Translator: AnubisTL
It wasn't just Jieming and Viola; the other logistics wizards clearly shared the same sentiment.
Jieming stretched lazily. "The camp's main task now should be to expand the geological survey and confirm this theory, right?"
Viola pulled a chair over from the side and settled into it leisurely. "Exactly. Such a crucial matter needs to be verified immediately. The camp's focus will likely shift to this."
"Then we're off the hook. Finally, we can get some rest..."
This was why the two had simultaneously breathed a sigh of relief.
After all, geological drilling and sample collection didn't require specialized logistics wizards. Most wizards could learn the basics with a little training.
Moreover, confirming the data would require a large team, so the bulk of the task would fall to the combat wizards.
In any case, combat wizards were already running around the Flamefrost Plane all the time. This mission would simply involve them collecting samples while mining for resources.
Viola swung her legs casually. "So what do you plan to do with your free time?"
"Me?" Jieming leaned back in his chair, gazing up at the camp's ceiling. "I plan to go for a walk."
"You young folks are full of energy," Viola teased. "We old folks need to rest in the camp for a few more days..."
Jieming smiled and shook his head, saying nothing more.
It's time to venture deeper into enemy territory and gather more Mortal Dust Qi, Jieming thought.
This had been his original mission all along, but he hadn't anticipated how much work the logistics wizards had piled on, delaying his departure until now.
Though the wizards had provided him with a considerable amount of Mortal Dust Qi during this time, it was still far from the amount Jieming needed.
Without alerting anyone, he quietly put away his research reports and changed into a more practical wizard robe.
Setting the magic net terminal to the lowest contact permissions, Jieming cast a flight spell and soared straight toward the depths of the Blazing Sun Realm.
To maximize his collection of Mortal Dust Qi, he decided to first visit the Blazing Sun Realm, then move on to the Frostdark Realm, aiming to cover the core regions of both extreme civilizations.
Coincidentally, the entire Wizard Camp was currently sending out wizards to collect geological samples for the geological survey mission, which was related to confirming earlier intelligence. With wizards flying about in all directions, Jieming's departure went unnoticed.
The Blazing Sun Realm was a true scorched earth wasteland.
After flying for several days, Jieming arrived at a desolate, lifeless place covered in volcanic ash, with lava occasionally flowing across the landscape.
The air was thick with the smell of sulfur and minerals, and the ground beneath his feet glowed a disturbing crimson. Several dormant volcanoes, still emitting plumes of white smoke, dotted the horizon.
The environment here was even harsher than around the Wizard Camp.
Jieming had landed here because his senses had locked onto a peculiar area: a somewhat dilapidated ruin, the remains of a town once inhabited by lava giants.
The charred stone structures stood in crumbling fragments, their silhouettes stark and desolate under the eternal sun.
Even in its ruined state, the site still told Jieming that dense lava giant settlements had once thrived here.
Due to the wizards' activities, the lava giants had been forced to retreat repeatedly. When he finally stumbled upon this ruin, Jieming hoped to find new clues.
Just as he was preparing to land and carefully inspect the ruins, he suddenly sensed an unusual energy fluctuation.
Several faint but rapidly moving life energy signatures were approaching from ahead.
"Looks like I got lucky and ran right into them," Jieming chuckled softly.
Through the information relayed by his scouting eye, Jieming identified three second-tier lava giants and over a hundred first-tier ones—undoubtedly a small lava giant reconnaissance team.
The group of lava giants clearly spotted Jieming as well.
They locked onto the wizard hovering in mid-air, and after a brief moment of surprise, erupted in deafening roars.
In their eyes, a lone first-tier wizard daring to trespass into their territory was practically walking into a trap!
"Intruder! Die!" the leading second-tier lava giant roared, spewing a torrent of molten rock from its mouth. The other lava giants on the ground simultaneously gathered their strength, preparing to attack.
Jieming wasted no time. The six autonomous floating cannons behind him instantly activated, their dark barrels rotating in the air, light flickering.
Over the past year, he had partially modified these cannons, enabling them to maintain wide-area fire coverage while also executing more precise sniping and targeted elimination.
"Clear!" Jieming gave the simple command.
In the next instant, the six floating cannons unleashed their full firepower. Hundreds of missiles and energy beams cascaded down like a dazzling net of death, instantly engulfing the hundred-plus first-tier lava giants.
These low-tier lava giants, lacking flexibility and precise defenses, offered almost no resistance.
Under the relentless barrage of firepower, their bodies crumbled like paper. In mere seconds, they were blasted into shattered fragments, reduced to countless charred rock fragments.
Jieming, meanwhile, focused his attention on the three second-tier lava giants.
The offensive rune-imbued magical artifact on his right wrist hummed as three razor-sharp light blades shot out almost simultaneously. Their speed was so blindingly fast that the giants had no time to react.
These three second-tier lava giants clearly possessed superior defensive instincts and quicker reflexes.
They immediately swung their massive lava hands to block, but Jieming's rune-imbued magical artifact moved too swiftly. The light blades tore through their molten armor without missing a beat.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Three dull thuds echoed as the light blades precisely struck their vulnerable core regions—Jieming, through a year of research, had analyzed the lava giants' weaknesses with unparalleled thoroughness.
The light blades exploded upon impact, their powerful shockwaves precisely disrupting the lava cores within the giants' bodies.
The three second-tier lava giants didn't even have time to cry out. Like statues stripped of their core components, they crashed to the ground with a clatter. The flow of lava within them halted, and they froze into rigid, lifeless figures.
The entire battle had lasted less than ten seconds. The lava giant reconnaissance team, which had been so menacing just minutes before, now lay reduced to piles of scorched rubble and charred remains amidst the ruins.
"It seems my newly developed spell is quite effective," Jieming nodded in satisfaction.
The rune-imbued magical artifact on his wrist stored a spell that was a byproduct of his year-long modifications to the "lava annihilation" spell.
He had optimized it for rapid release and added an automatic locking function.
Combined with the devastating power of targeted destructive magic against its designated targets, it could kill even a second-tier being in a single strike.
This was the terrifying power of wizards. Once they conducted in-depth research into a specific race, their destructive capabilities could become truly monstrous.
Jieming approached the corpse of a second-tier lava giant, pulled out a fourth-tier Soul-Searching Spell Artifact, and gently pressed it against its core.
The light of his "Universal Eye" flared again. Under the spell's influence, his vast mental power extended like tendrils, carefully probing the residual soul fragments within the lava giant's body to perform a soul search.
From the shattered memory fragments of the lava giants, he quickly gathered valuable intelligence: their recent activity range, gathering points, and methods of concealment.
As expected, after a year of intense combat, the lava giants had grown wiser.
They no longer ventured easily to the surface, spending most of their time hidden deep within the earth meridians or even directly submerged in scorching lava.
These lava regions, with their extreme temperatures and immense pressures, effectively blocked most first-tier wizards.
Even second-tier wizards would expend vast amounts of mental power to maintain their defenses during prolonged exposure to lava, severely depleting their combat effectiveness and hindering pursuit efforts.
But this posed no problem for Jieming!
Though still a first-tier wizard, his body had been tempered through the profound body tempering method on the Elosia Plane, making his physical strength far beyond what wizards of his tier could imagine.
With his bare body, he could withstand the lava's heat and the underground pressure without constantly maintaining a draining energy shield.
"Found it," Jieming murmured, his gaze locking onto a massive underground lava network from the memory.
Jieming soared into the air, following the lava giant's remembered path to a massive active volcano.
Inside the crater, molten lava flowed slowly, radiating suffocating heat.
Without hesitation, Jieming stored his clothes in his internal space and leaped into the bubbling, fiery magma!
The crimson lava instantly engulfed him, but no energy shield formed around him.
His formidable physique allowed him to effortlessly navigate the molten flow.
The only drawback was the lava's immense density, which made graceful swimming impossible. Instead, he moved more like a mole digging through the earth.
Sighing, Jieming used his hands like giant shovels, forcefully carving a stable tunnel through the magma.
The surrounding lava was temporarily pushed aside by his strength, creating space for him to advance.
Like a true subterranean creature, he rapidly descended through the scorching lava, plunging into the earth meridian.
Soon, guided by his memory, he arrived at an outer entrance to the lava giants' settlement.
Jieming immediately encountered his first problem: the entrance wasn't blocked by simple rock, but by a nearly materialized energy barrier!
The barrier was semi-transparent and orange-red, its surface shimmering with complex, primal runes that emanated an unsettlingly powerful energy.
It was deeply fused with the surrounding earth meridian energy, as if it were a part of the underground lava itself, making it utterly indestructible.
Jieming released a faint mental power to probe the barrier and quickly assessed its strength.
It wasn't merely defensive; it also seemed to possess some kind of energy-devouring effect.
Though this effect was simple in itself, with the support of the surrounding earth meridian energy, it transformed the barrier into an exceptionally fortified fortress.
After exhausting all his methods, Jieming found no way to breach it.
With his current knowledge and power, a forceful attempt would likely fail even if he depleted all his mental power.
Using the "Great Light Phase" could punch through, but such a massive disturbance would alert the lava giants, allowing them to escape through the earth meridians before he could break through.
Moreover, the barrier was part of the warning system. Any breach, regardless of method, would immediately alert the lava giants within.
Yet, instead of despair, a smile crept into Jieming's eyes.
For he couldn't help but recall a famous quote from his previous life: "When a door becomes too strong, the wall becomes the door."
Ignoring the impenetrable energy barrier, Jieming simply "swam" back into the volcano, following the tunnel he'd previously dug to return to the lava passage near the entrance.
He set his sights on the thick, solid rock wall—the very wall "protected" by the energy barrier.
Unfortunately, being submerged in lava prevented Jieming from taking a deep breath.
Still, he composed himself, activated his alchemy, and skillfully channeled his mental power into the volcanic rock wall.
Invisible drills seemed to materialize before his hands, and the rock face automatically parted to either side in the areas he focused on.
Jieming began excavating from the wall beside the tunnel.
This time, he wasn't carving through lava, but digging into the solid volcanic rock and solidified lava layers!
Under his alchemy, the rigid crust softened like quicksand, only to instantly solidify again in the next moment, creating a narrow operational space for himself.
As Jieming dug forward, he filled in the space behind him to prevent the lava from pressing in.
The intense heat and immense pressure constantly bore down on him from all sides, but thanks to his formidable physical defenses, none of it could affect him.
Through precise alchemical control and unwavering mental power, Jieming had painstakingly burrowed over a kilometer into the solid rock beneath the lava!
Crack...
With a faint crunch, the rock wall ahead thinned.
Jieming once again employed his alchemy, carefully pushing aside the final layer of stone.
An unprecedented wave of scorching air and the pungent stench of sulfur rushed toward him!
He leaped out of the narrow passage, landing steadily on the blistering ground.
With a casual sweep of his hand, he sealed the stone wall behind him.
Before him lay a vast, blazing underground cavern.
The space was far larger than he had imagined, with towering walls ablaze with flames. Massive lava crystals embedded in the walls emitted a searing glow.
Nearby, he could hear the deep groans of shifting lava, and...
The low roars and guttural conversations of a massive number of lava giants!
A cold smile curled at the corner of Jieming's lips as he narrowed his eyes.
He had successfully bypassed the most formidable "door" and slipped through the "wall," successfully infiltrating the lava giants' true lair.
(End of the Chapter)
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