novelraw Chapter 579: Harvest
Chapter 579: Harvest
Chapter 579: Harvest
The light of the teleportation array gradually faded.
Jie Ming opened his eyes to a familiar sight.
The eternally gray-red sky of the Infernal Sulfur Plane, thick smoke billowing from distant volcanic craters, and the pervasive smell of sulfur in the air.
“I’m back.”
He took a deep breath, the corners of his mouth involuntarily lifting.
More than ten years.
Although ten-plus years meant little to a wizard’s lifespan, the gains from this expedition were equivalent to several centuries of normal accumulation.
Jie Ming stepped out of the teleportation array, and a Black Giant Priest immediately came forward to greet him.
“My lord, you have returned.” Jie Ming nodded. As he walked out, he asked, “How have things been these years?”
The Black Giant Priest followed behind him and quickly reported, “The Incense Fire Divine Dao is operating smoothly. The number of believers has increased by approximately three percent. The seventh-ring large-scale elemental pool output is stable with no abnormalities. The automated factories are functioning normally and have stockpiled sufficient materials as per your instructions…”
Jie Ming listened to the report and felt greatly reassured.
The Infernal Sulfur Plane was his foundation. As long as nothing went wrong here, he would always have a retreat no matter what happened outside.
He spent three full days handling all the accumulated affairs.
Operational data of the Incense Fire Divine Dao, maintenance records of the elemental pool, production reports from the automated factories…
He reviewed and signed off on every single item.
Three days later, Jie Ming finally had time to sit down and properly take stock of his gains from this expedition.
He sat at the center of the laboratory with rows of pale blue crystals arranged before him.
Entropy Brains.
Large and small, a total of five hundred and twenty-three.
Looking at these crystals, Jie Ming could not help but smile.
During his time in the Information Plane, he had earned quite a lot of military merits. However, when he left, he had not taken away a single point of military merit. Instead, he had exchanged everything for Entropy Brains. Even the large sum of high-level military merits promised by Martin had been fully converted into Entropy Brains.
Facts proved that Jie Ming’s choice had been correct.
As the Information Plane was conquered, more and more wizards left and returned.
News related to Entropy Brains spread increasingly widely, and their price soared.
By the time he left, the price of a single Entropy Brain, depending on its size, had skyrocketed to between two hundred thousand and five hundred thousand high-level military merits.
“More than five hundred…”
Jie Ming murmured, satisfaction flashing in his eyes.
At current market prices, these Entropy Brains were worth at least one hundred million high-level military merits or more.
Whether he continued to hold onto the Entropy Brains and waited for further appreciation or used them to strengthen himself, their value far exceeded that of simple high-level military merits.
For Jie Ming, however, the Entropy Brains were only the most insignificant part of his gains this time.
He closed his eyes and organized the vast amount of knowledge he had obtained in the Information Plane.
The most important knowledge was the enlightenment he had gained inside the data space—the sudden insight he had achieved while being oppressed by the highest consensus algorithm at the edge of life and death. Over the following ten-plus years, through repeatedly helping others break free from silence, he had repeatedly experienced the operating principles of the entropy reduction cycle.
All these accumulations had finally converged into one point…
His understanding of “mobilizing external power” within the immortal cultivation system had reached an entirely new level.
Jie Ming opened his eyes and pointed forward with one finger.
Without chanting or forming hand seals, the surrounding elements instantly rioted.
Massive amounts of fire elements, wind elements, water elements, and earth elements surged in from all directions, condensing into a dazzling sphere of energy at his fingertip. The power of that energy sphere was comparable to a fifth-ring wizardry.
Yet the mental power Jie Ming had expended was negligible.
“If I convert my current level of mobilizing external power into the grades of the immortal cultivation side, I’m afraid I’ve already reached the Void Refinement Realm…”
He murmured.
In the immortal cultivation system, after Spirit Transformation came Void Refinement.
And now, after being tempered in the Information Plane, his pure mastery over the power of heaven and earth had already reached the standard of a Void Refinement cultivator.
What did this mean?
It meant he could now craft fourth-ring inscribed wizard artifacts!
Inscribed wizard artifacts were an important early invention of Jie Ming’s. By fusing immortal cultivation talisman techniques with the wizard rune system, they could use weak mental power as a key to draw elemental energy from the environment and release wizardries.
However, due to technical limitations, he had previously only been able to produce inscribed wizard artifacts below the third-ring level.
Now, although his overall knowledge level was still far from that of a normal fifth-ring wizard, his ability to mobilize the power of heaven and earth had reached Void Refinement standards. This bottleneck had finally been broken.
With a thought, Jie Ming retrieved a half-finished inscribed wizard artifact from his inner world.
It was a palm-sized metal disk covered with densely packed runes.
Jie Ming focused slightly and slowly injected his mental power.
The metal disk lit up.
The runes ignited one after another as surrounding elements began to converge toward it.
In just a few seconds, the metal disk completed its charging and floated quietly in the air, ready to release an attack at any moment.
This was a fourth-ring inscribed wizard artifact—an experimental product Jie Ming had created earlier to test his own level.
The wizardry it released surpassed ordinary fifth-ring wizardries in power. Although it could not compare to sixth-ring wizardries, it had the advantage of being able to be released continuously.
Jie Ming withdrew his mental power, and the smile on his lips deepened.
But this was still not his greatest harvest.
He stood up and took a deep breath.
Then, his body began to change.
Grayish-white flames surged out from within him, instantly engulfing his entire body.
His form twisted, dispersed, and recondensed, ultimately transforming into a blazing grayish-white flame humanoid.
Light God Transformation: Annihilation Form.
The temperature in the laboratory did not change too drastically, but the metal floor beneath Jie Ming’s feet began to “disappear” the instant he stood there.
Jie Ming glanced down, then quickly dispelled the form.
The grayish-white flames dissipated, and he returned to human shape.
A clear footprint-shaped depression remained on the floor, its edges as smooth as a mirror, as if a section had been erased from existence.
“Whew…”
Jie Ming let out a breath, cold sweat beading on his forehead.
He still found this move extremely taxing to use.
But the key point was that he had learned… the Ashheart Flames!
Although it was only a very insignificant fragment.
It was still the core law of the eighth-ring wizard “Ashheart” Martin—the result of tens of thousands of years of research.
Under normal circumstances, not only would he have been unable to learn it, he would not even have qualified to see it.
Even if he spent hundreds of billions of high-level military merits, he could not have bought knowledge of this level.
Yet because of his special experiences in the Information Plane, Jie Ming had obtained Martin’s data model for controlling the Ashheart Flames. He had also personally experienced the feeling of being oppressed by entropy reduction, and over the following ten-plus years, he had repeatedly come into contact with the entropy reduction cycle.
In the end, he had forcibly devoured this knowledge.
Although he could currently only use the “Annihilation Form” to wield this power in a rigid manner, still far from Martin’s effortless mastery, this was already outrageous.
After all, this was core knowledge belonging to an eighth-ring wizard.
Jie Ming sat back down in his chair and began calmly analyzing the practical combat value of this move.
First, the casting time was too long.
Because it contained a large amount of advanced knowledge far beyond his current level, even with the Fate Subsystem’s assistance, he needed at least ten seconds of preparation time to activate Annihilation Form.
Ten seconds.
In a real battle, ten seconds was enough for the enemy to kill him several thousand times over.
Second, the duration was too short.
With his current mental power and the load on the Fate Subsystem, he could maintain it for at most three to five seconds.
Any longer, and he would collapse on his own before the enemy even needed to act.
Therefore, from a practical combat perspective, this move could hardly be used in most situations.
But…
What if he could find an opportunity to use it?
Jie Ming narrowed his eyes as a figure appeared in his mind.
The “Imaginary” wizard.
That was the opponent he had encountered during the wizard war—an absolute elite sixth-ring wizard.
Back then, he had expended tremendous effort and ultimately only managed to defeat the other party by relying on Light God Transformation.
If he had possessed Annihilation Form at the time…
Jie Ming simulated the scene in his mind.
If that “Imaginary” wizard had not immediately fled the moment he activated Annihilation Form, he would have been instantly killed.
That was the value of Annihilation Form.
An absolute ultimate trump card.
Once he could use it, it would be enough to turn the tide of battle.
Jie Ming took a deep breath, suppressed the excitement in his heart, and began planning his next steps.