I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 926: Shifting Position

The whole base was shaking. The metal walls gave off a piercing shriek as they twisted, and the light tubes in the ceiling burst one after another.

From outside came the alarmed cries and shouts of the human fighters, mixed with a kind of dull roar carried in from far away.

Jie Ming did not hesitate. He turned and walked out of the base.

Reaching the base’s observation platform and looking at the scene in the distance, Jie Ming let out a helpless sigh. “What a nuisance…”

On the horizon far off, enormous tentacles that blotted out the sky reached down from the clouds, countless of them like an eerie forest in the act of growing.

Those tentacles were somewhat smaller than the ones the Holy Spirit had shown when it erupted at the Northern War Zone base half a year ago. Their surfaces were covered in layer upon layer of grey carapace, and the carapace was covered all over with flowing runic patterns.

Among the tentacles, a huge spherical mass studded with compound eyes rose slowly, giving off a suffocating pressure.

The Holy Spirit race.

Jie Ming narrowed his eyes and quickly sensed the other side’s energy level. It ought to be sixth level, roughly the level of a sixth-level elite creature.

Clearly, these Holy Spirits had learned from the last time.

The upheaval in the Northern War Zone a year and more ago had taught the Holy Spirit race one thing: summoning an individual of excessive strength into this plane would, on the contrary, draw the attention of that eighteenth-stage transcendent, which amounted to seeking their own death.

So the individual summoned over this time had been held to the level of a sixth-level elite, strong enough to crush the combat power Anvil Base had displayed all along, yet not so strong as to trip the threshold at which that strongest of humans would intervene.

“No, they must have arranged other descents elsewhere as well, to draw that strongest one’s attention. Still… it really is a fine piece of scheming.” Jie Ming rubbed his chin, somewhat resigned.

Jack was still a little short of bringing his physique up to the level of a third-level wizard, which meant that at this stage the mental energy he could project was still at the level of a first-level formal wizard.

The ceiling on his combat power had not risen by very much. It amounted to no more than going from cutting a rather sorry figure against a sixth-level creature to cutting a rather respectable one.

Against a sixth-level elite of this sort, a hair’s breadth from rising to a seventh-level creature, the most Jie Ming could manage with the mental energy projected across at this stage was to fight it to a draw.

But as his earlier study of that parasite had shown, what the Holy Spirit race was best at was a war of attrition. Once he was dragged into a drawn-out fight, this body of his would sooner or later be worn dry.

At that thought, Jie Ming called out towards the corridor behind him. “Jack!”

By then Jack had already come running out of the corridor, his face covered in sweat, a bloodied short blade still gripped in his hand.

When he saw those sky-blotting tentacles in the distance, his whole body stiffened for a moment, but he quickly recovered.

Jack reported the situation quickly. “Those creatures have already pulled back. What do we do next?”

Jie Ming thought for a moment, then gave his orders. “Go and direct the crowd. Get everyone into the underground shelter. I have a spatial teleportation array prepared there; it can send you all to the backup base.”

Jack nodded and turned to run.

But a few steps on he stopped and looked back at Jie Ming, because Jie Ming showed no sign at all of moving.

“And you?”

“The moment that thing appeared it disturbed the spatial fluctuations all around. The array’s coordinates need recalculating.” Jie Ming raised his head and looked at the forest of tentacles slowly closing in. “And they certainly won’t stand by and watch us leave. I’ll stay here to buy time, and finish the parameters while I’m at it.”

Jack stared at his back for a while, then clenched his teeth, his voice sounding as though it were being squeezed out between them. “Don’t die.”

Jie Ming glanced back at him and laughed. “Have you forgotten, lad? This was never my real body to begin with. Dying is not much of a problem.”

Jack did not answer.

He stood where he was, his fists clenched until the knuckles went white.

After the betrayal he had suffered last time, once again he hated his own weakness.

If he were only a little stronger, if he could reach the physical level of a third-level formal wizard that Jie Ming spoke of, would Jie Ming not have to stay behind alone?

Would he not be able to fight at Jie Ming’s side?

“Don’t think too much about it.” Jie Ming seemed to see straight through what was in his mind. “There has never been such a thing as a perfect plan in this world. Go.”

Jack gritted his teeth, turned and ran, rushing deep into the base and issuing orders to everyone over the loudspeaker.

At Jack’s orders the crowd showed not the slightest panic.

Over this past year of training, they had long since grown used to obeying instructions.

The old held the children close, the young supported the wounded, and everyone streamed towards the underground shelter in good order.

Above ground, Jie Ming had already begun recalculating the spatial parameters.

His mental energy spread outwards, catching the disordered ripples the tentacle mother-body produced as it churned the structure of space.

Those ripples conflicted with the original coordinate parameters of the base’s teleportation array. Unless he found a way to separate the two, the spatial passage could not take stable shape at all.

With one hand he drew a light screen out of the empty air. Countless tiny runes poured down it like a waterfall, arranging and rearranging themselves at speed beneath his fingertips.

Suddenly, a tentacle came smashing down.

Whoosh!

The descending tentacle carried a piercing shriek of torn air, and just as it was about to touch the base, a semi-transparent screen of dark golden light spread open and held the tentacle back in mid-air.

Boom!!!

In the deafening blast, the light screen shuddered violently. A small piece of the carapace at the tentacle’s tip shattered in the collision, but new carapace at once welled out from within the tentacle and swiftly filled the gap.

“As expected, it won’t hold for long.” Jie Ming glanced at the energy readings flickering on the light screen.

What had blocked that blow just now was the protective array he had set up. He had hardly been idle over the past year and more; protective arrays and the like he had laid down in no small number, on and off.

But in the end time had been short, and he had not been able to build them into a system.

This set of arrays was already the best solution he could produce under the conditions available.

“It should hold for a few minutes. That will do.”

Before Jie Ming had finished speaking, tentacles came smashing down one after another on the other side!

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Cracks began to appear in the light screen, and the dark golden glow flickered unsteadily.

A watchtower at the edge of the base, one not taken into the protective array, was struck by a tentacle. Its steel structure twisted and deformed like a wrung-out towel, then snapped through the middle.

Fragments flew outwards and crashed into the wasteland in the distance, throwing up great clouds of dust.

To this terrifying show of force, Jie Ming paid not the slightest attention.

His fingers tapped rapidly across the light screen, feeding set after set of spatial parameters into the calculation model.

His mental energy ran at full power, stripping the spatial ripples churned up by the tentacle mother-body out of the array’s coordinate parameters one by one.

Another round of tentacles came down, and the light screen finally gave way.

Crack… bang!

The dark golden light burst into fragments that filled the sky, and the defensive array collapsed completely under the tentacles’ relentless pounding.

A tentacle swept across the base’s northern wall. The metal panels were torn up and rolled away like scraps of paper, and the several buildings behind the wall collapsed in an instant under the impact.

Blocks of concrete and lengths of rebar were flung into the air, then came pelting back down like rain.

Jie Ming still showed no sign of moving.

The parameter model on the light screen had been worked through to its final step. His fingers moved faster and faster, until the motion was almost too quick to follow.

One tentacle changed direction and came crashing straight down on the spot where he stood.

Jie Ming raised his head, and sensing that the signal had come through from Jack’s end that everyone was inside the underground shelter, a trace of a smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.

He tapped in one last set of runes. The spatial parameter model on the light screen flared bright, and the array’s coordinates were successfully corrected.

“Off you go.” His mental energy travelled through the array into the underground shelter.

In the underground shelter, the light of the spatial teleportation array flared up.

Tens of thousands of survivors stood within the array’s bounds, and all of them at once felt a weightlessness rise from under their feet as the scene around them began to twist and warp.

People cried out, instinctively catching hold of the hands of those beside them.

When the light faded, they were already standing on the teleportation platform of the backup base.

That was the fallback Jie Ming had arranged in advance, hidden in an underground cavern in the deepest part of the Northwestern War Zone.

And on the surface at Anvil Base, Jie Ming felt the teleportation array send back its confirmation signal of “everyone has arrived”, and at last let out a breath.

He lifted his head, looked at the tentacle coming down, and pulled the corner of his mouth into a curve.

The huge tentacle crashed down, and Jie Ming’s figure was swallowed in the dust its impact threw up.

The whole base was split in two down the middle. The metal buildings twisted into a mass of scrap iron, and the stone buildings were ground flat.

Those defensive works that humans had once taken such pride in were as fragile as toys before this single tentacle.

Even the alien creatures nearby that had not managed to flee far enough were blasted into pulp by the shock wave, or blown away to who knew where.

When the dust cleared, a deep gully had appeared in the centre of the base, running right across it.

The eye at the centre of the Holy Spirit race’s tentacles turned slowly, searching for any sign of Jie Ming.