Chapter 490: Palpitations

At the same moment, roughly eight hundred kilometers away from the lava basin, in a jagged region of rocky mountains.

Jie Ming, who had been stealthily advancing, abruptly came to a halt.

Instinctively, he turned his gaze to the left. Three hundred kilometers away, behind one of the mountain ridges, intense energy fluctuations erupted.

Suppressing his aura, he quietly drew closer. Soon, the battle came into view: three wizards from the Noren Workshop were surrounding and attacking a gray-robed wizard from the Tower of Annihilation.

Yet despite the three-against-one advantage, the Noren Workshop wizards held no upper hand.

The Tower of Annihilation wizard moved with eerie, unpredictable footwork. Gray-white ripples of energy exploded beneath his feet with every step, propelling his ghostly, phantom-like shifts in position.

The energy beams he unleashed from both hands carried terrifying power. Combined with his elusive movement speed and robust shielding, the three Noren Workshop wizards attacked fruitlessly again and again, the fight locked in stalemate.

“Interesting,” Jie Ming murmured from his concealed vantage point. “This one’s actual combat ability is noticeably stronger than those thirteen from earlier.”

After observing for a while, Jie Ming prepared to step in and finish off the enemies.

In that instant—

An ice-cold, bone-piercing killing intent exploded without warning from the space to his left!

Too fast!

So fast that Jie Ming had no time to react at all!

Fortunately, the Return to Ruins Armor reacted on instinct. A layer of transparent armor instantly enveloped his body.

Almost simultaneously, a completely transparent crystal dagger wreathed in spatial fractures stabbed out from the void, aimed with lethal precision at Jie Ming’s left temple!

Zzt-la-la!!!

A piercing, electric-current-like screech erupted!

The dagger halted one millimeter from his skin, firmly blocked by the Return to Ruins Armor.

The bone-chilling killing intent transmitted through the armor made every hair on Jie Ming’s body stand on end!

He didn’t even turn his head. His left hand lashed backward like lightning!

But the ambusher was faster still.

The failed strike retracted like a living thing. The dagger withdrew, and the figure melted into spatial ripples and vanished.

Jie Ming’s grasp closed on empty air.

“Spatial leap?!”

His pupils contracted sharply. His right hand snapped toward the still-undispersed ripples and clenched hard!

“Spatial—Stabilization!”

Within a thousand meters, space instantly froze. All leaping, folding, and concealment were forcibly interrupted and suppressed.

A figure was “squeezed” out of the void.

The opponent’s entire body possessed a semi-transparent crystalline texture—not armor worn over the body, but the flesh itself transformed through some fusion of biology and mineral.

Now half-kneeling, right hand still gripping the dagger, light flared on his left hand—he had clearly intended a second jump, only to have every spatial technique locked down by the stabilized space.

He slowly raised his head.

The crystalline face had no features, only two pitch-black voids that devoured all light serving as “eyes.”

Those eyes gazed at Jie Ming with cold, emotionless detachment—as though appraising prey.

Chaos Secret Cult, “Crystal Modification lineage.”

Jie Ming recognized the origin of the opponent’s technique in an instant.

His heart still pounded wildly; the lining of his clothes was already soaked with cold sweat.

If the Return to Ruins Armor’s automatic defense had been even a fraction slower just now, he might already be dead!

The Causal Trace Shadow Technique swiftly replayed events: the enemy had been lying in wait within a spatial interlayer long before Jie Ming arrived to observe the battle—likely intending to ambush and eliminate one of the combatants at the perfect moment, only to discover Jie Ming as an even more tempting target.

“I got careless,” Jie Ming breathed deeply, forcing himself to calm.

This was precisely why he had come out to temper himself.

No matter how thorough the simulations and deductions, nothing compared to this visceral, life-or-death crisis in actual combat.

It forced him to confront his own weaknesses, his reaction limits, and every deficiency exposed in a true fight for survival.

While he stood locked in confrontation with the crystal wizard, the three-versus-one battle nearby had, at some unknown point, come to a complete stop.

All four wizards stared dumbfounded in this direction, shock written plainly across their faces.

That lightning-fast exchange, though brief, had been so perilous and skillful that even bystanders felt their hearts palpitate.

More importantly—none of the four had noticed that two more people had been hiding right beside them the entire time!

The crystal wizard slowly rose. The black voids showed no emotional fluctuation.

He lifted his left hand and gently pressed toward the stabilized space…

Crack.

A faint sound like breaking glass.

Jie Ming immediately felt his “Spatial Stabilization” begin to loosen—the framework was being infiltrated and redefined by some even more sophisticated spatial technique.

“What sorcery is that?” Jie Ming’s pupils shrank slightly.

As the restraint loosened, the crystal wizard’s figure began to fade once more.

Clearly, after realizing the assassination had failed, he had no intention of tangling further and was preparing to withdraw.

Jie Ming’s gaze turned icy. He raised his right hand, intending to reinforce Spatial Stabilization.

But just as the light began to gather—before it could fully form—the crystal wizard’s figure vanished completely. Even the Causal Trace Shadow Technique could only capture a rapidly dissipating blur.

“Gone?”

Jie Ming remained on high alert. The Causal Trace Shadow Technique swept the area three times over. Only after confirming no other ambushes did he finally exhale slowly.

He raised a hand to the back of his head; his palm came away slick with cold sweat.

“That moment just now…”

Recalling the image of the dagger stabbing toward him, his heart still thudded heavily.

This sudden upheaval had brutally extinguished the faint trace of arrogance that had unconsciously arisen after he effortlessly slew more than a dozen wizards of the same rank earlier.

“I’m still… not strong enough,” Jie Ming whispered.

Nearby, the four wizards remained rooted in place. Their gazes darted back and forth between Jie Ming and the Noren Workshop badge on his chest, wariness and astonishment intertwined.

After all, enemies disguising themselves as allies were far from rare on the battlefield. Until Jie Ming clearly demonstrated his stance, they dared not relax.

But after the heart-stopping assassination attempt, Jie Ming had no patience left to deal with them.

He turned toward the gray-robed wizard from the Tower of Annihilation.

The man sensed the gaze and stiffened, instinctively taking half a step back.

Jie Ming had no interest in wasting words. He raised his right hand and extended a single finger.

Dark-golden light condensed at the fingertip.

Hum…

The surrounding air and light began to distort.

Beneath the Tower of Annihilation wizard’s mask, his face instantly drained of color. He felt the bone-chilling premonition of the Grim Reaper locking onto him.

“No!!!”

Roaring, he frantically activated every defense he had. Layers upon layers of light-dark energy shields interwove, his body blurred as he tried to merge with the environment, and he even burned part of his soul to unleash a terrifying beam of energy.

But none of it mattered.

The dark-golden light swept over lightly.

Shields shattered layer by layer. The blurred form was forcibly pinned in place. The beam was directly reflected back at him.

The light landed on his chest.

A soft puff.

The wizard’s body immediately froze. He looked down at his chest.

A mirror-smooth, perfectly circular hole was rapidly expanding. Everything inside was being “extinguished”: flesh, bone, energy, soul… like an image being erased, vanishing inch by inch.

In the blink of an eye, only a drift of gray dust remained fluttering to the ground where he had stood.

Jie Ming withdrew his hand. The light faded.

Without so much as a glance at the three Noren Workshop wizards, he turned, stepped into the air, activated Great Void Step once more, concealed his figure, and sped toward the front lines.

Behind him, the three wizards stood motionless for a long time.

Finally, one spoke in a dry voice:

“That just now… that was…”

Another swallowed hard.

“I don’t know…”

The third slowly turned his head, shock still lingering in his eyes.

“If he had wanted to kill us earlier… the three of us…”

He didn’t finish the sentence.

But all three understood clearly—they wouldn’t have lasted a single move.

Each of them involuntarily swallowed again.

“Thank goodness… he’s one of us…”