Noren Plane No. 13. The faint glow of spatial teleportation steadied within the private laboratory.

Jie Ming let out a slow breath; the strange, lingering fragrance of that grand banquet’s delicacies still seemed to cling to his nostrils.

It had been no ordinary feast.

Every exquisite dish on the table had been conjured from thin air by Alchemy Technique, yet the texture, the energy contained within, even the unique effects of long-extinct species were utterly real—delivering the ultimate pleasure to both tongue and soul.

He had even tasted a goblet of ambrosia said to be brewed from the brain-marrow essence of the “Stellar Rainbow Whale,” a creature lost to the river of history. The flavor was like swallowing a miniature, dazzling galaxy.

“Alchemy… truly the miraculous art that turns the impossible into reality,” Jie Ming couldn’t help sighing once more.

In theory, as long as one’s mastery of alchemy was profound enough and one’s understanding of a target’s material composition, energy circulation, and information imprint was thorough enough, one could perfectly recreate it regardless of the barriers of time and space.

At present, he could barely synthesize some simple organic compounds. Between him and the realm of recreating all things lay an uncountable abyss of knowledge and technical barriers.

Beside him, Viola, Mentor Clark, and junior brother Ang had all returned together to Noren Academy No. 13.

After Grandmaster Anton Buchanan completed his promotion, he evidently still had other matters to discuss, but that no longer concerned them.

Only wizards of seventh ring and above had remained behind. Once the banquet ended, Jie Ming and the others obediently followed their mentor and left.

With everything concluded, upon returning to Noren Academy No. 13, the group prepared to go their separate ways.

As before, Jie Ming linked with his substitute doll and left his “spare body” in Mentor Clark’s laboratory.

Before parting, Mentor Clark deliberately warned, “In the coming period, pay close attention to announcements within the academy and the workshop. There may be some rather important changes.”

Jie Ming and the others nodded in understanding.

The birth of an eighth-ring wizard was nothing to the wizard civilization as a whole, but to the Noren Workshop and its surrounding powers, it was no small matter.

It not only signified a leap in the workshop’s peak combat strength but would directly affect the balance of power among the nearby wizard factions centered on the Noren Workshop—including the Tower of Annihilation and the Chaos Secret Cult.

The reallocation of resources, the shift in influence, the subtle realignment of cooperation and competition…

Yet Jie Ming also understood that the wizard civilization was currently in an expansion phase with boundless external resources available. Even if changes came, they would not be drastic. He could still peacefully remain in the Infernal Sulfur plane, conducting research and living a quiet life.

After bidding farewell to his mentor and fellow disciples, Jie Ming wasted no time. He activated his plane authority and returned to his true base—the Infernal Sulfur plane.

The familiar scent of sulfur mingled with the faint sense of order brought by the operation of the Incense Fire Divine Dao washed over him, calming his mind and spirit.

Back in the laboratory, Jie Ming immediately began dealing with accumulated matters.

The top priority was fulfilling the massive order of Spiritual Qi that Mentor Clark had purchased earlier.

He entered the laboratory’s specially designed “Spiritual Qi Extraction Chamber” and activated the array.

At once, the Incense Fire Divine Dao network spanning the entire plane trembled faintly. Refined Spiritual Qi, having undergone preliminary conversion, gathered from every corner of the plane as though summoned.

It passed through complex rune arrays for further purification and compression, then was injected into special storage crystals inscribed with powerful stabilization and isolation runes.

Because Mentor Clark required such an enormous quantity, Jie Ming spent nearly half a day before finally completing the condensed Spiritual Qi worth ten thousand high-grade military merits.

After carefully packaging it, he sent it through the inter-plane teleportation array to Mentor Clark’s laboratory.

Glancing at the plane’s Spiritual Qi reserves on the adjacent monitoring device, the corners of Jie Ming’s mouth curled into an uncontrollable grin.

If he could sell all of this stockpiled Spiritual Qi, he might actually be able to afford another substitute doll.

Of course, he knew full well this was pure fantasy.

At least until he made a name for himself among high-tier wizards, his biggest Spiritual Qi customers would remain his fellow disciples in the Noren Workshop.

Next, he opened his nearly bursting Magicnet terminal.

The first messages he dealt with were Blake’s relentless string of “where’s my shipment” demands.

Jie Ming had no idea where Blake kept finding so many buyers; the man’s appetite for “liquid refined gold” seemed bottomless.

He had clearly prepared more than enough liquid refined gold before leaving last time—based on Blake’s previous consumption rate—yet Blake had started hounding him for more as early as last month.

Looking at the latest order, Jie Ming gave a helpless smile.

At this rate of growth, it wouldn’t be long before the annual revenue from liquid refined gold alone rivaled the yearly income from the “Self-Stabilizing Domain Regulation Protocol” technology.

Naturally, the required production volume had skyrocketed, but fortunately, producing liquid refined gold was now second nature to him.

He went to the automated alchemy factory zone, adjusted the parameters, fed in the resources, and soon a fresh batch of flowing, golden-gleaming liquid metal was produced. After careful packaging, it was immediately shipped off to Blake.

Then he saw the cautiously worded inquiry from Dean Avery Knight.

It seemed the news of Grandmaster Anton Buchanan’s impending promotion had not been an absolute secret among the upper circles.

Jie Ming saw no need to conceal it and simply replied with a concise message: “Dean Knight, Grandmaster Anton Buchanan successfully advanced to the eighth ring some days ago.”

After sending it, he ignored whatever reply Dean Knight might send and continued handling the rest of the terminal correspondence.

Once all these trivial yet necessary external matters were settled, Jie Ming let out a long breath.

Instead of resting, he reviewed the daily research reports submitted by the black giant priests, then headed straight for the deepest part of the laboratory—the zone dedicated exclusively to spatial sorcery research and testing.

His exchanges on Noren Plane No. 1, witnessing the rhythmic fluctuations of laws during his grandmaster’s promotion, and his reflections after crossing blows with Rex and the others had all sparked countless new inspirations in his mind.

Especially regarding the synergistic use of Phase Shift and Spatial Stabilization, and how to more deeply integrate the “spatial stabilization” property of the mutated spider-snake crystal carapace into his own combat system—he now had several vague yet immensely promising ideas.

“First… let’s buy some more core knowledge…”

With that thought, Jie Ming opened the high-grade military merit shopping catalog on his Magicnet terminal.

…

…

Decades slipped by unnoticed.

Infernal Sulfur plane, core laboratory.

Jie Ming stood before an experiment table covered in precise runes and energy conduits, his expression focused as he performed a biological reconstruction surgery.

Several black giant priests served as silent, efficient assistants, passing tools and recording data.

Just as he delicately implanted a miniaturized energy core into the strange creature on the table, his movements suddenly paused for the briefest instant, his gaze growing distant.

“Lord?” One of the black giant priests immediately noticed the anomaly and sent a low psychic query.

Jie Ming snapped back at once and waved a hand, indicating he was fine.

Yet within, he was far from calm.

In that fleeting moment, an invisible barrier in his mental sea had quietly shattered.

A far more condensed surge of mental power poured into his soul like a breached dam—natural and seamless.

There was no heaven-shaking explosion of energy, no external phenomena of laws stirring, not even a significant fluctuation registered on the laboratory’s energy monitors.

And just like that, in the gap between precise surgical motions, he had—without fanfare—advanced to fourth-ring wizard.

‘I’m… fourth ring now?’ Even Jie Ming himself was slightly taken aback by how serene it felt.

Unlike immortal cultivators who often required secluded retreat and triggered heavenly phenomena when breaking through major realms, a wizard’s promotion—especially in the lower and middle tiers—was more akin to the natural qualitative change that followed the quantitative accumulation of knowledge and life essence.

Once mental power reached the required threshold and comprehension of laws met the corresponding standard, promotion followed as a matter of course.

Though the speed was much faster than he had anticipated, Jie Ming understood that this advancement did not grant an immediate, explosive boost in strength.

The core of a wizard’s power lay in knowledge. Fourth-ring status merely meant he now possessed the “vessel” and “authority” to bear more powerful knowledge and construct more complex spell models—equivalent to unlocking a higher ceiling of potential.

Turning that ceiling into actual combat power would still require enormous time invested in studying the far more profound witchcraft knowledge and techniques accessible only to fourth-ring wizards.

In terms of individual battle prowess, he remained at the level of a third-ring wizard for the time being.

Of course, advancing to fourth ring was not without immediate benefits.

Almost the instant his mental power completed its leap, Jie Ming keenly sensed the nascent soul in his dantian abruptly open its eyes, its radiance flaring brilliantly!

The Refining Essence into Qi method he primarily cultivated was a profound technique that took “Qi” as its core, driving the cyclical growth of the three treasures—Essence, Qi, and Spirit.

At this moment, his “Spirit” (mental power and soul strength) had, due to his wizard rank promotion, far surpassed both his “Essence” (physical vitality) and “Qi” (spiritual cultivation).

This massive disparity, under the operation of the Refining Essence into Qi method, generated an immense pulling force!

His overwhelmingly powerful “Spirit” became like a high-speed spinning core, frantically dragging the relatively lagging “Essence” and “Qi” upward at breakneck speed!

Several hundred years had already passed since he reached the Nascent Soul stage; his immortal cultivation, which had been stuck at mid-Nascent Soul, shattered the barrier to late-Nascent Soul in just a few breaths.

And the growth showed no signs of slowing—it rocketed straight toward the peak of Nascent Soul!

Such rocket-like cultivation progress would leave any Nascent Soul cultivator from the immortal world dumbfounded.

To Jie Ming, however, it was merely a benign interaction between two different power systems under specific conditions.

Yet neither the wizard rank promotion nor the explosive rise in immortal cultivation could fully capture his attention right now.

His gaze quickly refocused on the operating table before him.

Fixed upon it was an extraordinarily bizarre, gigantic “insect.”

Or rather, it only retained the most basic traits of an insect.

What drew the eye most was the slender “horn” protruding from its head, comprising over ninety percent of its total volume.

The horn was completely transparent crystal, sharply faceted, its edges glinting with chilling light; in form, it resembled a meticulously forged narrow crystal sword blade!

Its actual head and torso, by contrast, were extremely shrunken, curled at the base of that crystal blade—barely a tenth of the whole.

A pair of disproportionately huge compound eyes, faceted like polyhedral gems, were embedded on either side of the atrophied head, gleaming with icy light.

From a distance, it looked less like a living creature and more like a divine crystal weapon with two magnificent jewels inlaid at the hilt.

This was the culmination of decades of Jie Ming’s effort—the completely redesigned and upgraded new-generation Prowler, built upon the foundation of the mutated spider-snake!

The old Prowlers had been oriented toward reconnaissance and harassment.

Though they possessed a self-destruct function, in the face of the ever-strengthening black giant legions, they had indeed become too fragile and ineffectual, gradually reduced to useless appendages.

To compensate for his weaknesses in aerial combat, aquatic combat, and scouting, Jie Ming resolved to grant them new life.

“Begin performance testing. Designation: 01.” Jie Ming issued the calm command.

A protective force field rose over the testing ground on one side of the laboratory. A black giant priest released the “Crystal Blade Prowler” from the operating table.

The creature’s crystal-sword body quivered slightly. The next instant, it blurred before everyone’s eyes like ink dissolving into water and vanished without a trace.

Even with his All-Purpose Eye activated, Jie Ming could only barely perceive an extremely faint trail rapidly moving through phase gaps.

“Phase concealment activated. Energy fluctuation below detection threshold. Optical invisibility and energy masking—excellent,” the black giant priest reported calmly.

“Mark movement trajectory. Deploy simulated target—fourth-ring energy shield generator,” Jie Ming ordered.

At the center of the testing ground, a shield force field radiating stable energy flared to life.

Almost the exact moment the shield appeared…

Less than three meters away, space tore open with a hairline fissure, as though rent by an invisible hand.

The “crystal sword blade” materialized with speed beyond visual tracking—its emergence utterly without warning, as if it had always been part of space itself!

The instant it appeared, visible ripples of spatial distortion surged along the edges of its sword-like body!

Hiss—rip—

A faint yet piercing sound—like cloth being violently torn—rang out!

The energy shield that could withstand the relentless bombardment of ordinary fourth-ring spells was sliced through as easily as hot knife through butter.

Wherever the spatial distortion ripples passed, a perfectly smooth incision appeared!

The shield’s structure was physically torn apart at the fundamental level. Its light flickered wildly a few times before it shattered with a bang, dissolving into scattered motes of energy!

Having delivered that lightning strike, the Prowler blurred once more and vanished back into phase space.

The entire sequence—from appearance to attack to disappearance—was as swift as a fleeting phantom.

“Spatial Slash executed. Target shield destroyed. Results meet expectations. Extremely high penetration against both energy and material defenses,” the black giant priest recorded meticulously.

Satisfaction shone in Jie Ming’s eyes; the test results had even exceeded his projections.

Beyond the high-speed movement of its predecessors, this new-generation Prowler was equipped with powerful vision for enhanced reconnaissance and perfectly inherited the mutated spider-snake’s core innate talent—instinctive spatial manipulation.

Their spatial abilities were virtually identical to the mutated spider-snakes: they could conceal themselves in phase space, dramatically increasing survivability and stealth, and they could condense the violent spatial shearing force generated during phase transitions into a lethal Spatial Slash!

This produced a qualitative leap in destructive power—from mere tickling harassment to an assassin’s blade capable of posing a mortal threat to defenses of the same level or even one tier higher!

Of course, limitations remained.

While moving through phase space, they had to keep their speed below the speed of sound.

Otherwise, even with their instinctive phase regulation, excessively violent velocity would easily trigger spatial turbulence and tear them apart.

Yet for missions involving infiltration, closing in, and then delivering a killing blow, this speed restriction was still within acceptable parameters.

“Excellent.” Jie Ming gazed at the now-calm testing ground, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly. “From this day forward, the Prowlers are no longer disposable cannon fodder.”

They would now be dedicated to eliminating high-value enemy targets—commanders, key casters, guardians of energy nodes… perfectly complementing Jie Ming’s own combat system.