling the sharp pain in his soul noticeably ease, Jie Ming let out a long breath and leaned back in the chair.

Sitting alongside him were nearly a thousand other fourth- and fifth-ring wizards who had also operated the turrets.

Every one of them was pale-faced and weary-eyed, mechanically drinking the standardized recovery potions issued to them.

Around the perimeter of the rest area, far busier scenes unfolded.

Tens of thousands of third-ring wizards moved back and forth between the fortresses like worker ants.

Most were logistics wizards from the alchemy and rune schools. Under the direction of higher-ring wizards, they inspected energy circuits in the defensive arrays, repaired battle-damaged fortress outer walls, and reinforced underground elemental transport pipelines.

In a single battle, direct casualties among third-ring wizards were almost nonexistent.

After all, firing a single turret shot required the full mental power of a fifth-ring wizard. Fourth-ring wizards could pool their power in groups of ten, but for third-ring wizards to fire one shot required over a hundred people working together.

The manpower demand was simply too high, and internal fortress space was limited. Thus, during the previous battle, only fourth- and fifth-ring wizards had operated the turrets and defensive arrays.

Most third-ring wizards had remained in the safest core zones of the fortress cluster, primarily continuing to construct and reinforce the defensive line under the leadership of a few fifth-ring wizards.

That work was hardly easy, though. Visibly, every single one of them was exhausted to the bone.

Jie Ming watched a third-ring wizard who had clearly modified his own body—standing over four meters tall—struggling to carry a rune substrate even taller than himself toward Fortress No. 6.

Halfway there, his legs buckled. He nearly fell. Another third-ring wizard hurried over to support him. The two panted heavily as they dragged the substrate onward together.

Looking around, nearly every third-ring wizard was in a similar state.

Though direct casualties had been low during the intense earlier battle, they had been forced to haul materials, construct fortress array components, and—amid the ceaseless roar of artillery—grit their teeth through the tedious work of carving runes, smelting metals, and connecting energy lines.

Virtually all of them had depleted their mental power and were now running on fumes physically as well.

Still, it was only fatigue. Their condition was far better than that of the fourth- and fifth-ring wizards.

After one battle, aside from monsters like Jie Ming, nearly every fourth- and fifth-ring wizard had suffered some degree of soul damage.

Fortunately, the command had distributed recovery potions uniformly. It wouldn’t be long before they were back to being lively, hardworking beasts of burden.

Jie Ming withdrew his gaze and continued sipping his potion like an old man sunbathing.

Inside his body, 《Body Forging Method》 operated slowly, working in tandem with the potion’s effects to repair minute damage to his sea of consciousness.

He could sense that his total mental power had increased by roughly 120% compared to before the battle. His control precision over mental power had risen by about 12%, and his tolerance threshold for “fatigue” had jumped nearly 30%.

Combat truly was the greatest catalyst for Body Cultivation advancement.

“Hey, little junior brother—you’re still alive?”

A voice laced with amusement came from overhead.

Jie Ming looked up to see Viola slowly descending from the air to land beside him.

Viola looked considerably more disheveled than before.

Her once-elegant dark-purple wizard robe now bore more than a dozen tears, some edges scorched black.

Her silver-gray hair was no longer smooth; a large clump on the right side had clearly been singed by flame, curling and yellowed.

Ash streaked her face, and a thin, already-healed scar ran from her temple, leaving behind a faint trail of dried blood.

Yet her silver-gray eyes shone with startling brightness.

Deep within her pupils danced an almost manic excitement. The corners of her mouth curved upward uncontrollably, and her breathing was slightly quicker than usual.

This was not exhaustion. It was the physiological response of someone whose emotions had peaked to an extreme.

Jie Ming understood with just one glance.

“You won?” he asked.

“Won.” Viola’s voice carried irrepressible delight. “Though I only repelled two sixth-ring wizards working together and didn’t manage to keep either one down… it was incredibly satisfying.”

She dropped into the empty recliner beside Jie Ming, not caring at all about appearances as she leaned back and stared up at the lead-gray sky.

“Proper wizards… really are on an entirely different level from those wild creatures that only happen to possess sixth- or seventh-ring energy intensity,” she murmured, as though savoring the memory. “Those wild things—even at higher ranks—fight in primitive ways. Either instinct or innate talent. Beating them feels like bullying idiots. No fun at all.”

“But wizards are different.”

Viola turned her head toward Jie Ming. The excitement in her eyes was practically overflowing.

“Every wizard has their own unique combat style, their own trump-card secret techniques, their own capacity for on-the-spot adaptation. You never know what bizarre witchcraft the other side will pull out next, or what unexpected method they’ll use to counter your attack.”

“That feeling of dancing on a knife’s edge… that soul-level game of wits… that despair of watching your opponent struggle helplessly under your power, yet never finding a way out…”

Her breathing quickened again. An unnatural flush rose in her cheeks.

“It’s simply exquisite.”

Jie Ming turned his head expressionlessly toward the other side of the rest area.

He had long known his senior sister’s psyche was… not entirely normal. She took pleasure in observing the suffering of others—the greater the being, the greater her excitement when they suffered.

But now it seemed that as her strength grew, this “hobby” was becoming increasingly pronounced.

The scene in the air drew Jie Ming’s attention away.

High-tier wizards who had finished fighting were descending one after another, bringing their respective cannon fodder units with them.

Most seventh-ring wizards hovered about three hundred meters above the rest area, where a temporary “high-tier rest zone” had been set up.

In truth, it was just several dozen floating platforms created with spatial expansion technology, each equipped with independent protective barriers and energy supplies.

Among those seventh-ring wizards, one sixth-ring figure stood out conspicuously.

Clark.

He stood alone at the very center. His black robe swayed gently in the breeze.

From Jie Ming’s angle, only his back was visible—but the aura emanating from that back caused every seventh-ring wizard around him to instinctively maintain a certain distance. Not out of rejection, but a near-instinctive awe.

Viola followed Jie Ming’s gaze.

The flush gradually faded from her face. Her expression returned to its usual elegance and composure… at least on the surface.

“Mentor, he…” Viola spoke softly, “…just how strong is he, really?”

That was a question Jie Ming also wanted answered.

The two sat in silence, watching Clark in the distance, watching the seventh-ring wizards in the high-tier rest zone who spoke in low voices and occasionally cast complicated glances toward Clark.

After a while, Jie Ming could no longer hold back. He lowered his voice:

“Senior sister, what do you think… what law exactly has Mentor mastered? Or rather, what kind of technique? How can he possibly be that strong?”

Viola shook her head.

“I don’t know.” She was frank. “All I know is that after I advanced to sixth ring and went to seek Mentor’s guidance, he merely glanced at me—just one glance, didn’t even lift a hand—and then, using the Law of Pain, demonstrated three advancement directions I had never even conceived of.”

Her tone carried a trace of incredulity.

“Of those three directions Mentor demonstrated, I’ve only barely grasped the first one even now. I’ve just begun the second. The third… I don’t even have the faintest clue.”

“Sometimes I wonder if Mentor has mastered an emotion-based law as well, but with absurdly exaggerated ‘expansiveness.’ Other times, watching him fight, it doesn’t seem like it at all…”

The two began whispering back and forth.

They speculated from Fate Law to Time Law, to Space Law, then to various rare composite laws… The guesses grew wilder and wilder, and their excitement only mounted.

After all, for a wizard, exploring the unknown was an instinct etched deep into the soul.

Just as the two were deeply engrossed in their discussion—

“You’re both guessing far too timidly.”

A voice utterly devoid of emotional fluctuation abruptly cut into their mental conversation.

Jie Ming and Viola froze simultaneously.

Like cats whose tails had been stepped on, they jerked their necks back, then cautiously turned their heads.

At some point, Clark had appeared behind them.

His wizard robe had been changed to a fresh one—still plain black, without any ornamentation.

The wounds on his face and hands from the battle had vanished completely. His left arm and right leg were fully restored.

Right now, he gazed at his two students with those calm, unruffled eyes.

Jie Ming and Viola exchanged a glance. Both saw embarrassment and a trace of panic in the other’s eyes.

In wizard civilization, privately discussing and speculating about another wizard’s core knowledge—especially knowledge they clearly did not wish to make public—was quite taboo.

At best, it caused displeasure. At worst, it could be seen as coveting another’s knowledge and provoke judgment from the Star Orbit Tribunal.

Though they were master and disciples, and Clark was usually lenient with them, this behavior had still crossed a line.

“M-Mentor…” Viola forced a dry laugh, attempting to explain. “We were just casually chatting…”

Clark did not respond to her explanation.

He simply looked at the two of them quietly—for about three seconds.

Just when Jie Ming thought Mentor was about to reprimand them, Clark suddenly spoke:

“You want to know what law I study?”

Jie Ming and Viola were both stunned.

They instinctively glanced at each other, frantically communicating with their eyes:

“Mentor seems to be in a pretty good mood. Did he gain something extra?”

“Old man take the wrong medicine today?”

Then Viola, emboldened—or rather, her curiosity for knowledge momentarily overpowering her awe of Mentor—leaned in slightly and asked in a small voice:

“Mentor… what exactly is the law you study?”

Clark’s gaze swept across both their faces.

Then he uttered two words:

“All of them.”

Jie Ming and Viola froze at the same time.

“All of them?” Jie Ming instinctively looked toward Viola, eyes full of confusion. “Is… is there a law called ‘all of them’?”

Viola’s expression grew serious as well. She furrowed her brow, pondered for several seconds, then tentatively asked:

“Is it a fabricated law? Or perhaps… some kind of collective term for composite concepts?”

Clark looked at his two somewhat “slow-witted” students and gave a soft sigh.

“Exactly what the words mean.” He explained calmly, “I study… all laws.”

The air froze in that instant.

Jie Ming stared blankly at Clark as though he hadn’t processed it, mouth open but unable to make a sound.

His brain frantically processed the information in that sentence.

All laws?

What did “all laws” mean?

Fire-element laws, water-element laws, lightning-element laws, wind-element laws, earth-element laws, light-element laws, darkness-element laws, space laws, time laws, fate laws, pain laws, life laws, death laws, mechanical laws, symbiosis laws, chaos laws, order laws, concept laws, emotion laws, material laws, energy laws…

All known, all unknown.

All fundamental, all composite.

All that had names, all that had yet to be named.

…Was that what he meant by “all”?

Viola wore the exact same expression.

Her pupils contracted sharply. In her silver-gray eyes, Clark’s calm face was reflected, yet deep within her gaze raged a tsunami of shock.

Clark seemed reasonably satisfied with their reactions.

He nodded and added one more sentence:

“Don’t speak of this casually.”

With that, he turned and walked toward the depths of the rest area, where a dedicated passage led to the core region of the fortress cluster.

Only as Clark turned to leave did Jie Ming suddenly realize that, at some unknown point, an extremely exquisite sound-isolating barrier had been placed around the three of them.

The barrier was transparent and invisible, perfectly blended with the surroundings, its energy fluctuations so faint that neither he nor Viola had noticed it at all.

Only after Clark departed did the barrier silently burst like a bubble.

But right now, Jie Ming had no mind to marvel at his mentor’s masterful barrier technique.

All his thoughts were occupied by Clark’s earlier words.

“All laws… literally all laws…”

Jie Ming murmured to himself. His brain spun at high speed.

What did “literally all laws” mean?

Very simple.

In plain terms, Mentor Clark intended to research every known category of law in wizard civilization!

What kind of concept was that?

Jie Ming’s mind turned, and he instinctively recalled a Void Miracle he had personally witnessed and been awed by: a living plane.

Yes.

What was the essence of a plane that possessed self-awareness, could independently research, grow, and evolve?

It was “a collective body of world laws.”

A normal plane inherently contained all the laws that formed the foundation of its existence.

From the most basic four elemental laws, to space laws that maintained spatial stability, to time laws that drove the flow of time, and onward to more complex life laws, energy circulation laws, material transformation laws…

And a “living” plane meant it had the capacity to actively understand, master, and even modify those laws—though the vast majority of living planes lacked any such awareness.

If Mentor Clark’s path of “researching all laws” were taken to its extreme, what would it mean?

It would mean that right now… he was essentially a humanoid living plane!

Moreover, a humanoid living plane that possessed wizard intelligence, mastered the wizard knowledge system, and could actively learn and optimize laws!

“No wonder…” Jie Ming suddenly drew in a sharp breath, eyes widening. “No wonder Mentor reacted so strangely when Wizard Starfall vivified that plane before!”

He remembered clearly.

Back in the Frostflame Plane, Clark had shown an extraordinary interest in living planes, even personally observing and studying one up close.

If at that time Mentor had merely been curious about such a special Void Miracle, then later—when Wizard Starfall successfully vivified a plane and Clark directly offered to guide and nurture that newborn vivified plane—it had seemed overly enthusiastic. (Foreshadowing from Chapter 451)

At the time, Jie Ming had even found it surprising, because Clark was not usually the type to take initiative in such matters.

Now everything made sense.

Because Clark himself was walking the path of a “humanoid vivified plane”!

He wanted to see how a true vivified plane understood, mastered, and utilized the laws it was innately endowed with.

He wanted to verify his own path from another angle.

And that plane vivified by Starfall had become, for him, an excellent “reference sample.”

“So that’s how it is…” Jie Ming couldn’t help murmuring. “No wonder… no wonder during the earlier battle, those enemies showed such obvious signs of ‘being countered by laws’…”

In normal combat, to make an opponent suffer “law countering,” the prerequisite was that your mastery of that law had to far surpass theirs.

For example, when two wizards who both studied fire-element laws fought, the one with deeper understanding could easily suppress the other’s fire-element witchcraft, even causing the opponent’s spells to backfire.

In essence, it was knowledge suppression between scholars of the same type.

But what had Clark faced?

Over a hundred seventh-ring wizards researching different laws, thousands of sixth-ring wizards mastering different domains.

Their attacks had encompassed dozens of completely distinct law systems.

Yet Clark had still effortlessly countered them all.

Previously, Jie Ming had thought Clark must have used some profound technique to suppress those laws from a higher level.

Now it seemed…

Yes, there was technical suppression.

But far more of it was pure “numerical crushing”!

Previously, Jie Ming had wondered just how powerful those vivified planes that became wizards could become once Wizard Starfall’s techniques were further developed.

Now he had seen it directly and intuitively.

“No wonder Wizard Starfall received a first-class cultivation agreement…”

With that thought, Jie Ming turned his head and met Viola’s gaze.

Both saw the same shock, the same realization, and the same…

Excitement.

Excitement for knowledge, excitement for unknown paths, excitement at the revelation that “so this is possible too.”

Almost simultaneously, the two sprang up from their metal recliners and chased after Clark in the direction he had gone.

For wizards, curiosity about the unknown instantly overpowered awe of their mentor.

Viola ran faster than Jie Ming—she was sixth ring, after all; her physical qualities and mental reactions far surpassed his.

In just a few breaths, she caught up to Clark, drawing close to his side with unconcealed exhilaration on her face.

Fortunately, she still retained some sense and did not immediately bombard him with questions. Instead, she chose an indirect opening:

“Mentor! You seem to be in an excellent mood! Did this battle bring you some gains?”

Clark’s footsteps did not pause.

“Not bad,” he said. “This battle allowed me to encounter several new laws. The Chaos Secret Cult’s ‘Disordered Hyperplasia,’ the Tower of Annihilation’s ‘Positive-Negative Annihilation,’ and a few other special laws I hadn’t seen before—likely unique branches researched by the Tower of Annihilation itself.”

His tone was utterly flat, as though commenting that “today’s lunch menu was decent.”

But to Jie Ming and Viola, it sounded like thunder.

A single battle… and he had learned several new laws?!

And from the sound of it, these were core laws the other side kept as trump cards—clearly closely guarded secrets?!

Jie Ming moved to Clark’s other side, face full of astonishment:

“Mentor, the speed at which you now learn and research new laws… has it already become this fast?”

Clark glanced sideways at Jie Ming.

“Merely drawing analogies from what I know.” His explanation remained concise. “Once you have mastered a sufficient number of ‘fundamental laws’ and understood the ‘patterns of connection’ between them, a new law no longer appears before you as a puzzle that must be cracked from zero.”

“It becomes more like a ‘new machine’ assembled from parts you have already mastered, rearranged in some novel configuration.”

“All you need to do is disassemble it—see which parts were used, how those parts are connected, and why this particular connection produces new functions.”

“Then you have learned it.”

Jie Ming opened his mouth, but no words came out for a long while.

It sounded… surprisingly reasonable.

…As if!

How was this any different from putting an elephant in a refrigerator?!

Just how deeply familiar did one have to be with the “known parts” to glance at something once, disassemble it in your mind, and master it instantly?!

Yet this only made the two of them even more excited.

“Mentor, do you think I have the aptitude to learn this from you?!”

“Yes, yes—and me too!”

“You two? Heh heh heh…”

Master and two disciples continued chatting as they walked deeper into the fortress cluster.