I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality

Chapter 516: Not a Fictional [Imaginary]

First, one fact must be made perfectly clear.

The [Imaginary] Law is not a fictional law.

Although the [Imaginary] Law is regarded as the source and origin of fictional laws, it is not fictional itself—it genuinely exists.

Within the boundless power system of wizard civilization, the ninth ring stands as a realm both deeply revered and endlessly dreamed of.

Countless records and oral traditions all point to one truth: a wizard who reaches the ninth ring possesses “infinite” power and can freely distort laws, achieving a form of “thought becomes reality.”

Their interference with existence is like a creator wielding a brush, almost unbound by ordinary logic.

Such immense might, its principles and origins, naturally captivates every wizard who pursues the ultimate truths of knowledge, driving them to exhaust their minds and blood in the attempt to analyze it.

The [Imaginary] Law is precisely one of the “results” that countless wizard forebears derived and ultimately touched upon while researching the ultimate riddle of “how ninth-ring beings distort laws.”

Or, to put it more accurately – a degraded imitation.

From the surface, the [Imaginary] Law performs quite respectably.

It can indeed achieve a degree of “thought becomes reality,” yet its inner logic is fundamentally different from the root-level, reason-defying distortions of the ninth ring, and it carries inherent, insurmountable defects.

The core defect is this: the [Imaginary] Law can only accomplish things that the user themselves, relying on their own power, knowledge, resources, and time, could “theoretically” achieve in the end.

It merely helps the user skip the process and directly obtain a result that was theoretically possible to begin with.

For example, facing Jie Ming’s Return to Ruins Armor, this black-robed sixth-ring wizard who wields the [Imaginary] Law could, if he were willing to invest enough time, pour in vast mental energy, expend enormous computational power and resources, and employ all the knowledge and wizardry techniques at his disposal, ultimately break through the armor’s defense in theory.

Since it was “theoretically possible,” the [Imaginary] Law could let him “skip” the potentially long, complex, and costly “breaking process” and directly present the result of “the Return to Ruins Armor has been breached.”

From this perspective, the [Imaginary] Law is undoubtedly a powerful and convenient ability in combat.

It allows the user to convert their theoretical “upper limit of possibility” into actual combat results with extreme efficiency—especially obvious when facing enemies with complex defenses that cannot be quickly overcome by conventional means.

However, this brilliance is largely confined to the seventh ring and below.

Once a wizard reaches the eighth ring, they complete “law solidification.” Their core law becomes deeply bound to their existence, stabilized to the point where it is nearly impossible for external forces to distort.

At that stage, even the law distortions of ninth-ring beings can be resisted, let alone the [Imaginary] Law, a degraded “result leap” based on “one’s own possibilities.”

Consequently, wizards who specialize in the [Imaginary] Law often see their combat strength plummet after advancing to the eighth ring, sometimes becoming utterly ordinary.

To many, it is a dead-end path with almost no future.

Even at the sixth and seventh-ring stages, the [Imaginary] Law is far from invincible.

This touches on its second major flaw: the “skip budget” for the processes it can bypass is limited.

A wizard specializing in the [Imaginary] Law who wishes to skip the resources, energy, computational power, time, and so on required to break a defense, complete a complex spell, or achieve a specific outcome can only omit a certain “amount” depending on their own depth of research and mastery of the [Imaginary] Law itself.

Yet even if one cultivates the law to the theoretical peak of the sixth or seventh ring, that “skip budget” still cannot grant overwhelming superiority against top-tier combat wizards of the same level—especially those who command pure destructive laws such as “Annihilation,” “Collapse,” or “Termination.”

It can elevate the user to an “elite” or “outstanding” position within their rank, but it rarely makes them one of the absolute pinnacle few.

More importantly, any being below the ninth ring does not possess infinite power.

Therefore, users of the [Imaginary] Law cannot, like ninth-ring creatures, step on their own left foot with their right foot through “law distortion” and “infinite power” to achieve infinite stacking of combat strength.

The combined “volume” upper limit of their total spiritual power, energy reserves, physical strength, and depth of knowledge fundamentally restricts the upper limit of results they can “imagine.”

A fifth-ring wizard could never “imagine” the result of defeating a seventh-ring wizard, because that far exceeds what he could “theoretically achieve.”

In summary, in the field of combat the [Imaginary] Law is a powerful, highly efficient ability with clear ceilings and future bottlenecks. Among combat wizards it ranks solidly in the middle-to-upper tier.

In the field of research, however, the [Imaginary] Law receives a far lower evaluation—indeed, quite a poor one.

The primary reason is its extreme shortcoming in effective range.

The essence of a law is knowledge, and the wizard tools created by wizards using that knowledge are essentially manifestations of law power.

After a sixth-ring wizard completes “law solidification,” any wizard tool crafted with that solidified law at its core can still function normally even if taken to another plane an infinite distance away, provided it remains undamaged.

But anything created by the [Imaginary] Law, or any effect driven by it, can only exist and take effect while maintaining a direct spiritual connection with its creator.

This includes any attack, defense, or effect launched by the [Imaginary] Law itself; all must be attached to a medium directly controlled by the caster’s spirit, such as a spell model or spiritual tendrils.

Although a sixth-ring wizard’s spiritual control range can cover more than a thousand kilometers, compared to other solidified-law products that can operate independently at infinite distance, the [Imaginary] Law’s “range” defect becomes especially fatal in macro-strategy and research applications.

Second, although the [Imaginary] Law can “skip the research process and directly obtain results,” its value to wizards who pursue “knowledge” is limited—at times even harmful.

The most fundamental problem is this: you only receive the result; you do not receive the knowledge.

Any experienced researcher understands that if you lack thorough mastery of a technique’s or phenomenon’s internal process and core principles, even if you are given identical conditions and steps, it is extremely difficult to reproduce the result stably.

When the [Imaginary] Law “skips the process,” it does not thoughtfully include a detailed “process manual.”

You have no idea which key condition of yours actually led to success, nor which tiny factor would cause failure if missing.

You cannot even determine whether failure stemmed from insufficient conditions or from your initial hypothesis being fundamentally wrong.

Even if you luckily “imagine” a usable result, setting aside the range limitation imposed by the spiritual connection, without the accumulation of intermediate techniques, the next step of research becomes impossible.

Long-term reliance on the [Imaginary] Law for shortcuts will cause a wizard’s research ability to stagnate completely, stripping away the foundation for independent exploration and innovation.

More importantly, in many cases the numerous “by-products” and “failure experiences” generated during the research process may hold even greater value than the final target result itself.

Just as Jie Ming’s homeland in his previous life, in the long process of developing aircraft carriers, gave birth to countless critical materials, processes, designs, and management experiences—whose diffusion and overall elevation far outweighed the carrier itself.

The very existence of the [Imaginary] Law is the perfect illustration of this point:

As one of the final theoretical products of researching “ninth-ring law distortion,” its long and arduous exploration process yielded many valuable “by-products.”

One of the most significant was the partial revelation of key “paths” and theoretical models from the seventh ring to the eighth ring’s “law solidification,” helping to open the road for advancing to the eighth ring.

On the other hand, the existence of the [Imaginary] Law shattered the boundary between theory and reality, providing the necessary technical support for the birth of true fictional laws.

It could even be said that every fictional law later born in the wizard planes relied on the portion of knowledge within the [Imaginary] Law concerning the breaking of the boundary between theory and reality.

Whether it was the path to advancing to eighth-ring wizardry or the knowledge required to construct fictional laws, these insights held far greater value for the entire wizard civilization than the “main product” of the [Imaginary] Law itself.

At this moment, Jie Ming stared at the black-robed wizard whose aura grew increasingly profound, his heart filled with mixed emotions.

He suddenly understood a little of the complex expression, admiration mixed with regret, that had appeared on the faces of his mentor Clark, the seniors of Noren Workshop, and his colleagues when he first revealed the entirely new energy system of Spiritual Qi under the name “Imaginary Element.”

He knew full well that the wizard before him, because of the path he had chosen, had almost completely locked his future upper limit of power; on the true eighth-ring road and beyond, he was destined to fade into obscurity.

Yet “right now,” on this battlefield, the eerie, efficient, almost unreasonable “result-realization” ability the other displayed made him far more troublesome and immediately threatening than the vast majority of conventional wizards at the same level!

“What a—troublesome ability,” Jie Ming thought, inwardly on guard while also feeling a trace of relief.

He was relieved that the Return to Ruins Armor, built around the core concept of “devour, convert, return to nothingness,” possessed extremely high stability and resistance to abnormal effects.

Even against the bizarre technique of the [Imaginary] Law that directly defined “results,” it could forcibly neutralize one “breached” definition—at the cost of shattering itself.

He was even more relieved that the enormous spiritual and physical volume he had gained through the Body Forging Method and soul reconstruction—far surpassing ordinary fifth-ring wizards and approaching some sixth-ring ones—along with the various resources stored in his inner spatial domain, apparently exceeded the current “skip budget” carrying capacity of the opponent’s [Imaginary] Law.

This meant the other could not simply “imagine” the result of “instantly killing Jie Ming.”

Because the process that would need to be skipped consumed far too much, surpassing the law’s instantaneous processing ability.

Thus the battle was pulled back into a “process” of repeated offense and defense, attrition, and contest.

On the other side, the black-robed wizard whose law’s foundation had been exposed by Jie Ming in a single sentence showed a faint fluctuation in his dark-red eyes beneath the hood. He no longer seemed inclined to hide.

Since his trump card had been seen through, concealment lost all meaning.

His figure underwent that unsettling “change” once again.

No movement trajectory, no premonition of energy eruption.

In one instant he was still a thousand meters away; in the next, the result of “he stands before Jie Ming” had already manifested directly in reality, erasing every intermediate rushing step.

The palm covered by a black glove, like the scythe of the god of death, once more slapped toward Jie Ming.

Simple. Direct. Yet carrying the meaning of “inevitable hit” that could not be dodged.

Jie Ming’s pupils contracted. While his body retreated sharply, his mind spun at high speed and he instantly grasped the essence of the opponent’s attack pattern.

The other was not moving so fast that reaction was impossible; he had simply erased the “attack motion” process, directly presenting the result of “the palm strikes the target.”

To crack or interfere, one had to proactively intervene in the prerequisite for that “result” to occur!

Thus he responded exactly as before—once again swinging the right fist that had just finished regenerating, meeting the incoming palm head-on without deviation!

This was not a head-on clash of strength; it was proactively providing the opponent’s “attack result” with a definite, controllable “landing point”!

Whoosh—

The same scene replayed.

The instant fist and palm made contact, the fist dispersed like smoke and disintegrated.

Jie Ming’s face paled. Without hesitation he “abandoned” the entire right arm again. At the same time, he fully activated the Great Void Step beneath his feet, borrowing the faint recoil from the shattering of a layer of Return to Ruins Armor to explosively retreat!

Yet the black-robed wizard clearly had no intention of giving him any breathing room or regeneration time.

Jie Ming had barely withdrawn several dozen meters when the opponent’s figure appeared like a ghost once more, “skipping” the pursuit process and directly “appearing” on the path ahead of Jie Ming’s retreat.

The palm rose. This time the target was unmistakably Jie Ming’s head!

He clearly intended to directly “define” the more decisive result of “Jie Ming’s skull is shattered.”

A chill like ice water poured over his head—crisis!

But this time, Jie Ming’s reaction was faster!

The instant the opponent’s palm touched the outermost layer of Return to Ruins Armor and shattered it, the extremely compressed “attack process” finally revealed a trace of trajectory due to the armor’s neutralization!

That single trace gave Jie Ming precious reaction time!

The moment the second layer of Return to Ruins Armor shattered, Jie Ming’s left arm had already risen like a conditioned reflex, fiercely blocking in front of his forehead!

At the same time, his head slammed forward viciously against his own arm!

Crack!

The left arm turned to flying ash once more, but the recoil generated by the self-collision, combined with the eruption of the Great Void Step, allowed Jie Ming to narrowly pull open the distance again!

The black-robed wizard’s figure halted. He did not pursue immediately.

Beneath the hood, his brows furrowed slightly.

It was not that he did not wish to attack continuously; employing the [Imaginary] Law involved extremely complex mental load and computational consumption.

His attack frequency could not match the endless barrage of sixth-ring wizards who excelled at energy bombardment or close-quarters combat.

Every “skip of process” required precise calculation and a brief “cooldown” or “reset.”

This was also why, when he had earlier attacked with energy bullets, he had divided them into round after round.

A normal sixth-ring wizard using such simple attacks could have maintained a continuous stream.

He had no need to deliberately split every round into multiple waves just to conceal the gaps between attacks, as he did.

And in that momentary pause, Jie Ming’s astonishing regenerative ability manifested once again.

Flesh writhed madly at the severed right shoulder, a brand-new arm rapidly growing into shape. At the left-arm stump that had just turned to ash, tender buds of flesh also emerged, rebuilding at a speed visible to the naked eye.

“You—damn—guy—” the black-robed wizard finally could not hold back. His voice came through the hood, carrying a rare note of helplessness and disbelief. “Are you some kind of regeneration beast from nowhere?”

He had seen countless wizards who specialized in body modification and pursued immortality.

Yet the regeneration speed of the flesh on this fifth-ring minor wizard had already reached a bizarre degree.

It even surpassed many sixth-ring bio-modification wizards he knew who were renowned for their tenacious vitality!

Added to that strange domain capable of neutralizing a single [Imaginary] effect, the opponent’s energy rays that reached the sixth-ring threshold and his high-speed movement seemed comparatively unremarkable.

“In that case—” Jie Ming caught his breath, swiftly calming the energy and spiritual consumption caused by the repeated arm-loss and regeneration, and tried, “how about—Your Excellency showing mercy and sparing my life?”

A slightly stiff smile appeared on his face.

He was not showing weakness; he was making a rational assessment.

He was not unwilling to activate the “Light Transformation” escape technique and flee immediately.

But his earlier clash with the Hand of Annihilation had taught him that against a true sixth-ring wizard, simple high-speed movement at long range was unlikely to shake off a lock.

As long as the opponent “theoretically” possessed the ability to track and intercept him, the [Imaginary] Law could “skip” the tracking process and directly present the result of “he is intercepted.”

The black-robed wizard fell silent for a moment. A faint sigh came from beneath the hood.

When he raised his head again, the slight fluctuation in those dark-red eyes had already subsided.

All that remained was the ice-cold, absolute rationality of a battlefield wizard.

“My apologies,” his voice was steady and clear. “After witnessing your strength, especially this kind of growth potential and threat, I cannot possibly let you leave this war zone alive. Otherwise, to the fifth-ring wizards on our side, you would be a moving disaster.”

The killing intent in his words was completely unconcealed.

Upon hearing this, the last trace of probing smile on Jie Ming’s face vanished entirely.

He took a deep breath. Spiritual power inside his body accelerated, and the energy and spiritual sea stored within his grotto-heaven began to mobilize at even higher efficiency.

His newly grown arms gently clenched into fists, feeling the surging power refill them once more.

He understood that pleasantries and probes were over.

What came next would be a fight to the death.