I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 803: The Journey, and a Warning

In the morning, the artificial star of the junction point rose slowly.

Soft dawn light passed through the colored crystal glass of the inn dining room’s dome and fell in a scatter of colored shadows.

Red gold, pale blue and silver-white interwove, flowing slowly across the polished floor like a scroll painting that never stopped changing.

The dining room, silent all night, woke again with the dawn light.

Styles from different civilizations came together here.

The walls used the silver-gray streamlined metal panels the Star Ring Federation favored, smooth and spare.

But the tables were made of a dark spirit wood, warm as jade, its grain coiling naturally into faint rings of strange spiral patterning. The chandelier overhead was all geometric aesthetics, layer upon layer of regular cubes nested within one another, refracting the light into neat and elegant patterns as they turned slowly.

In one corner stood an emerald plant with a dozen or so soft tendrils.

Seen from a distance, it bore a fair resemblance to a Tentacle Tree.

Jie Ming sat by the window, several local specialty dishes laid out on his table.

One plate held the shed crystal shell of some silicon-based lifeform, sliced nearly transparent and thin as a cicada’s wing.

Once in the mouth there was no sense of chewing at all. It melted slowly like ice crystal, leaving only a faint fragrance behind, a flavor all its own.

Another plate held a mass of specially fermented spores.

Soft and fine, melting on the tongue, its rich fungal aroma threaded with the particular mellowness of nuts, layered in the extreme.

Beside them sat a bowl of steaming thick soup, its base simmered from a kind of algae that glowed of its own accord.

Every spoonful lifted points of starlight turning through the broth, like fragments of a galaxy floating in it.

Every dish was a unique crystallization born out of long ages of exchange between different civilizations.

Jie Ming tasted as he went, leafing through the star chart unfolded before him.

Traveling from the Noren Workshop to the conference site on the border of the Void Architecture Academy and the Anti-Entropy Alliance was no easy matter, even with the wizard civilization’s highly mature spatial teleportation system.

Because although the wizard civilization’s teleportation technology was mature, so were spatial blockade and spatial interception.

No power would allow an unfamiliar wizard to cross its heartland at will.

Even reckoned by the most direct route, the journey required crossing the territory of tens of thousands of wizard powers.

Fortunately the Star Ring Federation had been managing its affairs for countless ages and had long since built a vast official teleportation network internally.

So long as one was in the federation’s heartland, one could use that network to cross a great many borders directly.

But the farther out toward the frontier one went, the more the situation changed.

Those outer regions, only recently developed, had not yet had time to lay a complete teleportation system.

So every long-distance traveler had to keep making for the public junction points formed where various powers met, and use the public arrays open there to continue to the next stop.

Like a traveler changing trains over and over.

And precisely because of that, Jie Ming had seen a great many sights on this trip that he had never seen before.

Different wizard powers held entirely different governing philosophies, and beneath them lived vast numbers of servitor civilizations.

So every junction point was like a work of art formed where civilizations collided.

Utterly different civilizational styles fused with one another at those junctions, forming a strange and harmonious beauty.

For the sake of those sights alone, the journey had already been worth making.

Before setting out, Jie Ming had long since put the affairs of the Infernal Sulfur Plane in order.

The whole plane had by now formed a stable and efficient system of operation, and nothing would go wrong even if he were away a thousand years. Add to that his early departure and ample time, and Jie Ming was in no hurry at all.

At every junction point he would stay a few days and take in the local civilization’s customs.

“I have stayed here about long enough these past two days. Time to move on.”

At that thought, Jie Ming enlarged the star chart again.

The teleportation network before him was nearing its “terminus,” and this junction point amounted to a “frontier.”

Beyond it lay the public star region in the true sense.

And that was the most dangerous stretch of the journey.

Jie Ming raised a hand and drew a new route across the chart.

Several backup transit nodes were marked out in order.

Just then, steady footsteps came from behind him.

“Do you mind if I sit here?”

Jie Ming looked up to see the innkeeper coming over with a steaming drink in hand.

The crystal-doll waiter that had been standing by the table had been dismissed at some point.

At Jie Ming’s nod, the man sat down naturally across from him.

The innkeeper looked around fifty, in a gray robe kept immaculately in order.

A sixth-level wizard.

That was Jie Ming’s judgment at first glance.

But although the man’s Law Solidification Domain was complete, it seemed very loose, without the slightest keenness formed through countless battles. Clearly this innkeeper was a “civil-service wizard” who had scraped his way to the sixth level on long years and accumulated resources. He was presumably retired now, which was why he had come to this junction point to run an inn and enjoy a peaceful life.

“First time out this way?” the innkeeper asked with a smile.

Jie Ming put the last piece of crystal in his mouth. “Passing through, more or less.”

The innkeeper looked at him and could not help laughing. “I could tell at a glance. Someone as unhurried as you is no local.” As he spoke, he looked out at the bustling street beyond the window.

“Beyond here is the public star region, and that place is nothing like this one.” The innkeeper took a sip of his drink.

“Whatever else you say about here, it leans on the Star Ring Federation. If something really happens, you can still reach a patrol fleet.”

“But the public star region…” He shook his head.

“No power there is genuinely responsible for anything. If something happens, there is nobody to see justice done for you.”

Jie Ming set down his spoon. “How long have you had this place?”

“A few centuries.”

The innkeeper swirled his glass with a smile, ice clinking crisply.

“I have no great abilities. Once I had scraped together enough resources to step back, I opened this inn. Watching all sorts of young wizards come and go every day is interesting enough.”

Then he glanced at Jie Ming. “I have seen no few like you over the years.”

Then the smile gradually withdrew from his face.

“But… once you leave here, you had best put that leisurely air away. The public star region is more chaotic than you imagine.”

“There are not only black wizards there, but also remnants of the Multiracial Alliance forces scattered after their defeat, alien creatures drifting through the void, and even the occasional Reflection Dimension incursion.”

“If you go on the way you are now, taking in the scenery as you travel…” The innkeeper shook his head. “There is no difference between that and hanging a treasure from a flagpole and calling people over to take it.”

Jie Ming’s gaze stirred. “By your account, there are a great many black wizards there?”

“Several bands are active nearby.”

At that, the innkeeper’s expression turned rather serious.

“All of them desperate men who have been stuck at the fifth level for many years. Ordinarily these fellows even hide inside the various junction points, and once they spot a suitable target they strike together.”

“They generally will not touch a veteran sixth-level figure.”

“But someone newly advanced to the sixth…” The innkeeper looked Jie Ming up and down. “That happens to be their favorite prey.” Hearing this, Jie Ming grew thoughtful.

The innkeeper kept his serious expression a while, then laughed again.

“Though you do not look like a youngster fresh off an advancement, so there is no need to be too nervous.”

“In short, keep your wits about you and do not spend all your attention on the scenery.”

Jie Ming nodded in earnest. “Thank you for the warning.”

He finished the last of his food and rose to settle the bill.

By the time he walked out of the inn, the junction point had grown thoroughly lively.

On both sides of the street, creatures of all sorts of servitor civilizations had set up stalls.

Jie Ming watched with interest for a while, then walked slowly along the street toward the teleportation plaza in the distance.

He kept the innkeeper’s warning in mind, but that did not stop him taking in the sights along the way.

A moment later, Jie Ming stepped onto the teleportation array.