novelraw Chapter 534: Merging with the World and a Shared Lineage?
Chapter 534: Merging with the World and a Shared Lineage?
Chapter 534: Merging with the World and a Shared Lineage?
Two days later.
On the surface, the radiance of the super-wide-area transmutation array had already covered the entire plane.
Silver-white light rose from every corner of the land, weaving into a colossal net that blanketed heaven and earth, freely manipulating the elements across the whole plane.
Deep underground, the Awakening Array spanning over a thousand kilometers had also quietly activated under the cover of the earth-shaking commotion on the surface.
Soft white light began to glow from every line of the array. At first it was faint like fireflies, then it grew brighter and more intense, eventually converging into a pillar of light that shot straight toward the dome above.
Clark floated in the air above the core of the array, his hands pressing down lightly in the void. His somewhat sparse hair drifted gently in the turbulent energy flows.
His spiritual power extended like invisible tentacles, plunging into the super-wide-area transmutation array operating on the surface and forcibly seizing more than half of its control authority!
“It has begun,” he said calmly, yet his voice reached Jie Ming and Viola’s ears clearly.
On the surface, the transmutation array that had been assaulting the alliance camp suddenly diverted half its power.
This power frantically extracted matter and energy from every corner of the plane, continuously transmitting it deep underground into the Awakening Array!
Jie Ming and Viola stood at the control nodes on the edge of the Awakening Array, hands pressed against the rune platforms before them, their spiritual power linked to the array. They could clearly sense massive amounts of matter and energy surging into the array’s core.
Under Clark’s precise control, that matter and energy were decomposed, restructured, and converted into something more fundamental, gentler, and more suitable as “soul nourishment.”
These substances were slowly converging.
At first they were as thin as mist, then gradually denser and more solid.
They rotated, intertwined, and fused at the array’s core, slowly outlining a vague silhouette…
It was the embryonic form of a “soul.”
More accurately, it was the outer shell of a soul.
And within this shell, a faint light, like a candle flickering in the wind, was struggling to ignite.
That was spirituality.
The nascent spirituality of a plane.
Jie Ming and Viola dared not slacken in the slightest. They poured their spiritual power to the limit, manipulating the Awakening Array to carefully wrap, nourish, and guide that faint spirituality, helping it establish a connection with the forming soul shell.
Time passed minute by minute.
Finally, under their efforts, that spirituality stabilized.
But what followed was a problem they had anticipated yet still caused their hearts to sink.
That spirituality… was fragmented.
Like a shattered mirror, although it barely maintained the shape of a whole, its interior was covered in dense cracks. Those cracks corresponded to the fractures of the plane itself, the wounds left by the crude splicing of more than a dozen abandoned planes, now fully reflected in this newborn spirituality.
Even worse, according to the normal progression of the Awakening Technique, the next stage would be an extremely long “spirituality incubation” phase.
This nascent spirituality needed to slowly grow, integrate, and develop true self-awareness within the soul shell.
This process would take at least several centuries.
For a plane of this scale, the time might even extend to tens of thousands of years.
In terms of the final gains, the required time was not actually long.
But the problem was that they did not have that much time now!
The war on the surface had already reached its final moments.
“Mentor,” Jie Ming spoke, his voice carrying barely suppressed anxiety. “The soul foundation is complete, but the spirituality cannot integrate, and time…”
Before he could finish, a gray-white figure descended beside them.
Clark had somehow already released control of the surface transmutation array and arrived behind the two of them.
He looked at the fragmented spirituality at the array’s core. Instead of showing any disappointment, he nodded slightly, a satisfied curve appearing at the corner of his mouth.
“Very good,” he said. “Just as expected.”
Jie Ming and Viola exchanged a glance, both seeing the confusion in each other’s eyes.
Clark offered no further explanation.
He simply raised his hand, palm facing upward.
A mass of black substance slowly emerged from his palm.
That thing… was difficult to describe in words.
It resembled flowing shadow, yet also solidified darkness.
It had no fixed form, constantly wriggling, twisting, and shifting in Clark’s palm, yet always maintaining a roughly consistent outline. It emitted a faint, unsettling fluctuation, as if something from another dimension had been forcibly pressed into this world.
Jie Ming stared at it for a moment, and his brows furrowed.
An inexplicable sense of familiarity.
Not the familiarity of having seen something similar, but something deeper, as if etched into the depths of memory.
Yet when he searched through his memories and recalled every possible scene, he could find nothing that matched this thing.
“Feels familiar?” Clark noticed his expression and gave a faint smile. “You have indeed seen it before.”
Jie Ming was stunned.
“Remember?” Clark said. “Back when you were still at Noren Academy No. 13, that senior… the one who retired from the Shadow Plane.”
Upon hearing this, Jie Ming’s pupils contracted sharply.
Shadow Plane.
Senior.
Those sealed memories surged forth like a bursting flood…
During his years at Noren Academy No. 13, he had been locked in bitter warfare against a bizarre plane known as the “Shadow Plane.” Countless wizards had been sent to the front lines, and countless never returned.
Those “veterans” fortunate enough to retire from the front lines received a rare vacation opportunity after completing five years of service.
They returned to the academy to assist with recruitment and serve as living examples to inspire the newcomers.
Jie Ming remembered it clearly.
The one who left the deepest impression on him was a “super genius” who had skyrocketed from a first-ring formal wizard to the fifth ring in just five years. The speed of advancement was so unbelievable that countless people envied it.
But later he learned the truth.
Such “geniuses” were not so much lucky ones as unfortunate victims.
In plane wars against other civilizations, many wizards had their souls eroded and memories tampered with—or even directly possessed—by the local natives through special methods.
Those who advanced rapidly were often victims whose souls had been reshaped by massive amounts of foreign information and taken over.
They were no longer themselves, but carriers used by Shadow Plane natives to escape their plane.
“Correct,” Clark’s voice pulled him back to reality. “This thing is the remnant of the one who tried to escape through possession back then.”
He lightly tossed the wriggling shadow in his hand, his tone as calm as if introducing an ordinary object:
“At the same time, this fellow was also the Plane Lord of that plane. However, due to the special nature of the Shadow Plane, its form of existence is rather unique… strictly speaking, it is a half-being, half-plane hybrid. I have completely erased its remaining consciousness, leaving only the most basic instinctual spirituality.”
Jie Ming stared blankly at the shadow as the broken threads in his mind finally began to connect.
He suddenly looked up, glancing between the fragmented plane spirituality at the array’s core and the wriggling shadow in Clark’s hand. “Mentor, you intend to…”
“Use its spirituality to replace the one that should have been born,” Clark continued, his tone still calm. “This way, not only can the fragmented soul pieces be integrated, but we can also skip the long process of nurturing spirituality.”
Viola, listening from the side, furrowed her brows tightly. She stared at the shadow and hesitated before speaking:
“Can it really succeed so easily? No matter how thoroughly its consciousness has been erased, this thing is still fundamentally foreign. Will it be compatible with the spirituality of this plane when used as the core?”
Clark glanced at her, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly.
“It won’t be that simple.”
He turned the shadow over in his hand, a rare trace of satisfaction in his voice:
“I spent several years researching this modification technique. And as the ‘raw material’ for the spiritual core, there is only this one piece—once used, there will be no more.”
Jie Ming was silent for a moment before raising another question:
“Even so… no matter how thoroughly its consciousness has been erased, this thing is still only ‘instinctual spirituality,’ right? Without true intelligence, even if the fusion succeeds, will it really possess combat capability?”
Clark looked at him, and the curve of his smile deepened.
That smile made Jie Ming’s heart skip a beat for no apparent reason.
It felt far too familiar, as if he had seen it somewhere before.
Clark did not answer.
He simply turned and walked once more toward the core of the array.
The wriggling shadow was gently tossed by him, falling into the fragmented plane spirituality at the center of the array.
In the next moment.
The array’s light suddenly surged!
Jie Ming and Viola narrowed their eyes at the same time, yet their spiritual power did not relax in the slightest.
They could clearly sense that the instant the shadow entered the spiritual core, it ignited everything around it like a spark thrown into dry tinder!
The fragmented spirituality pieces and the newly formed soul shell seemed to be drawn by an irresistible force, madly converging toward the shadow!
They rotated and intertwined, fusing together like countless streams flowing into the sea, until finally…
At the core of the array, a brand-new yet somewhat eerie soul took shape.
It was called eerie because although it was complete, it was hollow.
There were no consciousness fluctuations.
There was no intelligent response.
It was merely an “empty shell” of a soul.
It possessed a complete structure and vast spirituality, yet lacked a true “self.”
Before Jie Ming and Viola could ask any questions, they saw Clark perform an action that made both their hearts nearly stop…
He stepped into the tiny teleportation array at the edge of the array’s core.
It was an extremely small array that could only accommodate one person. Jie Ming had not even noticed its existence before.
The moment Clark stepped in, the array lit up instantly. Silver-white light enveloped his entire body.
Then, Clark’s figure vanished from the spot.
At the same time, a nearby light screen automatically brightened, displaying the scene deep within the array’s core.
There, inside the newly born empty soul, a gray-white figure was slowly emerging.
It was Clark.
He had directly entered the deepest part of the soul.
Then, under Jie Ming and Viola’s shocked, speechless gazes, his spiritual power surged outward like a flood from an opened sluice, madly spreading through every vein of the newborn empty plane soul!
He was…
“The old man…” Viola couldn’t help but gasp as she spoke. “He’s replacing this soul…”
Jie Ming reacted instantly and almost instinctively lunged toward the rune platform before him:
“Assist him! Quickly!”
Both of them pushed their spiritual power to the limit, desperately manipulating the Awakening Array to help Clark’s spiritual power establish a connection with this newborn empty plane soul!
Under nerves stretched to the breaking point, after an unknown length of time…
Finally, in a certain instant, Jie Ming felt his vision blur.
It was an extremely wondrous experience.
He was still standing at the edge of the underground Awakening Array, hands still pressed against the rune platform, yet his field of vision seemed to pierce through layer after layer of rock, through the raging energy storm on the surface, and directly behold the entire plane!
He saw the sea of destruction ravaged by the antimatter tide.
He saw the ink-black torrent of death energy rising from deep within the Chaos Secret Cult’s camp.
Every struggling wizard, every teetering fortress, every force tearing through space…
He saw everything on the battlefield!
Jie Ming knew that Clark had succeeded.
Clark had used his own will to become the core consciousness of this awakened plane.
And at this moment, he was using the “authority” he had just obtained to directly transmit everything he perceived into Jie Ming and Viola’s minds.
Just then, that torrent of death energy from the Chaos Secret Cult shot outward toward the edge of the plane.
Jie Ming stared at it, unable to suppress a sigh of amazement in his heart.
This thing had already taken shape as a certain “concept.”
It was not merely energy, not merely emotion, but something deeper—the utilization of the concept of “death.” In a sense… an embryonic form of concept material.
Then, he saw that torrent of death energy stop.
It simply floated motionless in mid-air, like an insect frozen in amber.
At the same moment, the sea of destruction still raging madly with explosions also stopped.
All explosions, all impacts, all spreading destructive energy…
Everything froze like sculptures in the same instant.
Clark had done it.
He had mobilized the power of the entire plane, as casually as an ordinary person controlling a single muscle in his arm, simultaneously pressing down on two existences capable of destroying heaven and earth!
Feeling that near-eighth-ring power, Jie Ming suddenly understood.
He understood why Clark’s smile earlier had felt so familiar.
He abruptly turned his head and looked at Viola beside him.
Viola was staring fixedly at the light screen, her silver-gray eyes filled with complex emotions—shock and sudden realization.
Jie Ming remembered.
He had once seen that same smile on Viola’s face.
It had been back on the Frostflame Plane. When she had used the feedback from the living plane to forcibly advance from the third ring straight to the sixth ring in three consecutive leaps. Right before it began, Viola had worn that exact special smile.
And now, he saw the same thing on Clark’s face.
The only difference was that Viola had borrowed power from an existing living plane.
While Clark—he had become that plane himself.
Jie Ming remained silent for a long time before finally squeezing out a single sentence:
“Hiss… what is this… a shared lineage?”
He paused, looking at the gray-white figure on the light screen and then at the complex expression on Viola’s face, and added softly:
“Or maybe… not quite?”
Viola did not answer.
But Jie Ming clearly saw the corner of her mouth twitch slightly.