Dionysius Spencer closed the screen displaying Jie Ming, reclining lazily in a chair formed of pure energy, toying with a transparent force-field orb in his hand.
Within the orb, a miniature figure roared silently—the Blade God, captured alive by Dionysius.
Now, this once-exalted deity was like an insect trapped in amber, struggling futilely.
Dionysius Spencer’s gaze pierced through the force field, directly reading the deepest fragments of the Blade God’s soul—ancient secrets long buried by time, perhaps even forgotten by the god himself, unfolding one by one before him.
After years of effort, Dionysius Spencer had finally found what he sought.
Images reconstructed in his consciousness: countless eons ago, the World Lord of the Void Plane clashed with the World Lord of the Sacred Continent, who had crossed through a spatial gate.
The battle between these two seventh-rank beings shook the heavens and earth, destabilizing the very plane.
As the Void Plane’s World Lord teetered on the brink of defeat, the four subordinate gods who had accompanied the Sacred Continent’s World Lord launched a vile ambush against their own master!
They aimed to be the fisherman profiting from the clash, but they gravely underestimated the terror of a World Lord.
Even at the end of his strength, the Sacred Continent’s World Lord’s counterattack left the four subordinate gods critically wounded, on the verge of death.Yet, this sudden betrayal granted the Void Plane’s World Lord a fleeting opportunity.
Seizing the moment, he detonated his own origin core alongside his opponent’s, resulting in the mutual annihilation of both seventh-rank beings.
But could a World Lord-level existence be so easily eradicated?
In his final moments, the Sacred Continent’s World Lord disintegrated everything—will, flesh, soul, and laws—transforming into the white mist that now enveloped the entire plane.
This was an extraordinarily sophisticated survival tactic. In theory, if this mist, embodying his origin, could return to the Sacred Continent and draw upon the world’s origin power, it could slowly reform his divine body and resurrect him.
The four critically injured subordinate gods, sensing the vitality and return trajectory within the mist, were struck with terror.
They knew that if their master revived, they would face a reckoning far worse than death.
In a panic, they fled back to the Sacred Continent and forcibly sealed the World Gate, severing the mist’s path of return.
Thus, the Sacred Continent’s World Lord’s resurrection was forcibly halted, stuck halfway.
However, fortune and misfortune are intertwined. This upheaval brought an unexpected outcome—the mist, embodying the fallen World Lord, unconsciously began to fuse with the scattered origin of the Void Plane’s World Lord and the free energy of the entire Void Plane over countless ages!
It grew ever larger and more refined, its essence slowly evolving toward a higher level—eighth-rank!
Yet, as a chaotic amalgam of two seventh-rank beings’ origins, lacking a unified consciousness, its soul essence could never fully cross the chasm to achieve true eighth-rank status.
In essence, this seemingly harmless white mist spanning two planes was an extraordinarily unique chaotic entity, a “half-step eighth-rank” being!
When Dionysius Spencer stumbled upon the Void Plane and noticed the anomaly of the white mist, he immediately recognized its unparalleled value.
For a seventh-rank wizard like him, a being attempting to ascend to eighth-rank, with its process perfectly “frozen” mid-transition, held research value surpassing even a complete eighth-rank entity.
It meant he could dissect, like a specimen, the entire leap from seventh to eighth rank—observing the evolution of laws, energy condensation, and will sublimation. Every piece of information was invaluable.
Thus, he orchestrated and led this expedition.
Opening the spatial gate and conquering the Sacred Continent were not for mere resources.
The true purpose was to create an environment.
To allow this white mist, embodying the “half-step eighth-rank” being’s origin, to spread unimpeded across the Sacred Continent.
To simulate its original “return” path, stimulating its evolutionary process, so he could fully observe and study this miracle.
“Truly pathetic and laughable,” Dionysius Spencer said, withdrawing his gaze from the memories and glancing mockingly at the Blade God, still struggling futilely within the force-field orb. “Betraying for power, then sealing yourself away out of fear. Tens of thousands of years, and you couldn’t even heal your old wounds. Truly… useless.”
He casually tossed the orb aside, letting it float in the starlight.
At this stage, everything was proceeding smoothly.
The white mist was spreading as planned, yielding a steady stream of research data.
The other three fourth-rank wizards’ captured gods, with their methods, would take ages to extract ancient secrets of the same level from their fragmented souls—no cause for concern.
The minor hiccup with Jie Ming had been resolved. The white mist he collected was merely “payment” for borrowing his fate trajectory, and the ripples of destiny had settled.
Now, the only lingering point of concern…
“Those four ‘other worlds’ conquered by the holy vassals…” Dionysius Spencer’s gaze pierced the distance, as if penetrating layers of space to land on the temporarily unlocatable World Gate.
He had thoroughly inspected it. The Sacred Continent’s World Gate lacked the ability to actively connect to other planes.
The Blade God’s memories confirmed that their World Lord had not imbued the gate with such functionality when creating it.
“So, it wasn’t the gate connecting to them—it was they who actively connected to the gate.” A cold glint flashed in Dionysius Spencer’s eyes.
Four planes, acting in unison at the same time, connecting to a sealed plane not particularly rich in resources?
Moreover, according to the Blade God’s memories, those four worlds were resource-poor, leaving the four gods unable to recover their peak strength after all these years.
This wasn’t plunder—it resembled… establishing an outpost?
Or rather, a transit hub!
“Coordinated action, clear objectives, organized behavior…” Dionysius Spencer’s fingers tapped rhythmically on the armrest of his energy chair, producing a silent cadence. “It seems some reckless insects have sniffed out something and are trying to pull tricks under the nose of wizard civilization.”
A chilling, sinister smile spread across his face.
He never shied away from assuming the worst malice regarding potential hidden threats.
“In that case, this ‘unexpected discovery’ warrants a report to the higher-ups.”
As he made his decision, an invisible, ultra-encrypted message traversed the boundless void, heading toward the power core of the Star Ring Federation.
…
…
The conquest of the Sacred Continent and Void Plane entered its final stages.
Large-scale warfare had ended, leaving only resource cataloging, slave resettlement, and the establishment of long-term governance—trivial tasks.
For Jie Ming, the gains from this expedition far exceeded expectations, rendering further lingering unnecessary.
Though these two planes still held value to mine, for Jie Ming, who possessed the “Self-Stabilizing Field Regulation Protocol”—a veritable money tree—such scattered resources and profits no longer stirred his interest.
With stable annual merits exceeding one hundred million, he had the freedom to choose, no longer needing to fuss over scraps.
In the waning days of a plane war, management was relatively lax, and personnel movement was freer.
Jie Ming’s quiet departure caused no ripples in the still-bustling expedition camp.
Like a drop merging into the ocean, he silently passed through the cross-plane teleportation network, returning to his Golden Garden in the Elosia plane.
After over eighty years, his laboratory still functioned perfectly.
Maintenance puppets faithfully executed his pre-departure instructions, tending to the arrays and gardens, with all research projects in a frozen, ready-to-resume state.
Jie Ming conducted a quick inspection, confirmed everything was in order, and without lingering, stepped through a private teleportation gate within the tower into his personal world—the Infernal Sulfur plane.
The familiar, pungent sulfur-scented hot wind greeted him.
Eighty years were but a fleeting moment for a plane.
The crimson earth, roiling magma rivers, and twisted sulfur crystal jungles appeared nearly identical to when he left.
Even the incubation pools he had set up, housing the chaos crystals serving as cores for the Black Giants, had only progressed from dormancy to emitting a faint glow.
Jie Ming inspected them closely, sighing helplessly. “Only the initial energy infusion completed… still far from true formation.”
He knew well that with limited energy supply, nurturing war machines like the Black Giants was a protracted process.
Taking stock of his backlog of tasks, Jie Ming felt a pang of “happy troubles.”
Too many matters demanded his personal attention: installing the planned seventh-rank large-scale elemental pool in the Infernal Sulfur plane, studying the numerous rare biological samples and unique materials brought back from the conquered planes, analyzing the essence of the mysterious and powerful white mist, optimizing the Black Giants’ design based on new insights, refining his own combat system, and designing and mass-producing new scout-type cannon fodder units…
He had thought the standard two-hundred-year rest period was lengthy, but compared to his to-do list, it suddenly felt insufficient, even “short.”
Jie Ming couldn’t help but smile, realizing his sense of time had been subtly reshaped by his long wizarding career.
Two hundred years, an eternity to mortals, now required careful budgeting in his eyes.