Several years passed in the blink of an eye. Inside the Purgatory Sulfur Plane, one automated factory after another continued running day and night. Countless alchemical golems shuttled among the factories, carrying newly minted Talisman Imprint Rune Artifacts in an endless stream into the depths of the warehouses.
At the center of the laboratory, Jie Ming slowly set down the last experiment report in his hand. His gaze swept across the date flickering on the Magic Net, and he softly let out a breath. "It's time."
He shut down all automated testing programs in the laboratory, then reached out and tapped. The Magic Net terminal immediately popped up a flickering spatial coordinate—the rendezvous point Augusta had sent a few days earlier.
Jie Ming sealed the laboratory completely. After confirming that the automated factories, Incense Fire Divine Dao altars, and various research facilities in his Inner World had all entered autonomous operation, he stepped into the spatial teleportation array.
In the void, as a silver-white pillar of light gradually faded, Jie Ming's figure appeared inside a colossal void warship. The entire ship was deep black, with a hull several hundred kilometers long, covered in thick runic armor.
On the bridge, all the main guns were silently retracted. Spatial anchors held the warship firmly, keeping it utterly motionless in the Endless Chaotic Void.
The instant Jie Ming walked out of the teleportation array, a familiar voice came from nearby. "You're here."
Augusta stood before the bridge in a silver-white robe that remained spotless. Seeing Jie Ming, she gave a slight nod. "You've arrived just in time. I was about to give these little ones a briefing on the intelligence."
"Looks like I'm lucky, then," Jie Ming replied with a smile. As he spoke, his gaze swept across the bridge.
Besides Augusta, more than a dozen young wizards stood in a row before her. Their ranks were not high—mostly from the fourth to fifth rank, and a few were only at the third rank.
Judging from the Augusta family crest embroidered on their robes, these were clearly family members accompanying the army for practical experience. When Jie Ming appeared, their gazes all turned to him, and many of them had unconcealed curiosity in their eyes.
After all, the name Jie Ming had become practically thunderous throughout the entire Wizard Civilization in recent years. The Blood Sacrifice Method, the Life-Stabilization Field, and the evaluations he received from the three grandmasters of the Space System at the Academic Symposium... any one of those achievements alone would be enough to make a sixth-rank wizard renowned far and wide, let alone all of them concentrated on a single person.
Augusta raised a hand and introduced him simply. "This is Jie Ming, our other team leader for this operation. You all should already know about him, so I won't go into detail."
Hearing this, everyone bowed slightly. "Greetings, Wizard Jie Ming."
"Greetings," Jie Ming replied with a nod, quickly sweeping his mental energy across the group. A moment later, a gleam of satisfaction flashed in his eyes.
Not bad!
The quality of this batch of wizards was quite high. Although their ranks were not high, the overall standard was excellent. In particular, six of them had mental undulations that were noticeably more refined than those of their peers. They must be elite combat units.
Clearly, these wizards were the rising stars the Augusta family had cultivated over the past few centuries.
"Still... to be willing to let these people accompany me into a plane war, it seems the Augusta family has considerable trust in my combat ability," Jie Ming mused.
Just as he was thinking about this, he noticed something else. The mental energy fluctuations of these people were steady and solid, but they all lacked a sharp, keen edge. Very obviously, this batch of wizards was mostly from logistics backgrounds.
Jie Ming couldn't help but sigh inwardly. Among combat wizards, true geniuses who managed to grow up were indeed too few. After all, logistics wizards, even with weaker talent, still had countless opportunities to slowly cultivate and rise.
But combat wizards were different. Many exceptionally gifted prospects died in one plane war after another before they could truly mature. Every single one who managed to fight all the way to the higher ranks was someone who had waded through mountains of corpses and seas of blood.
On the other side, after the brief introduction, Augusta waved her hand lightly. A huge three-dimensional light screen rose in the middle of the bridge. On the screen, a khaki-colored plane slowly appeared, its entire surface covered in a dense layer of elemental clouds.
Through the projection, one could see that on the land of this plane, almost no oceans were visible. Instead, there were undulating rocky mountain ranges and an infinite fungal carpet that spread out like a grayish-yellow ocean.
Augusta stood in front of the light screen, her voice returning to its usual cool tone. "According to the intelligence brought back by the family's scout wizards, the detailed information on the target plane has been basically confirmed."
She reached out and tapped. The image of the plane kept zooming in, and countless dense light dots began to appear one after another.
"The civilization's main species is a unique life form—half rock elemental, half living organism."
As the image zoomed in further, a group of strange intelligent beings appeared before everyone's eyes. They were overall grayish-brown, with bodies that seemed carved from rock, their surface covered in coarse mineral textures. Yet on their rock-hard bodies sat heads shaped like enormous mushrooms.
The creatures had short but thick limbs, and it was obvious at a glance that they contained considerable strength.
"They possess the traits of both organisms and elemental life. Because of their appearance, the family has temporarily named them 'Mushroom People,'" Augusta continued.
"According to detailed reconnaissance, the enemy's primary high-end combat power has been confirmed to consist of five to seven seventh-rank beings. In addition, the number of sixth-rank units is estimated to exceed one hundred."
"However, those are not the most troublesome part. The most troublesome aspect of this plane lies in those low-rank life forms below the sixth rank. Because the elements here are extremely active, adult Mushroom People generally possess second-to-third rank combat strength, while elite units can reach fourth-to-fifth rank." Augusta paused briefly, then turned to the wizards in front of her.
"The key point is that the number of these creatures is absolutely absurd. Although there is no detailed data, according to calculations, the elite units of this plane, from the fourth to the fifth rank, number... more than one billion!"
Hearing this astonishingly exaggerated number, many of the young wizards' expressions changed.
On previous plane battlefields, they had encountered enemies with astronomical numbers, but those numbers had been the combined forces of an entire race. Now, these were merely the elite units, and they already exceeded one billion!