I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 826: The Opening and an Apology

The next morning, the academic exchange conference formally opened.

The ring-shaped conference hall had long since filled every seat, attendees from the great wizard organizations taking their places in order.

Several hundred sixth-level wizards, over a thousand seventh-level, and eighth-level wizards besides were gathered under one roof.

Numerous as they were, the wizards were of outstanding quality themselves, and there was not the slightest noise.

Before long a soft silver-white pillar of light lit up on the podium at the hall’s center, and Savien’s figure surfaced from it and walked slowly up to the podium.

Today he had changed into a formal dark gray robe, the Void Architecture Academy’s crest worn at his chest.

A ring of spatial runes floating unsupported at the robe’s edge showed and vanished by turns, as though the man had merged naturally with the space around him.

Savien merely stood there and swept a casual glance across the room, and every gaze in the hall fixed on him at once.

By Jie Ming’s understanding, what should come first was the opening address.

Savien only said, expression calm, “Welcome, all of you, to this academic exchange conference. I hope every one of you gains something here.”

That said, he raised his right hand at once, and with a sweeping rush an enormous spatial model instantly filled the entire hall.

Millions of three-dimensional runes hung in midair, nesting and combining with one another until they had built up an exceedingly complex diagram of spatial structure.

Which meant the opening address was over, and the keynote address was about to begin.

Jie Ming blinked, not much surprised.

Perhaps because transcendent power existed, wizards did not need long-winded speeches to display their own authority, so every opening ceremony Jie Ming had encountered up to now had been extremely brief.

Savien then began setting out his latest research results in spatial theory.

From the underlying law models to spatial resonance structures, and on to stability applications for large planes…

Each time he raised a theory, the corresponding imagery projected at once; each time he completed a derivation, the full rune framework surfaced.

Never mind padding or filler; the whole address was dry to the point of pain.

Rather than the keynote address of an opening ceremony, it was more like showing the entire spatial academic world its research direction for some time to come.

Seventh- and eighth-level wizards were still taking notes at speed, but Jie Ming noticed some of the young sixth-level wizards had given up on notes entirely.

They only stared blankly at the model data shifting above, eyes vacant, very nearly drooling.

Jie Ming listened just as carefully, recording the relevant content as he went.

Relying on the Entropy Brain talent’s automatic knowledge-organizing function, along with the sensitivity to this kind of law knowledge that came of his Dao Integration state, Jie Ming managed to keep up with Savien’s address.

The theoretical derivations Savien gave benefited Jie Ming a great deal.

Only when the last spatial model had slowly dispersed did Savien nod slowly. “That is what I wanted to say. Thank you.”

With that, Savien walked straight down from the podium.

The hall was extraordinarily silent, with no applause at all, but Jie Ming could clearly hear countless people letting out a long breath at the same moment.

This was not an audience gone cold. It was that the address had carried so much information that everyone’s mind was still immersed in the derivations.

“…and some of them purely because they have abandoned their minds entirely.”

Looking at the several high-level combat wizards sitting together at the very back of the hall, who had plainly gone wandering off somewhere beyond the world, Jie Ming added that silently to himself.

Nothing to be done; combat wizards are like that, even at high levels.

Their combat power might be assured, but in the matter of brains they still fell somewhat short.

And as Savien left the stage, the hall changed as well.

The seating sank into the floor like a liquid, and long tables bearing sweets and drinks of every kind rose slowly out of the ground in its place.

Around the hall, the formerly smooth walls unfolded slowly like curtains, revealing one broad passage after another.

Jie Ming recalled the conference procedure written in the handbook: after the opening ceremony’s keynote address came the tea break and public exhibition.

So behind these passages should be the exhibition area.

Jie Ming followed the other wizards into a passage at random, and a broad exhibition area came into view behind it.

Compared with the few posters and single display board of an academic conference back on Earth, wizard civilization’s academic exhibition was plainly a good deal more unrestrained.

Every sixth-level wizard taking part in the display had an independent area of his own.

Those who merely projected the rune structures they had researched counted as behind the times.

Some had built complete experimental platforms outright and demonstrated their whole research process on the spot; some unfolded the corresponding arrays and let onlookers experience the theoretical effect for themselves; and some had simply set the newest wizard artifact they had refined at the center of their display stand and fired it off at intervals into a specially arranged test area.

People moved constantly between the areas partitioned off by isolation arrays, and roars, law fluctuations and spatial tremors of every kind rose one after another.

Rather than an academic conference, these exhibition halls were more like a technology expo gathering the newest results.

Jie Ming wandered along, stopping and starting, and soon halted before a display stand on spatial crease theory.

At the center of the stand, a palm-sized miniature teleportation array was demonstrating the complete teleportation process over and over.

The array had compressed a traditional teleportation array’s spatial anchor to less than one percent of its original size while still maintaining extremely high stability.

“Now that is a good line of thinking…”

Jie Ming was watching with relish when he suddenly felt a figure stop beside him.

He turned to look. The newcomer was a tall, slender middle-aged wizard.

The man’s black and gold robe was tailored without a thread out of place, and a mild smile sat on his face.

Although the fluctuations about him were restrained very nearly to perfection, the obscure aura leaking from him still marked his level—an eighth-level wizard.

Jie Ming was slightly taken aback, but soon recovered his calm.

At last night’s welcome reception, because the three great figures had questioned him in turn, everyone else had obediently withdrawn, so he had guessed someone would seek him out today.

After all, this part of an academic exchange conference counted as the golden hour for socializing.

“And you would be…?” Jie Ming asked first.

Hearing Jie Ming’s question, the middle-aged wizard actually bowed slightly, with a courtesy so thorough that Jie Ming’s eyebrows twitched.

“Wizard Jie Ming, forgive the intrusion. I am Ryan, an elder of the Mobius family.”

“Hello.” Jie Ming nodded with some bewilderment.

Ryan raised a recording crystal in both hands and offered it to Jie Ming. “I have come specially to apologize to you.”

“Regarding the attack you suffered on your way to the academic exchange conference, we have already established the truth. That operation was carried out without authorization by an unworthy descendant of the clan, and once the family learned of it, we dealt with the matter at once. This is the complete record of the entire process. Please examine it.”

Although there was a great deal of noise around them, the situation over here still drew a good many wizards’ attention.

Especially on hearing the word “apologize,” a number of them looked over despite themselves.

Jie Ming reached out and took the crystal, sent his mental energy into it, and a scene unfolded before his eyes.

In the scene was a dim hall, a wizard with disheveled hair kneeling prostrate at its center, every family crest torn from his robe.

Wretched as he looked, judging by this wizard’s attire he should have been an elegant sort before this.

In the scene, though, his face was ashen and his expression dazed, as though he had never expected to fall to such a state.

A female elf servant seemed to be crying out and trying to stop it, and was struck offhandedly by the wizard carrying out the sentence and reduced to flying ash on the spot.

Then, as the punishment array activated, the dazed wizard dispersed within a vast current of energy, flesh and soul alike reduced to the most basic particles.

The whole process of punishment was clean and decisive, without a trace of hesitation.

There the scene in the crystal ended.

Jie Ming slowly withdrew his mental energy, his expression as calm as ever, though a trace of surprise crossed his mind.

Not because the poor wretch had been executed, but because this family had moved far too fast.

This was only the first day of the academic exchange conference… and even counting yesterday’s welcome reception, it could only be called the second morning, and they had already finished dealing with it.

As for whether the scene in the crystal might be faked, Jie Ming did not much doubt it.

If this wizard family had any brains at all, it would not do anything so stupid.

After all, the whole reason they were doing this was to make a connection with him, and to falsify it would be to offend him savagely.

Even if Jie Ming did not much care afterward, the families around this one would certainly not mind selling him a favor.

Last night’s welcome reception had only just ended, and by this morning the man was already dead.

What was more… their posture was rather too “respectful.”

Under normal circumstances, faced with a sixth-level wizard of extremely high potential, even one who might advance to eighth-level wizard, the eighth-level wizard before him ought not to be this “respectful.”

Although he had never heard of this family’s name, if even an elder was eighth-level then plainly there was more than one eighth-level wizard in this wizard family.

And facing a wizard with eighth-level potential genuinely should not warrant this attitude.

Since the reason did not lie with him, Jie Ming soon worked it out.

Before last night, he really had been only a newly promoted sixth-level with decent potential. But after the public acknowledgment of the three great authorities of spatial studies, Savien, Bastian and Morna, his standing had become something else entirely.

To move against him now was to slap not only Jie Ming’s face but the faces of three spatial-studies authorities.

More importantly, judging by the man’s attitude, although both were eighth-level wizards, a senior eighth-level like Savien and a conventional eighth-level were probably not the same concept at all.

The Mobius family had become an eighth-level family, so naturally it could read a situation this far.

So they had chosen the fastest and also the most thorough way of dealing with it.

They would rather clean their own house decisively than give anyone else the slightest opening to make an issue of it.

At that thought, Jie Ming could not help a private sigh.

A family able to stand among the circle of eighth-level wizards through untold ages evidently had not one simple character in it.