I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 633: Flipping the Table

The wizard clad in a deep blue robe positioned himself at the far end of the corridor, hands folded behind his back, while his eyes gradually scanned the twisted graffiti. “Everyone,” he declared, his voice moderate yet instantly seizing everyone's focus.

“We’ve already lingered here for almost six hours.”

All those gathered quickly grasped his point.

For a mission demanding attention across various sites, six hours stretched far too long.

Wizard squads picking busier spots had likely already dispatched one or two Strange and moved on to their following marks.

“You all must grasp the power tiers of these Strange clearly,” the deep blue-robed wizard pressed on. “Frankly, their base strength remains weak. Be it the salty finger or the graffiti, their energy outputs stay low. The real issue stems from their pesky traits… particularly merging into rules sans a corporeal form, rendering our power potent yet directionless.”

The young female wizard gave a nod. “Without capping our energy output, these vexing traits wouldn’t make them so hard to deal with.”

“That’s precisely the issue,” the deep blue-robed male wizard spun to confront the group. “In truth, these entities pose no real challenge. Lingering too much invites teams done with their Strange to swarm in. Worst case, we get deemed failures, forfeiting our exploration slots… We can’t stand by while others claim every spot in the Strange Plane.”

All were elite wizards of high rank, no mere rash youngsters.

Though purging Strange and shielding civilians formed the overt goal of this operation, the actual heart of the matter shone clear to all: access to probe the Strange Plane.

An utterly novel entity intertwined with laws—this lured wizards more than riches or honors. Even sans quota loss, dawdling in this town might let rival squads breach the Strange Plane ahead, scooping up every precious research specimen…

Such an outcome spelled disaster.

“Thus, here’s my proposal,” the deep blue-robed male wizard’s stare intensified. “Unable to pinpoint its spot, let’s overturn the board.”

“Overturn the board?” The sturdy male wizard arched a brow.

“Exactly!”

The deep blue-robed male wizard lifted his palm, tracing a loop through the air. A faint azure light trailed his fingers, forming a ring that steadily contracted.

“We’ll contract the barrier, narrowing it relentlessly from its hundred-kilometer span. Simultaneously, every one of us unleashes a personal Law Solidification Domain, hugging the barrier’s inner edge like a dragnet, steadily squeezing the two Strange’s maneuver room.”

“When the barrier constricts sufficiently, rule-fused or not, concealment ends. Within that tiny zone, as our barrier and domains crush the local rules, escape becomes impossible.”

“Then, no retreat remains for them.”

Silence gripped the corridor briefly.

“This scheme works,” the Curse Witch endorsed first.

“Count me in,” the lean male wizard adjusted his glasses. “In theory, a rule-merged Strange’s turf stays confined to the laws it sways.”

“Sustained compression forces manifestation or domain intrusion. Either beats blind hunting like now.”

“One hitch though,” Jie Ming lifted a hand. “Where do I fit?”

Gazes shifted to Jie Ming at the corridor’s side.

The deep blue-robed male wizard eyed him too, apology flickering in his look. “Jie Ming, your power’s not in doubt. Yet Law Solidification Domain marks sixth-ring wizards’ hallmark. You haven’t attained it.”

“Shrinking the barrier demands everyone’s domain to seal every gap, blocking Strange leaks. Your spot…”

“Got it,” Jie Ming nodded evenly. “No Law Solidification Domain means I’d just form a weak link. Proceed with the squeeze. I’ll hold the town.”

“More than holding,” the deep blue-robed male wizard clarified. “Keep watch over the town. As we constrict, these Strange may sow havoc on residents or grab hostages. Safeguard the townsfolk unscathed.”

“On me.”

Jie Ming fell silent. In a blur, his silhouette vanished from the hallway.

Town center, fountain square.

Once more, Jie Ming settled into a cross-legged stance on the fountain's stone rim, his spiritual force extending outward like surging waves in every direction.

This round, he directed his primary focus toward the town's interior, rendering his scan far more detailed than previously.

Each household, every alleyway, and all structures materialized in his mind as if rendered nearly see-through.

His Fate Subsystem hummed at maximum capacity, its web of causality enveloping the town's every nook.

Any hint of irregularity or any fate thread straying from its usual path would be instantly detected by him.

Up above in the skies, eight silhouettes fanned out.

The wizard clad in deep blue robes positioned himself dead center, lifting both hands skyward. An intricate rune formation materialized between his palms.

This served as the heart of the barrier's command. Every outer node linked to his spiritual force via this central hub.

“Start the contraction,” his command echoed in all their minds.

With that, the barrier initiated its shrink.

The enormous energy shield, spanning a hundred kilometers around the town, commenced a gradual inward pull.

Truth be told, such a technique would seem utterly impossible to countless low-level wizards.

For barriers excel at erecting impenetrable walls, yet suffer from a rigid size limitation.

Nevertheless, advanced wizards leveraged their vast knowledge to shatter this supposed limit.

Still, not even top-tier wizards rushed this maneuver, demanding flawless precision.

Shrink too swiftly, and the barrier destabilizes. Uneven reduction breeds openings.

Besides, they needed to constantly sift and eject unwanted substances throughout.

Otherwise, mere air pressure buildup by the finish would crush everyone within the town.

Enveloped within the barrier, Jie Ming sensed the shift.

Energy saturation in the atmosphere crept upward steadily, much like rising floodwaters.

This stemmed from the barrier's shrinkage boosting density per unit volume naturally.

The salty finger remained inert.

At least through Jie Ming's senses, that “salty” essence lingered diffusely in the town's atmosphere, unaltered by the barrier's compression.

It resembled a fish idle at the water's depths, oblivious to surface ripples.

Yet the graffiti Strange behaved otherwise.

As the barrier dwindled to fifty kilometers, Jie Ming's Fate Subsystem snagged the initial anomaly.

A causality strand quivered faintly in the town's northeast sector, like a distant string plucked softly.

Jie Ming's spiritual force zeroed in without delay.

There, on an derelict warehouse's exterior, faint graffiti marks that once blurred now shifted. Fresh scrawls began to surface.

Jie Ming acted swiftly. His spiritual force sharpened into a razor-thin edge, slicing precisely at the wall.

He cleanly excised the wall segment bearing the half-formed graffiti from the structure.

With a faint “snap,” the stone slab—graffiti and all—detached neatly. It tumbled through the air, then pulverized under Jie Ming's spiritual force.

The “medium” lay ruined, halting the graffiti Strange's manifestation.

Yet this marked merely the onset.

Soon after, the graffiti Strange seemed to grasp the peril and launched wild probes.

It tried spawning new marks across the town—in house exteriors, on cobblestone paths, even indoor wooden floors.

Each attempt got wiped out by Jie Ming prior to completion.

His spiritual force blanketed the entire town. With Fate Subsystem in overdrive, his responses outpaced even sixth-ring wizards. Every causal ripple got seized instantly, every budding graffiti obliterated on the spot.

Townsfolk remained utterly clueless.

A few caught odd noises, checked outside, and spotted missing wall chunks.

They shrugged it off as decay from years of neglect.

The barrier pressed on with its contraction.

Once down to ten kilometers, the graffiti Strange's probes dropped off sharply.

Still, Jie Ming sensed no surrender—instead, a buildup of strength.

The power squeezed into the tightening confines grew ever more restless.

Jie Ming swiftly relayed this development to the nearby wizards.

“Continue contracting,” the deep blue-robed male wizard’s voice echoed in the spiritual channel, tinged with a subtle hint of excitement. “It’s starting to panic. This means our direction is correct.”

Radius five kilometers, three kilometers, one kilometer…

As the barrier shrank to a one-kilometer radius, Jie Ming distinctly sensed the air in the town turning “thick.”

The wizards kept pushing air outwards nonstop. Naturally, this thickness wasn't literal, but some abstract density kept building up. Imagine salt spread thin in a huge pool of water; with the water steadily vanishing, the saltiness surged ever denser.

Closing his eyes, he deployed his spiritual force to probe that eerie anomaly.

Two distinct feelings emerged clearly to him.

One felt faint, akin to a candle flame dancing in the breeze, compelled to cluster tightly amid the barrier's squeeze.

…That was the salty finger.

The other dominated fiercely, claiming over ninety percent of the weirdness crammed into the constricted zone.

Unlike the salty finger's stillness, this one thrashed wildly, writhing and hunting for any escape route.

Undoubtedly, that was the graffiti Strange.

“Continue shrinking,” Jie Ming urged through the channel. “The salty finger has already been compressed very small. The graffiti is still resisting, but it can’t escape.”

The barrier kept constricting further.

A shift happened when the barrier’s diameter reduced to fifty meters.

The atmosphere over the fountain square quaked fiercely all of a sudden, like an unseen force had been wrenched free from a hidden dimension.

Jie Ming snapped his eyes open.

Right in the square's heart, next to the fountain, a ghostly pale finger materialized from nowhere.

It hovered freely, unrooted in any vessel, about a meter off the ground. Dampness filled its nail gaps, with droplets trickling down slowly.

The salty finger had reached its limit and revealed itself first.

Stroking his chin curiously, Jie Ming noted that this Strange's bond with the laws wasn't too profound—it needed a specific area. Now, lacking sufficient rule space, it couldn't conceal itself anymore.

The barrier's pressure combined with the eight wizards’ Law Solidification Domains had crushed its hiding rule territory almost out of existence.

The finger quivered faintly midair. Ripples of curse energy radiated outward from it—its primal assault method. Yet the curse waves rebounded instantly off the barrier's inner surface, slamming into an unseen barrier.

“The salty finger has manifested,” Jie Ming announced in the channel. “It is emitting curse fluctuations, but they are being blocked by the barrier. No effect on the townspeople.”

“What about the graffiti?” the deep blue-robed male wizard asked.

Just as his question landed, a wild explosion of jumbled colors erupted overhead in the square's sky.

The graffiti emerged.

This time around, though, the graffiti didn't cling to walls or stones. It drifted right in the open air.

Crooked strokes, sloppy paint smears, and childish daubs sketched nightmarish shapes straight into emptiness. These shapes shifted endlessly.

Sometimes a warped face loomed, features all wrong—eyes sprouting at the mouth's spot, mouth sprouting on the brow.

Then it morphed into a mad jumble of color splotches, like paints dumped together and sloshed at random.

Realizing escape was impossible, the graffiti started mimicking the wizards' forms.

Jie Ming spotted all nine of them sketched lopsidedly aloft, poses eerily mirroring their real positions around the square. The graffiti aimed to copy them, then warp the copies.

One doodled figure's arm elongated, noodle-thin and spindly.

Another's head squashed flat into a disc.

Yet another's torso coiled like a twisted pastry.

These distortions left the real wizards untouched.

Now, the eight sixth-ring wizards unleashed their full might, activating each one's Law Solidification Domain.

The graffiti Strange’s strikes got nullified at the law level the second they brushed those domains—no disturbance stirred.

Frustrated by failed assaults, the graffiti Strange rampaged fiercer.

Finding it powerless against the elite wizards encircling from above, it redirected every bit of focus to…

Jie Ming.