I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 750: The Unexpected Ones

The spatial fissure rippled slowly at the edge of the Infernal Sulfur Plane’s continent.

That black rift spanning the void contracted bit by bit, and the dark purple arcs surging in its depths dimmed along with it, until only a few scattered threads of lightning remained, dispersing soundlessly into the deep dark.

A crowd of Black Giants had already swarmed forward, carrying all manner of materials to stabilize the fissure.

Jie Ming and Viola floated side by side in the outer void of this new plane. Beneath their feet lay a continent wrapped in a pale blue plane barrier. Seen from across the void, that barrier was not thick at all; it even looked rather flimsy.

It was a semi-transparent sky blue, the light patterns flowing across its surface sparse and scattered. If a comparison had to be forced, the barrier’s strength was roughly that of a slightly thicker energy membrane.

“This plane is even smaller than I expected.”

Viola said it softly, though her tone carried very little actual surprise.

She flew forward a short distance, and the gray-white Pain Law Solidification Domain promptly spread out beneath her feet.

The moment that circular halo appeared, the void around them seemed to grow half a degree quieter.

Law runes extended from the edge of the halo, becoming dozens of fine tendrils that stretched slowly through the air, like some dangerous deep-sea creature easing out its arms one at a time.

Viola raised her right hand, five fingers spread.

In the next instant, the law tendrils reached toward the surface of the plane barrier in unison.

The moment the gray-white runes touched the barrier they began to vibrate at high speed, giving off a low-frequency resonance beyond the reach of human hearing.

Where the tendrils met the barrier, ring after ring of fine ripples immediately rose. The once-calm sky blue light patterns radiated outward from the contact points, only to be pressed back bit by bit by the law tendrils surging up behind them.

This was Viola tuning the frequency band of her Pain Law, bringing her own law fluctuations into complete synchronization with the energy structure of the plane barrier, and then “embedding” herself into it a little at a time.

It would make the barrier mistake her power for a part of itself, until at last it opened a passage for her of its own accord.

This approach took less effort than tearing it down by force, and it was quieter; it would not immediately alarm the living beings inside the plane.

Jie Ming floated not far behind her with his arms crossed, the vertical eye between his brows already quietly open.

The All-Purpose Eye recorded the barrier’s energy structure while continuously comparing the data against the Tentacle Tree planes he had campaigned against before. Before long, he reached a conclusion.

This plane was even younger than he had first estimated.

The aura of its plane origin was extremely fresh, like a newborn plane that had finished taking shape no more than a few hundred million years ago.

A place like this would not usually nurture anything especially ancient, but every so often it might be hiding an unexpected surprise.

Just as he was thinking that, Viola’s law tendrils suddenly stopped.

Watching from behind, Jie Ming saw it clearly: she had not run into any obstruction. She had pulled back on her own.

Puzzled, Jie Ming looked over at his senior sister.

She still held her hand with its five fingers spread, her head tilted slightly to one side, those pale green eyes fixed quietly on some direction deep within the plane barrier.

The habitual, faintly careless smile at the corner of her mouth was slowly folding away.

In its place came an expression that very rarely appeared on her face: caution.

And along with it, a faint trace of excitement.

“Looks like there’s an unexpected bonus in here.”

She said it in a low voice, her tone a few degrees slower than usual.

Jie Ming’s brow twitched, and he followed her line of sight into the depths of the barrier.

Unfortunately, with the plane barrier in the way, making out the rough terrain below was already his limit; he saw nothing else. Even so, he did not doubt Viola’s judgment.

The Pain Law’s perception range where living beings were concerned was inherently wider than his own, and on the specific question of “where pain exists,” her sensitivity was almost instinctive.

For her to stop partway through the infiltration meant that something happening beneath the barrier had already touched her law perception. Noticing Jie Ming’s confusion, Viola crooked a finger at him, motioning him over.

Jie Ming obediently moved to her side, and felt her palm come down on his shoulder.

“There’s been a tiny complication. I’m afraid you’ll be the one doing the heavy lifting in a moment.”

Riding the mental transmission Viola shared with him, Jie Ming felt his vision pass through the plane barrier and settle on the world slowly unfolding below.

It was a stretch of hill country inside the atmosphere, blanketed in dense vegetation.

The sky of this plane was pale violet.

As the light of its star passed through the atmosphere, some high-altitude gas of unknown composition refracted it into a soft violet tone that spilled across the rolling hills and hollows like a tranquil veil.

Large stretches of the hollows held shallow pale blue water, and when the breeze passed over it, fine ripples spread across the surface.

A faint sweet, raw smell hung in the air, like what was left behind when a great volume of plant sap evaporated, and it also left the whole region unusually humid.

Along the edges of the field ridges, a group of humanoid creatures whose bodies were built from green leaves and branches were busy at work.

Their torsos were woven from supple vines, their limbs were thicker branches, and the ends of those limbs were vines they could manipulate at will, like tentacles.

Each of them grew a cluster of small flowers of differing colors on top of its head, swaying gently with its movements like a crown of blossoms shaking in the wind.

Their vine tails hung down behind them, the tips buried deep in the soil, seemingly drawing some kind of nourishment out of the earth.

And what they were doing was rather strange as well.

Between the hands of each plant-person, a pale green orb of light had condensed.

The orbs were carefully peeled out of the air and then set into the rows of clay jars arranged neatly along the field ridges.

The instant an orb dropped into a jar it congealed into a few drops of thick emerald liquid that gave off an extremely faint but pure aura of life. Clearly, it was some refined product of life energy.

On the high ground above the fields, several armored humanoid creatures stood watch over them from above.

Those creatures were roughly the size of humans, but their faces plainly carried the features of tentacled life.

Dozens of long, slender fleshy tendrils hung around their mouths, the tips squirming gently in the air as though endlessly “tasting” the smells around them.

Their eyes were pure black, with no whites and no pupils, only an unfathomable darkness that reflected a dim, cold sheen under the pale violet daylight.

Their battle armor was covered in a dark energy coating, and the weapons hanging at their waists were shaped somewhere between a firearm and a staff, the muzzles flickering faintly with stored charge.

Two octopus-face guards were standing on a flat slab of rock.

One of them had taken off his helmet and hung it carelessly at his waist, exposing the full octopus face.

The tendrils on that face drifted lazily in the breeze blowing off the void; he looked less like a sentry than like someone slacking off in the sun. The other still wore his helmet, arms folded across his chest, black eyes sweeping carelessly over the crowd of plant-people laboring below. Then he suddenly swung his arm, and a whip of light lashed out from the armor on his hand and cracked across one of the plant-people. “Faster! No slacking!” The searing whip scorched the spot it touched a glowing red, and even though the plant-people’s nervous systems were not well developed, it still made him feel pain.

Barely perceptible ripples spread through the surrounding air. That was the plant-people’s own language.

Seeing it, the other plant-people shook the leaves and branches on their bodies and quickened their hands another notch.

“The collection rate on this batch is even worse than the last one.”

complained the octopus-face who had removed his helmet.

When he spoke, the low gurgling that came from beneath his tendrils sounded like bubbles rising through water, yet it translated into standard planar common tongue.

“At this rate, the finished goods we hand in this cycle are going to come up more than twenty percent short of last cycle’s.”

“So it’s short. It isn’t our fault.”

The helmeted one shrugged, the shoulder joints of his armor grinding faintly.

“Command knows what this cursed place is like. Those twig-heads are too stupid to even learn to talk; the fact that they can work at all is a bonus. If you want to blame someone, blame the survey team for not finding a better plane back then.”

“When has that survey team crowd ever been reliable?”

The unhelmeted octopus-face flicked a tendril through the air in contempt.

“Last time they swore up and down, ‘Confirmed: this plane holds no intelligent civilization, suitable for direct development.’ Then we set down and saw twig-heads all over the continent. If these natives didn’t happen to have a talent for collecting life energy, the higher-ups would have cleared the place out long ago. Then they wouldn’t need us out here going to all this trouble!”

“Trouble?”

The helmeted octopus-face let out a snort of laughter.

“You’re out here soaking up ultraviolet and watching a pack of plant-people farm, and you’re still not satisfied? Come on, stop complaining. At least this posting won’t get you killed; it beats going to the front line to be cannon fodder. Just treat it as paid leave.”

“Fair enough.”

The unhelmeted octopus-face stretched slowly and lazily, every tendril spreading outward at once before drooping back down in front of his face. “A few more years of this and I rotate out anyway. Once I’m back on the homeworld, the first thing I do is put in for a desk job in the rear Colonial Department. I never want to see so much as a single leaf again…”

He never got to finish. A burst of frantic shouting cut him off: “Something’s happened!!”

Another octopus-face came flying up from the direction of the outpost at the foot of the hills.

His helmet had slipped to one side, exposing half his face, and every tendril on that half was standing straight up as though it had been electrocuted, the tips even paling slightly from sheer tension.

He nearly overshot the two of them, and it took the unhelmeted octopus-man grabbing him to haul him back.

When the one who had come rushing up lifted his head, nothing was left in those pure black eyes but terror.

“The, the sky!”

He raised one hand, shaking violently as he pointed toward the sky, his voice cracking out of pitch.

“There are two unidentified creatures up there, and they’re breaking through the plane barrier!”