Chapter 474

Jie Ming stared blankly at the sky.

"These... are all modified using the same biological base."

Jie Ming muttered to himself, his voice carrying undisguised amazement.

As an alchemy master with a quite decent level, Jie Ming soon distinguished the essence of these creatures above.

At the same time, he knew better than anyone what this meant.

Different creatures have different soul structures, energy circuits, and physical bearing limits.

To transform a Level 1 slime into a Level 6 creature, what needs to be replaced is not just physical materials, but to reconstruct its existence essence from the most basic elemental level—that is almost equal to creating a new species.

And this legion displayed by Ke La Ke, with a number exceeding one hundred million, but all individuals, from the lowest giant shield warrior to the highest shadow lord, all maintained a certain "homology."

Like different branches of the same big tree.

This means that Ke La Ke has mastered a "standardized" technology system that can stably mass-produce high-tier modified creatures.

And the upper limit of this system is high enough to stably produce Level 8 creatures.

"The mentor is only Level 6 now..."

Jie Ming felt a sense of almost absurd impact.

His most proud work is the Black Giant manufactured by fusing the 【Five Viscera Sacrificing God Art】 and elemental creature characteristics.

After a thousand years of cultivation and countless iterations of optimization, the strongest two leaders have only barely touched the threshold of Level 7.

As for the Black Giant Priests?

That is purely a "mutation" under the incense god dao system, a miracle born from the gathering of faith of billions of Black Giants, and has little to do with his alchemy technology.

But Mentor Ke La Ke...

"Is this the mentor's full strength?" Jie Ming sighed subconsciously, "I didn't expect the mentor's strength to be so strong..."

"Strong?"

A playful voice came from beside him.

This Senior Sister glanced at Jie Ming sideways, her pupils reflecting the boundless shadow legion outside the window, but the corners of her mouth hooked into a smile that was not a smile.

"Junior Brother, is your 'Black Giant Legion' your entire combat power?"

Jie Ming was stunned.

He instantly understood Wei Ao's implication.

"Could it be that... the mentor's own combat power..."

"That's what they say." Wei Ao withdrew her gaze and looked out the window again, "But I also heard it from other high-tier wizards chatting, because the mentor hasn't made a move in public for a long time."

She paused and added:

"But this statement is highly credible. After all, the vast majority of wizards... including yourself, are in a similar situation, right?"

Jie Ming was silent.

Indeed.

A wizard's power source is knowledge, and knowledge can be transformed into multiple external manifestations: alchemy creations, rune arrays, summoning legions, law control, physical modification, elemental construction...

Most wizards will choose one or two as the main attack direction, supplemented by other means.

But few people will fully reveal the entire strength of their "body" to the outside.

Just like Jie Ming himself... what outsiders see are rune wizarding tools and the Black Giant Legion.

But only he himself knows that the inner heaven and earth hammered by 【Internal Circulation】, the immortal body built by 【Body Refining Method】, and the Purgatory Sulfur Plane that constructed the Incense God Dao, these are his true trump cards.

Then, how strong is the body hidden under the black robe of Mentor Ke La Ke, who can display the hundred-million-level shadow legion as "conventional power"?

Jie Ming didn't dare to think deeply.

Just at this moment...

Hum!!!

A harsh alarm sound rang out abruptly in every corner inside the fortress.

That is the alarm system installed in the fortress, a "crisis perception" resonance that acts directly on the soul level.

Jie Ming and Wei Ao turned their heads at the same time, looking at the distant horizon outside the observation window.

There, at the junction of the leaden grey sky and the dead earth, flickering light spots began to appear.

At first, it was just sporadic points, like distant stars in the night sky.

Then, the light spots increased rapidly, became dense, and connected into a piece of jumping light belt.

Finally, the light belt turned into a surging meteor shower dragging tails of various colors—that was the wizard group flying at high speed while continuously releasing interception wizardry backward.

The vanguard legion of Nuolun Workshop had retreated.

And biting tightly behind them were more dense and violent pursuit torrents.

"Go to position!"

Wei Ao drank low, and her figure had turned into a purple light, rushing toward the control center in the lower layer of the fortress.

Jie Ming didn't have any hesitation, and the preparatory runes for the Grand Void Steps lit up with faint light on his legs.

He took a step, his figure pulling out faint afterimages in the air, following closely behind Wei Ao, rushing into the passage leading to the core area of the fortress.

The two traveled at high speed in the complex metal corridor, surrounded by other wizards who were also running.

No one spoke, only rapid footsteps, the hydraulic sound of metal gates opening and closing, and the increasingly clear energy explosion roar vaguely coming from outside the fortress.

A few seconds later, Jie Ming rushed into a hemispherical control room.

More than thirty wizards had already gathered here, and everyone was standing at their respective operation consoles.

The operation consoles were arranged in a ring, and in the center floated a three-dimensional projection sand table with a diameter of more than five meters, displaying the battlefield situation within a radius of three thousand kilometers centered on Fortress 7 in real-time.

At the edge of the sand table, the blue light spots representing the Nuolun Workshop vanguard legion were rapidly shrinking toward the fortress direction.

And behind them, the red light spots representing the joint army of the Chaos Secret Sect and the Tower of Annihilation were chasing closely like a blood-colored torrent that had burst its banks.

"Lock on interception area 1-7 to 1-12!"

In the center of the control room, a Level 6 wizard with grey hair and a monocle ordered in a low voice.

He is the tactical commander of this fortress, specializing in large-scale battlefield scheduling.

"Rune array charging, countdown five seconds!"

"Five..."

Jie Ming quickly sat down at his operation console numbered "Fortress 7-Alchemy-09."

On the table, dozens of crystal panels of different colors lit up at the same time, displaying the real-time status of the twelve "super-heavy elemental decomposition cannons" outside the fortress.

Each of these weapons requires energy consumption equivalent to the total spiritual power of a Level 5 wizard, and its power is enough to evaporate the flesh of a Level 6 creature in an instant, and even cause serious damage to Level 7 existences.

The energy consumption is huge to operate, but as a fixed defensive fortification's firepower point, it is just right.

"Four..."

Jie Ming pressed his hands on the sensing area of the operation console, and his consciousness sank into the control network.

Vision switched.

He "saw" the scene outside the fortress.

In the sky, the figures chasing from behind, the ones rushing at the front, were nearly a hundred figures emitting Level 7 fluctuations.

Those are the top combat powers of the Chaos Secret Sect and the Tower of Annihilation, they took the lead, like the tip of an arrowhead, biting tightly on the tail of the Nuolun Workshop rearguard troops.

The wizards of the Chaos Secret Sect are easy to identify.

Most of them wear dark red, dark purple, or pitch-black robes, and their bodies show more or less non-human characteristics: some have a third eye on their forehead, some have tentacles protruding from their backs, and some have liquid runes flowing on the surface of their skin.

The wizards belonging to the Chaos Secret Sect rarely use direct attack wizardry, and instead, they use invisible curse ripples, illusion force fields that distort reality, screams that act directly on the soul, and various "pollution" that induces negative states.

A Level 7 wizard of Nuolun Workshop tried to turn back to counterattack, and the thundercloud he had just condensed was hit by three curses that descended at the same time.

One made a logical paradox appear inside his spell model, and the thundercloud self-annihilated; one distorted his spatial perception, making him misjudge the distance between the enemy and himself; the last one directly planted a seed of "self-doubt" in his consciousness, making his spellcasting appear a momentary delay.

It was this moment, and an attack from a Tower of Annihilation wizard arrived.

That attack was plain and unadorned, just a beam of light intertwined with black and white.

But wherever the beam passed, space itself let out an unbearable groan.

The beam contained two diametrically opposed but homologous forces, which were forcibly blended together and then guided toward the most violent conflict and annihilation.

Boom!!!

The black and white beam hit the shield that the Nuolun wizard had hurriedly propped up.

No explosion, no fire.

Only a piece of absolute "nothingness" spread at the hit point, and the shield, light, sound, energy, and even part of the space structure all turned into the most basic disordered particles in that annihilating power.

That Nuolun wizard groaned, the shield shattered, and his left shoulder along with a small half of his chest disappeared directly.

But he didn't even turn his head, instead, he borrowed the impact force to accelerate forward, and at the same time, the flesh and blood at the wound wriggled crazily, beginning to regenerate.

The wizards of the Tower of Annihilation specialize in studying the collision and use of opposing energies.

So their combat style is completely opposite to the Chaos Secret Sect, and their attacks are simple and rude.

The collision of water and fire produces high-temperature and high-pressure plasma steam explosions.

The annihilation of light and darkness creates an absolute nothingness swallowing field.

The contact of matter and antimatter releases a pure energy destruction torrent.

Fortunately, this batch of rearguard elite wizards of Nuolun Workshop were all carefully selected.

Besides frontal combat power, they were also outstanding in mobility, survival ability, and tactical response.

Although they were at a disadvantage in numbers, relying on exquisite cooperation and endless life-saving trump cards, as well as familiarity with the traps pre-arranged in this area, they forcibly dragged the pursuit battle into a consumption battle of fighting while retreating.

"Two..."

On the sand table, the blue light spots representing the rearguard troops finally crossed a certain invisible "boundary line."

That boundary line is an arc-shaped defense line starting from Fortress 1 at the very front and extending 120 kilometers outward.

Behind the defense line is the fortress cluster defense zone that Nuolun Workshop has initially built.

"One..."

The commander's countdown, like a cold hammer sound, knocked into the consciousness of every wizard in the control room.

Jie Ming took a deep breath.

On the operation console in front of him, the twelve icons representing the "super-heavy elemental decomposition cannons" turned from yellow to dazzling scarlet at the same time.

Charging completed.

"... Fire!"

(End of chapter)