novelraw Chapter 549: The Strange Plane and Silence
Chapter 549: The Strange Plane and Silence
Chapter 549: The Strange Plane and Silence
The dizziness from the ultra-long-distance teleportation had yet to fully dissipate when Jie Ming felt the desolate, hard ground beneath his feet.
The free-floating elements in the air were extremely sparse, carrying a dry, rusty metallic scent.
He raised his eyes. All around stretched an endless dark-red wasteland, with massive metal structures occasionally visible half-buried in the soil at the horizon. “It’s a ship plane,” Jie Ming realized.
He was all too familiar with these war bases constructed from abandoned planes.
Spatial stabilization made them ideal for large-scale troop assembly. Their only drawback was the scarcity of free-floating elements, yet they remained the primary military bases used by wizards for planar warfare.
Buzz!!!
The air trembled continuously as beams of teleportation light flared up around them.
One figure after another stepped out from silver-white spatial ripples, each aura more exaggerated than the last.
Jie Ming swept his gaze over them and felt a slight shock in his heart. Every wizard emerging from the light emitted an oppressive pressure that distorted the surrounding air.
In the elite missions Jie Ming had participated in before, second- and third-ring formal wizards formed the main force.
But here, fourth- and fifth-ring wizards were everywhere within sight, and there was no shortage of sixth-ring great wizards whose every movement triggered law resonance.
Even farther away, on several elevated platforms, a few auras as unfathomable as abysses stood silently.
“Those are… seventh-ring?” Jie Ming restrained his own aura, understanding dawning in his mind.
“Information processing and fate-type knowledge… As expected, these are domains where high-ranking wizards gather.”
Similarly, planes involving information processing and fate laws were inherently the territory of high-tier wizards.
Wizards of insufficient rank who came here might not even be able to sense the enemy’s existence, let alone fight.
Wizards were all intelligent people; naturally, none would casually throw away their lives.
However, Jie Ming’s attention quickly shifted away from his colleagues.
He turned toward the sky overhead. As he looked at the scene above, his pupils suddenly contracted.
The firmament of the ship plane had been torn open by a colossal black fissure spanning ten thousand miles.
On the other side of the fissure, the most eye-catching sight was not the mottled chaotic void, but an existence that would send chills down any researcher’s spine. It was a sphere so perfectly regular it resembled a work of art.
Under normal circumstances, the background of the endless chaotic void was twisted and disordered, like countless pigments splashed together at random and then madly stirred.
So-called planes were essentially miracles born when a group of elements, by chance and coincidence, formed order.
Even the most distinct plane barriers, when placed within the vast endless chaotic void, were not particularly conspicuous. Normal planes embedded in the endless chaotic void were like finding a slightly more uniform patch of color amid chaos—barely distinguishable in outline. But this plane was different!
This plane… was far too regular.
The entire plane presented a perfect sphere, geometrically circular.
Moreover, its color was pure white, without any impurities, as if all internal colors had been forcibly unified by some power into the same frequency. Against the backdrop of the chaotic, twisted, and multicolored endless void, this plane appeared like a geometric body forcibly trimmed out by some supreme logic. It floated against the chaotic void background, so incongruous that it was glaring.
Even more eerie was the abnormal deathly silence this plane emanated.
Jie Ming had seen countless planes. Even those on the verge of collapse, or resource-exhausted planes that wizards called abandoned planes, still possessed some “movement”—energy tides, elemental flows, or even the plane’s own rhythms.
But this white sphere had nothing.
It simply floated there quietly, without atmospheric circulation, without planar oscillations, without any reaction.
It was like a deathly pale eyeball, silently overlooking the entire void.
“This is too regular…” Jie Ming murmured. “So regular it doesn’t seem like a natural product, but more like a giant… storage unit.”
No matter how he used his current detection methods, Jie Ming could not find any flaws in this sphere.
“What the hell is this thing…”
A low murmur came from nearby.
Jie Ming didn’t need to turn his head to know it was one of the support wizards who had just teleported over like him.
As more and more support wizards arrived, the anomalous white sphere in the sky was noticed by increasing numbers of people.
Commotion spread through the crowd.
Low voices from the surrounding wizards rose one after another, intertwining astonishment, fervor, and solemnity.
Faced with unknown terror, low-ranking wizards might feel fear, but for this group of elites who pursued truth, it was more a kind of greed and excitement toward high-tier knowledge.
Curiosity, surprise, excitement…
Various emotions mixed together, yet no one acted rashly.
After all, wizards who had cultivated to this level contained no fools.
There were still three days until the assembly time listed in the notice. Some wizards gathered in small groups to converse in low voices, while others found corners to sit alone and meditate with closed eyes. Jie Ming also withdrew his gaze.
He squatted down and pressed his palm against the wasteland’s surface.
Alchemy Technique activated. Under the influence of his spiritual power, the gray-brown soil writhed, condensed, and took shape…
In the blink of an eye, a simple yet comfortable reclining chair appeared on the spot through the Alchemy Technique.
Jie Ming sat down leisurely, closed his eyes, and sank his consciousness into his inner cave-heaven.
“Synchronous self-inspection begins.”
Inside the cave-heaven, five hundred black giant priests sat in neat formation around a pre-constructed altar.
It was an information supporting transmission device with the Fate Subsystem, capable of establishing cross-plane contact with the vast believer communities far away in the Infernal Sulfur Plane via the Incense Fire Divine Dao link, obtaining support from the Fate Subsystem.
“How is the operating status of the altar and the Fate Subsystem?”
“Master, Fate Subsystem load at 3.2%, logic verification normal, information overflow redundancy cleared.” The black giant priest leader’s voice sounded in Jie Ming’s mind.
At the same time, the black giant priest projected the information visible on the light screen:
【Fate Subsystem Connection Status: Stable】
【Cross-Space Energy Transmission: Normal】
【Information Flow Analysis Efficiency: 88%】
Although the additional transmission system caused a slight drop in efficiency, it was still sufficient.
Jie Ming withdrew his consciousness in satisfaction.
Three days was enough time for him to confirm the Fate Subsystem’s operating status and avoid any chain failures on the battlefield later.
At noon three days later, a vast and heavy pressure capable of igniting the entire wasteland descended without warning.
The pressure arrived without any sign, yet it was so heavy it felt like an entire plane pressing down on everyone’s shoulders.
Jie Ming’s breathing stalled. His internal Spiritual Qi automatically circulated to resist, and then the pressure vanished in an instant.
All the wizards on the wasteland rose to their feet simultaneously.
In the sky, a man whose eyes flickered with star-ember-like red light descended through the air.
He was a middle-aged male wizard who appeared to be in his early forties, with short gray-white hair and a cold, stern face. He wore an extremely minimalist gray robe. No energy leaked from him; he simply floated there quietly, yet every wizard present instinctively lowered their gaze.
There was no doubt—this was the initiator of this planar war, the leading eighth-ring wizard.
“I am “Ashheart” Martin.”
The man’s voice was not loud, yet it clearly reached everyone’s ears.
“You should have read the intelligence on this plane before coming,” Martin’s gaze swept across the crowd. “But intelligence cannot fully describe the danger of this plane. What I need to tell you now is that this plane is abnormally dangerous, especially toward data and information processing capabilities. If any of you lack confidence in this aspect, it is still not too late to leave now.”
No one moved.
The entire field fell silent. No one wavered.
Martin seemed to have anticipated this. He raised his hand, and a grand holographic image unfolded before the fissure.
It was footage recorded by the ship plane.
In the image, “Ashheart” Martin led the charge, followed by five seventh-ring wizards, dozens of sixth-ring wizards, and a dense army of over one hundred thousand wizards.
They passed through the black fissure and entered the pure white plane.
Then…
The moment they stepped in, disaster struck.
The leading Martin himself was unaffected.
But right behind him, three seventh-ring wizards instantly lost consciousness and fell straight backward.
Immediately after, twenty sixth-ring wizards collapsed simultaneously, like puppets whose strings had been cut at the same time.
Farther back, the wizard army fell into chaos. The front ranks toppled in droves, while those in the rear finally reacted, urgently halting their steps and retreating warily. The image froze.
“Ashheart” Martin’s voice sounded: “We have examined all the affected wizards. Every one of them, along with their magic network terminals, carried wizard artifacts, and even the various imprints in their spirit seas, have fallen into a bizarre ‘silence’ state.”
Martin waved his hand, and several hundred floating medical pods were transported to the center of the wasteland, distributed evenly for the surrounding wizards to observe.
The pod doors opened, revealing the “unconscious” wizards inside.
Jie Ming quickly walked over to one of them.
It was a sixth-ring wizard, female, still wearing her combat wizard robe.
Jie Ming activated the All-Purpose Eye. Massive streams of data flowed through his eyes.
Bodily functions were normal, the spirit sea was intact, even the magic network terminal continued operating, and the spirit sea itself remained active.
The imprints, thought processes, and even instinctive spell deductions were all functioning normally.
It was like a machine whose engine was running, gears turning, and every part working as it should…
But there was “no effect whatsoever.”
“Their minds are still operating violently, perhaps they have even experienced thousands of battles within their minds,” Jie Ming took a deep breath. “Yet all output vanishes in the instant before it can manifest.”
Only then did he understand why “Ashheart” Martin had used such an unusual term.
Any information attempting to transmit outward from the spirit sea, whether thought fluctuations or externalized spiritual power would, at the moment it was about to leave the spirit sea, be transformed by some force into complete silence.
It was not severance or shielding, but “silence.”
Like sound still existing, yet the air had vanished, so the vibrations could not propagate.
Jie Ming withdrew his spiritual power and looked up at the face of the “silenced” wizard.
Her breathing was steady, and her eyeballs occasionally moved beneath her eyelids.
She was thinking. She was active. But everything about her was trapped within her own body, forever unable to exert any influence on the outside world.
“Indeed, they have not been rendered unconscious. Their thoughts are functioning normally. They have simply… been ‘silenced.’”
Jie Ming slowly stood up.
He looked at the pure white perfect sphere in the sky, then at the equally solemn-faced wizards around him, and took a deep breath. “Truly troublesome.”
He spoke in a low voice, yet the corners of his mouth lifted slightly.