I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 927: The Strongest One and the Legions

The Holy Spirit’s eye rose swiftly all of a sudden, and there was Jie Ming, his whole body in ruins, appearing high in the air.

His left arm was gone, his right leg was no more than a half-length below the knee, and his robe was torn as though a pack of wild beasts had savaged it.

But Jie Ming’s gaze was as calm as ever.

Countless tentacles stretched down from the clouds once more, closing in to strangle Jie Ming like a net cast over heaven and earth.

“In any case, the preparations that needed making are done.” Jie Ming flexed the one right hand he had left, and dark golden light kindled at his fingertips. “Let us use what strength remains to have a fight with you.”

Several beams of Trigram Fire Annihilation Divine Light shot from his fingertips. The dark golden shafts punched through the first few tentacles to lunge at him, blasting charred black holes across the surface of their carapace.

But once pierced the tentacles paused for only an instant; the carapace at the broken places grew back at once, and they came whipping on as good as new.

Jie Ming moved rapidly through the air, releasing several layers of protective spells.

Each time a tentacle struck them, these protective spells shattered, and in the instant of shattering he would condense another layer, holding out by a rhythm that came close to trading wound for wound.

Now and then Jie Ming managed to shatter one or two of the tentacles lashing at him, but for the most part he was the one taking the beating.

After all, this body had already exhausted its reserves earlier, protecting the base, and was now barely running at all on scattered energy drawn in on the spot.

Before long the already ruined body had become still more of a wreck.

“It seems this is about the limit.”

Jie Ming looked down at his mutilated body and prepared to meet that final blow.

Then the Holy Spirit suddenly burst apart.

Without any warning, that mass of sky-blotting tentacles, together with the alien creatures around it that had not managed to withdraw in time, burst apart in the same instant.

Tentacles snapped, carapace crumbled, compound eyes ruptured, and green body fluid and grey fragments sprayed in every direction.

But Jie Ming’s body was more than half beaten to pieces by the tentacles’ dying counterstroke as well, and now only a head was left in anything like one piece.

Looking at the scene before him, Jie Ming was stunned for a moment, and then he sensed the person in front of him.

An old man.

He looked impossibly old.

His skin hung slack on his frame, his hair was almost entirely white, his back was slightly stooped, and his clothes hung loose and shapeless on him.

Yet it was a man like this who had just now, without a sound or a sign, wiped out the entire Holy Spirit along with every alien creature around it.

Jie Ming looked at the old man and clicked his tongue in admiration. “No wonder these fellows have been so active of late. So that is how it is. By the look of things, your lifespan is close to its limit.”

The old man did not answer.

He hung in the empty air, his clouded eyes looking over the one head Jie Ming had left.

His energy fluctuations far surpassed any existence Jie Ming had sensed before. That power was deep and heavy, like a star burnt down to its last age and on the verge of collapse: though the outside still blazed, the core had already shown a weakening that could not be concealed.

Jie Ming finally understood why those alien races had suddenly become so active.

He had all along been instinctively applying the circumstances of other races and of wizards to this man, and had forgotten one very important matter.

Lifespan.

Humans were an extremely fragile race, and what was more, the transcendent power this world’s human civilisation commanded was itself an emergency product, evolved in haste under the pressure of the mutation, and carried all manner of inborn defects.

Even a powerhouse who had reached the old man’s level could not shake off the shackles of lifespan.

Those alien races had clearly got word that this strongest one’s lifespan was about to reach its limit, which was why they kept stirring up incidents, pulling at his attention and draining his energy, and so hastening his death.

Just then, another surge of power erupted from the wreckage of the Holy Spirit race’s shattered mother-body.

Dense patterns unfolded in the air. Judging by the eighth-level energy coming off them, this was plainly the enemy’s fallback.

The old man raised a hand, ready to wipe this thing out along with the rest.

But Jie Ming interrupted him. “As I said before, my preparations are all but complete.”

“It will be a good while yet before that thing takes full shape. Leave it be. Come, let us have a talk.”

The old man drew back his hand and turned to look at Jie Ming, a flicker of curiosity passing through his clouded eyes. “You do not seem to fear me.”

Jie Ming used alchemy to condense a body anew. Skin, bone and muscle wove themselves rapidly into shape, and within a few breaths he was restored to what he had been.

He twisted his newborn neck, drawing a few crisp cracks from the joints. “You have already saved me. Naturally there is no need for me to be afraid.”

He raised a hand and worked a spatial teleportation, and a stable rift in space opened before the two of them. “Come, let us talk somewhere else. As it happens, I still have to go and arrange what comes next.”

The old man glanced at him, nodded, and offered no resistance, letting Jie Ming carry him away by spatial teleportation.

When the light of the teleportation faded, Jie Ming and the old man appeared in the cavern hall of the backup base.

The people around them saw Jie Ming return and at once crowded in.

“Lord Jie Ming! Are you all right?”

“The ground shook so hard just now, we thought…”

“Everyone made it, not a single one missing!”

Jie Ming nodded to them and quickly issued several instructions, assigning people to take stock of supplies and to put up temporary living quarters.

Once the crowd had dispersed, Jack came over from the side.

First he gave Jie Ming a look of complicated feeling, and only after confirming that Jie Ming was whole and unharmed did he let out a breath.

But then his gaze shifted to the old man at Jie Ming’s side, and his whole body went instantly on guard, his hand moving without his meaning it to the short blade at his waist.

“No need to be tense.” Jie Ming waved it off. “The humans of this world of yours owe it to his efforts that they have survived this long.”

Jack was stunned for a moment, and then understood who the old man was.

He opened and closed his mouth, the astonishment on his face almost spilling over. “This… this is… that one?”

The old man was not looking at Jack.

His gaze swept over the people busy at work in the cavern.

They were clearing the ground and hauling supplies, and even though they had just been through such an upheaval, their faces still carried none of the usual fear and despair, but instead an emotion very rarely seen in this world: hope.

Children darted and scuffled among the adults, letting out clear peals of laughter from time to time.

The old man watched for a long while, then turned his head and said one thing to Jie Ming.

“If I hand humanity over to you, can you let them go on living like this?”

At those words Jack drew a sharp breath. “That means… surely you don’t mean…?!”

Jie Ming, for his part, smiled.

There was no surprise at all in his expression, as though he had long since foreseen the question.

After all, this was a piece he had set on the board long ago.

His willingness to take Jack as a disciple, his willingness to help these humans by the more troublesome route, was of course not merely a matter of the kindness in his heart. It had far more to do with the man in front of him.

To the wizard civilisation, a genius who could reach the equivalent of a seventh-level elite wizard on his own talent was worth even more than an entire plane cluster.

And this strongest one had been willing to guard human civilisation for several thousand years; his character was plain at a glance.

So Jie Ming was willing to show him the attitude the wizard civilisation took towards “its own people”, and by that means draw this genius in.

As it appeared now, the effect had been excellent.

After the smile, however, Jie Ming’s expression turned suddenly stern. “Of course not!”

Jack and the old man were both struck dumb at once.

Before they could react, Jie Ming went on. “Their present living conditions are the Prisoner-of-War Treaty. If they are willing to join the wizard civilisation and be converted into humans of the wizard world, then on the basis of that treaty they can be exempted from labour and receive free food… but if they want better food than that, they will have to rely on their own labour for it. Everyone has free medical care and education for life. For those with talent, the wizard civilisation will also provide a channel of advancement to becoming a transcendent…”

He rambled on at length, and the old man and Jack grew blanker the more they heard.

In the end the old man spoke without thinking. “They really need not live quite that well…”

Then he coughed in embarrassment, though at least Jack beside him wore the very same expression.

After all, the terms Jie Ming had described were simply too good to be true for them.

Jie Ming glanced at the pair of them and shook his head. “The wizard civilisation is a cruel one. It promotes by ability alone. A person without ability will be an ordinary person all his life, with no possibility of rising whatsoever. Only those with ability are qualified to rise!”

The old man and Jack exchanged a glance.

The two were silent for a moment, then the old man asked in a low voice, “That is… cruel?”

“Uh…” Jie Ming fell silent.

He became keenly aware of the gap between the two sides’ views of the world.

In the eyes of this world’s humans, steady food, medical care, education and a channel for advancement amounted to paradise.

Whereas in the wizard civilisation those things were no more than the most basic social guarantees, and what was truly cruel was the competition itself.

The process by which countless geniuses were sifted, eliminated and ground to pieces on one and the same platform could not be called anything but cruel.

“If everything you say is true.” The old man spoke at last, his voice slow and heavy. “Then I am willing to join that wizard civilisation, and willing to help bring humanity into it as well.”

Then he asked, “So when do you wizards descend?”

Jie Ming looked up at the roof of the cave with a smile. “Soon. It can be opened at any moment now.”

…

…

The Infernal Sulfur Plane.

More than twenty high-level wizards had gathered here.

Ten of them were seventh-level wizards, and the rest were all elites among the sixth level.

Their numbers were not large, but behind every one of them trailed a vast cannon-fodder legion.

Not far off, Wizard Augusta and Mentor Clark were still drawing on the power of space, sending cannon-fodder legions across in an unbroken stream.

The space beyond the Infernal Sulfur continent was already packed dense with cannon-fodder legions.

Hundreds of billions of monsters jostled and shoved together into one mass amid the mighty elements the wizards had set in motion, ferocious in appearance.

Set against that, Jie Ming’s Black Giants and Dragonblood Mushroomman Legion did not even stand out at all.

Jie Ming’s true body hung at the highest point of the Infernal Sulfur continent.

Suddenly he turned his head and looked at every wizard present.

“All of you, make ready.”

Every wizard fell silent at once, and then a terrifying momentum came surging up from each and every one of them!