Chapter 323 Harvest Summary

After an unknown span of time, Jie Ming naturally awoke from a deep slumber.

Opening his eyes, the familiar rune patterns on the laboratory dome came into view, and a long-lost sensation of refreshed clarity coursed through his entire body.

The exhaustion accumulated over fifty years, along with the numbness brought by slaughter, seemed to have been thoroughly washed away by this complete rest.

He sat up and stretched his somewhat stiff muscles.

Instead of immediately diving into research, he first attended to the backlog of affairs.

Through the magic network terminal, he quickly browsed and replied to the communication requests he had missed over the years—mostly invitations for academic exchanges or routine notifications from Noren Academy in the Elosia plane.

Then, he carefully inspected the operational status of various facilities in the Elosia plane laboratory and confirmed via remote link that development in the Infernal Sulfur plane was proceeding normally. Only then did the worry that had been hanging over his heart fully settle.

With all the trivial matters handled, he brewed a cup of invigorating spiritual leaf tea.

Sitting at the experiment table, he began systematically summarizing the gains from this fifty-year expedition.

First, he inventoried the physical spoils—Jie Ming shook his head helplessly.

Originally, on the Giant Spirit Realm battlefield, thanks to the outstanding performance of the Great Radiance Formation and the black giant, as well as the discovery of that treasury, his harvest had been bountiful.

Energy crystals, soul crystals, and rare materials piled up like mountains.

However, the Mycelord’s bizarre conceptual contamination turned it all to nothing.

To survive apres, all physical spoils of war had to be abandoned.

During the subsequent execution of the “purification protocol,” he strictly adhered to the principle of “destroy only, acquire nothing.”

As a result, in terms of resources and experimental samples, he had essentially invested purely with no output.

Add to that the massive energy reserves consumed during the Giant Spirit Realm war and the losses of cannon fodder units…

“From the perspective of resources and military merit gains alone, this expedition was a complete blood loss.” Jie Ming sipped his tea and muttered to himself.

Though he said this, the smile on his face refused to fade.

A wizard’s value never relied solely on material accumulation.

His true gains lay in knowledge.

His thoughts sank into his internal space, where massive information packets—personally “disinfected” and confirmed safe by Noren wizards—were stored.

These were the various kinds of knowledge replicated during the cleansing of those destroyed civilizations, excluding sensitive coordinates—from the Giant Spirit Realm’s metal smelting and symbiotic body technologies, to the Mind Realm’s mental network construction and illusion principles, to the biological structures, energy applications, and even unique technologies of certain special civilizations from the cleansed golden baboon civilization and its associated ones…

This knowledge was all-encompassing, chaotic yet precious.

During the execution of the “purification protocol,” they were treated as useless byproducts.

But for the current Jie Ming, this was the most valuable wealth of the expedition—a wellspring of inexhaustible inspiration for future research.

Beyond knowledge, there were military merits.

Fifty years of information processing and cleansing tasks had brought him approximately five hundred thousand low-level military merits.

This amount was a fortune even for an ordinary third-level wizard, but for Jie Ming, who held the patent for the Self-Stabilizing Domain Regulation Protocol and received stable massive royalties each year, it was merely icing on the cake.

The real surprise lay in high-level military merits.

Due to the involvement of conceptual contamination and the extreme risk of the mission, the Star Ring Federation had specially allocated a batch of high-level military merits as rewards.

Normally, this batch would only be distributed among the three seventh-level wizards like Dixon and the Noren wizard.

However, during the battle in the Giant Spirit Realm, although Jie Ming did not directly detect the Mycelord’s contamination, his abnormal state caught Dixon’s attention, indirectly contributing to the early warning.

Deemed to have “rendered merit to civilization,” he was exceptionally awarded one hundred thousand points of high-level military merits!

One hundred thousand high-level military merits, if simply converted to various universal resources at the official exchange rate, equated to roughly one million low-level military merits.

This figure was negligible compared to Jie Ming’s annual patent income.

But the true value of high-level military merits far exceeded that.

This general equivalent, issued directly by the Star Orbit Tribunal, was jointly recognized by the other three top wizard forces outside the Star Ring Federation—the Void Architecture Academy, the Anti-Entropy Alliance, and the Crimson Court!

This meant Jie Ming could use them to exchange for special resources, materials, and technologies that circulated internally within these forces and were never sold externally.

More importantly, if high-tier wizards wished to shorten their mandatory post-war recuperation period, they had to consume high-level military merits.

Due to their scarcity and hard currency nature, many high-tier wizards were willing to trade their most prized core technologies for them.

In other words, high-level military merits were the key to accessing true core knowledge that low-level military merits could never touch!

Thinking of this, Jie Ming immediately recalled his Divine Power Faith Network Technology, which he had been advancing in the Elosia plane but had progressed slowly due to a lack of key references.

Even though his mentor Clark had given him some research notes back then, facing such a complex system involving the rule level, he still felt strained, like walking alone in the fog.

“Finally… I see hope!” Jie Ming’s spirits soared. He immediately opened the magic network terminal and accessed the exclusive exchange interface for high-level military merits.

He first searched with anticipation for Between the Laws of Time.

That grand structure on the Giant Spirit Realm battlefield, capable of stably accelerating time flow by tenfold without affecting research results, had left a deep impression on him.

Produced by the Void Architecture Academy, he hadn’t even qualified to view it before.

The search results popped up. Jie Ming glanced at the long string of zeros following the price, his mouth twitching as he silently closed the page.

The smallest portable model of Between the Laws of Time cost: ten million high-level military merits.

And that was just the portable version!

The large fixed type he had used in the expedition camp exceeded ten billion!

“I truly didn’t expect wizard civilization to spare no expense in dealing with threatening civilizations…” Jie Ming clicked his tongue, thoroughly extinguishing the thought.

It seemed such strategic facilities were still beyond his current reach.

He composed himself and began seriously searching for knowledge related to the core technology of the Divine Power Faith Network.

This time, the results did not disappoint—in fact, they were unexpectedly… cheap?

A detailed explanation of the core principles and construction ideas for this technology, compiled by an eighth-level wizard, was priced at only one hundred thousand high-level military merits.

If it was research from a sixth-level wizard, it could even be obtained for just ten thousand points.

“So cheap?” Jie Ming was somewhat surprised.

Although this knowledge could theoretically be sold repeatedly to multiple buyers, the price was indeed remarkably low relative to its potential value.

He pondered carefully for a moment and made his decision.

He did not purchase the eighth-level wizard’s research.

The reason was simple: the divine power faith network was closely tied to plane characteristics, native races, and faith sources, possessing strong uniqueness.

An eighth-level wizard’s research might be lofty and comprehensive, but its approaches and solutions could be too “specific,” potentially limiting his own innovation instead.

What he needed was not to copy a template but to reference diverse ideas, absorb the essence, and ultimately forge his own path.

Thus, he decisively spent fifty thousand high-level military merits to purchase five core research materials on the divine power faith network from different sixth-level wizards.

These materials offered varied perspectives and emphases, providing him with richer references.

After completing the exchange, the materials were instantly transmitted via encrypted channels.

Jie Ming suppressed the urge to immerse himself in study immediately and browsed other sections of the high-level military merit mall out of curiosity.

The array of exotic materials, high-tier knowledge, powerful witch artifacts, and strategic structures listed there broadened his horizons and left him itching with desire.

But glancing at his remaining fifty thousand high-level military merits, he ultimately closed the magic network terminal with a hint of reluctance, acting rationally.

“One must walk the path step by step.” Jie Ming took a deep breath, pulling his attention back to reality.

The priority now was to properly digest the expedition’s gains, especially the massive trove of knowledge and the newly acquired divine power network research materials.