Chapter 493: Confirming the Search Radius

Jie Ming had no desire to get tangled up with other enemies in the current situation.

With so many foes scattered around, the slightest carelessness could easily draw even more of them.

So he simply moved toward the farthest possible region. Once he had left the zone of highest combat intensity, he flew at full speed without hesitation.

Ten consecutive hours of extreme flight—Great Void Step pushed to its limit—reduced his form to a faint shadow nearly indistinguishable from the background.

Only when the interwoven clashing energy fluctuations in his perception thinned to the distant hum of mosquitoes did he finally slow down and land on the leeward side of a low rocky hill.

After a quick mental calculation, he estimated his current position was roughly 1.2 million kilometers from the Noren Workshop defensive line.

Jie Ming lifted his head and gazed toward the horizon.

Even across such an immense distance, faint light still flickered intermittently behind the clouds in the direction of the main battlefield.

Residual waves of various elements and energies pulsed like an unending heartbeat—weak, yet persistent and unbroken.

“To think the aftershocks can reach even this far… The main battlefield must be in an extremely bitter stalemate,” Jie Ming muttered, clicking his tongue.

But on reflection, it made sense.

If Noren Workshop intended to deliver a heavy blow to the enemy, who could say the other side wasn’t using those harassment legions as bait to set up an ambush against Noren Workshop in return?

Given the cunning and intellect of wizards, nested stratagems and counter-schemes were perfectly normal.

In the end, everything still came down to raw power.

“Still, the camp facilities on our side are already fully constructed. This is Noren Workshop’s home ground—they shouldn’t suffer too badly,” Jie Ming mused, rubbing his chin as he considered the current situation.

“Moreover, after the earlier clashes, the high-ring wizards on both sides no longer dare to move freely. Right now the coalition’s main focus—Chaos Secret Cult and Tower of Annihilation alike—should still be outward search and reconnaissance. That’s tying down a great deal of their combat strength. If we only count forces below high-ring, the Workshop might even hold the advantage.”

Yet that also meant that even after Jie Ming had left the densest combat zone, the probability of encountering hostile wizards remained quite high.

“Good thing that’s exactly what I came here for. As long as I don’t run into high-ring wizards, there’s no problem.”

Only now did his true mission for this trip begin.

Jie Ming extended his spiritual sense and cast Phase Shift, shrinking himself into a spatial fissure.

Once he had secured a temporary safe zone, he began organizing his thoughts.

This abandoned plane, chosen by the Star Ring Federation as the battlefield, was essentially dozens of resource-exhausted plane fragments forcibly stitched together into one “ultra-large plane.”

And for the Star Ring Federation to classify it as ultra-large meant its scale was truly exaggerated.

Its sheer size far surpassed ordinary worlds.

The facts bore this out.

According to pre-war intelligence provided by the Star Ring Federation, this plane followed a classic “heaven round, earth flat” structure—the land spread out like a vast chessboard, the sky arched overhead like a dome.

The landmass had a diameter of roughly fifteen billion kilometers—absurdly enormous.

By the standards of his previous life, the land of this ultra-large plane could nearly fill the entire volume of the solar system out to the heliopause.

But the analogy wasn’t entirely accurate.

Though the solar system of his former world was vast in extent, its actual material density was extremely low.

The Sun alone accounted for over 99.86% of the solar system’s total mass; if the heliosphere were a football field, the Sun would be little more than a soybean at the center.

To fill the entire solar system with matter—ignoring gravitational collapse—would require draining not quite an entire galaxy, but certainly the mass of one or two galactic spiral arms.

Fortunately, the physical laws of the wizarding world differed from those of his previous life, and their manifestations were different as well.

Moreover, this plane’s resources had long since been completely exhausted; earth-element density was abnormally low, resulting in far weaker gravity than normal. That was why wizard armies could operate here with relative freedom.

“Looking at it this way, the Star Ring Federation arranged the spatial rift entry points for both sides… with remarkable precision,” Jie Ming mused.

A landmass fifteen billion kilometers in diameter—yet the initial landing zones of Noren Workshop and the coalition had been almost directly facing each other.

This was almost certainly no coincidence. The Star Ring Federation had deliberately compressed the starting distance between the two armies to the absolute minimum, forcing the war into white-hot intensity in the shortest possible time.

“But even for three wizard factions fighting each other, the battlefield they’ve been given is simply too vast,” Jie Ming frowned slightly.

In theory, a seventh-ring wizard was indeed capable of single-handedly destroying an ordinary plane.

But “ordinary” usually meant planes ranging from roughly the size of the Moon to small stellar scales.

Against an ultra-large plane of this magnitude, even if every seventh-ring wizard from both sides joined forces to bombard it, they would likely be unable to inflict serious damage on the plane itself.

Unless…

Jie Ming suddenly looked up toward the sky.

Above the firmament hung four “suns.”

But they were not true stars, nor were they reflections of fire-element planes.

Every resource in this abandoned plane had long been stripped away by wizards—even the coordinate anchors to elemental planes had been relocated.

Thus the four suns overhead were actually the radiant energy emissions released during combat by four eighth-ring wizards.

Terrifying elemental radiation blazed like four artificial solar wheels suspended in the heavens. Wherever their light reached, space itself showed faint twisting folds.

A flash of realization passed through Jie Ming’s eyes.

“The true protagonists of this battlefield have never been us.”

Everything the wizard legions did—building defensive lines, scouting and hunting, seizing resources, laying down trump cards—was ultimately only to add the slightest “probability weight” to the victory of their side’s eighth-ring wizards.

The real decider of the war’s outcome lay high above in the sky.

“That’s why both sides are so fixated on scouting the locations of each other’s trump cards. And my focus from here on…” Jie Ming withdrew his gaze and refocused on the present, “…should also be searching for the locations where the enemy has placed their trump cards.”

If Jie Ming wanted to temper himself, he needed to encounter enough enemies. Since both sides were so concerned about locating each other’s hidden trump cards, as long as he kept searching, he would inevitably face wave after wave of incoming foes.

But searching for a few hidden points across a landmass fifteen billion kilometers in diameter sounded like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Fortunately, after a moment’s thought, Jie Ming realized the actual search area was far less daunting.

After all, deploying a trump card required time, secrecy, and safety.

High-ring wizards would never waste precious time on long-distance travel.

At the same time, to allow rapid deployment to the battlefield once the trump card was ready, the deployment site had to be kept within a certain distance of the main camp.

“Judging from the coalition’s mobilization and reaction speed these past days, their main base should be no more than ten million kilometers from Noren Workshop’s main camp defensive line.”

Jie Ming pulled up the map on his terminal and drew a circle centered on the Noren Workshop camp.

“That range should represent the optimal distance for high-ring wizards of Chaos Secret Cult and Tower of Annihilation to mobilize and respond. In that case…”

He then drew a second, larger circle outside the first—one with double the radius.

Since the conventional movement speed of high-ring wizards set a baseline, the enemy’s trump-card deployment zones would not exceed that distance from their own camp.

“A search radius of twenty million kilometers… still vast, but at least no longer hopeless.”

After further consideration, Jie Ming erased the outermost circle.

“In that case, priority is to locate the enemy camp first. Then, using their camp as the center, I only need to search outward in an expanding radius of ten million kilometers.”

That reduced the required search area dramatically.

As for the enemy camp’s precise location…

Although Noren Workshop had been under pressure these past days and hadn’t yet pinpointed it, the general direction was still known.

Jie Ming exited Phase Shift, made a quick calculation, selected a direction, and once more transformed into a faint shadow as he sped onward.

Several more hours passed.

While in mid-flight, Jie Ming’s heart suddenly stirred.

His detection sorcery picked up three gray-white energy fluctuations roughly three hundred kilometers ahead, rapidly closing on his position.

“This elemental signature… Tower of Annihilation wizards.” His gaze sharpened.

What concerned Jie Ming more was that the enemy showed no sign of changing course upon sensing his awareness—and their advance was heading straight toward him.

Which meant…

“They detected me earlier than I detected them,” Jie Ming couldn’t help frowning.

His weakness in scouting methods was laid bare in this moment.

He had thought his preparations were reasonably thorough, but once actually on a wizard battlefield, he realized he had still underestimated how troublesome wizards could be.

Causal Trace Shadow Technique was better suited for tracking existing leads or concealing one’s own traces when fate lines were thoroughly polluted by battle.

For active detection and long-range early warning, he still relied on outdated techniques.

Against wizards of the same rank who specialized in scouting, that shortcoming became glaringly obvious.

“I’ll have to find a way to fix this after the war,” Jie Ming silently noted the matter in his mind.

In his perception, the three fluctuations drew steadily closer, showing no sign of slowing or dispersing.

“Very confident,” Jie Ming sneered coldly.

Rather than retreating, he abruptly accelerated—charging straight toward them!

If he couldn’t hide, then there was no need to hide anymore.

“Target accelerating… not fleeing, but preparing to engage!”

Among the three Tower of Annihilation wizards, the one in the center held a continuously rotating gray-white crystal orb. Its surface reflected the image of Jie Ming hurtling toward them.

“Stay alert. Facing three and still daring to charge head-on… either he has backup, or he’s extremely confident in his strength,” the wizard on the left said in a low voice. “Send the signal—have nearby squads converge on this area.”

The center wizard immediately took out his terminal and transmitted a brief request for reinforcements.

Yet they did not retreat. Instead, they began layering various protective sorceries on themselves and accelerated toward the target.

From the perspective of these three Tower of Annihilation wizards, all were of the same rank. The three-against-one numerical advantage was real.

Even if the opponent truly had extraordinary ability, they could stall for a short while until reinforcements arrived.

With this tacit understanding, the distance between both sides shrank rapidly.

Soon it was down to a mere one hundred kilometers.

For fifth-ring wizards, that was already quite close. At such range, the vast majority of offensive sorceries would be impossible for ordinary fifth-ring wizards to evade!

“Attack!” the Tower of Annihilation wizard barked.

All three simultaneously mobilized their mental power. Gray-white and pitch-black annihilation energies began to converge…

But Jie Ming moved faster.

He simply raised his right hand and pointed a finger into empty air.

Under the shocked gazes of the three wizards opposite him, the surrounding air and light began to distort.

A point of dark-golden radiance quietly appeared at his fingertip, then transformed into a slender beam of light that shot forth silently.

The beam rapidly expanded during flight. By the time it struck the position of the three wizards, it had widened to over a hundred meters across.

Pop!

With a sound as light as a bursting bubble, the protective spells of the two hit wizards shattered instantly.

The seemingly harmless light instantly enveloped their bodies.

When the dark-golden radiance vanished, no trace of the two remained in their original positions—as though they had been erased from existence.

The third wizard’s pupils contracted sharply in horror; he tried to retreat.

But Jie Ming had already begun preparing spatial sorcery the moment he released Trigram Fire Annihilation Divine Light.

The instant the divine light ended, he executed a spatial leap. His figure appeared like a ghost directly in front of the terrified wizard.

Then—a punch!

A simple, unadorned punch blasted forward.

Where the fist passed, air was compressed into visible conical shockwaves. Drawing on the residual spatial distortion from the recent leap, faint spatial fractures flickered briefly around his fist.

The wizard barely had time to cross his arms in front of his chest. Gray-white annihilation energy surged madly along his arms, forming a shield imbued with highly compressed annihilating force.

Fist met arm-shield.

Crack!

The black arm-shield shattered like fragile glass inch by inch. The annihilating energy tried to erode Jie Ming’s body but couldn’t breach the Return to Ruins Armor’s protection.

The fist’s momentum continued unabated, smashing through the protective energy and driving into the chest.

The wizard’s body arched violently—then exploded into a cloud of blood mist.

Jie Ming channeled elemental energy and casually annihilated the escaping soul as well.

He withdrew his fist, shook his hand, and dispersed the clinging blood mist.

“Pity. Can’t extract any intelligence from their mouths,” he said with a trace of regret in his voice.

Even during coordinated warfare, the Star Orbit Tribunal’s prohibitions remained in effect.

Unauthorized soul-searching or memory plunder of another wizard, once discovered, would be regarded as theft of a fellow wizard’s knowledge and could even provoke direct intervention from the Tribunal.

He didn’t dare take the risk.

“But…” Jie Ming looked toward the direction the three had come from. “Since there’s a patrol squad here, it means the direction is correct.”

Ahead lay the outer reconnaissance perimeter of the enemy camp.

His form faded once more, blending into the environment as he continued stealthily toward the unknown region.