Meanwhile, inside the Mushroom People plane.
In response to the disturbance in the sky, the reaction within the plane was eerily silent.
Time in the Endless Chaotic Void was warped. To the wizards outside the plane barrier, perhaps only a few seconds had passed. But to the creatures inside this plane, that brief span outside could have meant months or even years within. Yet even after such a long time, the enormous changes in the sky had drawn no response.
It was not until the wizards' cannon-fodder army charged into the plane through the opening in the sky, that the dormant mushroom people nearby shot upright. They had not been woken by the sounds of battle, but by the scent of food.
The flesh-and-blood bodies of the cannon-fodder units gave off a rich organic smell the mushroom people had never encountered.
For creatures who had starved for untold years, that scent was like a sudden source of water in a parched desert, sending tremors through their bodies.
More than a hundred thousand mushroom people pulled themselves out of the sand and rock. The tendrils around the edges of their gray-brown rocky caps writhed madly with hunger. Like a swarm of locusts rising from the earth, they hurled themselves at the vanguard of the cannon-fodder legion.
Their average level, however, was far too low.
Most were ordinary civilians of level two or three, and after slumbering through famine for so long, their internal energy reserves were at rock bottom. Against nearly a million cannon-fodder units carefully bred by the wizard army, the charge of these more than a hundred thousand mushroom people was like a wave crashing against a reef.
The cannon-fodder legion's battle line did not so much as waver. The entire field sank into a one-sided slaughter.
Jie Ming hovered beside the rift in the plane barrier. Using himself as a conduit, the power of the Incense Fire Divine Dao spread inward along the crack, passing through the plane barrier and quietly wedging itself into this plane.
Augusta stood at his side, arms crossed, her dark eyes calmly watching the battle below.
A few minutes later, two cannon-fodder units flew up carrying a still-living elite Mushroom Person. It was a full size larger than ordinary mushroom people, its rocky shell covered in mottled scars, and even a large chunk of its cap edge had been cut away.
Grayish-green fluid seeped from the wound. It coagulated the moment it touched air, sealing the cut, and gave off a mineral odor like stone dust.
Even badly wounded, its tendrils kept squirming unconsciously, reaching for the two cannon-fodder units holding it.
Jie Ming stretched out a hand, activating the True Illusion Void-Breaking Eye and the All-Purpose Eye simultaneously, scanning the elite Mushroom Person's body structure from head to toe. It was, as he had guessed, a creature half elemental and half living being. Rock elements formed its outer shell and skeleton, giving it defensive power far beyond creatures of the same level, while the flesh and blood tissue of a living being filled the elemental skeleton, forming an extremely efficient energy-circulation system.
Two forms of existence that should have been mutually exclusive had been forcibly fused by a structure he had not yet fully unraveled. Its stability drew even Jie Ming's attention, and a faint flicker of research interest stirred within him.
But why did its intelligence seem so low?
Judging from how these creatures behaved, they were not the ruling race of a civilization so much as social animals driven by survival instinct that happened to possess extraordinary power.
Jie Ming withdrew the mental energy he had used for analysis and directly cast the Soul Search spell.
The elite Mushroom Person's memories unfolded layer by layer in his sea of consciousness.
He soon noticed something wrong. The memories in this Mushroom Person's mind were far too scattered and broken, with many gaps missing. Was that why these mushroom people were so unintelligent—because their souls had shattered long ago?
Unable to reach a conclusion, Jie Ming sent another order to the wizards below. Soon, several mushroom people of different levels were brought up. After inspecting them, Jie Ming confirmed that all of their souls were shattered.
As for the cause of the shattering, that remained unknown for now.
He could not tell whether it had been done by external force or had been a gradual soul collapse caused by their endless slumber.
"This..." Jie Ming fell into thought.
Augusta stepped closer. "What's wrong?"
"Something strange... Why did your family's reconnaissance wizards report this as a civilization rather than a race?" Jie Ming explained what he had found and asked.
Augusta thought for a moment. "Because, from the analysis of the elemental radiation spectrum, many areas of this plane show traces of artificial interference with the elements."
Jie Ming nodded. "Yes, that would take a civilization of no small scale."
Artificially influencing the elements meant the race on this plane should have possessed large-scale environmental modification techniques.
But...
Jie Ming subconsciously glanced downward.
The Mushroom People plane was a typical continental plane, with a round sky and a square earth; the horizon was not a problem. And standing as high as he did, with his vision, he could see nearly the entire surface of the plane.
Without a doubt, the whole plane was nothing but desolate rock and disguised mushroom people—not a trace of artificial construction.
"It seems this plane is not so simple after all..." Jie Ming rubbed his chin.
Augusta laughed. "Isn't that a good thing?"
Jie Ming laughed as well. "Heh heh heh heh... Indeed, that's a good thing."
As long as one's strength was sufficient, "accidents" were usually equivalent to "extra gains."
At the same time, the situation on the battlefield below was quietly changing.
The young wizards of the Augusta family had completely let their guard down.
"Haha! These things are way too weak!"
"My group has already advanced more than ninety kilometers!"
"Only ninety?"
"My cannon fodder has broken through a hundred!"
"Looks like first place is mine this time."
They commanded their legions forward while comparing achievements. The young wizards of the Augusta family had gone from vigilance to open arrogance, their faces carrying undisguised pride.
To them, facing such a low and backward civilization gave a feeling of absolute control. Their cannon-fodder legions were unstoppable, their elemental bombardment sweeping everything aside. Each volley blasted whole clusters of mushroom people into pieces.
This sensation of commanding a battle, of holding the power of life and death, intoxicated many of them. They even started competing over kill efficiency and whose cannon-fodder units could advance faster, their voices tinged with youthful flippancy.
Jie Ming and Augusta stood high in the sky, looking down at it all, and both let out an extremely faint cold laugh.
They had both noticed that subtle shift in the battlefield.
As mushroom people died en masse, more and more were waking from their slumber farther and farther away.
The reason was simple: the corpses of slain mushroom people had become food themselves. Fresh corpses gave off a scent of their own kind's biomass, even stronger than the smell of the cannon-fodder units. To hungry mushroom people, the dead of their own kind were just as edible.
Every fallen mushroom person was silently releasing a wave of food signals, stirring mushroom people farther away and deeper underground to open their eyes.
The more fiercely the young wizards attacked, the more mushroom people awakened, and the wider the awakening spread. Soon, this entire area would become a giant food-signal tower, waking all the mushroom people across an even broader region.
"Should we stop them?" Jie Ming turned his head toward Augusta, his tone carrying a mix of curiosity and amusement.
He was a bit curious, really, because these young wizards reacted too naively. They had none of the sharp battlefield sense of a veteran wizard. Given their level, they should have experienced more than enough wars by now.
Augusta was silent for a moment, then sighed softly. "This is the flaw of family wizards. Because they had companions protecting each other from the very beginning, they are used to following the main force into easy battles, growing up slowly under the family's shelter, working smoothly together."
"But their ability to independently judge the battlefield was quietly weakened by that very shelter."
Her voice carried a trace of helplessness. "Do you think every wizard can be a lone wolf like you? The vast majority of wizards simply don't have that ability or qualification. Even wizards outside the family system will find their own team over the long course of war."
Jie Ming nodded with an unreadable expression.
He understood.
Those who had always fought easy battles behind the main force naturally had never truly faced the cruelest side of war.
He said nothing more and did not plan to intervene. Augusta was clearly letting these young ones take a hit on purpose. Some lessons could not be taught by words; they had to be bought with one's own mistakes on a real battlefield. As for Jie Ming... these young ones' behavior actually pleased him.
Originally, he had intended to obtain the location of the region's leader from the elite Mushroom Person's mind, but unfortunately, the soul was shattered for unknown reasons, ruining his plan.
The spot Jie Ming had chosen to tear open the plane barrier was not random—it was one of the locations marked in the earlier intelligence as having a Level 7 reaction. But without pinpointing the exact location, searching such a huge area for the target would be far too troublesome.
So let the young ones make some noise.
With their abilities, the impact they could cause was limited, and they would not wake too many enemies at once.