Within Anton Buchanan’s private plane, the day was unusually tumultuous.

Across the land, hurricane-like storms raged incessantly, accompanied by distant surges of energy turbulence. All creatures in this plane knew these were the aftershocks of living beings clashing in combat.

The fifth-level wizard Helios pushed his energy-form body to its limit, fully transforming into a humanoid blazing white sun.

Hovering in mid-air, each wave of his hand unleashed torrents of elemental fury.

Meteor-like exploding fireballs, chain lightning that rent the earth, soul-freezing beams of extreme cold… A barrage of powerful area-of-effect witchcraft poured down like it cost nothing, turning the once-lush grassland into a hellscape interwoven with lava, frost, and scorched earth.

His attacks were not entirely aimed at the black giants; much was meant to sow chaos and suppress Jie Ming’s potential movement paths.

The other wizard, a bio-modification specialist named Morpheus, had completely shed human form, becoming a nightmarish abomination.

His lower body was a cluster of thick tentacles covered in suckers and barbs, propelling his massive frame at high speed. His upper body extended several pairs of bone scythe-arms gleaming with metallic sheen, alongside maws that constantly opened to spew acid and neurotoxins.

His defensive and regenerative abilities were horrifically potent; wounds barely carved into him healed at visible speed.

Only areas continuously covered by time force fields regenerated noticeably slower.

Jie Ming lingered at the battlefield’s edge, fine beads of sweat on his forehead.

The Great Radiance Formation hovered behind him, its ring of over ten thousand talisman seal artifacts spinning at unprecedented velocity.

The barrage poured forth like golden rain, desperately intercepting and weakening Helios’s wide-area bombardments while providing fire support for the charging black giant priests.

Six black giant priests, like six streaks of black lightning, assaulted the two fifth-level wizards furiously under the dual effects of accelerated time for themselves and slowed for enemies.

Their bodies’ black liquid metal continuously devoured energy attacks. Their time-disruption abilities left afterimages of their blinding speed, heavy fists carrying space-tearing might hammering repeatedly at enemy shields and flesh.

Two black giant priests already bore severe injuries—one arm severed at the shoulder, black energy flowing like blood from the stump.

That was the price paid earlier to shield Jie Ming from Morpheus’s cunning ambush.

The entire battle area’s space felt as if filled with invisible cement—heavy and viscous.

This was the [Spatial Anchoring Field] that Helios and Morpheus had jointly deployed at great cost after realizing Jie Ming’s troublesome spatial abilities.

By locking space, they completely negated Jie Ming’s use of Phase Shift or Spatial Slash for ambushes or evasion.

Jie Ming could only rely on the overclocked reactions from acceleration talisman seal artifacts and the black giant priests’ time manipulation to barely maneuver through the gaps in the fifth-level wizards’ assaults.

“I must take one down first!” Anxiety gnawed at Jie Ming.

The Great Radiance Formation’s energy reserves were draining rapidly. Though the black giant priests fought valiantly, their wounds and energy consumption mounted steadily under the two fifth-level wizards’ combined counterattacks.

Jie Ming himself danced on a knife’s edge—Helios’s occasional condensed solar flare rays or Morpheus’s sudden underground piercing tentacles laced with paralytic venom forced him to evade with full effort.

Even the shockwaves required the Great Radiance Formation to instantly stack over a dozen energy shields to withstand.

Without the formidable physique from the Body Forging Method and various adaptive resistances, he would long have been gravely wounded by the fallout.

On the other side, the two fifth-level wizards fared poorly as well.

They had already sustained heavy injuries from clashing with each other earlier, surviving Jie Ming’s Spatial Slash ambushes only by luck.

The relentless assaults worsened their wounds, forcing repeated retreats.

Both knew clearly: once the spatial lockdown’s duration ended, defeat would be theirs.

Thus, they had to resolve the battle before it lifted!

Suddenly, due to the intense combat, the Great Radiance Formation overheated from high-frequency firing, lagging for an instant.

“Now!” Helios roared mentally.

His sun-form contracted inward fiercely before erupting!

A pure destructive energy pulse expanded in a ring, forcibly blasting away the besieging black giant priests.

Even with their energy-absorption talent, the instantaneous overload caused their black liquid metal surfaces to boil violently, clearly inflicting significant damage.

Almost simultaneously, Morpheus seized the fleeting opportunity.

His tentacled, bladed mass lunged with agility defying its size, breaking through the momentarily thinned barrage.

Several thickest tentacles hammered like battering rams with ear-piercing whistles, aimed straight at Jie Ming—whose mental force was highly focused on controlling the Great Radiance Formation and black giants!

The tentacle tips gleamed with light that pierced energy defenses—clearly his trump card!

“I’ve been waiting for you to overcommit!” A fierce glint flashed in Jie Ming’s eyes, no panic in sight.

At the critical moment, a colossal figure over fifty meters tall—like a black mountain—abruptly appeared before Jie Ming: one of the two fifth-level black giant leaders!

Its positioning was perfect, blocking directly between Jie Ming and Morpheus’s lethal strike!

“ROAR!!!”

The prepared black giant leader bellowed thunderously.

It neither dodged nor evaded, taking the mountain-shattering tentacles full on its ebony chest!

Its physique, capable of withstanding sixth-level attacks, was instantly riddled with holes, hot “blood” spraying—but its massive frame stood unmoved like the most loyal barrier!

In the instant the tentacles struck—old force spent, new yet to generate—Jie Ming issued a ruthless command via soul contract:

Self-destruct!

Within the black giant leader’s vast body, a black sun seemed ignited.

Destructive energy climbed to its limit in a hundredth of a second, then…

BOOM!!!

A terrifying energy storm comparable to Helios’s earlier explosion erupted centered on the black giant leader!

Black destructive energy mixed with shredded flesh formed a ring of annihilation, instantly engulfing the close-range Morpheus.

The shockwave rapidly expanded, sweeping in Helios—who had just unleashed his ultimate and was in brief recovery.

The originally iron-solid space locked by [Spatial Anchoring Field] groaned under this cross-level destructive impact, twisting and destabilizing.

The moment Jie Ming issued the command, he had already shot like a startled rabbit behind a black giant priest blasted toward him.

The loyal priest immediately turned, shielding Jie Ming completely beneath it.

Its black liquid metal flowed into defensive posture, tanking the core shockwave head-on.

Even so, the terrifying force hurled them away, smashing a distant hill.

Before the explosion’s aftershocks fully subsided—with smoke and energy turbulence still raging…

“Cough cough…”

Jie Ming emerged disheveled from beneath the black giant priest, spitting dust-laced saliva, his eyes sharp as a hawk’s.

He spared no glance at the results; soul contract clearly sensed the positions of the blasted black giant priests.

Without hesitation, he issued the final command via contract to all surviving black giant priests—including the one that shielded him:

Charge! Close on survivors! Self-destruct!

In the next moment, several black figures plunged like moths to flame into the lingering destructive smoke.

Guided by sensed energy fluctuations from the two fifth-level wizards, they rushed toward their likely positions.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Four even louder, more devastating explosions rang out in the smoke.

Jie Ming himself, after issuing the command, didn’t even look—flinging himself flat on the ground.

His hands glowed with alchemical light as he dug frantically like a burrowing mole, excavating a tunnel thousands of meters deep in moments.

He dove in, evading potential secondary blasts and energy rebounds from the chain detonations.

Moments later, all finally quieted.

Jie Ming cautiously poked his head from the smoking, charred surface.

The scene before him was apocalyptic: a massive crater over several kilometers wide had replaced the landscape, its edges vitrified soil and twisted spatial remnants.

Following soul senses, he swiftly recovered the energy cores of surviving black giant priests and leaders from the blasts.

Then, he spotted the two figures in the crater’s center, barely maintaining form.

Morpheus’s prized bio-modified body was tattered—most tentacles severed, bone blades shattered.

A massive cavity gaped in his core, writhing slowly in futile repair attempts, his aura withered to the extreme.

Helios’s energy form had dimmed to a flickering candle in the wind, struggling to maintain stability.

Clearly gravely wounded by the chain explosions.

Seeing the two fifth-level wizards “merely” heavily injured despite such horrific successive blasts, Jie Ming winced.

“Truly… tough-skinned and thick-fleshed!” he cursed inwardly.

As levels rose, wizards’ vitality indeed grew increasingly “inhuman.”

At the crater’s bottom, Morpheus and Helios also spotted Jie Ming emerging. Exchanging glances, both saw helplessness and bitterness in the other’s eyes.

Struggling, they spoke almost simultaneously, voices weak yet clear: “We… surrender.”

The words fell, and in the next instant, their figures vanished abruptly from the crater, as if never there.

Jie Ming’s pupils contracted at the sight.

“Is this the might of an eighth-level wizard…” he murmured.

The surrounding [Spatial Anchoring Field] still lingered, space firmly locked.

Yet Wizard Noren had effortlessly, silently teleported them away.

Completely incomprehensible how—but Jie Ming knew it meant ordinary spatial lockdowns were utterly ineffective against eighth-level wizards.

He soon set aside such thoughts, brushing dust and ash from his robe, gazing at the shockwave-cleared cloudless sky with a helpless sigh.

Victory came, but at heavy cost—the black giant legion in his internal world was nearly crippled.

Inhaling air laced with scorched scent, he surveyed the seemingly empty charred earth, warped hills, and lingering energy turbulence.

Suddenly, Jie Ming called out loudly, his voice echoing over the silent ruins:

“Come out. You’ve watched the show long enough—time to show yourselves.”