I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 818: Strategy and Arrival

Several hours later, a silver fissure spanning the void appeared ahead, and beyond the fissure a stable expanse of space slowly unfolded.

This was a public junction point located in the Endless Chaotic Void.

Compared with a dangerous area like the supply station before the Broken Bone Corridor, this place was plainly a good deal more prosperous.

Floating islands drifted through the Endless Chaotic Void, transport ships from different civilizations came and went from the spaceport without pause, and on those islands creatures of every form moved back and forth.

And at the center of the whole junction point stood an enormous spatial teleportation hall.

Silver-white pillars of teleportation light lit and went out in turn, wizards from different routes entering steadily and leaving again at speed, which made the whole hall look busy and yet perfectly orderly.

Jie Ming walked in with a calm expression.

The one managing the hall’s teleportation arrays was a middle-aged wizard with short gray hair. He looked up, swept a glance over Jie Ming, then tipped his head toward the map beside him:

“Where to?”

Because this was an unclaimed public zone, actually daring to ask after someone’s identity was purely asking for trouble.

So steps like inquiring into identity and background were skipped outright. The “authorities” were responsible only for taking payment and teleporting.

Of course, they were not worried about anyone starting trouble here either. After all, the many wizard powers here had gathered into one small clique after another, which was enough to handle the overwhelming majority of problems.

“Route two, tenth junction point.” Jie Ming set several standard-model energy crystals, prepared long in advance, on the counter.

Places like this were outside the rule of the three great powers, but official “points” from the Star Ring Federation, the Anti-Entropy Alliance or the Void Architecture Academy could all still be used directly.

If one wished to conceal one’s identity, though, most people would simply pay with energy crystals.

The middle-aged wizard swept a hand over them, confirmed the quantity was correct, worked the instrument beside him for a moment, then waved offhandedly. “Fine, go on in.”

“Next!”

Jie Ming tugged at his hood and turned toward the teleportation array lighting up beside him.

Just before stepping into the array, he glanced at the map to one side.

On the pale blue light screen, the point of light representing this junction point’s position sat in a region off to the side of the red-marked Broken Bone Corridor.

If the conference rendezvous coordinates he was bound for counted as “ahead,” then the region he stood in lay to the right and behind the Broken Bone Corridor.

And the place he was now going to lay on another, rather more “regular” route.

As the teleportation array’s silver light rose, the corner of Jie Ming’s mouth lifted slightly.

This was his real purpose.

He had never intended to cross the Broken Bone Corridor at all.

Or rather… he wanted whoever was tracking him to know he had not crossed the Broken Bone Corridor.

The reason Jie Ming had been willing to endure the agony of spatial storms scouring his body, using coordinate resets to get here at speed, was to create an impression:

that his entering the Broken Bone Corridor earlier had been merely a layer of illusion deliberately left for the one behind all this, and that the real route was to slip quietly out of the Broken Bone Corridor, swing around to route two, and travel from there to the academic exchange conference’s rendezvous area.

For a wizard who had been the target of assassination, taking a route of this kind, mixing the true and the false, the open and the hidden, was perfectly normal.

That way, when others went back and investigated him, they would arrive at only one entirely reasonable conclusion: that to keep himself from being assassinated again, Jie Ming had entered the Broken Bone Corridor purely as a feint, and that his real objective had been route two all along.

The method was simple to describe but in fact very hard to carry out, and the greatest difficulty in it was time.

An ordinary wizard… never mind a sixth-level one, even a seventh-level wizard could not move quickly in a place like the Broken Bone Corridor, and on top of that one could not make spatial jumps freely in the Endless Chaotic Void.

So under normal circumstances it was simply impossible for anyone to swing that wide an arc from deep inside the Broken Bone Corridor to another route in so short a time.

It was thanks to the Mustard Seed Dao-Holding True Body Art that Jie Ming had been able to get here in time.

As for how to expose himself, that was simpler still. Jie Ming did not even need to leave any deliberate opening; he had only to pass carefully through each public junction point, exactly as every wizard concealing his identity did.

To keep anyone from starting trouble, these public zones recorded information on every wizard who passed through in the first place, and a sixth-level wizard like Jie Ming would be recorded with particular care.

Once Jie Ming arrived at the academic exchange conference’s rendezvous point, the one behind all this would naturally check back along the route.

And when he did, the records left at these junction points would prove it for him automatically: that he had come the whole way along route two.

As for the Broken Bone Corridor… that was merely an unremarkable piece of misdirection.

As the silver light faded, Jie Ming had vanished from where he stood.

…

…

At the same time.

Inside a dim study.

Candle flames swayed gently, the particular candles giving off, as they burned, a fragrance that helped a wizard settle his mind.

A wizard in a long black robe sat quietly at the desk, leafing with evident interest through a thick ancient volume.

Just then the door was pushed gently open, and a female of a beauty very nearly dreamlike walked slowly in.

Her skin was fair, a strand of silver-green hair fell loose down her back, and together with her long pointed ears she appeared to be some subspecies of elf.

The elf came softly to the wizard’s side and bowed slightly. “Master.”

The black-robed wizard did not raise his head, his attention still fixed on the book. “There is news?”

“Yes. At the third junction point on route two, we found a record of Wizard Jie Ming passing through.”

When the elf servant had finished, the room went quiet for a moment.

The black-robed wizard’s hand stopped turning pages.

He slowly raised his head, and a trace of amusement surfaced in those deep eyes. “Route two?”

“As I recall, the intelligence we obtained earlier had him preparing to cross the Broken Bone Corridor?”

The elf servant nodded respectfully. “Yes. Our people have eyewitness reports of Wizard Jie Ming at the forward supply station of the Broken Bone Corridor, and watched him enter the Broken Bone Corridor.”

The black-robed wizard laughed softly. He closed the book, fingers tapping the desktop:

“So it seems… we were all taken in by him. That Broken Bone Corridor was nothing but a blind, and his real route was route two.”

At that he shook his head with a soft laugh. “Interesting. He does have a little cleverness about him.”

The elf servant asked carefully, “Master, shall I have everyone lying in wait at those Broken Bone Corridor exits moved over?”

The black-robed wizard was silent for a moment, but in the end he waved a hand. “No need. It is already too late.”

He rose and went to the window, through the vast floor-length panes of which a vast starry sky could be seen outside.

“It may be only a little cleverness, but it was genuinely useful.”

“We never had enough people stationed in the public zone as it is, and to block him earlier we sent the overwhelming majority of our strength to lie in wait at the Broken Bone Corridor’s exits. Moving them now would not only fail to arrive in time, it would risk exposure as well.”

As he spoke, the black-robed wizard picked up a stack of intelligence from the desk. Printed plainly on the first page was Jie Ming’s portrait.

Clearly, this was the investigative material on Jie Ming.

“What is more…” He leafed casually through a few pages, a faint smile at the corner of his mouth.

“Judging by the latest investigative intelligence, this Wizard Jie Ming is no ordinary sixth-level. Those black wizards lack the strength; however many of them there are, they are not qualified to stop him.”

Setting the intelligence down, the black-robed wizard’s gaze fell on route two’s position on the map:

“Since he is already close to the third junction point, that means he is already very near the Void Architecture Academy’s controlled territory. The vicinity of the four great powers is not a place just anyone dares raise a hand.”

“Making a little noise in a public zone can still be explained away as a private grudge.”

“But going to their front gate during the academic exchange conference to attack an attending wizard…” Seemingly picturing the scene, even the black-robed wizard could not help laughing aloud.

“Those old fellows on the Academic Exchange Committee have been fretting over the lack of a chance to establish their authority. Anyone who dares reach out now, they will happily chop up along with his whole family!”

Having said his piece, the room fell quiet again.

A moment later the black-robed wizard spoke mildly. “Notify everyone. Pull them all back.”

“This was an idle move on the board to begin with. Since it has failed, there is no need to go on wasting strength on it.”

“Yes.” The elf servant bowed respectfully and slowly withdrew from the room.

As the door closed, silence returned to the whole study.

The black-robed wizard stood alone at the window, looking up into the endless stars, the smile never leaving his face:

“Jie Ming… you may count my trial as passed.”

His voice was very soft, and yet it carried a certain weight. “Still… the real danger has never been me. Those old things at the academic exchange conference, who have lived none of us know how many tens of thousands of years, are the true players.”

The black-robed wizard glanced at the intelligence in his hand and waved it away offhandedly, and the pages the intelligence was recorded on turned to ash in midair and dispersed.

“I hope that when the time comes, you can go on winning.”

…

…

As Jie Ming passed through the last spatial teleportation array, he distinctly felt the ground beneath him grow slightly heavier.

That meant this junction point had higher gravity than the others, which meant its scale should be larger than those junction points in the public zone before it.

That was only natural, since this was already a large junction point on the frontier of Void Architecture Academy territory.

One glance was enough for Jie Ming to feel an atmosphere utterly different from the junction points he had passed along the way.

The whole junction point was quiet and clean, carrying even a sense of technical order very nearly like a work of art.

The teleportation plaza was paved entirely in pale gray crystal stone, every slab polished mirror-smooth, with tracery etched along the edges so fine as to be almost beyond belief.

Those tracings glittered with a faint silver radiance in the sunlight, interweaving to build an enormous spatial network covering the entire plaza.

Jie Ming’s True-False Void-Piercing Pupil ran, and a moment later a trace of admiration flashed at the bottom of his eyes.

“What a formidable spatial stabilization array… and a multi-layered nested structure at that.”

Spatial stabilization arrays counted as quite basic among spatial arrays.

But even the most basic thing, taken to its utmost, becomes a kind of art.

Take this spatial stabilization array: not only did it hold spatial stability at the delicate level where spatial teleportation was permitted while spatial turbulence would not arise, it had also smoothed out every spatial fluctuation within a range of several million kilometers.

Wizards could teleport freely here, and yet the spatial turbulence that arose constantly in the Endless Chaotic Void outside was all shut out beyond it.

This junction point was less like a frontier fortress than a holy site built in the void.

Glancing at the map provided on the invitation, Jie Ming set off toward the hall at the junction point’s center.

Along the way, buildings stood in well-judged arrangement on either side of the road.

Contrary to expectation, there was not a scrap of superfluous ornament on them.

And yet the lines of every building were extraordinarily elegant and flowing, every proportion exactly right.

Even the colors and forms of these buildings answered to the colors of the Endless Chaotic Void behind them, as though they had merged with nature itself.

One look at them and a comfortable, pleasing feeling arose of its own accord.

“So this is the Void Architecture Academy? To achieve this much with even ordinary buildings is truly… astonishing.”

Before he knew it, Jie Ming had reached the central hall. He drew his gaze back and went inside.

The hall was even more spacious than it had looked from outside.

The dome, hundreds of meters high, was built entirely of semi-transparent crystal, and sunlight passing through it was refracted layer by layer into a soft diffuse light that spilled down, leaving the whole hall warm and bright.

Only on seeing the facilities inside the central hall did Jie Ming finally have the feeling of having returned to “modern society.”

He picked an unoccupied counter at random, looked at the alchemical doll behind it, and set his invitation on the counter. “I have come at your invitation.”

The alchemical doll took the invitation in both hands, and a scanning beam shot from the depths of its pupils.

It swept the invitation from top to bottom, then swept Jie Ming himself. “Honored Wizard Jie Ming, thank you very much for coming. Please wait a moment; a reception attendant will be arranged for you at once…”

In only a few seconds, hurried footsteps came from the depths of the hall.

“Coming, coming…” Along with the voice, a wizard in a robe came out very nearly at a jog the whole way.

He looked to be somewhere past forty, his short brown hair groomed without a strand out of place, gold-rimmed round spectacles perched on his nose, and two quill pens for note-taking even tucked at his chest.

Clearly this wizard had been in the middle of research and had come at once on hearing the alchemical doll’s urgent notification.

On seeing Jie Ming, his eyes lit up immediately.

“Wizard Jie Ming! Hello, hello!” He strode up to Jie Ming and put out both hands unprompted, his smile extraordinarily warm. “Your reputation precedes you. Welcome to the Void Architecture Academy.”

“I am Varon, head of reception in the external liaison department for this academic exchange conference.”

Jie Ming nodded slightly and shook his hand. “Hello, Wizard Varon.”

Varon’s smile grew brighter still. “You are a good deal earlier than expected. I was rather taken aback when I got the message just now. But no matter; your lodgings and laboratory have long been prepared. Please come with me.”

“Then I will trouble you.”

Jie Ming nodded and followed Varon away.