I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 882: A Classic Villain Move

After the wedding was over, Berta Vera Augusta came to the Infernal Sulfur Plane as agreed.

Jie Ming received her in the small reception room beside his main laboratory.

The room was not large and its furnishings were plain: apart from a few metal chairs shaped at random by alchemy and one floating table, there was nothing but several pots of luminous ferns in the corner, slowly shifting through their colours.

Augusta picked out a chair the moment she came in and sat down as though the place were her own, crossed her long legs, and tossed over the data crystal she had been holding.

“The back-derivation of the coordinates of the mushroom-men’s original plane has produced preliminary results,” she said. “But it is not good news.”

Jie Ming caught the crystal and sent his mental energy into it, reading the information inside while he went on listening to her.

The gist of it was that the wizard of the Augusta family who specialised in biological archaeology had indeed worked backwards to the coordinates of the mushroom-men’s original plane.

But when he tried to extend his detection toward the target region, he found the coordinate region to be extraordinarily chaotic.

The spatial system of the whole region looked as though something had stirred it into porridge, the space warped past all reason.

Their several attempts at extracting the specific coordinates of the target plane had all failed.

In the end the wizards reached their judgement: a great many planes there must have become interconnected, and the space had been violently distorted as a result.

“Oh? A great many planes interconnecting? To think one could actually run into such a thing.” Jie Ming’s interest was piqued at once.

For what was called “a great many planes interconnecting” was in essence the precursor to the birth of a plane cluster.

Planes were, to begin with, miracles born within the endless chaotic void.

Besides the wizard clusters deliberately built by design, as the wizard civilization had built its own, there also occurred in the natural state the phenomenon of multiple planes, their core elemental structures being similar, linking together into a continuous sheet under special conditions.

There were two core requirements for a natural plane cluster to form. One was that the absolute distance between those planes could not be too great; the other was that their core elemental structures be similar.

Once those two conditions were met, then under certain special circumstances—a spatial storm, say, or a spatial jump deliberately triggered by creatures inside a plane, or else the influence of a plane’s own spatial fluctuations—the similarity of elemental structure would draw two planes together and link them.

Once quantitative change had built into qualitative change, the planes of one broad region would begin to move as one, and the overall spatial coordinates would fall into disorder with them.

Jie Ming’s earlier wish to find the mushroom-men’s original plane came of what his investigations had turned up: the mushroom-men came from a distinctly advanced civilization, and his object in going there was to scrape up high-order knowledge of every kind.

And by the look of things now, this journey might even bring them upon an entire plane cluster in the act of taking shape.

The pressure of conquest would be greater, but that was hardly a bad thing.

“The trouble, though, lies precisely there.” Augusta said, toying with a lock of her hair.

“From what we have observed, these planes are in the chaotic period that comes before a plane cluster is born. At that stage there is genuinely no way to fix precise coordinates.”

“Force a crossing, and with good luck you merely drop into some unknown corner of the endless chaotic void. With bad luck, the various parts of your body and soul are delivered by those chaotic coordinates into different planes apiece.”

Jie Ming shook his head at that, with some regret.

If he really did meet with having body and soul parcelled out a piece here and a piece there, then even with the Body Forging Method and the death resistance he had evolved out of it, he would certainly die a wretched death.

Jie Ming asked, “Then roughly how long before this chaotic period comes to an end?”

“Going by the materials and statistics we have, and by the normal course of development, the chaotic period of that plane may well go on for more than ten million years yet.” Augusta shook her head.

Jie Ming stroked his chin. He was not particularly surprised.

After all, the thing was rather like the movement and change of the celestial bodies.

To speak plainly, for change to come in a mere ten million years was already quite fast.

“So the normal method is out.” Jie Ming raised his head to look at her. “But by the look of you, you did not come only to deliver the bad news, surely? Is there a solution?”

“There is.”

At that Augusta sat up straight and swept her black hair back over her shoulder. “If the normal method will not serve, then naturally there is an abnormal one.”

“Which is?”

“I will warn you in advance: this abnormal method also comes down to luck, so do not pitch your expectations too high.” Augusta raised an eyebrow.

Jie Ming looked entirely unconcerned. “That is quite all right. A method is better than no method.”

Augusta gave a laugh. “Put into words, the method is really very simple: you send media capable of transmitting power through by way of the coordinates.”

“Most of the power media will fail in transit, but so long as the quantity is large enough, some portion of them will always land successfully in the target plane. Once they have landed, you then find a way to induce the beings there to open a portal of their own accord, or to expose the precise coordinates. That is all it takes.”

As Jie Ming listened to this description, his expression grew stranger and stranger.

This method he knew far too well.

In certain stories from his previous life, after all, he had seen this move performed more than a few times.

In those stories, the beings called “demons” and “devils” did exactly this: they spread abroad a method of “sacrificial offering,” induced mortals to open the gate to another world, and so channelled their own power across.

And it soon occurred to him besides that in the wizard world he had witnessed this very move with his own eyes.

Back when Noren Academy No. 147 was first founded, he and David had together captured the illegal wizard who was the Sage.

That fellow had been bewitched by the “Destroyer Demon,” had inscribed linking symbols on the island, and had opened a portal with himself as the offering, in an attempt to draw the Destroyer Demon on the other side down into Noren Plane No. 147.

Though the upshot was that the Destroyer Demon, and even the plane that demon came from, had all ended up as Dean Avery Knight’s experimental material and spoils of war.

For the wizards, that affair counted as “luck” of the pie-out-of-the-sky variety.

But in the manner of its working, it was exactly what Augusta had described.

“The efficiency of a method like that must be very low,” Jie Ming said.

“It is low,” Augusta admitted, “and it depends a great deal on luck, and the process of handling it is tedious besides.”

“Apart from those beings born powerful who are bored out of their minds all day long, wizards rarely do it. But in certain special circumstances there is no harm in giving it a use.”

And with that Augusta could not even keep from laughing outright. “In any case, to a good many civilizations wizards are a calamity already. Doing a few more things that look villainous hardly matters.”

Jie Ming’s mouth twitched, but he had to admit that she had a point.

“If you want to seed media of your own, I can put some in for you while I am about it,” Augusta said. “The family will be seeding them regardless. A few more is no trouble at all.”

“Oh? Then I am very interested indeed.” Jie Ming’s enthusiasm rose.

Once Jie Ming had expressed his interest, Augusta went on to explain to him the key points of making the media.

“What matters in a medium is durability, stability and concealment. Put simply, the less conspicuous the medium the better, while it must still be solid and stable enough that chaotic space-time cannot stop it transmitting power, and that the natives cannot easily destroy it.”

“As for how much power the medium transmits… my advice is not to make it too strong. Better still, at the outset let the medium transmit consciousness alone, purely for communication. Later on you can guide the natives into strengthening the medium’s transmission of power themselves.” Augusta said after a moment’s thought.

“Why?”

“With so many planes linked to one another, the environment there is bound to become extremely chaotic, and the civilizations extremely on edge. The stronger a thing is, the more easily it draws eyes; whereas it is the inconspicuous thing that more easily survives the chaotic period.”

As for how to guide the natives step by step afterwards… that came down to each person’s own wits.

“The medium is only the brick that knocks at the door.” Augusta said. “Whether a door truly opens depends on how the one holding it plays his hand.”

Jie Ming nodded in understanding.