I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 653: Research and Action

Chapter 653: Research and Action

The underground laboratory’s metal panels steadily emitted a soft white glow.

Jie Ming stood at his workbench, in front of him a sealing rune stone slab that had been partially disassembled.

The slab was silver-gray, its surface covered in dense grooves filled with residual light blue rune powder.

His fingers moved slowly along the grooves. A thin spiritual power membrane formed by Alchemy Technique coated his fingertips, analyzing the slab’s structure layer by layer as he touched it.

This was something he had been doing for the past half month.

His research on the Shadow Thief had come to an end for now.

What Jie Ming was studying currently was the hazard-level Strange that had been sealed inside a metal box, which he had purchased at the auction.

As for the Shadow Thief, over the past half month he had studied it inside and out countless times.

The results were naturally quite substantial.

On the left side of the workspace, inside a row of culture vessels, new micro-light eyes were slowly growing within the nutrient solution.

The Shadow Thief, being one of the rare Stranges that possessed its own physical main body, was not merely a subject for studying Strange powers to Jie Ming.

Its very existence, structure, and energy distribution served as valuable reference material for optimizing the micro-light eyes.

The energy frequency of the second-generation micro-light eyes had been recalibrated. Not only had their survival time been greatly extended, they could now achieve “compatibility” with the auras of most Stranges, reducing the instinctive reaction that made Spirit Mediums’ hair stand on end.

After completing the preliminary inspection of the sealing stone slab before him, Jie Ming wanted to conduct further tests.

He instinctively looked up toward the left, then suddenly remembered that the area was now occupied by the culture vessels for the micro-light eyes.

Scratching his hair, Jie Ming waved his hand. Several experimental instruments on the left were collected into his internal cave heaven. With another wave, a strangely shaped experimental instrument was summoned out from within.

He placed the slab into the instrument, completed a series of operations, and finally began the second round of testing.

Suddenly, Jie Ming let out a sigh, his voice filled with helplessness.

He had already expanded this underground laboratory as much as possible in every direction.

All four walls had been pushed outward by several meters, increasing the total area of the basement to three times its original size.

He had also employed spatial expansion techniques.

He had cautiously cast the wizard spell that could “stretch” existing space four times, each time increasing the internal volume by roughly fifty percent.

But this was already the limit. He could not expand it any further.

The problem stemmed from the power of The Strange.

This underground room was located beneath the old district of Mist Capital. After hundreds of years of accumulation, the soil and rock here had long been permeated with various residual energies of The Strange.

When the spatial expansion factor became too large, the internal space would grow unstable, leading to disturbances at the level of natural laws.

Jie Ming had noticed this issue after the third expansion: the energy fluctuations of two Strange samples placed in the laboratory began showing irregular random surges.

To confirm the phenomenon, he had even conducted a control experiment.

He divided the same batch of Strange samples into two groups—one placed in the expanded laboratory, the other in his bedroom on the second floor of the bookstore.

The result was clear: the samples in the laboratory exhibited unexplainable random changes in energy fluctuation, while those in the bedroom remained completely normal. This was the influence of The Strange’s power.

When the spatial structure was artificially altered, the residual Strange energies permeating the ground would be activated, affecting the environment inside the laboratory.

If Jie Ming forced further expansion, the research results would no longer be reliable, and every experiment would produce random conclusions.

For a researcher, this was unacceptable.

As for digging downward… he had considered it.

But beneath the old district lay a dense network of underground pipelines. The so-called underground black markets mostly used these pipelines as bases. Bypassing the pipelines and digging deeper was also impossible.

Less than thirty meters down from this land was a special rock layer.

During the day, he had scanned that rock layer with his spiritual power and discovered an extremely faint periodic vibration deep within it.

Later, after consulting materials, Jie Ming learned that people of this plane called similar phenomena “The Strange deep underground.”

No one knew its exact level, because no one who reached that depth had ever returned alive.

However, in the Spirit Medium Association’s internal records, Jie Ming had seen related documentation: that Strange’s characteristics were tightly intertwined with the concept of “earthquakes.” Once provoked, it was capable of wiping an entire city off the map.

This was no exaggeration.

Similar events had occurred in this plane before.

One hundred and twenty years ago, a city accidentally triggered a deep-layer Strange during underground construction.

The entire city was destroyed by continuous high-intensity earthquakes over three days, with over three hundred thousand deaths.

The city was later abandoned and remains a forbidden zone to this day.

Jie Ming had no intention of becoming the next case study.

He had also considered another solution: sending Strange fragments or Strange powers into his internal cave heaven for research.

That way, he could completely avoid the environmental restrictions of this plane. The space would be large enough, the environment stable enough, and it would be absolutely safe.

But the idea had been rejected by him the moment it emerged.

The reason was simple: even the eighth-ring wizard Austin had crashed and burned.

When Austin was campaigning in one plane, he accidentally allowed a Strange rule phenomenon to seep into his own backyard, causing that miniature glass garden plane to become “infected.”

That was an eighth-ring wizard, yet he still failed to completely block the infiltration of The Strange.

Jie Ming did not believe his own internal cave heaven was more stable than Austin’s plane.

After forming his true body dharma image, the internal cave heaven served as the foundation of his Internal Circulation and the support for his true body.

If Strange power seeped into it, the consequences would be unthinkable.

Before fully understanding the essence of The Strange, rashly introducing unknown forces into his core system was not something a proper researcher should do.

Therefore, he could only continue squeezing into this laboratory that had already become too small for him.

After finally completing the current phase of research in this extremely rudimentary environment, Jie Ming arranged the last piece of equipment, closed the cabinet door, and walked back to the workbench. Suddenly, his body paused.

He raised his head, his gaze piercing through the ceiling and the floor of the first-floor bookstore to look toward the street outside.

Someone was approaching the bookstore… it was the black broker.

When the old bookstore’s wooden door was pushed open, the hinge sounded louder than usual.

Clearly the person pushing it had moved too hastily and failed to control their strength.

The black broker stood at the doorway, his trench coat collar turned up and his hat brim pulled low.

His breathing was somewhat rapid. It looked like he had run from the street corner all the way to the bookstore entrance.

And he had run urgently, as if something were chasing him from behind.

Jie Ming sat in the rocking chair, newspaper in hand, and glanced at him.

“Close the door,” Jie Ming said.

The black broker hurriedly closed the door and bolted it.

He turned around, removed his hat, his forehead covered in sweat. He looked quite tense.

“Long time no see, Mr. Jie Ming,” he said in a lowered voice. “I’m truly sorry. Things have been under very tight inspection lately.”

Jie Ming put down the newspaper without speaking, waiting for him to continue.

“The Spirit Medium Association suddenly strengthened control over Strange resources and genetic agents starting last month.” The black broker pulled out a cloth bundle from inside his trench coat and placed it on the table, but did not open it as usual.

“Many items on the black market are out of stock. It’s not that they’ve sold out, but that no one dares to sell them. This time when I came out, I took several detours and switched vehicles three times to shake off possible tails.”

Jie Ming’s gaze fell on the cloth bundle.

Judging by its shape and weight, the quantity of goods this time was much less than usual.

“Do you know the reason for the crackdown?” Jie Ming asked.

The black broker shook his head, then nodded, and finally sighed. “I heard it’s related to the previous incident at the abandoned factory. I don’t know the specifics, but someone I know who works in the Association’s logistics department said the higher-ups are investigating their own people. Not us—they’re investigating insiders.”

Jie Ming’s expression remained unchanged. He had expected this.

After all, the Spirit Medium Association wasn’t stupid either. The opposing side’s performance during that battle had been far too obvious. With limited clues, they would naturally prioritize investigating internal spies and the flow of large quantities of resources within the city.

“Have they found anything?”

“I don’t know.” The black broker wiped the sweat from his forehead. “They wouldn’t let people like us know about such matters. But the controls are real. The price of Strange fragments on the market has tripled, and genetic agents are even crazier. Some contraband has gone up five times and still can’t be bought. I could only bring this much this time. Please make do with it for now.”

As he spoke, he opened the cloth bundle. Inside were several small Strange fragments and two genetic agents sealed in metal tubes. It was indeed much less than usual, but the quality still looked decent.

Jie Ming picked up one fragment and examined it under the light.

Hazard level, mid-to-high quality. It seemed the Spirit Medium Association’s internal inspection had indeed affected the black market.

“Payment as usual.” Jie Ming set the fragment down and closed the bundle. “Next time you come, bring more intelligence. Less goods is fine, but intelligence cannot be lacking.”

The black broker nodded repeatedly, then took out a folded note from his pocket and carefully placed it on the table.

“This is what I’ve gathered these past few days. I can’t guarantee everything is accurate, but it should be useful.”

Jie Ming opened the note and scanned it.

It contained several lines of handwritten text in sloppy script, recording recent movements of the Spirit Medium Association: which department’s warehouse had increased guards, which batch of Strange fragments had been transferred where, and which areas had seen frequent Association activity lately.

None of this information was new to Jie Ming—he could see it all during his daytime spiritual power scans.

But the fact that the black broker could provide it showed that his channels were indeed deepening.

“Understood.” Jie Ming put the note away. “You should go. Come less often recently. I’ll find you if needed.”

The black broker breathed a sigh of relief, bowed to Jie Ming, put his hat back on, turned up his collar, cracked open the wooden door, peered outside for a few seconds, then slipped out.

Jie Ming sat in the rocking chair, his fingers tapping lightly twice on the armrest.

The Spirit Medium Association’s strict investigation showed they were indeed taking the traitor issue seriously.

This was not a bad thing. At least it meant the Association’s higher-ups had no intention of letting it slide.

But it also meant the difficulty of obtaining high-quality research materials from the black market would only continue to increase.

“Still, the research materials issue should be resolved before long…”