novelraw Chapter 543: Adjustments and the First Modification Target
Chapter 543: Adjustments and the First Modification Target
Chapter 543: Adjustments and the First Modification Target
The sky over the Infernal Sulfur plane remained its usual crimson hue.
Jie Ming floated ten thousand meters in the air, overlooking the vast land below that he had personally reshaped countless times.
Around him, dozens of Black Giant priests hovered in the air as well. In front of each one floated a massive rune light array, radiating lights of various colors.
“West sector energy node, lower by another three-thousandths.”
Jie Ming’s voice spread across the entire area through spiritual power.
One Black Giant priest immediately adjusted the light array before him, his fingers tapping rapidly in the void. The complex rune sequence shifted accordingly.
Moments later, a faint glow flashed somewhere on the ground below—the signal that the energy node adjustment was complete.
“North sector Array Eye No.7, the output waveform is off. Correct it to the standard value.”
Another priest began operating. This was the fiftieth consecutive day of their work.
Every subsystem of the Incense Fire Divine Dao, including the cross-spatial energy transmission system, and even the main system itself, required a comprehensive optimization. The minor issues left behind from the design hundreds of years ago now had to be resolved one by one.
Jie Ming was in charge of overall command, while the Black Giant priests controlled the super-large formation that covered the entire plane, performing fine adjustments to every detail. From ten thousand meters up, the whole Infernal Sulfur plane looked like an enormous circuit board.
Countless energy nodes flickered with faint light, and complex patterns traced arcane designs across the land.
And these people were performing a precise calibration on this circuit board.
“Southeast sector feedback delay still has issues,” one priest reported.
Jie Ming frowned slightly. With a shift of his body, he instantly appeared above the southeast sector.
He closed his eyes and sensed for a moment before speaking, “Reset the phase synchronization protocols for the seventh, eighth, and ninth nodes entirely, and rematch them to the main array’s fluctuation frequency.”
Another round of adjustments began.
Time passed quietly amid the focused work.
When the data for the final node finally reached the ideal value, Jie Ming opened his eyes and let out a soft breath.
“All nodes in position. Begin the test.”
At his command, all the priests activated the rune light arrays before them simultaneously.
In the next instant, the entire energy network of the Infernal Sulfur plane lit up.
Viewed from high above, the sight was indescribably magnificent.
Countless streams of light flowed across the land like blood surging through veins, ultimately converging toward the massive energy tower at the center of the plane. The tower’s peak blazed with intense light as a nearly solid pillar of energy shot skyward, piercing deep into the void.
That was the sign that the cross-spatial transmission channel had opened.
Jie Ming stared at the beam of light, his spiritual power closely following the flow of energy and sensing every loss and every fluctuation during transmission. The test lasted a full three minutes.
When the light faded, he lowered his head to look at the recording crystal in his hand, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly.
Transmission efficiency increased by twelve percent.
Energy stability increased by fifteen percent.
Response speed increased by nine percent.
“Not bad.” Jie Ming nodded. “Dismiss the team.”
When he returned to the core laboratory, the various insights from the adjustments earlier still lingered in Jie Ming’s mind.
He walked into the cultivation chamber, sat cross-legged on the meditation cushion, closed his eyes, and turned his inward vision toward his spiritual sea.
Deep within the spiritual sea, the Ring of Truth floated quietly, rotating slowly. It was the core of his power as a fifth-ring wizard.
Beside the Ring of Truth, a golden thread encircled it like a satellite orbiting a planet.
That was the manifestation of the Spiritual Qi Law.
Jie Ming focused his gaze on it, his eyes narrowing slightly.
The golden thread had thickened by another circle compared to before.
He carefully sensed it. The mastery of the Spiritual Qi Law had risen from twenty percent to nearly thirty percent.
“This is an unexpected pleasant surprise.”
Jie Ming opened his eyes, lost in thought.
Thinking about it carefully, it wasn’t strange.
The adjustments to the Incense Fire Divine Dao were essentially him reorganizing the related knowledge once more. In the process, his understanding of the Spiritual Qi Law naturally deepened.
It was like reviewing the original knowledge and gaining new insights along the way.
He looked at the Ring of Truth within his spiritual sea and silently calculated the ratio between his gains and the growth in Spiritual Qi Law mastery.
Jie Ming shook his head with a sigh. “The growth rate is dropping quite fast.”
To advance from a fifth-ring wizard to sixth-ring, one needed to raise the mastery of the law from ten percent to one hundred percent.
He was only approaching thirty percent now—two-thirds of the journey still lay ahead.
And this was merely the basic threshold.
After reaching one hundred percent, one still needed to comprehend law solidification before truly stepping into the sixth ring.
It sounded simple, but putting it into practice…
Jie Ming couldn’t help but sigh.
Mastery of laws might seem like something that could keep increasing, but in reality, the further one progressed, the harder it became.
The deeper and more profound the knowledge one studied, the greater the difficulty of learning and the thicker the accumulation required.
Purely in terms of difficulty, advancing from fifth-ring to sixth-ring had already surpassed the total difficulty of rising from wizard apprentice all the way to fifth-ring.
“Take it slow, then.”
Setting aside his emotions, Jie Ming casually completed his daily cultivation routine.
After finishing cultivation and confirming everything was normal, he stood up and left the cultivation chamber, heading toward the biological laboratory on the other side.
The doors to the biological laboratory opened automatically, and a mixed scent of nutrient solution and preservative agents hit him in the face.
The laboratory was bustling with activity.
Dozens of Black Giant priests worked busily at their respective stations. Some were dissecting biological tissues, some were recording data, and some were calibrating various instruments.
Huge display screens covered the walls, scrolling with massive amounts of analysis results.
On the right side of the laboratory, a row of transparent cultivation pods stood neatly arranged, each more than ten meters tall and several meters wide.
The cultivation pods were filled with pale green nutrient solution. Suspended within the solution were creatures of various forms, if those things could still be called “creatures.”
Jie Ming walked over and stood in front of the cultivation pods to observe.
These creatures looked like oversized insects.
Some had sickle-shaped forelimbs, some were covered in thick shells, and some possessed multiple compound eyes.
They floated in the nutrient solution with dense probes inserted into various parts of their bodies, connected to data interfaces on the outer walls of the cultivation pods.
“Master.”
One Black Giant priest came forward to greet him.
It was slightly shorter than the other priests, but the light of wisdom in its eyes was even more brilliant.
Jie Ming remembered it was called “Brain,” the one with the strongest thinking ability among this batch of priests.
“Report the progress,” Jie Ming said.
Brain handed over a recording crystal. “We have re-analyzed all variants of the Sickle-Skull race from the Samsara plane. Combined with the research materials you left behind back then, we have basically compiled all the required foundational data.”
Jie Ming took the crystal and sent his spiritual power into it.
The crystal stored vast amounts of dissection data, gene sequences, and energy reaction test results.
Every variant of the Sickle-Skull race, workers, warriors, commanders, mother nests, had detailed records.
Back then, his harvest in the Samsara plane had been bountiful; he had brought back almost all research materials related to the Sickle-Skull race.
Now, after the Black Giant priests’ re-analysis, the data was even more detailed and better organized.
Jie Ming browsed through it and nodded.
He planned to begin modifications with the “Nest” first.
The Nest was a biological warship unit he had designed in his early years, but over the years it had never really seen use.
The Prowler had at least contributed something, while the Nest had zero presence at all.
As a biological warship, the Sickle-Skull race, a species naturally bred as biological weapons, was naturally the most suitable simulation sample. The mother nest units of the Sickle-Skull race were themselves a type of biological warship.
They could produce soldiers and store resources. Integrating these characteristics of the Sickle-Skull race into the Nest’s design was naturally the most fitting approach.
As Jie Ming was thinking, he suddenly sighed.
What a pity.
If only the Mycelord from back then could have been used for research.
The Mycelord from the Triangle plane would have been the ideal simulation sample.
Its adaptability, evolutionary ability, and resource conversion efficiency far surpassed those of the Sickle-Skull race.
Unfortunately, that thing was far too dangerous. In the end, they had been completely exterminated, and not even a complete sample was left behind.
Jie Ming shook his head and pulled his thoughts back.
Without the Mycelord, the Sickle-Skull race was a bit lacking, but it would still suffice.
Holding the recording crystal, he walked toward his own workstation.