I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 930: The Springboard World

The Holy Spirit race’s council hall floated amid a haze of dark purple cloud.

The hall itself was an enormous dome woven from translucent biological carapace, its interior vast enough to hold tens of thousands of Holy Spirits.

Beneath the dome, a dozen or so massive eighth-level Holy Spirits sat coiled on their respective seats, their tentacles interlaced and entwined, giving off a low mental resonance.

Around them were more than a hundred seventh-level Holy Spirits, lying quietly on the carapace floor and awaiting the orders of those of higher station, like attendants.

“These newly arrived creatures: what do you all make of them?” The foremost Holy Spirit King tapped the edge of his pedestal with a tentacle, his mental fluctuations carrying undisguised greed. “I have read the intelligence on them, and their numbers are indeed enormous. Any world that can raise a cannon-fodder legion like that must be worth a great deal in its own right.”

“We can take that world as the appetiser.” Another eighth-level Holy Spirit King took up the thread, his tentacles spreading in excitement. “Before we attack the Central World, we take that world first and use its resources to strengthen ourselves. Once we are fully prepared, then we launch the all-out assault on the Central World.”

“I would advise you not to underestimate that world.” A Holy Spirit King whose every tentacle had been severed gave a cold laugh.

Without a doubt, he was the unlucky fellow who had earlier tried to invade the Infernal Sulfur Plane in reverse and ended up having to sever his own tentacles.

“You took one loss, that is all, and it has made you this timid?!” The Holy Spirit King in the first seat flicked his tentacles disdainfully.

“From the intelligence you provided, all they did was pin you down by sheer numbers. Before real strength they are not worth mentioning!”

“Yes, yes!”

“Hahahaha, to think you have actually turned this timid!”

“A handful of primitive creatures like that, beating us? Not a chance in hell!”

Listening to the mockery of his kin all around him, the Holy Spirit King with the severed tentacles felt a flash of humiliation too, and began to wonder whether his retreat had been too hasty.

After all, those primitive creatures had not managed to stop his escape at all, which showed their standard was nothing special. There was no need to worry at all!

“And what of the division of that earlier world?” an eighth-level Holy Spirit asked impatiently.

“The Holy Spirit Council has already drawn up a preliminary division.” The King in the first seat raised a tentacle and projected a rough map into the void. “The East Continent has the richest resources, but also the tightest defences, so we will not get a bite of it. The insect-men resources of the West Continent go to…”

“Great kings.” A seventh-level Holy Spirit suddenly raised its head from the carapace floor, a flicker of unease in its compound eyes. “I have just received a warning. Something has invaded.”

The council chamber fell silent at once.

Every tentacle stopped moving at the same moment, and the compound eyes of the dozen-odd eighth-level Holy Spirits turned as one toward that seventh-level Holy Spirit.

“What is it?” The Holy Spirit King’s voice sank.

“We do not recognise them. They are pouring out of a newly opened spatial passage in great numbers and sweeping away the springboard world’s garrison legion. The batfolk cannot hold them at all; they collapse at the first contact.”

The Holy Spirit King was silent for a few seconds. Then his tentacles slowly curled, and he gave a low, cold laugh.

“It seems that newly arrived otherworldly army is bolder than we expected.” His mental fluctuations carried the anger of one who has been affronted.

“To dare chase us straight to the springboard world. So be it; that saves us the trouble of hunting for their world. Since they have delivered themselves to our door, we will eat them first, then follow their passage back and counterattack.”

He turned to the other eighth-level Holy Spirits. “Muster every force we have and make for the springboard world. I want that army to come and never leave.”

Outside the council chamber, a crowd of batfolk huddled trembling on either side of the passageway.

They were close to humans in build, but their whole bodies were covered in black fur. Broad wing membranes were folded against their backs, and they had jutting snouts and sharp fangs.

These batfolk were the natives of the Holy Spirit race’s springboard world; after the Holy Spirit race descended, their whole species had been utterly conquered.

The Holy Spirits had implanted a special biological tentacle into their nervous systems, one that reached deep into the brainstem and permanently rewrote their consciousness.

From the day of implantation on, they were no longer independent lives, but extensions of the Holy Spirit race’s will.

At this moment, these batfolk guards were receiving the Holy Spirit race’s orders through their biological tentacles.

Terrified, they turned and ran for their respective posts, preparing to face the coming invasion.

…

…

Elsewhere, Jie Ming’s army passed through the spatial passage and set foot on the soil of the springboard world.

The moment he arrived, he frowned.

“What a weak Plane Origin…”

But Jie Ming quickly understood. “As one of the advanced civilisations, the Holy Spirit race must also have used another race’s world as a springboard to invade Jack’s plane.”

“The only difference from the other civilisations is that the Holy Spirit race did not hide behind the scenes, but stepped onto the field in person.”

He looked around and found himself standing inside an enormous biological structure.

Its inner walls were of translucent carapace, covered in vein-like patterns that were still pulsing.

Jie Ming had taken only a few steps when a crowd of batfolk guards came charging at him, shrieking.

They gripped weapons of bone, their wing membranes spread and their sharp fangs bared.

Jie Ming had no intention of lifting a finger. The Black Giant priest behind him struck first, and a blazing beam shot from its fingertip, instantly vaporising the few batfolk at the front of the charge.

The remaining batfolk fell back shrieking. A few of them turned and fled, letting out a piercing alarm call as they ran.

Jie Ming paid them no mind and broke straight through the structure’s carapace wall to the outside.

Outside lay a boundless plain.

Across the plain, tens of millions of batfolk were converging from every direction like a black tsunami.

“Most of these creatures are only at the third level, then.” Jie Ming looked them over and shook his head.

He turned and signalled to the Black Giant legion and the Dragonblood Mushroomman Legion behind him.

“Clear them out.”

“ROAR!!!” The Black Giant legion was the first to charge.

On the battlefield the sixth-level Black Giants needed almost no technique at all. Their liquid-metal bodies were immune to every attack the batfolk had, and with each opening and closing of the vertical mouths in their chests they swallowed batfolk by the swathe.

The dragonblood mushroom-men, meanwhile, formed up in neat square formations and flattened the batfolk lines through sheer weight of numbers and the gulf in strength.

The clearing took less than half an hour.

The batfolk army of tens of millions was wiped out, leaving the plain strewn with nothing but scattered corpses and shattered carapace.

Jie Ming made a circuit of the battlefield and casually plucked one of the batfolk, not yet quite dead, out of a pile of corpses.

He sent in his mental energy and swiftly scanned its nervous system.

“As I thought… No wonder they fought to the death without retreating. They were under control long ago.”

Deep in its brainstem, a special biological tentacle had been implanted. It had fused completely with the nervous system and controlled all of its perception and action.

This control was permanent; from the moment of implantation, the host lost any independent sense of self.

“The Holy Spirit race’s handiwork.” Jie Ming let go, dropping the batfolk corpse to the ground.

“It seems I have not followed the wrong trail.”

Through that scan, he had already extracted some fragments of memory from its surviving neural circuits.

Those fragments held information on this world’s overall structure, as well as the location of the Holy Spirit race’s main stronghold in this world: the Holy City.

It was the Holy Spirit race’s core stronghold in the springboard world; the commands carried by the neural tentacles of all the controlled batfolk originated there.

Jie Ming withdrew his mental energy and issued a new order to the legion behind him.

The Black Giant priests swiftly organised the troops, and the Black Giant legion and the Dragonblood Mushroomman Legion finished assembling in a very short time.

Jie Ming hovered directly above his legion, dark golden light flowing around him.

He raised his hand and pointed in the direction marked in the memory fragments.

“Move out. Target: the Holy City!”