Translator: AnubisTL
After an unknown amount of time, Jieming awoke naturally from his deep slumber.
He opened his eyes to the familiar runic lines on the laboratory's dome. A long-forgotten sense of mental clarity and physical refreshment washed over his entire body. The fatigue accumulated over fifty years, along with the numbness brought by endless slaughter, seemed to have been cleansed away by this complete sleep.
He rose and stretched his somewhat stiff limbs.
He didn't immediately dive into his research but first dealt with the backlog of pending matters. Through the magic net terminal, he quickly browsed and replied to the communication requests he had missed over the years. Most were invitations for academic exchange or routine notices from Noren Academy in the Elosia Plane.
Afterward, he carefully checked the operational status of the various facilities in the Elosia Plane laboratory. He then used a remote connection to confirm that the development of the Purgatory Sulfur Plane was proceeding normally. Only then did the heart that had been hanging in suspense finally settle.
Once all the trivial matters were handled, he brewed a cup of invigorating spirit leaf tea.
Sitting at the workbench, he began to systematically summarize the gains from this fifty-year expedition.
First, he took stock of the physical rewards—and Jieming shook his head helplessly.
Back on the Giant Spirit Realm battlefield, he had reaped a bountiful harvest thanks to the stellar performance of the [Great Light Phase] and the Black Giants, as well as the discovery of that treasure vault.
Energy crystals, soul crystals, and rare materials had piled up like mountains.
However, the Fungal Lord's eerie conceptual pollution had turned it all to ash.
To survive, he was forced to discard all physical spoils of war.
During the subsequent execution of the "Purification Protocol," he had strictly adhered to the principle of "destroy only, acquire nothing."
As a result, in terms of resources and experimental samples, he had' practically made a net investment with zero return.
Coupled with the massive energy reserves consumed and the cannon fodder units lost during the Giant Spirit Realm war...
"From the perspective of resources and military merits alone, this expedition was a complete disaster," Jieming muttered to himself, taking a sip of tea.
Despite his words, the smile on his face was impossible to suppress.
A wizard's value had never depended solely on material accumulation.
His true gains lay in knowledge.
His thoughts sank into the internal space within his body, where vast quantities of information packets—personally "disinfected" and verified as safe by Wizard Noren—were stored.
This was the diverse knowledge they had copied while purging destroyed civilizations—stripped of sensitive coordinates. It ranged from the Giant Spirit Realm's metal smelting and symbiote technology to the Mental Realm's spiritual network construction and the principles of illusion magic. It even included the biological structures, energy utilization, and unique technologies of the purged Golden Baboon Civilization and its associated cultures.
These knowledge packages were all-encompassing, chaotic yet precious.
During the execution of the "Purification Protocol," they were dismissed as useless byproducts.
But for the current Jieming, this was the most valuable treasure of the entire expedition—an inexhaustible spring of inspiration for his future research.
Beyond knowledge, there were the military merits.
Fifty years of information processing and cleanup tasks had earned him approximately five hundred thousand low-tier military merits.
Even for an ordinary third-tier wizard, this sum would be considered a fortune. But for Jieming, who held the patent for the [Self-Stabilizing Field Regulation Protocol] and received massive annual royalties, it was merely the icing on the cake.
The true surprise lay in the high-tier military merits.
Because this mission involved conceptual pollution and carried extreme risk, the Star Ring Federation had allocated an additional batch of high-tier military merits as a special reward.
Normally, this batch of military merits would only be distributed among Dixon, the other two seventh-tier wizards, and Wizard Noren.
However, during the battle in the Giant Spirit Realm, although Jieming did not directly discover the Fungal Lord pollution, his abnormal state had caught Dixon's attention, indirectly facilitating the warning.
He was considered to have "contributed to civilization" and thus exceptionally awarded one hundred thousand high-tier military merits!
If one hundred thousand high-tier military merits were simply converted into various general resources based on the official exchange rate, their value would only be approximately one million low-tier military merits.
This figure was nothing compared to Jieming's annual patent income.
But the true value of high-tier military merits was far from this.
This general equivalent, issued directly by the Star Orbit Tribunal, was jointly recognized by the other three top wizard factions outside the Star Ring Federation—the Void Architecture Institute, the Negentropy Alliance, and the Crimson Court!
This meant that Jieming could use it to exchange for special resources, materials, and technologies that circulated internally within these factions and were absolutely not for sale to outsiders.
More importantly, if high-rank wizards wanted to shorten their mandatory post-war recuperation period, they had to consume high-tier military merits.
Due to the scarcity and hard-currency nature of high-tier military merit, many high-rank wizards were willing to trade their most treasured core technologies for it.
In other words, high-tier military merit was the key to acquiring truly core knowledge that was completely inaccessible with low-tier military merit!
At this thought, Jieming immediately recalled the [Divine Power Faith Network Technology] he had been developing in the Elosia Plane, which had been progressing slowly due to a lack of key references.
Although Mentor Clark had given him some of his research notes back then, Jieming still felt overwhelmed by such a complex system involving the rule level, as if he were walking alone in a fog.
"Finally... I see hope!" Jieming's spirit lifted. He immediately opened his magic net terminal and accessed the exclusive exchange interface for high-tier military merit.
He first searched for the [Chamber of Time Laws] with great anticipation.
That magnificent building, which could stably accelerate the time flow by tenfold in the Giant Spirit Realm without affecting research results, had always left a deep impression on Jieming.
It was produced by the Void Architecture Institute, and he hadn't even been qualified to look at it before.
The search results popped up. Jieming glanced at the long string of zeros following the price, his mouth twitched, and he silently closed the page.
The smallest portable Chamber of Time Laws was listed at ten million high-tier military merit.
And that was just the portable version!
The large-scale fixed model he had used at the expeditionary force camp was priced at over a billion!
"I never imagined the wizard civilization would spare no expense when dealing with threatening civilizations..." Jieming clicked his tongue, completely abandoning the idea.
It seemed such strategic-level facilities were still beyond his current means.
He composed himself and began to seriously search for knowledge related to the [Divine Power Faith Network Core Technology].
This time, the results did not disappoint him. In fact, they were unexpectedly... cheap?
A detailed explanation of the core principles and construction ideas for the technology, compiled by an eighth-tier wizard, was priced at only one hundred thousand high-tier military merit.
If it were the research results of a sixth-tier wizard, it could even be acquired for just ten thousand points.
"So cheap?" Jieming was somewhat surprised.
Although this knowledge could theoretically be resold to multiple people by the seller, the price was indeed incredibly low compared to the potential value it could bring.
He pondered for a moment and made a decision.
He did not purchase the eighth-tier wizard's research.
The reason was simple: the Divine Power Faith Network was closely related to the plane's characteristics, the indigenous races, and the source of faith, making it highly unique.
While the research of an eighth-tier wizard was undoubtedly profound, its approach and solutions might be too "specific," potentially limiting Jieming's own innovation.
He didn't need to copy a single template. Instead, he needed to study different perspectives, absorb their essence, and ultimately forge his own path.
Thus, he decisively spent 50,000 high-tier military merit to purchase five core research documents on the Divine Power Faith Network, each authored by a different sixth-tier wizard.
These documents, written from diverse perspectives and focusing on different aspects, would provide him with a wealth of reference material.
After the exchange, the documents were instantly transmitted via an encrypted channel.
Jieming suppressed the urge to dive into them immediately and, driven by curiosity, browsed other sections of the high-tier military merit store.
The listed exotic materials, high-tier knowledge, powerful spell artifacts, and strategic structures all broadened his horizons and left him itching with desire.
But, glancing at his remaining 50,000 high-tier military merit, he finally closed the magic net terminal with a touch of reluctance, his reason prevailing.
"One step at a time," Jieming took a deep breath, pulling his attention back to reality.
His immediate priority was to fully digest the gains from this expedition, especially the vast amount of knowledge and the newly acquired research materials on the Divine Power Faith Network.
(End of the Chapter)
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