Jie Ming carried the two newly forged Talisman Imprint Rune Artifacts and crossed the teleportation array, arriving deep within the star region of the Infernal Sulfur Plane.
This area had originally been used to store refined planets that once orbited stars, but Jie Ming had now ordered the Black Giants to clear out a separate section as a testing ground.
Looking at the target planets in the far distance, Jie Ming first tested the Talisman Imprint Rune Artifact etched with the Terminus Ray, channeling his mental energy to activate the core array in his hand.
Boom! A blinding beam of light blasted out from the spell formation released at the front of the rune artifact. In that instant, the released radiance illuminated the entire test area as if it were daylight.
Wherever the beam passed, the very fabric of space was torn apart, and every meteor and asteroid used as a target along the way was utterly vaporized the moment the beam touched it.
In the blink of an eye, the beam had pierced the entire test zone, punched through the solid planet sitting at the far end as the ultimate target, and vanished into the depths of the universe. The solid planet serving as the final target exploded violently on the spot after the beam passed through. The shattered crust and mantle material were vaporized into gas almost in the blink of an eye, and a visible shockwave spread outward in a sphere through space.
That shockwave, formed from the sheer mass of converted matter, even swept several nearby asteroids that had not been far enough away into destruction.
Jie Ming glanced down at the recorded parameters on the test instruments beside him and raised an eyebrow involuntarily. The Terminus Ray had originally been a spell released in imitation of a supernova explosion. But with the enhancement of the Talisman Imprint Rune Artifact, its destructive power was now nearly indistinguishable from the particle flow of a true supernova.
According to the data, the Terminus Ray amplified by the rune artifact was now sufficient to destroy a star outright. Perhaps only medium-to-large stars could retain any material under such an attack; slightly smaller stars would have all their matter blasted away entirely.
In terms of destructive power, it had fully reached the standard of a seventh-circle spell!
"Not bad, not bad." Jie Ming nodded in satisfaction, then switched to another Talisman Imprint Rune Artifact. He ordered the Black Giant Priests to arrange for the area to be cleared, then moved to another test site.
He took out the Echo Bomb Artifact and aimed it at another new solid planet designated for testing in the distance. As his mental energy activated it, a glowing projectile materialized and streaked toward the distant target as a stream of light.
Sound cannot travel through a vacuum, but with Jie Ming's vision, he could clearly see a gorgeous blossom of fire erupt on the planet's surface after the first Echo Bomb struck. The flames instantly spread across the entire planet, scorching the whole surface red-hot. The massive shockwave shredded the atmosphere outright, exposing the entire surface to vacuum radiation.
As the planet's surface rapidly cooled in the void, aside from changing color, the attack had only left a crater a few thousand kilometers in diameter on the surface. On the scale of an entire planet, that didn't even count as a flesh wound.
"It's enough to wipe out the surface biosphere, but it's still far from destroying the planet." Jie Ming looked at it calmly, then fired a second Echo Bomb without hesitation.
The residual elements gathered by the first Echo Bomb had already silently merged into the planet's material structure. The instant the second bomb struck, a heavy, profoundly muffled boom came from within the planet. The entire far side of the planet was shattered outright, with debris and molten magma erupting from the breach.
A third shot... The planet completely disintegrated!
Planetary fragments tumbled and scattered through space, while residual elemental particles continued to trigger faint secondary explosions among the debris, turning the entire test zone into a long ribbon of fragments flickering with elemental light.
Jie Ming shut off the test data panel and stood alone in space for a moment. Gazing at the still-expanding field of planetary fragments and the elemental flashes that had yet to fully fade, his expression suddenly turned somewhat odd. In a tone that carried an ambiguous mix of relief and helplessness, he said, "The results are very much in line with my expectations, but I hope that plane Augusta and the others found... is big enough."
A few years later, when Augusta's communication came in, Jie Ming was standing at the experiment table, running durability tests on the final batch of Echo Bomb Talisman Imprint Rune Artifacts. In the center of the laboratory, gem-like silver-black rune artifacts floated in midair.
The rune array on the experiment table continuously operated, releasing ring after ring of invisible energy oscillations to simulate the conditions under which the rune artifacts would release spells.
Under the stimulation of the rune array, the rune artifacts repeatedly went through the full cycle of activation and recovery. Elemental energy stored around them poured continuously into the artifacts, then flowed back out during the recovery phase to be received by the rune array, only to be absorbed again by the re-activated rune artifacts.
The cycle continued without end, without the slightest pause.
With a burst, a crack appeared on the smooth mirror-like surface of one of the rune artifacts. Jie Ming raised his hand to record the final set of data, and a hint of satisfaction finally appeared at the corner of his mouth.
"Durability improved by twenty-seven percent, rune fatigue decay reduced by thirty-one percent, and the safety measures after damage ensure nothing outside will be harmed... Not bad, it's meeting expectations."
Just then.
Hum... The Magic Net terminal vibrated softly, and a communication request popped up. "Oh?" Glancing at the contact, Jie Ming casually shut down the experimental array. Light in the air quickly condensed into a screen. Augusta's figure appeared within it.
She still wore a silver-white robe, her black hair tied back, her expression so cold that it seemed almost completely unchanged.
"Contacting me at this hour... Are you already preparing to go into battle?" Jie Ming asked with a smile.
Augusta had no intention of exchanging pleasantries. She raised a hand, transmitting a massive data packet over. "Intelligence regarding the target plane has been confirmed." As her voice fell, a complete star chart of the plane unfolded before Jie Ming.
On the screen, a massive, dusty-yellow plane rotated slowly, while dense streams of data continuously refreshed and scrolled around it.
Jie Ming raised his head with interest, carefully examining the intelligence before him: "So fast, and the data is quite detailed. The intelligence analysts of the Augusta family are really something." Augusta merely nodded and began her briefing matter-of-factly:
"The target should be a medium-sized plane. The coordinates are still being calculated. Based on the radiation feedback of the elemental spectrum, preliminary scans have detected at least five independent seventh-circle energy reactions. Considering that many high-order beings are capable of concealing their aura, the actual number can only be higher, not lower."