novelraw Chapter 461: Final Preparations
Chapter 461: Final Preparations
Fifteen years passed quietly.
In the manufacturing zone of the core laboratory on the Infernal Sulfur plane, the air grew scorching.
Jie Ming stood alone before the central control console. More than thirty enormous curved light screens floated in formation before him.
Each screen displayed different streams of data, energy spectrograms, material status readouts, or intricate three-dimensional manipulation interfaces.
His hands hovered over the control panel, fingertips glowing faintly with mental power as they established a deep link with the vast array network throughout the manufacturing chamber.
Through the multi-layered composite observation window in front of the console, one could see the core manufacturing room the size of a basketball court.
At this moment, more than ten thousand pre-arranged micro-arrays inside the chamber were operating in perfect synchronization. According to the complex program Jie Ming had set, they emitted lights of various colors, performing precise operations.
Some arrays spat out pale-white or ghostly-blue flames with temperatures controlled to within fractions of a degree. Others functioned like mechanical arms, drawing powdered, liquid, or crystalline materials from fixed tracks and spraying or etching them evenly. Still others released powerful force fields, stretching and shaping the mass of material located at the very center of the manufacturing chamber.
That mass was a constantly shifting, semi-tangible pale mist—the very “Mysterious Astral Mortal Dust Barrier” awaiting its complete transformation and upgrade.
Jie Ming’s mind was calm, his gaze sharp. What he was performing now was a form of “modern artifact refinement” that combined the immortal path’s artifact-crafting techniques with the wizard world’s precision manufacturing technology.
In his early days, when his rank was low and his laboratory crude, he could only rely on his own true fire and manual labor to refine artifacts slowly and laboriously.
But now, with a fully operational seventh-ring large elemental pool as an energy source, a highly automated array network, and his vast accumulated knowledge of materials science and energy manipulation, such primitive methods were long behind him.
The manufacturing chamber before him was the culmination of his technical prowess—capable of efficiently and precisely completing the refinement and modification of nearly any complex artifact.
“Step one: material fusion.”
Jie Ming focused his mind and issued commands through the light screens.
Behind the observation window, several large arrays lit up simultaneously.
First, the channels from the storage zone opened. Vast quantities of brilliantly colored “Flower God Baleful Qi” were drawn forth as though by invisible hands, forming a viscous torrent that poured into the core array and completely enveloped the Mysterious Astral Mortal Dust Barrier.
Next, the two pitch-black “Baleful Qi Gourds,” radiating bone-chilling cold, were activated.
The high-quality “Dead Baleful Qi” inside surged forth like two ferocious black dragons, roaring as they merged into the multicolored torrent and clashed with the Flower God Baleful Qi.
Under the powerful constraint of the arrays, the two forces were forced into slow fusion, their combined color deepening into a more ominous, dangerous dark purple.
Then came the “liquid gold,” serving as both framework and harmonizing agent.
Bright metallic liquid rained down in fine streams. Guided by the arrays, it permeated the baleful qi mixture evenly, granting the whole a solid structural framework and exceptional energy conductivity.
A small amount of worldly-scented “Mortal Dust Qi” was also introduced.
Since Mortal Dust Qi had many other uses, Jie Ming used only a measured quantity this time—treating it as a binding and stabilizing agent.
It established a fragile balance and connection between the violent baleful qi and the ice-cold liquid gold, ensuring overall structural stability while preserving the barrier’s foundational ability to disrupt heavenly secrets and obscure causality.
Finally—and most critically—the dedicated pipeline leading to the “Poison of Incense Fire” storage warehouse opened.
The near-solid golden mass, riddled with swirling distorted multicolored spots, was drawn out thread by careful thread under the precise control of the powerful arrays and gently injected into the core mixture.
In that instant, all light within the core manufacturing chamber seemed to dim for a fraction of a second!
The previously stable dark-purple mixture suddenly boiled violently. Countless twisted shadows darted wildly within!
The essence of billions of living beings’ stray thoughts, negative emotions, and chaotic wills contained in the Poison of Incense Fire began frenziedly corroding and assimilating the other materials, attempting to drag everything into an abyss of madness.
Jie Ming’s expression remained unchanged. His hands moved in blurs across the control panel.
More than three hundred regulation arrays powered up to full capacity at once!
Arrays on the ceiling of the manufacturing chamber released pure beams of orderly light to suppress the chaos. Meanwhile, other arrays swiftly constructed layered mental filtration barriers inside the Mysterious Astral Mortal Dust Barrier.
They then vibrated at specific frequencies, guiding the “toxicity” of the Poison of Incense Fire into directed fusion with the other materials’ properties rather than indiscriminate destruction.
This was an extremely dangerous and precise balancing act.
The slightest mistake could not only ruin everything but allow the erupting Poison of Incense Fire to contaminate the entire manufacturing chamber—or even spread to the wider laboratory.
Yet for Jie Ming, this level of difficulty remained firmly within his control.
On the light screens, energy curves and material structure analysis graphs jumped wildly, capturing every minute change in the internal fusion process.
After an unknown span of time, the violent churning of the core mixture finally subsided. Its color settled into a restrained dark gold that seemed capable of drawing in and devouring any gaze.
Across its surface, extremely faint distorted multicolored gleams occasionally flashed and vanished, lending it a dangerous, eerie quality.
“Step two: shaping and spirit-imparting.”
Jie Ming drew a deep breath and began the next phase.
Pre-prepared specific artifact-refining runes and high-tier wizard energy-solidification arrays were simultaneously imprinted into the fused material.
The arrays blazed even brighter. Temperature and pressure shifted under precise control, acting like invisible great hammers that repeatedly forged every part of the artifact.
The dark-gold material began collapsing inward. Its form gradually transformed from a chaotic mist into a more stable, intangible barrier that perfectly matched the fluctuations of Jie Ming’s soul.
Within it, the properties of the various materials were intricately interwoven by the artifact runes and energy arrays, forming a complex autonomous defense and counterattack system.
When every array in the manufacturing chamber simultaneously dimmed and the burning true flames gradually extinguished, what now floated at the center was no longer the earlier thin mist.
It looked… almost more “unremarkable.”
Completely colorless and transparent, formless and intangible.
It resembled nothing more than a small patch of air with slightly different density, hovering silently.
Only the sharpest perception could faintly detect the subtle dissonance within.
Jie Ming left the console, passed through the airtight door, and entered the core manufacturing chamber.
He stood before the seemingly “empty” space and extended his index finger, gently touching it.
A cool sensation reached his fingertip, accompanied by a bloodline-like, perfectly responsive soul connection.
The newly upgraded Mysterious Astral Mortal Dust Barrier!
Jie Ming closed his eyes and carefully sensed it.
The foundational defense and counterattack mechanisms of the upgraded treasure remained unchanged, but the complete overhaul of its core materials—especially the massive infusion of Flower God Baleful Qi, high-quality Dead Baleful Qi, and most crucially the Poison of Incense Fire—had utterly revolutionized its “foundation” and “toxicity.”
“With so much ‘extra ingredient’ added…” The corners of Jie Ming’s mouth curved upward. “Now, even a seventh-ring wizard who dares to use curses, divination, or soul-corruption methods against me… will die in a very ugly way!”
With a slight shift of thought, the upgraded Mysterious Astral Mortal Dust Barrier came alive, instantly spreading and enveloping his entire body.
Then it vanished completely into the space and energy field around him, leaving no trace.
The first major preparation was perfectly complete.
Jie Ming did not leave the manufacturing zone.
He walked to the console and pressed a specific call button.
Soon, several exceptionally tall black giant priests whose liquid-metal sheen was even deeper and more profound hurried in.
“Master.” The lead priest bowed.
“How is the status of the basic materials I requested?” Jie Ming asked directly.
“In reply to Master: according to your list, the fill rate of ‘Material Depot Zone One’ has reached eighty-seven percent and continues to rise rapidly. However, I must inform you that the planned capacity of ‘Material Depot Zone One’ accounts for only fifty percent of the total materials you ordered. Additionally, over the past fifteen years, the long-term procurement contracts signed progressively have recently begun centralized delivery. In the coming period, large quantities of materials are expected to arrive via cross-plane teleportation.”
The priest swiftly recited the figures, clearly well-versed in the details.
Jie Ming pulled up the monitoring light screen.
The footage showed an open-air stacking yard on the laboratory’s outskirts—an area comparable in size to a small plain—presenting a truly spectacular sight.
Tens of thousands of black giants, each over thirty meters tall and radiating powerful auras, were present.
These were elite units cultivated over many years, all having reached fifth-ring transcendent standards.
At this moment, they had become tireless porters.
From beside a large, constantly flashing spatial teleportation array, they steadily carried mountain-like stacks of metal ingots, multicolored crystal clusters, sealed liquid-material canisters, and other supplies to the stacking yard.
Though these black giants were enormous and possessed immense strength, the densely compressed and packaged material piles still felt weighty even in their hands.
On one side of the stacking yard, various materials had already formed several true mountains of metal and crystal, reflecting cold light under the dark-red sky of the Infernal Sulfur plane.
The data on the light screen confirmed the priest’s report: real-time storage levels in Material Depot Zone One were visibly surging upward.
“Very good.” Jie Ming nodded in satisfaction.
Without pause, he turned back to the main console in the manufacturing chamber. His gaze settled on another long-prepared automated production program interface.
With his operations, some of the arrays in the manufacturing chamber—silent just moments ago—lit up again.
But this time, the target was no longer the Mysterious Astral Mortal Dust Barrier. It was the vast quantities of basic materials continuously fed into the preprocessing zone from the stacking yard via conveyor belts.
Under Jie Ming’s control, blazing flame furnaces activated, melting large blocks of rare metal into flowing liquid.
Crystal-grinding arrays started, pulverizing hard energy crystals and purifying them into standard powder. Extraction arrays operated, separating needed active components from specific plant or mineral raw materials…
Under Jie Ming’s precise direction, these preprocessed materials combined and took shape in secondary manufacturing units according to specific ratios and sequences.
Finally, from the end of the production line, thumb-sized, perfectly octagonal thin metal plates—smooth as mirrors and gleaming with dark-gold luster—fell like droplets of water. They were automatically sorted and collected into energy storage boxes.
These were the new “ammunition” Jie Ming had prepared for the coming war—secondary optimized and modified single-use storage witch tools for “Trigram Fire Annihilation Divine Light.”
Unlike the earlier staff-shaped witch tools, these metal plates featured highly integrated internal structures. Almost all available space was dedicated to more efficient energy storage runes and ultra-rapid charging arrays.
The trade-off: each metal plate could store and release only one full-power “Trigram Fire Annihilation Divine Light.”
But their advantages were equally outstanding: extremely fast recharge!
With sufficient energy supply, an exhausted metal plate could be “refilled” and restored to combat readiness in just thirty seconds.
Moreover, their compact size made them easy to carry in large quantities and deploy rapidly.
This was precisely the approach Jie Ming had designed for high-intensity, high-attrition warfare.
Rune-etched witch tools could draw on environmental energy for theoretically “unlimited” firepower, but current technology could not yet support highly specialized composite spells like “Trigram Fire Annihilation Divine Light.”
Traditional witch tools offered strong stability and immunity to environmental interference, but their firepower was limited—usually reserved for emergencies or as trump cards.
Jie Ming had taken a different path: since a single witch tool’s firepower was limited, he would make up for it with quantity!
As long as the total number of witch tools he carried was large enough—so large that, before the first batch was fully expended, the earliest-fired batch (already recharging) could refill and fire again…
Then, under ideal conditions, a closed firepower cycle could be formed, theoretically enabling continuous high-intensity saturated bombardment!
Three prerequisites were required to realize this concept: near-unlimited energy support, vast quantities of rapidly rechargeable standardized witch tools, and sufficient storage space to hold them.
Coincidentally, Jie Ming possessed all three in full.
The cross-spatial energy transmission system of the Incense Fire Divine Dao had been preliminarily constructed. Backed by the seventh-ring large elemental pool, Jie Ming could truly declare, “My energy is endless.”
As for sufficient storage space—his ever-expanding internal cave-heaven presented no problem whatsoever.
And as for sufficient quantity…
The ceaseless stream of dark-gold metal plates rolling off the production line was the answer to the second prerequisite.
Jie Ming personally oversaw and completed the manufacturing process for the first batch of approximately five hundred metal plates.
He randomly selected several for testing, confirming stable internal energy structures, smooth charging interfaces, and full-power activation.
“Quality is acceptable. Proceed to full batch production.”
He set down the testing device and configured the entire automated production workflow he had just debugged as the highest-priority cyclic task.
At the same time, through the console, he directly connected to a dedicated interface of the Incense Fire Divine Dao cross-spatial transmission system, channeling the vast, stable energy of the seventh-ring large elemental pool continuously into the manufacturing chamber’s energy network.
“Activate full-automatic mass-production protocol.”
The command was given.
In an instant, the entire vast manufacturing zone awoke like a slumbering behemoth!
All related arrays, furnaces, and production lines roared to full power, emitting deep, resonant booms.
Materials were consumed at an even faster rate. Dark-gold metal plates poured from the end of the production line like golden raindrops, filling waiting energy storage boxes. Once a box was full, it was automatically sealed and conveyed to the dedicated finished-goods warehouse. Fresh empty boxes immediately took their place.
The efficiency was more than a hundred times greater than when Jie Ming operated manually!
Standing before the control console, Jie Ming watched the waterfall of production data refreshing on the light screens and the bustling scene in the monitoring footage. He slowly let out a long breath.