novelraw Chapter 575: Final Means
Chapter 575: Final Means
Chapter 575: Final Means
The instant the barrier shattered, everyone thought victory was within reach.
The cheers had just begun when Martin’s expression changed drastically.
“Something’s wrong!”
He shot forward, the power of an eighth-ring wizard erupting violently.
But the moment that power touched the gap in the barrier, it vanished like a clay ox entering the sea, disappearing without a trace.
At the gap, a strange void was spreading.
Jie Ming stood at the center of the opening, the smile on his face freezing.
In the next second, he vanished.
It was as if he had been erased from the real world entirely. “We’ve been tricked!”
Martin’s face turned terrifyingly dark.
The high-tier wizards around him also changed expressions at the same time.
Everyone present was a high-tier wizard who had experienced countless wars. They immediately understood that the opponent had suddenly snatched Jie Ming away at this moment because they wanted to achieve some goal.
No matter what the opponent’s ultimate purpose was, they absolutely could not be allowed to succeed!
Martin raised his head and looked at the gap torn open by Jie Ming.
At the gap, that strange void was spreading, attempting to reseal the entire plane.
Martin raised his right hand.
Gray flames condensed in his palm.
“All personnel, hear my command.”
His voice echoed across the heavens and earth.
“Attack with full force.”
“Spare no cost.”
“Rescue that kid!”
The moment his words fell, more than a dozen seventh-ring wizards attacked simultaneously.
Hundreds of sixth-ring wizards led millions of expeditionary troops right behind them.
Countless cannon-fodder creatures surged toward the gap like a tidal wave.
Gray flames, twisted information, violent elements, chaotic laws…
All attacks poured down onto that void like a storm.
Jie Ming opened his eyes and found himself standing in a stretch of nothingness.
There was no up or down, no left or right, no light, no darkness, no matter, no energy.
Even the very concept of “space” itself did not exist—he merely “felt” that he was standing here, but in reality, there was no “here” at all.
“This is…”
Jie Ming’s pupils contracted slightly.
He tried to mobilize his mental power, only to discover that his spiritual sea seemed frozen solid, completely unmoving.
At that moment, a majestic voice rang out.
“All things ultimately return to silence.”
Jie Ming’s entire body shook.
The voice did not come from any direction. It sounded directly in his mind, echoing deep within his soul.
The voice carried no emotional fluctuation—only an absolute, deathly calm.
The voice continued, each word pressing down on his soul like a massive mountain.
“Your struggles are meaningless.”
“Your chaos will eventually subside.”
“Your expansion will eventually cease.”
“Why not merge into this perfect entropy reduction cycle?”
The primordial spirit deep within Jie Ming’s soul let out a pained wail under the unbearable pressure.
That was the core of the immortal cultivation system, the essence he had condensed over a thousand years.
At this moment, under the oppression of that majestic voice, it was trembling and cracking, seemingly on the verge of collapse.
At the same time, the rings of truth within his body began to shake violently.
The precisely arranged runes flashed wildly, as if they might disintegrate at any moment.
“This is…”
Jie Ming gritted his teeth and persisted, his mind racing.
There was no doubt that the entity communicating with him was the “highest consensus algorithm” born from the entire information-being civilization.
It was not an individual, nor a collective, but the aggregated consciousness of the entire civilization.
No matter how powerful the information beings had been before, they were merely executors of this algorithm.
And now, the algorithm itself had taken action personally.
Jie Ming also understood that he had been dragged into a “virtual space” composed purely of information.
The majestic voice rang out once more.
“The parsing and plundering you excel at are useless before greater chaos.”
“The expansion instinct you take pride in is insignificant before absolute order.”
“The knowledge and truth you pursue are merely illusions before eternal silence.”
Jie Ming was silent for a second.
Then he laughed.
Not out of joy, but because—the opponent was right.
What was the essence of wizards?
Exploration, parsing, expansion.
From apprentice to formal wizard, from first-ring to ninth-ring, every step was a conquest of the unknown and mastery over rules.
This expansion instinct was itself a form of entropy increase.
And entropy increase would naturally yield to even greater entropy increase. Faced with a stronger power, wizards would naturally submit… if such a level of power truly existed.
At the same time, sensing the information streams constantly attempting to drill into his mind, Jie Ming also understood the opponent’s plan.
In their battles against the wizards, these information beings had already grasped some of the underlying rules of wizard civilization through their control over information—for example, the absolute protection of individual knowledge.
That was one of the core contracts of wizard civilization.
Every wizard was branded with this rule upon entering the system: any act of spying on, stealing, or tampering with another’s knowledge without permission would incur the harshest punishment.
Now, these information beings intended to exploit exactly this point.
They planned to “acquire” all of Jie Ming’s knowledge and then transmit it into the minds of every wizard in the expeditionary force.
As long as the knowledge was spread throughout the entire expeditionary force while Jie Ming was still alive, the contract would determine that countless wizards had simultaneously “stolen” Jie Ming’s knowledge.
At that time, judgment from the Star Orbit Tribunal would descend.
The wizards of the expeditionary force would lose their lives in an instant.
Even if the high-tier wizards among the expeditionary force had revival methods, it would be useless, because this was power from a ninth-ring wizard!
Jie Ming took a deep breath.
He knew that the opponent’s plan had a high chance of succeeding.
After all, the protection of knowledge was the most fundamental foundation of the entire wizard civilization. To prevent any “clever” wizards from finding loopholes, this rule was extremely rigid and extremely strict.
But it was precisely because it was so rigid that, once exploited, it would become extremely troublesome.
The surrounding power was infiltrating every inch of his soul, attempting to read, copy, and archive all of his information.
His consciousness began to blur.
His memories began to fall into chaos.
His sense of self began to waver.
At that moment…
Jie Ming suddenly let out a low laugh.
The laughter echoed in the deathly silent void, growing louder and louder—harsh, wild, and unrestrained.
“Hehehehe… Hahahahahaha…”
The majestic voice paused for an instant, seemingly confused.
Jie Ming raised his head, the corners of his mouth splitting into a mocking smile.
“You’ve calculated well.”
“Using the contract to backlash against us would indeed allow you to wipe us all out in one go.”
“But unfortunately…”
A point of golden light suddenly blazed between his brows.
That golden light flickered wildly under the suppression of the silence, on the verge of extinguishing at any moment.
Yet it did not extinguish. Instead, it grew brighter and brighter, increasingly dazzling.
“You miscalculated one thing.”
Jie Ming’s voice became calm.
“I am not merely a wizard.”
Jie Ming did not speak these words aloud. He simply remained silent as he mobilized the Fate Subsystem and the Incense Fire Divine Dao.
The golden light between his brows surged violently.
In that instant, he no longer resisted the surrounding silence. Instead, he actively opened the inner world within his body.
Inside the inner world, several hundred Black Giant Priests raised their heads at the same time.
In the Infernal Sulfur Plane, the billions-strong Black Giant race simultaneously halted their actions.
Countless thoughts, countless consciousnesses, countless streams of information surged into the Fate Subsystem at the exact same moment.
It was not computational power.
It was “existence” itself.
The torrent of thoughts from billions of living beings surged into Jie Ming’s consciousness like a towering wave.
Every single thought was independent. Every single thought was chaotic. Every single thought was “existing” in its own way.
If the opponent wanted to infiltrate his consciousness, it would first have to break through these billions of thoughts.
But it could not.
Because even this highest consensus algorithm could not instantly erase billions of independent “selves.”
The pressure on Jie Ming suddenly eased. He finally regained other sensations.
He could feel that his Body Forging Method was operating frantically.
This body forging technique from the immortal cultivation world was now displaying its most terrifying trait—adaptive evolution.
Under the oppression of the highest consensus algorithm, his body, his soul, and every inch of his existence were desperately evolving resistance against information.
Even the Body Forging Method could not fully adapt to an enemy of this level in a short time.
But Jie Ming did not need to “counterattack.”
He only needed to stall.
To stall for long enough.