novelraw Chapter 437: Taking Stock of Gains and Returning
Chapter 437: Taking Stock of Gains and Returning
A hundred years had passed in the blink of an eye.
The Wizard Expeditionary Army base that had once surrounded the divine temple in the Reincarnation Plane had now been reduced to less than half its original scale.
Even the ground-level camp had long since been lifted into the sky to better facilitate comprehensive research on the entire Reincarnation Plane.
The temporary teleportation arrays specifically designed for combat wizards had been gradually shut down decades ago, leaving only a few large, stable long-distance gates for logistics and research personnel, each radiating a faint, ghostly blue light.
Inside the base, the once-crowded research zones now felt much more spacious and empty.
Jie Ming walked along the transparent corridor connecting the laboratories. Beneath his feet lay a breathtaking view from thirty thousand meters up, where he could see the vast expanse of the Reincarnation Plane’s surface, forever altered by the Time Paradox Generator.
“Researcher Jie Ming, this is the final batch of data archives you requested.”
A floating silver construct drifted to his side and projected a light screen.
Dense streams of data scrolled across it—most of them concerning the underlying rune interaction models of the Time Paradox.
Jie Ming gave it a quick glance and shook his head lightly. “Archive them. Seventh-sequence encryption.” “Executed,” the construct replied in its calm electronic tone. “Additionally, Professor Altreus inquires whether you will be attending tomorrow’s seminar on ‘Time Anchor Point Stability.’”
“Please politely decline for me. I’m preparing to leave.”
As he spoke those words, a faint ripple of complicated emotions stirred in Jie Ming’s heart.
Decades ago, when the combat wizards had completed their sample collection from the Sickle-Skull race and withdrawn in waves within just a few years, Jie Ming and the other logistics wizards had chosen to stay behind.
The first few decades had been incredibly fruitful.
The senior wizards of the Logistics Research Division, most of whom were over eight thousand years old, possessed such profound attainments in the laws of time that they opened Jie Ming’s eyes.
He had absorbed knowledge like a sponge, cross-referencing the time-related cultivation secret arts recorded in the Great Dao Book Pavilion with the wizard world’s understanding of time. His rate of progress astonished even the old wizards assigned to guide him.
But changes began creeping in over the last thirty years.
As research on the Time Paradox Generator entered its deepest phase, the topics discussed in the Logistics Research Division grew increasingly abstract.
The theoretical models had expanded from four-dimensional spacetime into high-dimensional topology, the mathematical formalization of causal logic, quantum decoherence effects on timelines…
Three years ago, during a seminar, Jie Ming realized he could no longer completely follow the lecturer’s derivation process.
A year ago, he even needed to look up the definitions of certain specialized terms.
And just last week, when he tried to read the core paper in the latest issue of the Journal of Applied Time Paradox Studies, an overwhelming sense of powerlessness crashed over him like the sky collapsing—not because he couldn’t understand the words, but because he could no longer comprehend the multilayered, nested theoretical framework behind them.
“The wall of knowledge…”
Jie Ming murmured to himself with a touch of melancholy as he walked toward his private laboratory.
The lab had undergone multiple expansions and now covered an area the size of a small plaza.
Twelve large data storage cores lined the walls, each glowing with light representing different categories of knowledge.
In the center stood a holographic projection platform. Above it floated a three-dimensional model of the Reincarnation Plane, with countless points of light flowing through it, marking the various phenomena produced during the Time Paradox Generator’s operation.
Instead of immediately beginning to pack, Jie Ming first walked to the row of cultivation pods on the east side of the lab.
Floating inside were more than a dozen dormant Sickle-Skull individuals.
These were specimens he had deliberately preserved from the final reincarnation cycle a hundred years ago.
Even in hibernation, the chitinous shells of these advanced insectoid beings gleamed with a metallic sheen. The pair of razor-sharp sickle-shaped forelimbs, though motionless, still radiated an aura of danger.
“According to contribution allocation, I can still obtain one complete seventh-level Sickle-Skull body…” Jie Ming rubbed his chin in thought. “As a specially modified biological weapon, if these materials are used well, they might raise the average combat power of the cannon fodder legion by half a rank.”
With a wave of his hand, he stored the cultivation pods into his internal cave-heaven and began systematically organizing the fruits of a century’s labor.
First came the military merit tally.
The light screen projected from his personal terminal displayed the numbers clearly:
【Low-grade Military Merit Balance: 15,271,027,458 points】
【High-grade Military Merit Balance: 1,003,200 points】
The majority of the low-grade merit came from technical dividends of the “Self-Stabilizing Field Adjustment Protocol.”
Over the past century, that single technology had quietly accumulated more than ten billion low-grade merit points.
The one million-plus that followed represented his direct gains from the Reincarnation Plane over these hundred years.
“I didn’t deliberately loot materials during the final reincarnation cycle, so this figure is actually quite reasonable,” Jie Ming mentally calculated. “But if we add the estimated value of that seventh-level Sickle-Skull body, total gains should reach around thirty million low-grade merit… For an ordinary fourth-ring wizard, that’s already an astronomical sum.”
Far more precious were the high-grade military merits.
A hundred years ago, after spending most of the initial million-plus high-grade merits, he had been left with just over eight hundred thousand.
Those had mainly been used to purchase massive amounts of cutting-edge knowledge on law research and plane construction.
This time, however, his performance during the time loop had attracted the attention of the Starforger Altreus. That eighth-ring Great Wizard had personally awarded him an additional two hundred thousand high-grade merit, bringing his total back above one million.
“One million high-grade merit…” A thoughtful gleam flashed through Jie Ming’s eyes. “When I return, I can try to see whether I can purchase the thing I want.”
He temporarily set those thoughts aside and turned his attention to the true highlight: knowledge gains.
With a thought, all twelve data storage cores in the lab lit up simultaneously. Vast streams of information converged and were archived on the holographic platform.
First knowledge repository: 【Time Paradox Generator Research Archives】.
This was the essence of a hundred years of work by the Logistics Research Division—the crystallization of effort from the most elite logistics wizards in the entire expeditionary force.
Although Jie Ming could no longer understand the latest research results and had basically been unable to participate in the studies of the last few decades, he had completely recorded and preliminarily digested all foundational theories, experimental data, failed cases, and successful models from the first seventy years.
Honestly, if he hadn’t confirmed that the cost-effectiveness of staying any longer had fallen far below returning to the Infernal Sulfur plane to continue his research, Jie Ming truly would have been reluctant to leave.
Second knowledge repository: 【Sickle-Skull Biology Research】.
This included not only the surface-level data the combat wizards needed, but also the social structure of this insect civilization, the evolutionary path of its transcendent system, the logic behind its technology tree development…
Jie Ming had even reverse-engineered several possible “civilizational leap” bottlenecks the Sickle-Skulls might face—knowledge that held significant reference value for perfecting the social attribute experiments on the Black Giants.
Third, fourth, fifth…
Anomalous behavior of alchemical reactions in time-disordered environments, causal stability corrections for rune arrays, stress distribution models of plane structures under time-reversal pressure…
Each repository represented a deep expansion into a specialized field.
He closed his eyes and sank his consciousness into his sea of spirit.
In that strange space constructed by the Wizard Truth Rings, two bands of materialized law light slowly flowed.
One was the pale golden “Spiritual Qi Law,” which had risen from 12% mastery a hundred years ago to 12.5%.
That 0.5% increase might seem tiny, but considering how exponentially more difficult law comprehension becomes the deeper one goes, it was already an impressive improvement.
More importantly, this 0.5% had been gained “by analogy” during the study of time laws, without consuming additional dedicated research time.
Jie Ming calculated silently, “At the current pace, if I focus on Spiritual Qi Law research while making use of the Incense Fire Divine Dao data feedback from the Infernal Sulfur plane, I could reach one hundred percent in at most a thousand years…”
Honestly, that speed was astonishing.
Though it couldn’t compare to dedicated research, it was still far from slow.
If word of this pace got out, it would be enough to make most wizards green with envy.
But what truly mattered to Jie Ming was the other law—the one that flowed like liquid mercury: the “Time Law” band.
A hundred years ago, his mastery of time law had been practically zero. He had only gained some related knowledge very early on from a strand of Water Elemental Plane origin.
But that origin carried far more than just time-related knowledge, so his understanding of time hadn’t even reached the minimum threshold needed to form a light band on the Truth Ring.
Now, not only had a band formed, but its solidity had already reached 0.9%.
“0.9%… Just a little more and I’d meet the standard for a fourth-ring wizard specializing in time knowledge,” Jie Ming mused inwardly.
“And if we convert 0.9% mastery of the Time Law into military merit value…”
Due to its convenience and rarity, time-type plane origin always commanded a market premium of about 30% over ordinary plane origin.
A standard strand of plane origin was generally priced at 10 million low-grade merit in the Star Ring Federation market, while time-type origin went for 13 million.
0.9% mastery equated to nine strands of time-type origin.
That was 117 million low-grade merit.
“A single plane war… just the knowledge gains are worth over a hundred million…” Jie Ming nodded in satisfaction.
His gains from this plane war could only be described as outrageously bountiful.
Generally speaking, a first-ring combat wizard entering a plane war, without exceptional luck, might only earn a few thousand low-grade merit after everything was tallied.
Second-ring wizards might get tens of thousands, third-ring several hundred thousand, and ordinary fourth-ring wizards perhaps just over a million low-grade merit.
And that was after converting all collected knowledge resources into merit value—yet Jie Ming had already reached that number in pure low-grade merit alone.
Not to mention the high-grade merit that was almost impossible for mid-to-low ring wizards to obtain, and the vast sea of knowledge that had yet to be converted into actual value.
But when one thought about it carefully, this actually aligned perfectly with the internal logic of wizard civilization.
Knowledge, especially high-level knowledge, was the most precious resource of all.
“That’s why all those wizard organizations place such heavy emphasis on the logistics research system…” Jie Ming thought deeply. “On the front lines, people fight desperately and might only earn pocket change, while the true profit lies in the ‘mines’ excavated by the Logistics Research Division.”
Having finished cataloging all his gains, Jie Ming began packing up the personal items in his laboratory.
Most of the experimental instruments were standard base equipment and needed to be returned.
The equipment he had brought himself required careful disassembly and storage in his internal cave-heaven.
The process took half a day.
When the last core component was safely sealed away, Jie Ming stood in the now-empty center of the laboratory and slowly looked around.
Over the past century, he had probably spent a third of his time in this very room.
The late nights spent deriving models, the moments of excitement or confusion over experimental data, the fierce debates with colleagues in the Logistics Research Division that suddenly blossomed into insight…
“It’s time to go.”
He spoke softly, then turned and walked toward the teleportation area.
In the corridor, he occasionally encountered other logistics wizards who were also preparing to leave. They nodded in greeting, with little small talk.
Interactions between wizards were mostly like this—rational and restrained.
Especially at the end of a long-term research project, everyone was eager to return, digest their gains, and advance their own studies.
In the teleportation hall, the adjutant of Starforger Altreus, a seventh-ring wizard, was handling the final evacuation matters.
“Researcher Jie Ming, confirm departure from the Reincarnation Plane research project?” the adjutant asked in a calm, even voice.
“Confirmed.”
“Your contribution evaluation has been completed. Additional reward: one complete seventh-level Sickle-Skull body, already transmitted to your personal warehouse at Noren Academy No. 147. Retrieve using your identity code.”
“Understood.”
“Additionally, Lord Altreus asked me to pass on a message.” The adjutant raised his head, and those starlight-like eyes looked toward Jie Ming. “‘Your research path is very interesting. Keep walking it.’”
Jie Ming paused for a moment, then bowed solemnly. “I am grateful for Lord Starforger’s recognition.”
The teleportation array activated.
Deep blue light enveloped his entire body. Space began to twist and fold.
In the very last instant before he was completely swallowed by the teleportation glow, Jie Ming looked back.
Through the observation window of the hall, the strange land of the Reincarnation Plane gleamed with a metallic sheen under the sunlight.
Although the Time Paradox Generator had ceased operation, the traces it left behind would continue to exist in this plane.
The next moment, the world spun.
When his vision cleared again, he was standing on the exclusive teleportation plaza of Noren Academy No. 147.
The familiar scent of elements rushed toward him. In the distance, towering wizard towers cast long shadows in the sunlight. Occasionally, wizards riding flying artifacts streaked across the sky.
Everything was almost exactly the same as when he had left a hundred years ago.
Jie Ming had returned at an opportune moment—just in time for the new student enrollment period.
Watching the freshmen clutching their brand-new equipment, walking along the streets with faces full of wonder at everything around them, and seeing the occasional little ones who looked up at him with astonishment, Jie Ming felt a strange sense of the passage of time:
“Without realizing it… I’ve become a proper wizard after all.”