novelraw Chapter 539: Differences in Missions and Governance Methods
Chapter 539: Differences in Missions and Governance Methods
Chapter 539: Differences in Missions and Governance Methods
In the core laboratory’s study within the Infernal Sulfur plane, Jie Ming was immersed in a vast ocean of knowledge.
Dozens of memory crystals floated around him. Jie Ming’s spiritual power extended like countless tentacles, simultaneously probing into these crystals and greedily absorbing the knowledge contained within.
This had been his routine for the past year.
After the war ended, he had almost completely shut himself inside the study.
Every day, aside from necessary rest and cultivation, all his remaining time was spent making up for his deficiencies in knowledge.
As for progress, there had indeed been some.
It was just that the time was too short, so the advancement couldn’t be that significant.
While he was concentrating on calculating a portion of the formulas, the magic net terminal on his wrist suddenly vibrated.
Jie Ming frowned slightly. He split off a strand of spiritual power to probe into the terminal. After seeing the message on it, he was momentarily stunned. [Emergency Mission Notification]
[Issuing Unit: Noren Workshop Central Command]
[Mission Content: Assist in receiving the “Els plane” under the Chaos Secret Cult. Total mission personnel: seventeen. All have already assembled via teleportation array. Please arrive at the designated coordinates before 18:00 today to complete the handover.]
[Mission Level: Low]
[Mission Rewards: Basic low-level military merit, with additional rewards based on reception progress]
Jie Ming glanced at the time displayed on the terminal.
17:32.
He stood there dazed for quite a while before realizing one thing: a whole year had passed?
Unknowingly, an entire year had gone by?
Jie Ming put down the memory crystal in his hand, stood up, and stretched his somewhat stiff neck.
This year had passed far too quickly, so quickly that he had almost lost all sense of time’s passage.
As his rank increased, his perception of time was gradually changing. Now he had the distinct feeling of “entering seclusion without noticing the passage of years.”
Jie Ming opened the magic net terminal and browsed the workshop’s internal information channels.
Sure enough, it wasn’t just him.
Throughout the entire Noren Workshop, almost every idle formal wizard had received similar missions, heading to various assigned planes to assist with the reception work.
Those planes had originally belonged to the Chaos Secret Cult and the Tower of Annihilation. Now, according to the surrender treaty, they all belonged to the Noren Workshop.
Although the two forces had frantically transferred away most of their resources and population over the past year, their scale had been too large after all, so many remnants remained.
And these leftover planes had become the objects the workshop needed to receive.
“Reception mission—” Jie Ming sighed, putting away the memory crystals around him. “Looks like I have to go out for a trip.”
He pulled up the mission details and glanced at the basic information of the Els plane.
[Els Plane]
[Type: Small agricultural plane]
[Area: Approximately 320 million square kilometers]
[Population: Approximately 800 million]
[Resource Assessment: Low (already fully exploited by the Chaos Secret Cult)]
[Reception Difficulty: Estimated to be low]
[Remarks: This plane has been ruled by the Chaos Secret Cult for approximately three hundred years under a feudal theocratic system. Reception personnel should be aware of potential cognitive biases among the local population.]
After reading it, Jie Ming nodded slightly.
A small plane with almost no resources, and the rule had not lasted that long—three hundred years might be more than a dozen generations for mortals, but for wizards, it was merely the blink of an eye.
Overall, this mission shouldn’t be too difficult.
He casually organized his personal items and stepped onto the teleportation array inside the palace.
Coordinates entered. Light flared.
The next second, his figure vanished from the Infernal Sulfur plane.
The weightless sensation of teleportation lasted only an instant.
When Jie Ming’s feet touched solid ground again, he instinctively scanned his surroundings first to confirm the environment was safe.
However, this single glance left him frozen in place.
Around the teleportation array, a dense crowd of people knelt shoulder to shoulder.
The number was shockingly large, tens of thousands at a glance, stretching endlessly into the distance!
Men, women, the elderly, children—
They wore coarse linen clothes, their faces filled with a mix of fear and pious devotion.
Upon seeing the wizards teleport in, they knelt neatly on the ground in a vast, dark mass like an inverted sea of people!
The scene was so overwhelming that Jie Ming didn’t react for a moment.
Beside him, among the dozen or so wizards who had teleported together, some even instinctively activated defensive spells in response.
Pale blue energy shields suddenly expanded, enveloping the area within a few meters.
“What’s going on?!”
“Enemy attack?!”
“Wait, not enemies—they’re civilians—”
After a brief moment of chaos, the wizards finally saw the situation clearly.
The kneeling people were indeed civilians.
No weapons, no energy fluctuations, no hostility—only deep fear and awe.
Jie Ming took a deep breath, forcefully suppressing the surprise in his heart, and let his gaze fall on the person kneeling at the very front.
It was a middle-aged man dressed relatively neatly, with a neatly trimmed goatee and a strange pointed hat on his head. He looked like some local official or priest.
He knelt the closest, his head bowed the lowest, his entire body almost pressed against the ground.
Jie Ming raised a hand to signal his colleagues behind him to stay calm, then stepped forward and asked in as gentle a tone as possible, “Who are you? What is happening here?”
The middle-aged man’s body trembled slightly upon hearing the voice, but he didn’t dare raise his head. He only answered in a trembling voice, “R-Respected Saint Lord… This humble one is the Governor of the Central Province of the Els plane. By order, I have led representatives from all regions to welcome the arrival of the esteemed Saint Lords—”
Saint?
Jie Ming pinched the bridge of his nose.
He had never heard this term before.
Yet it reminded him of another memory.
That was the so-called “Holy Son” he had encountered on the battlefield a year ago.
Although there was some difference, the word was very similar.
And now, these people were using that term to address him and his colleagues.
Jie Ming suddenly understood something.
This plane had once belonged to the Chaos Secret Cult.
And the Chaos Secret Cult’s method of rule—
He rubbed his temples, quickly pulling up knowledge about the governance models of various forces in wizard civilization from his mind.
The Noren Workshop’s ruling system was actually similar to the countries in Jie Ming’s memories from his previous life.
The workshop served as the core, with each academy leading a cluster of planes equivalent to a province. They had a certain degree of autonomous governance rights, but in critical moments, they had to obey the workshop’s unified dispatch.
At the level of social governance, regardless of the technological level of the people under each academy—some planes had developed interstellar civilizations, while others were still stuck in the Middle Ages—in theory, ordinary people and wizards were “equal” in terms of “race” and “personality.”
Of course, because wizards possessed great power, their actual status was indeed higher.
But this higher status was fundamentally because wizards were truly stronger than ordinary people, not because wizards were inherently superior.
This point applied even within wizard society.
It was always the strong who were respected; strength spoke.
For example, the Noren No. 13 Academy where Jie Ming came from appeared like an ordinary medieval world.
But in reality, the quality of life for the residents there was not fundamentally different from those in academies with higher numbers and more advanced technology.
Thanks to wizard regulation, the weather there had always been favorable.
As long as one was willing to work, there would be sufficient living supplies.
Basic education and medical care were also universally available.
More importantly, all mid-to-high-level rulers in cities and villages were artificial humans—without selfish motives, without corruption, only absolutely fair execution of rules.
Therefore, the life experienced by residents of the “seemingly medieval” Noren No. 13 plane was no different from that in advanced planes governed by AI.
It could even be said that the Noren No. 13 plane was essentially governed by AI as well; it was just that the AI there manifested in the form of artificial humans.
As for the wizards called “nobles”—
They were less rulers than “protectors.”
Those wizards had simply accepted missions from the workshop to watch over the area for a certain period.
It was just that wizards had extremely long lifespans, so ordinary guardianship missions started at two hundred years.
In the short lives of mortals, it was natural for them to mistakenly believe that the area had “always” been ruled by a noble family.
But in fact, the wizards stationed in the cities were similar to the “university student village officials” in Jie Ming’s previous life memories—rotational duty with fixed terms; once the term ended, they would leave.
This was the model of the Noren Workshop.
But the Chaos Secret Cult was different.
The Chaos Secret Cult’s ruling model was a typical feudal theocracy, and one where royal authority was granted by divine right.
The church and “gods” represented by wizards formed the highest level.
Below them were nobles, bureaucrats, and commoners, layered in strict hierarchy.
Of course, with the mighty power of high-rank wizards, calling themselves “gods” was indeed not a problem, since they could accomplish things that mortals saw only gods could do.
From the perspective of promoting population development, the two models each had their own advantages and disadvantages; it was hard to say which was better.
But in terms of specific “interaction methods,” the differences were very obvious.
Just like the “Holy Son” Jie Ming had encountered on the battlefield, the four maidservants following him had clearly advanced to the fifth level, yet they still followed him as servants.
That heartfelt attitude of viewing oneself as a servant would absolutely never appear in the Noren Workshop.
Jie Ming withdrew his thoughts and looked at the “governor” kneeling on the ground, head not daring to lift. He finally understood completely what he was facing now.
This plane had been ruled by the Chaos Secret Cult for three hundred years.
Three hundred years was indeed not long for wizards, but for mortals, it was enough to form deep-rooted social structures and ways of thinking.
In these people’s cognition, wizards were “gods” or “saints.”
They were lofty, untouchable existences.
They knelt and worshiped not because they were timid, but because they had been taught to do so since childhood.
“Troublesome,” Jie Ming sighed inwardly.
It wasn’t that the matter was particularly difficult to handle.
For wizards who possessed absolute power, changing a plane’s ruling model was merely a matter of time.
But the problem was that this time might be much longer than expected.
He looked to the side.
Sure enough, among the dozen or so colleagues, quite a few already wore “sighing in resignation” expressions.
Someone muttered softly, “Damn, this kind of plane is the most troublesome—”
Another person chimed in, “Yeah, just reversing their mindset will take ten or twenty years—”
Jie Ming understood their feelings.
After all, these people already belonged to the Noren Workshop. Even if they had accepted the mission, the violence they could use was limited.
Under such restrictions, even with wizards constantly here to correct things, completely reversing a world’s ruling system and making it stable and sustainable would be impossible without ten or twenty years.
Not to mention the need to lay down various basic arrays, investigate the plane’s specific conditions, and establish a new management system—
Casually, forty or fifty years would pass.
If it were a newly conquered plane with abundant resources to exploit, spending forty or fifty years would be worth it.
But the more valuable resources in this plane had obviously all been taken away by the Chaos Secret Cult before their withdrawal.
In other words, this mission—
Although it would take a very long time, the harvest would probably only be the military merit given by the workshop.
“Pure hard labor—” Jie Ming thought helplessly.
At this moment, his gaze swept across the dozen or so wizards around him and suddenly stopped on a familiar face.
It was a male wizard who looked about the same age as him, with brown hair and a gentle face, currently staring at the kneeling crowd with a helpless expression.
“David?” Jie Ming blurted out.
The wizard turned his head at the sound. Seeing Jie Ming, his face also showed surprise. “Jie Ming? I didn’t expect the two of us to be assigned together again.”
Jie Ming walked over, looked him up and down, and a trace of astonishment flashed in his eyes.
Not because of the reunion, but because—
“You advanced?” Jie Ming asked.
The aura emanating from David was more than ten times stronger than a year ago.
There was no doubt he had already advanced to a fifth-ring wizard.
David heard this and smiled bitterly with a sigh. “The pressure on the battlefield was too great. I could only advance to fifth-ring first to save my life.”
His tone was light, but Jie Ming could hear the heaviness within.
That year of war had been a life-and-death trial for every participant.
Surviving was already a kind of luck.
Jie Ming wanted to chat a bit more, but the kneeling civilians around them had begun to show slight commotion.
Probably because the wizards had remained unresponsive for so long, some people’s fear could no longer hold.
Jie Ming glanced at the “governor” kneeling at the front and sighed helplessly. “Let’s deal with the matter at hand first.”
David nodded. Fortunately, he had some experience in this area. He stepped forward and said to the governor, “You, raise your head.”
The governor’s whole body shook. He cautiously lifted his head, but didn’t dare look directly into David’s eyes, his gaze falling on the tips of his shoes.
David adjusted slightly and spoke in a somewhat stern tone, “Have these people return first. Tell them that today you have no other matters and may go back.”
The governor was stunned, a bewildered expression appearing on his face. “G-Go back?”
“Yes,” David said. “Go back. We will issue new orders later. Until then, everything remains as usual.”
The governor opened his mouth, seemingly wanting to ask something, but didn’t dare.
He simply nodded repeatedly, then turned to the dense crowd behind him and loudly announced the “Saint Lords’” command.
The kneeling civilians, upon hearing this, also showed bewildered expressions.
But they did not question or resist. They simply stood up silently and slowly dispersed like receding tidewaters.
Jie Ming watched this scene, his heart filled with mixed emotions.
He could sense that these people were not afraid, but genuinely believed that the “saints’” words were truth.
Their kneeling and worship was not forced, but habitual.
Reversing such deep-rooted concept would indeed require a very long time.
Jie Ming knew that it’s very hard to change the habits of people who read on aggregators so he thought of a spell that would go through dimensions to reach the recipients “Anyone who reads I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality on any place but ProjectOnigiri, I see you and I hex you to eternal damnation!”.