Chapter 411: Research and Speculation

"Report."

"Enter."

Gao Jie Ming stood outside the command center, heard the voice inside, and pushed open the door.

Frost stood before the tactical sandbox; its projection had been updated—large swaths of red dots representing the Scythe Skulls had vanished, leaving only a few isolated pockets still resisting.

"You're here." Frost didn't look up, tossing him several crystals, "Here are the detailed combat metrics: energy consumption logs, tactical response times, enemy commander behavioral patterns—I want you to preserve these for the next cycle. Can you manage?"

Gao Jie Ming caught the crystals and swept them with his spiritual sense. Reading novels daily to pass the time was fine, ttk. s. tw ultra-smooth

The data inside was indeed highly professional, even including details he hadn't noticed before—such as an anomalous fluctuation in the Scythe Skulls' pheromone network encryption during the later stages of battle.

"No problem." He tucked the crystals into his robe, actually storing them in a dedicated zone within his dantian, "I'll create an independent archive, classified by time, type, and priority."

"Good." Frost finally looked up, his eyes brimming with suppressed excitement, "Then next question: what's the storage limit of your device?"

Gao Jie Ming hesitated.

He unconsciously "looked" into his dantian; after so much expansion, the space had grown to the size of a continent.

Though still minuscule within the plane, for storage purposes—

"If it's just recording crystals—" he chose his words carefully, "there's no need to worry about capacity in the short term."

Frost raised an eyebrow.

"So your device has high storage capacity—but what you'll need to store is every single record from the entire battlefield." He confirmed again, "Are you certain?"

"I am certain." Gao Jie Ming's expression didn't change, "Rest assured, storage capacity won't be an issue."

""

Frost pondered for a moment, then suddenly realized something.

He stepped before Gao Jie Ming, locking eyes with him: "What if I asked you to store more than just battlefield records?"

"Your meaning?"

"Technology." Frost said, "All research data on the Scythe Skulls: energy weapon decryption, exoskeleton material analysis, pheromone network reverse engineering—even our own research data on time reincarnation itself."

Gao Jie Ming's breath quickened slightly.

"These records—" Gao Jie Ming kept his tone calm, speaking slowly, "are priceless."

"Of course." Frost nodded, "So you won't be working for free. Beyond standard military merits after the war, I'll grant you a privilege: you may freely study, research, and even use any technology data you store—so long as you don't leak it externally."

Gao Jie Ming's heart thudded heavily.

This was a condition he could not refuse.

Wizards were inherently seekers of knowledge—and now, Frost had offered him a complete, continuously updated technical database!

"I accept." Gao Jie Ming didn't hesitate.

Such terms required no thought.

Frost smiled at this.

"Excellent curiosity. That's the most fundamental quality of a wizard." He said, "But you should know—accepting this task means you can no longer go to the front lines. Though I recall you're a logistics wizard anyway, so frontline duty probably never mattered to you."

He turned, swiftly inputting commands into the magic network terminal.

Seconds later, the command was broadcast via the legion's internal network to every logistics wizard's terminal.

Priority: Maximum. Content: Immediately initiate the "Time Cycle Breakthrough" Special Research Program. All relevant wizards shall form teams to study Scythe Skull technologies and time cycle phenomena. All findings must be submitted to the Tactical Command Center for review and archiving.

Special Note: This is a continuous directive, active until the end of this plane war.

After sending the command, Frost looked at Gao Jie Ming: "What do you think?"

"I am at your service."

"Good." Frost gazed out the window. Dawn was approaching; the horizon had turned pale.

"A new day begins," he whispered, "And this time, we won't passively wait for the cycle."

"We will actively shape history."

One month.

For a plane war involving two advanced civilizations, this duration was barely the length of a drill.

Yet within these thirty standard wizard days, the battlefield underwent a revolutionary transformation.

Hundreds of streaks of light cut through the sky—trails of wizard teams in flight.

After assigning the research mission, Frost issued further exploration orders to the entire wizard legion.

Armed with intelligence from Gao Jie Ming, Frost's tactic was simple and effective: abandon cumbersome army formations, maximize intelligence superiority.

Wizards dispersed into small elite units of three to five, like precise scalpels, piercing every corner of Scythe Skull territory.

Their primary mission: record every piece of information gathered during patrols, then submit it upon return.

The result: the Scythe Skulls' meticulously constructed defenses became sieve-like.

"Seventh Team report: Three energy nodes destroyed. Enemy garrison attempted self-destruct; preemptively implanted rune locks blocked it. One intact data core recovered."

"Fourteenth Team completed cleanup of Acid Gorge. Discovered new Scythe Skull variant; specimen collected and sealed."

"6

"Logistics Team Three requests support—encountered counterattack from the Burrower clan during excavation of underground facilities—wait, issue resolved. These bugs are pathetically weak now that we know they're outside the time cycle."

The command center's communication channel buzzed with victory reports.

Frost sat before the tactical projection, hundreds of real-time battlefield feeds floating before him.

His fingers tapped the air, categorizing, analyzing, and redistributing each new intelligence stream.

"Advance speed exceeds expectations by forty percent." He murmured, though his eyes held no joy, "Too smooth. It seems the enemy will flip the table sooner than before."

Even without memories from past cycles, Frost knew well: if their own progress became too rapid, the enemy's likelihood of triggering a time reversal surged.

"But—these bugs don't seem ready to trigger time reversal yet. Is the condition unmet? Are they gathering more intel? Or—something else?"

From reports across wizard teams, the Scythe Skulls appeared to be—retreating.

They abandoned numerous outposts, concentrating forces into a few key zones.

In the abandoned areas, they left behind intact production facilities, research data, even larval breeding chambers that couldn't be evacuated.

It was unmistakably the posture of a force preparing for a last stand.

"What are they thinking?"

Frost stared at the map, at the zones once heavily defended but now swiftly captured, his brow furrowed.

If they wanted more intel, they should have fought fiercely.

After all, no matter how heavy the losses, time reversal would reset everything—so why fight so timidly?

Meanwhile, in the research center at the camp's core.

Gao Jie Ming, clad in a white lab coat, stood before a three-meter-tall transparent growth chamber.

Inside, a Scythe Skull corpse floated.

The corpse was a rare "worker bee" variant.

Smaller in size, thinner exoskeleton, forelimbs specialized into fine manipulation organs, compound eyes optimized for close-range observation.

"We found this in the mycelium farm." Beside him, Fourth-Rank female wizard Allison pointed at the corpse, "They tend a fungus that secretes high-energy nutrient fluid—the primary food source for Scythe Skull larvae."

Gao Jie Ming nodded, sweeping the corpse with his spiritual sense.

In his perception, the corpse's internal energy circuits were unnervingly clear.

Not residual afterlife energy—but some kind of "developmental stasis."

"Have you dissected it?" he asked.

"Of course." Allison walked to the console, pulling up a holographic image, "Look here—its nervous system has seven redundant backups, its digestive system adapts to seventeen different energy sources, its reproductive system—completely regressed. This isn't a complete organism. It's more like a multi-functional tool."

Gao Jie Ming frowned at this conclusion.

Such structures were common in insect swarms with collective consciousness—but the Scythe Skulls merely resembled insects in behavior and appearance; they were fundamentally advanced sentient beings.

These creatures had their own culture and high-tech technology!

For such a structure to appear in an advanced lifeform made no sense.

Allison continued: "We've captured many variants before, but this specimen shows the highest degree of differentiation—exceeding even our previous expectations for this species."

The image zoomed in, revealing microstructures.

"But thanks to this specimen, we've finally broken through in genetic research." Allison pointed to a simulated gene chain, "We compared it with twelve other variants and found their differences concentrated in expression regulation regions—like the same set of blocks, assembled differently to form entirely different structures."

Gao Jie Ming stared at the flickering gene nodes, a thought stirring.

"So the various Scythe Skull variants aren't separate species—they're phenotypes of the same species, shaped by different developmental stages or environmental triggers?"

"More precisely," Allison corrected, "they undergo extreme metamorphosis. Like caterpillars becoming butterflies—except the Scythe Skulls' metamorphosis is far more extreme and controllable."

"Fascinating—" Gao Jie Ming rubbed his chin, "Is this race artificial? Are the Scythe Skulls an uncontrolled bio-engineered product?"

"Correct. Naturally evolved species don't exhibit such controllable variation. And—"

Allison switched the display, now showing a series of larval development logs.

"We intercepted surveillance data from several breeding facilities. We found Scythe Skull larvae undergo at least three major morphological shifts. Each shift requires specific environmental stimuli—temperature, energy concentration, pheromone signals, even—time pressure."

"Time pressure?" Gao Jie Ming seized the term.

Allison's expression turned grave.

"This is a new discovery—not yet in official reports." She lowered her voice, "We analyzed data from thirty-seven breeding facilities. All larvae responded to a specific fluctuation. When the fluctuation occurred, metamorphosis accelerated over three hundredfold, then returned to normal speed after it passed."

Gao Jie Ming felt a chill run down his spine.

"That fluctuation—"

"We've temporarily named it 'Cycle Ripple,'" Allison said, "Discovered by a logistics wizard who controls the time law. According to him, he simulated the lawwave generated after time reversal ends."

The lab fell into brief silence.

Several nearby wizards paused their experiments and gathered closer.

"So," said a fifth-level male wizard adjusting his tactical goggles, his voice tinged with incredulous excitement, "the Scythe Skulls' development is tied to the realm's time cycle? With each cycle, some of their individuals develop into the forms needed, based on information left over from the previous cycle?"

In Gao Jie Ming's mind, fragments began to fit together: "That means the realm's time reversal extends far longer than we imagined—yet all we can observe and experience is only the moment we entered this realm."

"Highly efficient," another wizard said. "Imagine a civilization that, over countless cycles, endlessly experiments and fails, using minimal resources to breed the most war-adapted variants. From a temporal standpoint, this civilization could be fully prepared before its enemies even arrive."

"If they could break free of the realm's limitations—"

"Then they would become true calamities."

Amid the murmurs, Gao Jie Ming silently pulled out a recording crystal and logged every word of the conversation and all the research data.

But his thoughts had already drifted elsewhere.

If the Scythe Skulls' development is tied to the cycle—

Then could the "device" or "mechanism" controlling the cycle also be the same one controlling their development?

And further—

If we could fully understand the mechanism behind the Scythe Skulls' metamorphic development and how they transmit information during each cycle, could we indirectly uncover their method of time reversal?

The thought quickened his heartbeat.

He turned to Allison: "Regarding the Scythe Skulls' information transmission mechanism—how far have your studies progressed? Could you—"

"Simulate it artificially?"

Allison paused, then her eyes lit up.

"You mean—"

The lab fell silent again.

The wizards were all intelligent; with Gao Jie Ming's hint, they instantly grasped his intent.

They exchanged glances and quickly confirmed the feasibility of the plan.

"Theoretically possible," Allison licked her lips. "But we need more samples—especially developmental data from high-tier individuals. And simulating the information signals would require massive computational resources—"

"I'll apply for it," Gao Jie Ming said. "Commander Frost will approve it—if we can prove the value of this research direction."

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