Chapter 487: More Enemies

The two Noren Workshop wizards remained dazed for a moment. Only when Jie Ming’s words—“You may retreat now”—echoed in the air did they snap back to reality as though waking from a dream.

“Th-thank you, my lord, for saving our lives!”

The female wizard reacted first. She bowed respectfully toward Jie Ming, only then feeling the sharp pain radiating through her mind.

To maintain her barriers against the Tower of Annihilation wizard’s frenzied assault earlier, fine cracks had already appeared in her spiritual sea.

The male wizard—who had fully transformed into a tentacled monstrosity—also struggled to assume a posture of respect. With great difficulty he spoke:

“Thank… you… my lord… for your assistance…”

His voice was extremely weak; he was clearly teetering on the edge of death.

Jie Ming merely nodded calmly, saying nothing.

The two wizards exchanged a glance. A flash of understanding passed through their eyes.

In the world of wizards, no aid came without reason.

Equivalent exchange was a principle etched deep into every wizard’s soul.

Without hesitation, the female wizard raised her right hand and pressed her index finger to her temple, closing her eyes in concentration.

A pale-blue stream of data composed of countless runes flowed from her fingertip, coalescing in midair into a fist-sized crystal.

“This is my core discipline: the ‘Multi-Layer Barrier Nesting Optimization Algorithm.’ It allows the simultaneous construction and dynamic linkage of up to seven barriers of different attributes under limited mental power.”

She gently pushed the crystal toward Jie Ming, her tone respectful:

“Though it is only fifth-ring technology, its practicality is very high in positional defense and small-scale skirmishes.”

The male wizard also strained to lift a tentacle, condensing a dark-red mental-power crystal.

“Mine is… ‘Water-Element Shaping and Energy Compression Technique…’” Each word required a labored breath. “…It allows water-based witchcraft to retain fluidity while… gaining impact force close to that of solid matter… and… high-concentration corrosive properties…”

The two crystals floated before Jie Ming.

He glanced at them and raised his hand to accept them.

He said neither “You’re welcome” nor “This isn’t enough.”

In the world of wizards, such transactions were simply the default rule.

You saved their lives; they offered their most proficient techniques in return.

Perfectly fair.

Seeing Jie Ming accept the crystals, both wizards breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

The male wizard lowered his head. In his rapidly collapsing body, a trace of helplessness flickered through his eyes.

“My physical body… can’t hold on any longer.”

He looked toward the female wizard:

“Help me… bring a portion back.”

The female wizard nodded.

The male wizard closed his eyes. His body surface began to deform once more.

One tentacle on his right side swelled and twisted at visible speed, ultimately transforming into a roughly half-meter-long, dark-red fleshy tendril covered in spiral patterns.

At the tip of the tendril remained a soul imprint belonging to the male wizard.

His main body, meanwhile, completely lost all signs of life. It rapidly decayed into a withered husk and collapsed to the ground.

The female wizard stepped forward, carefully picked up the tendril, and placed it inside a metal cylinder engraved with preservation and soul-stabilization runes.

Having finished, she turned to Jie Ming and bowed once more:

“My lord, we will withdraw now. Please… be careful.”

Jie Ming nodded.

The female wizard hesitated no longer. Her hands formed seals, and a silver-white spatial gate unfolded before her.

She stepped through. Her figure vanished, and the gate closed behind her.

In the clearing remained only Jie Ming—and the rapidly disintegrating husk.

Jie Ming did not leave immediately.

He simply stood there, gazing down at the still-steaming lava basin below, his expression calm as though lost in thought.

The wind swept across the wasteland, carrying gray-white dust and emitting a low, mournful whine.

“It’s the Law of Pain… but heading in a different direction.”

In truth, Jie Ming had paid little attention to the two wizards’ departure. In his mind, he was replaying the various curses and illusions the Chaos Secret Cult wizard had unleashed earlier.

“Senior Sister Viola’s Law of Pain leans toward ‘mental torment’—amplifying existing painful memories, implanting false pain hallucinations, even directly attacking the soul’s pain-perception center.”

“But that one just now…”

Jie Ming stroked his chin, eyes closed in contemplation.

“His Law of Pain leans toward ‘conversion between flesh, energy, and emotion.’”

“Directly transforming pain emotions into tangible damage, using the enemy’s suffering to strengthen his own witchcraft, even employing pain as a ‘binder’ to forcibly fuse disparate energy systems…”

A spark of interest flickered in Jie Ming’s eyes:

“Interesting. Though his overall level is far below Senior Sister’s, this approach of ‘materializing emotions into energy’ is genuinely worth studying.”

His gaze shifted to the spot where the Tower of Annihilation wizard had last vanished.

“As for the one playing with light-dark annihilation…”

Jie Ming recalled the other’s brutally simple yet terrifyingly efficient attack style.

“He has indeed gone quite far down the path of ‘positive-negative energy annihilation.’ The ratio of light to dark, the degree of compression, the timing of release—everything was controlled with considerable precision. Energy utilization rate per attack was at least thirty-five percent.”

That figure was already quite impressive. After all, mutually annihilating energies were far too volatile and difficult to control; achieving one hundred percent utilization likely required at least sixth-ring mastery.

“Unfortunately…”

Jie Ming shook his head:

“That final ‘energy overload’ move was clearly an unfinished technique. Forcibly channeling two conflicting energies into his own body may have looked overwhelmingly powerful, but it was riddled with flaws. Chaotic energy flow paths, unstable law resonance frequencies—he hadn’t even achieved basic ‘self-consistent energy circulation.’”

“If given another fifty years, he might have perfected it into a stable burst technique. But right now…”

“Still lacking.”

While thinking, Jie Ming casually raised his left hand, fingers splayed, and gently clenched it toward the surrounding void.

Hum…

An invisible ripple spread outward with him at the center.

Space began to “solidify.”

Not in the physical sense—but anchored at the level of law.

Within a hundred-kilometer radius, every spatial fold, interlayer, rift, and jump node was forcibly smoothed and fixed by an overbearing force.

Like a crumpled sheet of paper being ruthlessly ironed flat until mirror-smooth.

And as space solidified…

“Urgh!”

A muffled grunt came from about three hundred meters to Jie Ming’s left, within the void.

The space there suddenly “squeezed” out a human figure.

It was a wizard clad in a dark-green robe, face concealed behind a wooden mask.

At the moment, he was awkwardly frozen mid-spatial-jump posture, his body trapped like an insect in amber—locked immovably in place by the congealed space.

His eyes were filled with shock.

Seeing that Jie Ming made no further move, he erupted with force and forcibly tore himself free from the solidified space.

Only then did Jie Ming seem to return from his thoughts.

He slowly raised his head and glanced at the wizard who had been forced out.

Then his gaze swept outward, casually scanning the seemingly empty gray-white wasteland, the jagged rocks, the low mounds.

The corners of his mouth curved into an icy arc.

“Come out, all of you.”

His voice was not loud, yet it clearly reached every corner within ten kilometers.

“Hiding in the shadows to watch the show—aren’t you tired?”

The instant the words fell—

The dark-green-robed wizard who had been forced out by the spatial lockdown involuntarily took a step back.

Only after doing so did he realize it had been pure instinct.

Because the “presence” radiating from the gray-robed wizard before him was simply too terrifying.

It was not pressure from energy intensity.

From perception alone, the other party was indeed only at peak fifth-ring—same rank as himself.

No, it was a deeper, more fundamental oppression.

Like a mouse facing a cat, a rabbit facing an eagle, an ant facing an elephant.

A primal biological instinct screamed at him:不可力敌—cannot be opposed, cannot be resisted.

And as Jie Ming spoke, the surrounding “environment” began to change.

From behind rocks, three figures slowly rose.

From the sides of mounds, air distorted, revealing four more wizards.

In the distant sky, places that had seemed utterly empty rippled like water, successively manifesting five or six floating figures.

Thirteen in total—all fifth-ring wizards.

They wore robes of varying styles—some belonging to the Chaos Secret Cult, others to the Tower of Annihilation.

At this moment, every one of them stared gravely at the central figure of Jie Ming, their eyes filled with wariness, apprehension, and sheer disbelief.

They had not witnessed the entire sequence of events, but they had at least observed Jie Ming’s final handling of the Tower of Annihilation wizard’s energy-giant transformation.

From that dark-golden beam that instantly slew a peer, to casually forcing out a comrade hidden in a spatial interlayer, to his current terrifying calm in the face of thirteen wizards of equal rank surrounding him—everything pointed to one conclusion.

This man… was very strong!

Jie Ming gave the thirteen a brief glance.

Their spiritual-force intensities ranged from mid-fifth-ring to peak.

Their elemental fluctuations were varied; clearly each specialized in different areas.

But not a single one sparked his interest.

Jie Ming was well aware of his own positioning.

In terms of accumulated “wizard knowledge,” among fifth-ring wizards he was indeed near the bottom.

After all, the time he had truly devoted to the wizard system amounted to barely a thousand years at most.

Most fifth-ring wizards were old monsters who had lived three, four thousand years—or longer.

But when it came to “actual combat power”…

A trace of indifference passed through Jie Ming’s eyes.

Thanks to the otherworldly knowledge provided by the Great Dao Book Pavilion, along with the rune-seal witch tools and modified spells he himself had developed…

Ordinary fifth-ring wizards were no longer worthy of his attention.

Just like now.

Though these thirteen had hidden themselves quite well and employed varied methods,

Under Jie Ming’s Causal Trace Shadow Technique, their positions were as glaringly obvious as bonfires in the night.

The fate lines of the entire plane had indeed been polluted; large-scale causal divination was nearly impossible.

But using Causal Trace Shadow Technique to detect “information residues” within a small area and track the positions of a dozen peers of the same rank…

Far too easy.