I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 920: Objectives and Preparations

In the end Jack still did not give a clear answer.

He only stayed silent a long while, then asked, “What do you intend to do next?”

Jie Ming did not press him further, because he could feel that the fluctuations in Jack’s mental energy had already turned from the hostility and wariness of the beginning into a far more complicated mixture.

There was doubt and guardedness in it still, but deep down something in Jack had loosened.

For a man who had been deceived for several years, a reaction like that counted as rather good.

Jie Ming was well satisfied, and did not expect him to declare himself at once.

Judging others by himself, he did not think he could have given an answer straight away either, so he meant to build up a little “credit rating” with Jack first.

Jie Ming raised his head and glanced at the dark red glow still spreading outward along the distant skyline.

“We cannot stay here. What the Holy Spirit stirred up this time was far too vile. The strongest combat power humanity has in this world is certainly on its way already.”

“The strongest? You mean that eighteenth-stage…” Jack raised an eyebrow and looked at the tentacle in the distance that blotted out the sky.

“Are you certain he can deal with a thing like that?”

“Do not underestimate your own strongest. By our divisions that thing is a seventh-level creature at the very most, while your strongest man’s combat power is the equivalent of a seventh-level elite wizard of ours.” Jie Ming curled his lip.

With the combat power of a seventh-level elite wizard, beating a seventh-level creature was a foregone conclusion.

Had the Holy Spirit not gone so far this time as to overturn the whole main base of the Northern War Zone, that strongest one would most likely not have stirred at all.

Even Jie Ming, unless his true body came in person, absolutely could not handle this strongest human.

So at this stage he must on no account come face to face with the man!

Nor did Jie Ming make any secret of his wariness of that strongest human.

“In any case, I have no wish to fight a monster like that. So next I am going to the Northwestern War Zone. It has not been fallen for long, so there should still be a fair number of surviving human settlements. And that region is chaotic enough at present, which suits me nicely for the work that follows.”

“What work that follows?” Jack asked.

Jie Ming glanced at him, and his words were quite blunt. “Opening a spatial passage, of course.”

Jack’s expression did not change much at that. A being that called itself a wizard could not have infiltrated this world for no reason at all, nor come to his rescue for no reason at all.

What was more, from the very beginning the other had shown no intention of concealing his purpose; he had in fact been perfectly blunt about it throughout.

“You are honest enough…” Jack said with a cold laugh.

Jie Ming nodded, seemingly somewhat absent-minded. “Thank you for the praise…”

The corner of Jack’s eye twitched. “That was not praise. And what have you been thinking about all this while?”

“Nothing much. Only sorting through some of the data I collected.”

At that point Jie Ming was suddenly moved to remark, “The humans of this world of yours really can hold out.”

Jack said, “…Ah?”

Jie Ming showed no intention of explaining.

While he was in the Northern War Zone base, in the interval when Jack was facing off against those old people, he had used his mental energy to break into the base’s terminal system and had collected a vast quantity of intelligence.

What that material recorded had alarmed him more the further he read, and only now had he found the leisure to sort the whole of it through in his head.

Jie Ming had known already that this world was riddled with holes, but only now did he learn that the traces of invasion it faced came to a full twenty-seven!

After screening and ordering the information himself, he found that behind at least fifteen of the invading races lay the traces of a high-level civilisation!

These advanced civilisations, hidden behind races such as the treemen, the insect-men, the slime-men, the birdmen and the dinosaur-men, had by and large chosen to support proxies in secret and wait for a better moment.

Some of them might even have buried their own seed in some corner already.

And humanity had borne up, by sheer brute endurance, under the invasion of twenty-seven worlds plus fifteen advanced civilisations.

To be honest, a line-up like that made even Jie Ming’s teeth ache to look at.

And there was only one answer to why humanity had not collapsed by now: that one strongest human.

An eighteenth-stage transcendent, a being equivalent to a seventh-level elite wizard.

Fighting for his life, he was enough to trade away eighth-level creatures in their thousands upon thousands.

For most advanced civilisations, sending out one or two eighth-level creatures to probe was acceptable, but to lose so many eighth-level creatures for the sake of a single plane was far too high a price.

For a good many advanced civilisations, that already amounted to a calamity that would end the race.

So they chose the method that cost them least.

That is, this business of cutting flesh with a blunt knife: an unbroken stream of low-level invasions that wore humanity’s strength down bit by bit.

“The situation for the humans of this world is far graver than I imagined. That they have held out until now rests entirely on that eighteenth-stage, and if anything happens to him, this world’s line of defence will very likely collapse altogether in an extremely short time!” Jie Ming thought to himself.

“It seems I shall have to move faster. At the very least I must get that eighteenth-stage expert out…”

Yes: in Jie Ming’s eyes that one eighteenth-stage expert was very likely worth more than the entire plane cluster.

Wizards had never minded absorbing the geniuses of other races, so long as the other party was willing to sign a contract and acknowledge himself a member of wizard civilisation.

What was more, the principal race of this plane was a human subspecies, which left even less to discuss.

Jie Ming condensed a light screen out of his mental energy and called up a rough map of the Northwestern War Zone.

Before long he had marked on it several places where surviving human strongholds might remain, along with a great many fallen regions occupied by otherworldly creatures.

After a moment’s thought he set his finger on one position, then turned his head toward Jack.

“We shall go here first. I want a human stronghold under my control as soon as possible, and then I shall bring the strength of your body up.”

“At present you are roughly at the level of a second-level formal wizard. Go a little further up and the mental energy I can send through will rise considerably, and then we can start preparing to open the spatial passage.”

He finished and looked at Jack; Jack looked back at him.

The wind on the open waste blew past the two of them, carrying up a swirl of dead grass and grit.

“I have not agreed yet!” Jack felt the words squeezed out between his teeth.

Jie Ming put the light screen away and nodded casually. “I know. But you understand the situation as well as I do. I cannot simply let you walk away now. So… shall we go?”

Jack clenched his teeth, and after a long while let out a dispirited breath.

He knew Jie Ming was right. With the gap in combat power between them as it stood, the other was merely notifying him.

“Let us go,” Jack said.

At that the corner of Jie Ming’s mouth lifted slightly. He said nothing more, only beckoned Jack to come a little closer and set off the spatial teleportation.

…

…

In another world, in the main laboratory of the Infernal Sulfur Plane, Jie Ming sat at his workbench and set down the secondary control crystal in his hand.

After a moment’s thought he sent a meeting invitation through the magical network terminal to every wizard he had notified before.

On the light screen, figure after figure lit up one after another.

Jie Ming told them all of the intelligence gathered on Jack’s side, and the light screen laid out the number of traces of invasion in that world, along with a rough analysis of the fifteen advanced civilisations.

When he had finished, a brief silence fell over the meeting room.

“That is rather a lot.”

Teacher Kastilla was the first to speak, but there was not the least worry in her tone; on the contrary it carried a keen, itching excitement.

“It would be splendid if the other side had a ninth-level creature. The value of a single ninth-level creature would be enough to call the eighth-level wizards over in support. In that case the battle would hold no suspense at all.”

“Assuming they have one.” Clark took up the thread flatly. “The most troublesome case is that they have nothing but eighth-level creatures. Then we shall have to fight them one by one ourselves.”

“All of you had better prepare more cannon-fodder units.” Clark’s gaze swept over them all. “I shall explain matters to the Mentor. If need be, we can submit a fine to force the mandatory leave period shorter.”

Wizard Augusta nodded in agreement. “As it happens, those several eighth-level wizards are studying the ninth-level creature we captured earlier. If we truly meet a ninth-level target, we can call them in for support at any time. So we need only be prepared to deal with eighth-level creatures.”

Everyone present nodded.