Chapter 426: Trade and Information
Translator: AnubisTL
Inside the core control room of the Purgatory Sulfur Plane, Jieming levitated in mid-air.
Thousands of runic bands of light swirled around him, each connected to a massive, three-dimensional magical formation model below—a partial optimization scheme for a certain spell.
His left hand formed a loose fist, and a mass of pale-gold liquid condensed from incense power slowly shifted its shape. His right hand swept through the void, leaving behind a series of complex wizard runes.
Just then, a deep purple crystal embedded in the wall of the control room trembled slightly.
That was Viola’s dedicated communication rune. Only a few individuals approved by Jieming could send a direct teleportation request to the Purgatory Sulfur Plane.
Jieming’s brow twitched slightly. He swept his divine sense over the crystal, and only after confirming it was Senior Sister Viola’s own aura did he slowly descend to the ground.
He snapped his fingers, and his research robes were instantly replaced by a simple black wizard’s robe, its hem faintly visible with fine silver-threaded talismanic seals.
“Teleportation approved.”
As the words fell, the space at the side of the control room began to warp, and a stable portal quickly materialized.
Jieming stepped through, and in the next instant, he appeared in the meeting room on the other side of the plane.
The decor here was a stark departure from the traditional style of the wizard world. The walls were crafted from warm, smooth jade, and the floor was covered in a flame-plush carpet that automatically adjusted its temperature. In the center of the room hovered a set of tables and chairs carved from obsidian and lava crystal—all native to the Purgatory Sulfur Plane.
As the teleportation light faded, Viola’s figure materialized.
Jieming froze.
His senior sister, who he remembered as always elegant and composed, her silver-gray hair cascading like a moonlit waterfall, now looked… disheveled.
Her deep purple wizard’s robe was coated in dust, its hem scorched in several places. Strands of her smooth, long hair stood on end, and a faint smudge of gray marred her face.
More importantly, her aura was visibly unstable; the law fluctuations that should have been steady for a sixth-tier wizard were now chaotic.
The moment Viola appeared, she collapsed backward into the nearest obsidian chair like a zombie that had lost its support, letting out a long, weary breath.
“Senior sister?” Jieming walked over and sat across from her, then raised his hand to brew two cups of spirit tea. “This is brewed with Molten Heart Flower and frost moss, specialties of the Purgatory Sulfur Plane. It’s exceptionally effective for stabilizing the spirit.”
Viola took the teacup and drained it in one gulp, finally catching her breath.
“I almost got swept up in the aftershocks of that madwoman’s experiment…” she muttered, then glanced at Jieming. “Your place is actually quite nice. It’s a lot better than that hellhole, Starfall.”
“Wizard Starfall?” Jieming immediately seized on the key name. “You just got back from her place?”
“What else?” Viola rubbed her temples. “That woman used the ‘Imaginary Element’ she got from you to find her own path to seventh-tier advancement. After completing the initial verification, she kicked me out—her ‘temporary assistant’—saying she needed to enter secluded cultivation to perform her Core Construction.”
“So, Senior Sister, you’ve come here to…” Jieming asked tentatively.
“Procure.” Viola sat up straight. Though her appearance was disheveled, her silver-gray eyes had regained their usual sharpness. “Procure in bulk. Starfall asked me to give you this.”
She flicked a transparent, diamond-shaped crystal onto the table.
Jieming swept it with his divine sense, and his pupils suddenly constricted.
Stored within the crystal was a string of Military Merit Account information and a number that made him gasp in shock: 10 billion low-tier military merit.
“This…” Jieming wore a rare look of awkwardness. “Senior Sister, I’m afraid I can’t gather this amount in a short time. I’ve been using Imaginary Elements to reshape the plane lately, and it’s been a huge drain.”
He pointed out the window. Through the observation pane of the meeting room, the Purgatory Sulfur Plane’s signature dark red sky was visible, with a river of lava flowing slowly in the distance.
Even with the Incense Divine Path continuously converting power, and billions of Black Giants acting as believers to produce incense power, which was then processed through the Element-Spiritual Energy Conversion System to generate spiritual energy… the total accumulation over all these years still wouldn’t reach this level.
Besides, Jieming needed to maintain the plane’s own operation and fund his own research.
Viola waved her hand, signaling him not to worry.
“Starfall knows that. Her exact words were: ‘Take as much as you can for now, then send more batches over every so often.’ Anyway…” She paused, a subtle smile playing on her lips. “According to her estimates, even if she finds the Path, she’s still several thousand years away from a true advancement to the seventh tier. That’s plenty of time for you to produce it slowly.”
Jieming breathed a sigh of relief, but his brow soon furrowed again.
A continuous supply for several thousand years?
Demand on this scale could never be for a mere laboratory experiment…
The conversation between the two women just before he left Wizard Starfall’s plane flashed through his mind, and a possibility surfaced.
“She needs so much…” Jieming began slowly, his tone tentative. “She couldn’t be planning to… activate the entire plane, could she?”
The smile on Viola’s face froze for a fraction of a second.
Though it lasted only a heartbeat, Jieming’s keen eyes caught that flicker of unnaturalness.
“You’re too sharp,” Viola sighed, making no attempt to deny it. “Yes, that is her ‘project.’ Using the Imaginary Element you provide as the core medium, combined with her own Spirituality Law and the living plane data I supply, she is attempting to fully activate the ‘Shattered Star Plane’ under her control.”
Jieming couldn’t help but gasp.
He truly hadn’t expected Wizard Starfall to actually put that seemingly fantastical idea into practice.
To endow a plane—one that previously possessed only basic material circulation and energy flow—with a complete embryonic self-awareness… This was equivalent to artificially creating a living plane!
If she succeeded, Starfall would not only step into the seventh tier but could even directly secure a high-ranking position within it.
If she failed…
“What about the safety measures?” Jieming asked, his voice grave. “If the full activation experiment spirals out of control, the resulting plane consciousness rampage, chain reaction of law collapse, and energy tide backlash… Even just the loss of control over the activated plane would cause catastrophic consequences.”
Viola shrugged unceremoniously.
“That’s exactly what I’m about to do,” she said, her tone terrifyingly calm. “I plan to purchase three ‘Plane Destruction Devices,’ order ‘Phase Isolation Shields’ from the Void Architecture Institute, and buy a batch of ‘Law Stabilization Anchors’ from the Negentropy Alliance… If the experiment fails, I’ll have to activate the destruction sequence in a short amount of time, completely erasing the Shattered Star Plane—and whatever malformed consciousness might be born from it—from the level of reality.”
Jieming fell silent for a moment, finally shaking his head in admiration.
“Truly… what guts.”
Even for a seventh-tier wizard, a plane under their complete control was an extremely precious asset. For a sixth-tier wizard, such a plane could practically be considered their entire net worth.
Starfall’s daring to use her own core plane for this all-or-nothing experiment truly lived up to her name.
“So, how much can you provide in the first batch?” Viola got back to the point.
Jieming closed his eyes, focusing his divine sense as it connected to the core of the Plane Manipulation Formation.
A panoramic map of the Incense Divine Path Network unfolded in his mind: the energy conduits spanning the entire Purgatory Sulfur Plane. Through the three hundred and sixty Element-Spiritual Energy Conversion Towers scattered across the plane, the massive amounts of elements provided by the seventh-tier large elemental pool were being continuously transformed into spiritual energy and stored within the natural spiritual veins deep in the earth.
“I can spare half of the current reserves,” Jieming opened his eyes. “But I need some time for high-purity compression and sealing. Using Sixth-Tier Small Elemental Pools as containers will minimize transportation losses.”
“Alright,” Viola nodded. “The container cost will be billed separately and deducted from my account.”
Jieming didn’t stand on ceremony and immediately accessed the formation’s authority.
The entire Purgatory Sulfur Plane trembled slightly.
Deep within the earth veins, a massive amount of pale blue spiritual energy was extracted, converging at the control tower at the plane’s core through the Incense Divine Path Network.
Jieming manipulated the Plane Control Formation, concentrating this staggering power.
The spiritual energy visibly condensed from gas to liquid, then compressed from liquid into a viscous gel, before finally transforming into thousands of azure crystals, each the size of a fingernail.
This process lasted a full six hours.
When the last Spiritual Energy Crystal dropped into the prepared Sixth-Tier Small Elemental Pool, the pool’s surface was already covered in a pale blue glow.
The runes, which had dimmed due to energy depletion, reignited, shining even more brilliantly than they ever had at their peak.
“Here,” Jieming pushed the sealed Small Elemental Pool toward Viola. “It contains the total energy of approximately five hundred standard Fifth-Tier Small Elemental Pools, all stored in crystal form. You’ll need to use the decompression formation I’ve included before drawing from it, otherwise, a direct extraction will cause an energy rampage.”
Viola took the elemental pool, feeling the surging energy fluctuations within it, and nodded in satisfaction.
She tossed out a silver rune crystal. “For future deliveries, teleport them directly to these coordinates. Starfall has set up an automatic receiving formation. As long as the energy signature matches, the goods will be sent directly into the Shattered Star Plane’s reserve vault.”
With the transaction complete, Viola rose to leave.
But just as the teleportation light flared, she seemed to remember something and turned back to Jieming.
“By the way, your mandatory rest period… it’s almost up, isn’t it?”
Jieming blinked, then nodded. “About three years left.”
“Any word on your next support plane?”
“Uh…” Jieming showed a rare look of embarrassment. “I’ve been so immersed in iterating my wizardry and knowledge these past few decades that I haven’t checked the mission notices from the Military Department yet.”
Viola shook her head, a “just as I thought” expression crossing her delicate face.
“You really need to step out of the lab and get some fresh air sometimes,” she said with a sigh. “Go on, check the messages and prepare. This is likely your last short-term mandatory rest period. Once you advance to a fifth-tier wizard, your rest periods will be forcibly extended.”
As her words faded, the light of teleportation swallowed her figure.
Silence returned to the parlor.
Jieming stood where he was, lost in thought for a moment before raising his hand to summon his magic net terminal.
A translucent screen unfolded in the air, the bright red “Unread Messages: 127” in the top right corner glaringly obvious.
Most were automated notifications from the Military Department, royalty reports for technical patents, and various collaboration invitations.
He filtered directly for the “Military Orders” category.
Three messages marked with urgent symbols popped up.
The first was sent two hundred years ago, notifying him that his rest period was halfway over and he could apply for combat duty early.
It was completely useless to him.
The second was from fifty years ago, inquiring if he was interested in participating in a certain “High-Risk Plane Exploration Project” (already expired).
The third…
Sent: Seven days ago.
(End of the Chapter)