Jie Ming stood before the utterly defeated Levin Mills, his gaze icy.
Their eyes met, each seeing the killing intent in the other.
Without hesitation, Jie Ming threw a punch, instantly destroying Levin’s body.
A Level 3 wizard’s soul was strong enough to survive briefly without a body.
But Jie Ming gave him no chance.
He drew a special Level 4 attack artifact from his internal space, imbued with a spell designed to annihilate souls.
As Levin’s weakened soul fled his ruined body, Jie Ming activated the artifact.
But he deliberately angled it slightly, ensuring the soul spell didn’t obliterate it entirely, instead leaving it critically wounded and unconscious, slowly dissipating.
The result was as Jie Ming planned. Levin’s soul hovered, fading.
Seizing the moment, Jie Ming cast “Soul Search.”After the Level 4 spell’s impact, most of Levin’s memories were irreversibly damaged.
But, per the nature of souls, fragments tied to deep obsessions remained.
In these shards, Jie Ming found what he urgently needed—the truth behind everything.
Initially, Levin Mills’ team had indeed taken a camp mission to search for a missing wizard squad.
Though Levin called Jie Ming a genius, his own talent wasn’t poor, having gained basic spatial rule knowledge after advancing to Level 3.
This gave him the confidence to accept the risky mission.
At first, all went smoothly. They located the lost squad in this warped space.
But as they prepared to escort them out, the squad suddenly attacked without warning!
Fortunately, the squad had only six wizards, with two newly advanced Level 3s who hadn’t fully mastered their power.
Levin, ever cunning, had kept some team members hidden as backup.
With his Vitality rule’s resilience, he survived and led his team to kill several attackers with their numerical advantage.
The surviving enemy Level 3 wizard, seeing the ambush fail, recklessly used his unrefined spatial rules to tear open a rift for escape.
This triggered cascading spatial instability in the already volatile region, forcing Levin’s team to retreat temporarily until the space stabilized.
Through memory extraction from the slain, Levin uncovered a staggering secret: the core of this warped space held an incredibly rare free-form “Plane Origin”!
Plane Origin, aside from being extracted by Level 7 wizards, could naturally condense in specific energy forms or materials under rare conditions, creating valuable resources.
Though less pure than a Level 7’s extraction, it still greatly aided wizard advancement.
Crucially, this region’s origin was the rare and precious “spatial rule” origin!
This explained the enemy Level 3’s poor mastery—he had forcibly absorbed the Plane Origin to advance, without time to build corresponding knowledge or control.
Why did they attack Levin’s team?
The region’s unique nature required a special “sacrifice” of high-quality matter and information to extract the origin.
Due to intense spatial fluctuations, the origin was unstable, and sacrifices could “exchange” it.
Matter was easy to obtain, but “high-quality information” was rare.
While information carriers abounded, pure information was scarce.
Aside from pure Plane Origin, the best medium for information was souls.
“High-quality information” meant local beast souls were useless; the ideal sacrifice was intelligent life—especially wizards, whose souls condensed vast knowledge!
Thus, seeing Levin’s team as relatively weak, the squad attacked to harvest souls for the origin.
They hadn’t anticipated Levin’s backup, leading to their failure.
What followed was what Jie Ming experienced.
Levin’s team, to hunt remaining enemies and conceal this secret, hired low-tier wizards as cannon fodder.
If the plan was exposed, they could eliminate them and use their souls as “premium resources” to exchange for the spatial origin.
The surviving enemy Level 3 wizard, finding the exit sealed, had no choice but to sacrifice his dead comrades’ souls, extracting vast Plane Origin to forcibly advance, hoping to survive by rank.
Reading these fragmented memories, a glint of understanding flashed in Jie Ming’s eyes.
He finally grasped Levin’s true motive and why the Level 4 wizard was so weak—essentially a Level 2 wizard propped up by origin.
With a Level 4’s mental strength and physique but no matching knowledge or skill, he was easily defeated.
Jie Ming’s focus shifted to the critical detail: the treasure ground where Plane Origin could be exchanged!
Countless thoughts raced through his mind.
After a long moment, he made his decision.
He turned to the Level 4 wizard, still collapsed and weak.
Having witnessed Jie Ming’s handling of Levin, the wizard’s face held only bitterness.
With the anti-magic field lingering and his own critical injuries, he surrendered without hesitation: “Don’t kill me… I’ll accept the camp’s trial and review.”
Jie Ming nodded, saying nothing, and produced a new contract.
The Level 4 wizard gave a wry smile but imprinted his mental signature.
For Jie Ming, this was the safest course.
Officially, wizard civilization strictly forbade internal slaughter.
If undiscovered, it was fine, but with solid evidence, violators faced harsh trials.
Unless the offense was egregious, death wasn’t typical, but wizards had ways to extract maximum value from offenders, making them repay their crimes over a long life.
As the one exposing and delivering the offender, Jie Ming would permanently gain a portion of all resources, knowledge, or merits extracted from this Level 4 wizard—a living “resource mine.”
The premise was passing the “review.”
Unlike the public “trial,” the “review” was secretive.
It was triggered when camps or higher powers suspected issues like “mental contamination,” “soul replacement,” or “psychic incubation.”
Forcibly advancing via a single Plane Origin was a prime case for scrutiny.
Theoretically, wizards could advance with pure Plane Origin, but only if sourced from multiple planes.
Plane Origin was an aggregation of information, and consciousness and spirit were also informational forms.
If a high-tier being willingly decomposed their soul into basic origin and let another absorb it fully, they could perfectly replace the recipient’s core consciousness without detectable anomalies!
This was the most common issue in reviews.
If a world’s World Lord (its strongest being) was wise enough to see the true power behind wizards, they faced two paths: death or becoming “spoils.”
While some chose mutual destruction, many sought survival.
For beings able to commune with Plane Origin, such a possession-like method was an obvious solution.
Jie Ming recalled, before formally advancing, meeting a legendary senior from the Shadow Plane who rose five levels in five years during a trip to Elosia.
After learning the insider knowledge, he checked Noren Academy’s archives and found that senior’s name quietly listed among the fallen.
Undoubtedly, that “lucky” senior had been possessed by the Shadow Plane’s World Lord.
But this cost allowed Noren Workshop’s powerhouses to swiftly subdue the difficult Shadow Plane.
Thinking back, his mentor Clark’s knowing smile likely stemmed from prior knowledge.
“…Let’s go.”
Jie Ming snapped out of his thoughts, glancing at the ashen-faced Level 4 wizard and the shell-shocked survivors.
Without another word, he collected the battlefield’s spoils and flew toward their starting point.