novelraw Chapter 651: Analysis
Chapter 651: Analysis
Jie Ming hovered approximately ten meters above the sea surface, with churning seawater below his feet.
Even though he had left Mist Capital, the thick fog over the sea was even denser than on land.
It was as if someone had stuffed the entire sea into a massive steamer. Visibility for an ordinary person here would likely be less than two meters.
The air was filled with a salty, fishy smell mixed with an indescribable rotten, sickly-sweet odor.
Jie Ming roughly calculated that he had flown about a hundred nautical miles southwest from Mist Capital’s coastline.
The Micro-Light Eye’s signal was growing stronger.
The shark monster was less than two nautical miles ahead. The signal was stable and showed no movement.
Jie Ming had originally hoped it would enter some hidden base, have companions waiting to receive it, or at least have a hiding place.
However, the information from the Micro-Light Eye detected no other enemies’ energy fluctuations.
Confirming he had entered the area near the Micro-Light Eye, Jie Ming slowed down and glided silently through the dense fog. The Great Void Step reduced his presence to the minimum. The sea breeze brushed past him without creating even the slightest ripple.
Jie Ming quickly located the target.
The monster was floating on the sea surface, half its body exposed above the water, swaying with the constantly churning waves.
Its five-to-six-meter-tall body appeared especially small in the gray-black seawater.
Although he had already received the message from the Micro-Light Eye, Jie Ming still felt somewhat disappointed upon seeing the actual situation.
Not only did the monster have no one coming to receive it, but its own body was collapsing.
The skin covered in fine scales was peeling off in large patches. The exposed areas revealed muscle tissue without epidermal protection, riddled with ulcerated spots and white pus.
Its dorsal fins were broken, with dark liquid slowly seeping from the fractures and dyeing the surrounding seawater an unhealthy brown color.
The shark head remained.
However, its pure black eyes had become turbid, covered by a gray-white membrane.
The gums of its inward-hooked teeth had turned black and atrophied. Several teeth had loosened and were shaking slightly with its weak breaths.
The twisted human face pressed tightly beside the shark head had completely deformed.
Previously, one could still vaguely make out the contours of its features. Now those contours looked as if they had been crushed by an invisible hand, leaving only blurry pits and holes.
Jie Ming hovered less than a few meters away, looking down at the scene.
There was no doubt—this monster had been abandoned.
It had been discarded on this desolate sea surface to fend for itself.
The other party was very cautious.
They knew this monster had been exposed in battle and might be tracked, so after it completed its task, they had ruthlessly abandoned it.
Jie Ming remained silent for a moment, then descended.
His feet stepped onto the sea surface, creating a small depression in the water without wetting his shoes.
He walked up to the monster, extended his right hand with fingers spread, and grabbed a relatively intact scale on its shoulder.
Even though its body was on the verge of collapse, the monster’s reaction was still swift.
Its body shuddered violently. Its turbid black eyes suddenly focused and stared at Jie Ming.
The shark head opened its mouth, letting out a muffled roar from deep in its throat.
Its left arm swung up fiercely, slapping toward Jie Ming.
Jie Ming did not even bother dodging this dying counterattack.
His right hand gripping the scale remained completely still. He casually used his seemingly defenseless cheek to take the blow.
Thud!
The impact sounded dull.
Even on the verge of death, the monster’s strength was still astonishing. The force of that palm strike was enough to flatten a car.
Yet Jie Ming’s body did not sway in the slightest. Even the seemingly soft part of his face showed no deformation, as if he had merely caught a leaf falling from a tree.
A trace of confusion flashed through the monster’s black eyes.
Its left arm strained, trying to push Jie Ming’s hand away, but Jie Ming’s fingers were like five steel nails, firmly embedded in its flesh.
Jie Ming paid no attention to the monster’s dying struggle. He silently activated the All-Purpose Eye and the Fate Subsystem.
Golden light glowed on his forehead, and countless runes lit up deep within his pupils.
The All-Purpose Eye penetrated the monster’s skin, muscles, and bones, reaching the core structures within its body.
Jie Ming wanted to extract as many of the technical methods applied within it as possible before it completely collapsed.
Information flooded into his consciousness like a tidal wave.
Sealing structures.
Fusion methods with The Strange.
Traces of biological modification.
Energy transmission channels…
Every layer was rapidly peeled apart and analyzed by the All-Purpose Eye.
Time passed minute by minute.
The monster’s body continued to rot in Jie Ming’s grasp. Scales peeled off piece by piece.
The muscles beneath the skin began to liquefy. Dark liquid dripped from Jie Ming’s fingers into the seawater.
Its struggles grew weaker. Its roars turned into muffled whimpers, and eventually even the whimpers disappeared.
Finally, Jie Ming withdrew his hand.
He rose into the air, leaving the rapidly disintegrating body behind.
The monster had already lost all signs of life. In a few more hours, it would completely decompose into the most basic substances and return to this plane’s energy cycle.
Jie Ming did not look at it again.
He stood above the sea surface, closed his eyes, and organized the information he had just collected in his mind.
The analysis results caused his brows to furrow slightly.
The wizard techniques hidden within the monster’s body and the modification methods targeting The Strange… were quite crude.
It was not that the technology itself was crude, but that the version applied to this monster was clearly a “downgraded” one.
The core principles were correct, but many aspects of the execution lacked refinement.
This indicated that the monster was not created by a wizard, but rather by natives of this world who had obtained knowledge from a wizard.
Jie Ming could clearly distinguish that some of these techniques aligned with the knowledge system he possessed.
The opponent’s level… at least in the field of Strange modification, did not surpass his own.
It might even be slightly lower.
But Jie Ming did not rush to conclusions.
Because these techniques were the product of cooperation between local natives and a wizard.
That wizard might have only provided lower-tier technology, or had held back while guiding the natives in their modifications.
After all, no one would hand over all their most guarded secrets to a collaborator.
Jie Ming opened his eyes and gazed at the churning thick fog over the sea, turning his thoughts to another issue.
This wizard’s operational efficiency was much faster than his own.
It had only been a little over two months since he entered this plane.
He had been lying low in Mist Capital the entire time, studying The Strange, gathering materials, and deploying Micro-Light Eyes.
His progress was not slow, but the wizard behind this monster was clearly faster.
That person had already found local collaborators, established a force of a certain scale, and could even produce this level of deeply fused Strange. Although the technique was crude, enabling the natives of this world to achieve this from scratch showed that the opponent’s action plan was quite mature: find proxies, find collaborators, and make local forces work for them.
This plan was indeed good.
Jie Ming had similar plans, but at the current stage they were still in the early setup phase.
Those black market intermediaries were at most temporary tools to run errands, buy things, and provide some intelligence—far from qualified collaborators.
Yet the unknown wizard already possessed an organizational force capable of infiltrating the Spirit Medium Association’s operations, launching assaults from the sea, and even ruthlessly discarding a “chess piece.”
All wizards in this plane, including himself, had entered through Wizard Austin’s mission.
While they were not necessarily hostile to each other, they were absolutely competitors.
The issue now was that there had only been one thousand mission slots available. None of those who managed to seize a slot among so many competitors were simple characters.
Generally speaking, there were three types of wizards who could secure a mission slot.
The first type: those with powerful strength.
They could multitask, keeping part of their attention on the magic network terminal at all times to monitor the elite combat unit task system. The moment this mission appeared, they had enough spare capacity to surpass other wizards and snatch a slot.
Such wizards were usually of high rank—at least sixth-ring, possibly even seventh-ring.
Their own strength was their greatest asset.
The second type was wizards like Jie Ming.
They were fairly lucky, spotted the mission at the right time, and had sufficient strength to secure a slot.
This type should be the smallest in number, with varying strengths and large gaps between their upper and lower limits.
The third type was the most terrifying: the “lucky” wizards.
The “luck” here was not true random luck, but “good luck” manipulated through fate-type knowledge.
For wizards proficient in fate-type knowledge, luck itself was something that could be controlled.
A skilled fate-type wizard only needed to gently “pluck” the strings of fate the instant the mission appeared, making the outcome of “himself securing a slot” the most probable fate line.
Wizards capable of this had considerable mastery over fate-type knowledge—far beyond what a beginner like Jie Ming, who had only recently stepped into the field, could compare to.
No matter which type, they would be quite difficult competitors.
After all, resources were limited.
The number of Strange entities that could be studied in any given area of this plane per unit of time was fixed. If you captured one more, he would have one less.
With Great Wizard Austin present in this plane, even in competition, the wizards would ensure the intensity did not escalate too far.
But the competitive relationship existed objectively.
Moreover, the unknown wizard had already demonstrated faster deployment capability than him.
If he did not accelerate his pace, by the time the other party harvested all the high-quality research resources in Mist Capital and the surrounding areas, it would become much harder for him to find quality research samples.
“It seems… I need to speed up.”
Jie Ming withdrew his gaze from the sea surface and flew back toward Mist Capital.