Chapter 419

Vivian's figure completely sank into the void, sneaking into the city first for deep reconnaissance.

A moment later, her voice came through the encrypted spiritual link: "Safe. No organized enemies found, only a small number of Tier 1 worker bee individuals found wandering aimlessly in the lower pipes, possibly abandoned or naturally hatched later. Can enter."

Gao Jie Ming and Roland landed on the top of a relatively tall tower at the edge of the city.

From here, one could overlook a large area of the city.

Gao Jie Ming did not waste time; he immediately took out a recording crystal, which encapsulated the detailed log of the wizards collecting samples here in the last round.

Spiritual sense swept over, and the situation at that time emerged: the battle broke out in a tall building in the distance, the wizard unit attacked from the east main passage, the Sickle-Skull tribe defenders organized a final resistance in the west square, and after the defeat, the remnants tried to escape through the underground network, but were cleared by pre-laid rune traps—

"That area—"

Roland also watched the recorded information and issued a reconnaissance spell toward that side.

A moment later, he nodded: "Indeed, although the camouflage is quite good, the energy fluctuation is too flat compared to other areas."

Soon, Vivian's on-site reconnaissance results were also sent back: "The other side's camp is indeed in this area—"

Gao Jie Ming nodded and looked at Roland: "It's good that there's no change, then I'll have to trouble you for the next part, try not to let any escape."

"Small matter."

Roland raised his palm toward the sky, and in the blink of an eye, a super-giant energy shield spread out.

The raised energy shield was like an inverted semi-transparent giant bowl, silently enveloping the entire Sickle-Skull tribe forward outpost.

The faint sounds of carapace rubbing and pheromone communication coming from the camp were instantly isolated.

"Do it." Vivian's voice sounded in the spiritual link, cold and concise.

Roland, as the frontal assault hand, waved his staff, and above the spiral building that served as the command post in the center of the camp, dozens of meteorites burning with scorching white flames suddenly condensed and smashed down with long tail flames!

The explosion and flames instantly swallowed the building and its surrounding area, and the panicked hisses and the crisp sound of the energy shield shattering intertwined.

However, Roland's control of power was very good; this spell destroyed the enemy's defense system and caused a lot of chaos, but tried to avoid causing any casualties as much as possible.

Vivian took advantage of the collapse of the other side's defense system and sneaked in directly, turning into a god of death in the shadows.

Her figure flickered at the edge of the camp's sentry towers, material stacks, and small incubation pools, and every appearance was accompanied by a subtle space crack sweeping past.

The Sickle-Skull tribe members swept by the cracks would instantly stiffen, and then a smooth cut would appear on their carapaces, silently splitting into two halves.

Her killing targets were all Sickle-Skull tribe members of relatively high tiers.

Gao Jie Ming's targets were also Sickle-Skull tribe members of high tiers.

His spiritual sense had long locked onto the light spots with prominent energy reactions in the camp; lock, raise hand, space distortion instant cast.

Hum!!!

Invisible spatial force erupted violently around several Tier 4 or Tier 5 Sickle-Skull tribe squad leaders, like an invisible giant hand fiercely twisting that area.

Carapaces, limbs, internal organs—everything turned into fragments in the dislocation and tearing of space, and the targeted Sickle-Skull tribe members didn't even have time to scream.

As for the only Tier 6 Sickle-Skull tribe commander, it had just hissed angrily and soared into the sky from the wreckage of the burning command post, just trying to organize a counterattack, when it was pointed at by Roland from the air.

A "Gravity Anchor" rune condensed to the extreme was instantly branded on it, dragging it back to the ground like a meteor, smashing out a deep pit.

Before it could struggle to get up, Roland's second spell, "Molecular Stiffening," had already descended, completely solidifying its huge body along with a small area around it, unable to move.

The battle presented a one-sided crushing from the beginning.

Ten thousand Sickle-Skull tribe members had no power to fight back in front of three wizards who were well-prepared, had crushing strength, and had clear tactics.

Except for the low-tier Sickle-Skull tribe members deliberately left behind, all high-tier Sickle-Skull tribe members in the camp were slaughtered in a short time.

What was truly time-consuming and laborious was the subsequent work.

"Seal!" Roland gave a low drink, his hands forming seals.

The energy shield originally used to isolate the outside world deformed and shrunk, turning into thousands of independent energy cages of different sizes.

The remaining panicked low-tier Sickle-Skull tribe members in the camp were separated and trapped, suspended in mid-air, which not only prevented them from self-harming or attacking each other but also facilitated observation.

"Start identifying." Gao Jie Ming shook his hands, released the spell, and walked to the nearest energy cage.

Inside were trapped a dozen shivering Sickle-Skull tribe worker bees.

In the eyes of ordinary people, these bugs might look exactly the same.

But in the eyes of Gao Jie Ming, who had deeply studied their physiological structure, mutation lineage, and even the subtle differences in carapace growth patterns, they each had their own characteristics.

He began to compare them one by one according to the sample information stored in the recording crystal.

The first one, no.

The second one, the curvature of the carapace edge is wrong.

The third one—

When checking the seventh cage, Gao Jie Ming's gaze locked onto a Tier 2 combat-type Sickle-Skull tribe member.

On the second joint of its left front limb, there was a very subtle natural dark spot pattern, shaped like an incomplete triangle.

The record showed that in the last round, he had collected a Sickle-Skull tribe sample with a similar spot pattern on its left front limb here, but only collected half of its head and part of its torso, discarding the remaining corpse.

Gao Jie Ming immediately took out the "half head" that had been sealed from the corresponding area of his internal dantian.

He shrunk the energy cage to only wrap that living Sickle-Skull tribe member, pulled it close, and at the same time displayed the cut surface of the half head.

When this Sickle-Skull tribe member saw the head in Gao Jie Ming's hand, it squeaked in terror, its voice full of unbelievable panic.

This was no wonder; no matter who it was, seeing someone else holding their own head would definitely let out the same scream.

However, Gao Jie Ming didn't care about the other side's fear, but compared them carefully.

Carapace color, texture density, subtle direction of energy circuits, and even activity imprints at the cellular level—completely matched—and more importantly, the special carapace on the chest of this living Sickle-Skull tribe member known as the "Glory Armor" was uniform in color, without any exotic patterns produced by recent healing.

This showed that it had never lost that half head and part of its torso—at least in "this round" of life, it was complete.

"Partial collection—torso completely restored. Glory Armor has no new healing marks." Gao Jie Ming recorded in a low voice and took the half head back into the dantian.

They continued to screen.

As one Sickle-Skull tribe member after another was identified, the results gradually became clear:

For all samples that Gao Jie Ming had performed "partial collection" on (only storing parts of limbs or organs), the corresponding living bodies in this Samsara were all complete and intact.

There were no scars, and the Glory Armor did not record any traces of "missing and then restored."

The power of time reversal seemed to perfectly repair this kind of "partial missing," resetting the individual's existence state to the intact origin of "not being collected."

However, for those Sickle-Skull tribe members that Gao Jie Ming stored as a whole in his internal dantian, the situation was completely different.

Gao Jie Ming and the two Tier 6 wizards carefully checked all the trapped Sickle-Skull tribe individuals, searched every corner of the camp that might exist, and even used small-scale spells to detect the undead and trace memories.

It was finally confirmed that the fifty Sickle-Skull tribe members recorded as being stored as a whole in the dantian had all disappeared.

In the timeline of this camp, they seemed to have never existed.

To further verify, the three randomly selected hundreds of living Sickle-Skull tribe members and used soul memory reading spells, focusing on searching for memory fragments about those "disappeared individuals."

The results were intriguing.

In the memory images of these Sickle-Skull tribe members, the camp's life, work, and combat training were consistent with the records, except for the lack of the figures and interactions of those fifty "companions."

In their memories, the camp originally only had so many people, and those fifty individuals never existed.

Time reversal not only erased the material existence of those individuals but also seemed to synchronously correct the causal logic and collective memory related to them, making the "missing" itself reasonable and unnoticeable.

"Individuals removed from the timeline as a whole have their existence completely erased, and even the related causal traces are 'reasonably' corrected—" Roland touched his chin, thoughtful. "This is more thorough than simple 'deletion'; it's as if they 'never existed'."

"..."

Gao Jie Ming was silent, and a bolder verification thought arose.

He took out two Sickle-Skull tribe corpse samples that had been preserved completely from his internal dantian—exactly two of the "fifty disappeared ones."

Two well-preserved corpses appeared in his hands, their carapaces still bearing the scars left by the last round of battle.

However, the moment they completely left the dantian and made contact with the space-time of the current Samsara plane—

There was no sound, no energy fluctuation, no light and shadow effect.

It was like being erased instantly by the most brilliant eraser, and it was like they themselves were fragile soap bubbles in the sun.

The two corpses disappeared into thin air.

Not decomposed, not teleported, just the most direct disappearance.

Gao Jie Ming's pupils contracted sharply, and then, incomparably bright light burst out in his eyes.

"Sure enough!" He almost roared, "The existence of these samples was directly erased by the time paradox!"

"When time reversal occurs, everything in the current plane is forcibly reset back to a certain 'save point.' For individuals partially collected, the reset force will attempt to repair their missing parts. Since the missing parts (in my dantian) and the main body (in the plane being reset) are already separated in space-time, the reset force seems to 'default' that the main body was originally complete, or 'fills' the missing parts in some way, thereby allowing the individual to 'recover'."

Gao Jie Ming's brain was extremely active, rapidly integrating various information obtained through experiments.

"But for individuals stored as a whole, the reset force discovers that this individual 'does not exist at all' at any time node of the current plane (because it was isolated). It can neither 'repair' (because there is no main body) nor 'ignore' (because the individual should have existed at the save point). Two contradictory states—'should have existed at the save point' and 'does not exist at any save point because of being isolated'—cannot be reconciled, producing the most fundamental space-time paradox."

"And the way this plane law solves this paradox is the most brutal one: erasing the fact of the individual's 'existence' from the history and future of the current timeline. So, they 'never existed,' and related memories were also corrected."

"And I just took out the corpses, which is equivalent to 'pasting' the individual whose fact of 'existence' has already been erased back into the current space-time. This immediately triggered a secondary paradox conflict: something that 'never existed' has 'appeared.' Thus, the plane law took effect again, erasing them instantly to maintain space-time continuity."

"Wrong!"

Gao Jie Ming suddenly realized something and overturned his previous thought: "It didn't trigger a secondary paradox conflict, but is still in the first round of paradox conflict. Unlike things I brought into this plane from other planes, I'm afraid things from this plane have been marked in advance, which is why they were erased the moment they were taken out."

"Otherwise, it should be like those measuring instruments, only waiting until this round of time reversal to be erased!"