Chapter 534

Two days later.

Above the surface, the light of the super-wide-area transmutation array had covered the entire plane.

Silver-white radiance rose from all over the earth, intertwining into a giant net covering the world, wantonly manipulating the elements of the entire plane.

And deep underground, that giant enlightenment array with a range of over a thousand miles also quietly activated under the cover of the earth-shattering movement on the surface.

The glowing white light lit up from every line of the magic array, faint as fireflies at first, then brighter and brighter, more and more prosperous, and finally converged into a pillar of light shooting straight to the dome.

Clark floated above the core of the magic array, his hands pressed virtually, his sparse hair fluttering gently in the energy turbulence.

His mental power was like invisible tentacles, probing into the super-wide-area transmutation array running on the surface, forcibly taking over more than half of the control authority from it!

"It's started." His voice was calm, but clearly reached the ears of Jie Ming and Wei Aola.

On the surface, the transmutation array that was launching an offensive against the coalition camp suddenly split off half of its power.

These forces crazily extracted matter and energy from all over the plane, continuously transmitting them to the depths of the underground, transmitting them to this enlightenment array!

Jie Ming and Wei Aola stood at the control nodes on the edge of the enlightenment array, their hands pressed on the rune platform in front of them, their mental power connected to the magic array.

They could clearly perceive that massive amounts of matter and energy were pouring into the core of the magic array.

Under Clark's precise control, those matters and energies were decomposed, reorganized, and converted into something more essential, softer, and more suitable as "soul nourishment."

Those things were slowly gathering.

First as thin as mist, then thicker and thicker, more and more solid.

They rotated, intertwined, and fused at the core of the magic array, gradually outlining a blurred outline—

That is the prototype of the "soul."

More accurately, it is the shell of the soul.

And inside this shell, a very weak light, like a candle in the wind, was struggling to light up.

That is spirituality.

The nascent spirituality belonging to a plane.

Jie Ming and Wei Aola did not dare to be the slightest bit slack, their mental power running at full power, manipulating the enlightenment array, carefully wrapping, nourishing, and guiding that weak spirituality, allowing it to establish a connection with the soul shell that was taking shape.

Time passed second by second.

Finally, through the efforts of the two, that spirituality stabilized.

But what followed was a problem that both of them had anticipated but still felt their hearts sink.

That spirituality—was torn apart.

Like a shattered mirror, although it barely maintained an overall form, it was covered with dense cracks inside.

Those cracks corresponded to the fragmentation of the plane itself—the trauma left by the rough splicing of more than a dozen abandoned planes, all reflected on this nascent spirituality at this moment.

What's worse, according to the normal process of enlightenment, the next stage would be an extremely long "spiritual brewing" stage.

This nascent spirituality needs to slowly grow, slowly integrate, and slowly produce true self-consciousness in the soul shell.

This process takes at least several hundred years.

And if it is such a large plane, this time might even be extended to ten thousand years.

In terms of the final harvest, the time required is not long.

But the problem is, they don't have that much time now!

The war outside has reached the final moment.

"Mentor." Jie Ming spoke, his voice carrying irrepressible anxiety, "The soul foundation is complete, but the spirituality cannot be integrated, and time—"

Before he finished speaking, a gray-white figure had already landed beside them.

Clark had let go of his control over the surface transmutation array at some point and came behind the two.

He looked at the torn spirituality at the core of the magic array, not only without the slightest disappointment, but nodded slightly, a satisfied arc appearing at the corner of his mouth.

"Very good." He said, "Just as expected."

Jie Ming and Wei Aola looked at each other, both seeing the confusion in each other's eyes.

Clark did not explain much.

He just raised his hand, palm up.

A black substance slowly emerged from his palm.

That thing—is hard to describe in words.

It looks like flowing shadows, and like solidified darkness.

It has no fixed form, constantly squirming, twisting, and changing in Clark's palm, yet it always maintains a roughly constant outline.

It emits some extremely subtle, unsettling fluctuations, as if an existence from another dimension has been forcibly pressed into this world.

Jie Ming stared at the thing for a while, and his brows furrowed.

An inexplicable sense of familiarity.

Not the familiarity of "having seen similar things," but a deeper familiarity, as if carved into the depths of memory.

But he searched through his memory, scraped through all the images he could think of, but couldn't find any existence corresponding to this thing.

"Feel familiar?" Clark noticed his expression and smiled faintly, "You have indeed seen it."

Jie Ming was stunned.

"Remember?" Clark said, "When you were still at Nuolun Academy No. 13, that senior—who retreated from the Shadow Plane."

Upon hearing this, Jie Ming's pupils contracted sharply.

Shadow Plane.

Senior.

Those sealed memories, like a bursting flood, gushed out—

Nuolun Academy No. 13, the years he spent in the academy, he had been fighting a bitter battle with a strange plane called the "Shadow Plane."

Countless Wizards were sent to the front line, and countless people never came back.

And those "veterans" who were lucky enough to retreat from the front line, after serving for five years, gained a rare opportunity for vacation.

They returned to the academy, assisted in enrollment, and also served as living examples to inspire latecomers.

Jie Ming remembered very clearly.

What impressed him most at the time was a "super genius" who soared from a Level 1 official Wizard to Level 5 in just five years.

That promotion speed was unbelievably fast, making countless people envious.

But later he found out.

Such "geniuses" were less lucky ones and more unlucky ones.

In plane wars with other civilizations, many Wizards would have their souls eroded, memories tampered with, or even directly possessed by local natives.

Those "geniuses" who improved rapidly were often victims whose souls had been transformed by a large amount of information and thus possessed.

They were no longer themselves, but became carriers for the shadow natives to escape that plane.

"That's right." Clark's voice pulled him back to reality, "This thing is the guy who tried to escape by possession at that time."

He shook the squirming shadow in his hand, his tone as calm as if he were introducing an ordinary item: "At the same time, this guy is also the Plane Lord of that plane. However, because of the special nature of the Shadow Plane, its form of existence is relatively special—strictly speaking, it counts as a combination of half creature and half plane. I wiped out all its residual consciousness, leaving only the most basic instinctive spirituality."

Jie Ming stared blankly at the shadow, and those broken clues in his mind finally began to connect into a line.

He raised his head suddenly, looking at the torn plane spirituality at the core of the magic array, and then at the squirming shadow in Clark's hand: "Mentor, you want to—"

"Use its spirituality to replace the spirituality that should have been born." Clark took over the conversation, his tone still calm, "In this way, not only can the torn soul fragments be integrated, but the long process of brewing spirituality can also be skipped."

Wei Aola listened from the side, her brows locked. She stared at the shadow and asked hesitantly: "Can it be successful so simply? No matter how much this thing's consciousness is wiped out, it is essentially an external object. Using it as a core, can it be compatible with the spirituality of this plane itself?"

Clark glanced at her, the corners of his mouth rising slightly: "This is not simple."

He turned the shadow in his hand, his tone rarely carrying a hint of self-satisfaction: "I have been researching this transformation technology for several years. And as a raw material for the spiritual core, there is only this one copy—once used up, there will be no more."

Jie Ming was silent for a moment and then raised another question: "Even so—no matter how much this thing's consciousness is wiped out, it is essentially just 'instinctive spirituality', right?"

"Without true wisdom, even if it fuses successfully, does it really have combat capability?"

Clark looked at him, and the arc at the corner of his mouth deepened a bit.

That smile made Jie Ming's heart jump inexplicably.

Too familiar, as if he had seen it somewhere.

Clark did not answer.

He just turned and walked toward the core of the magic array again.

The squirming shadow was gently tossed up by him and fell into the torn plane spirituality in the center of the magic array.

The next moment.

The light of the magic array soared suddenly!

Jie Ming and Wei Aola narrowed their eyes at the same time, but their mental power did not dare to relax in the slightest.

They could clearly perceive that the moment the shadow fell into the spiritual core, it was like a spark thrown into dry firewood, quickly igniting everything around it!

Those torn spiritual fragments, those soul shells that had just taken shape, seemed to be pulled by some irresistible force, crazily gathering toward that shadow!

They rotated and intertwined, fused with each other, like countless streams flowing into the sea, and finally—

At the core of the magic array, a brand new, complete, yet somewhat eerie soul was formed.

The reason it is called eerie is that although it is complete, it is hollow.

There is no consciousness fluctuation.

There is no wisdom reaction.

It is just an "empty shell" of a soul.

It has a complete structure and vast spirituality, but no true "self."

Jie Ming and Wei Aola hadn't had time to ask, when they saw Clark make a move that made both of their hearts stop—

He stepped into the teleportation array on the edge of the core of the magic array.

That was a tiny teleportation array that could only accommodate one person standing; Jie Ming hadn't even noticed its existence before.

At this moment, as Clark stepped in, the array lit up instantly, and silver-white light shrouded his whole body.

Then, Clark's figure disappeared from where he was.

At the same time, a light screen on the side lit up automatically, showing the scene deep in the core of the magic array.

There, in that newborn hollow soul, a gray-white figure was slowly emerging.

It was Clark.

He entered the deepest part of the soul directly.

Then, in the eyes of Jie Ming and Wei Aola, who were shocked to the point of being speechless, his mental power spread crazily toward every vein of the entire soul like a floodgate opening!

He was—

"The old man is—" Wei Aola gasped when she spoke, "He is replacing this soul—"

Jie Ming reacted suddenly, almost instinctively pouncing on the rune platform in front of him: "Assist him! Quickly!"

The two simultaneously drove their mental power to the limit, struggling to manipulate the enlightenment array, helping Clark's mental power establish a connection with this newborn hollow plane soul!

In the extremely tense nerves, I don't know how long it took—

Finally, at a certain moment, Jie Ming felt his eyes blur suddenly.

That was an extremely wonderful experience.

He was still standing on the edge of the enlightenment array underground, his hands still pressed on the rune platform, but his vision seemed to penetrate heavy rock layers, penetrate the energy storm still raging on the surface, and see the entire plane directly!

He saw the sea of destruction ravaged by the antimatter frenzy.

He saw the pitch-black death energy torrent rising deep in the Chaos Secret Sect camp.

Every Wizard struggling, every fortress crumbling, every force tearing through space—

He saw everything on the battlefield!

Jie Ming knew that this was Clark's success.

Clark, with his own will, became the core consciousness of this living plane.

And at this moment, he was using the "authority" he had just acquired to pass everything he perceived directly into the minds of Jie Ming and Wei Aola.

Just at this moment, that death energy of the Chaos Secret Sect shot toward the outside of the plane.

Jie Ming stared at it, unable to help but marvel in his heart.

This thing already had a certain prototype of a "concept."

It was not just energy, not just emotion, but something deeper—the use of the concept of "death."

A prototype of conceptual material in a sense.

Then, he saw that death energy stop.

It just floated quietly in mid-air, like amber frozen.

At the same moment, the antimatter frenzy still raging crazily also stopped.

All explosions, all impacts, all destructive energy spreading—

Everything, everything, froze like a sculpture at the same instant.

That was Clark's doing.

He mobilized the power of the entire plane, like an ordinary person controlling a certain muscle on his arm, lightly, simultaneously holding down two existences capable of destroying the world!

Feeling that power close to Level 8, Jie Ming suddenly understood.

Understood why Clark's smile just now was so familiar.

He turned his head suddenly and looked at Wei Aola beside him.

Wei Aola was staring fixedly at the light screen, her silver-gray eyes full of complex light—there was shock, there was realization.

Jie Ming remembered.

He had seen the same smile on Wei Aola's face before.

That was when they were in the Yan Shuang plane. When she used the feedback of the living plane to forcibly jump from Level 3 to Level 6 in three steps.

At the beginning, the smile Wei Aola showed was that special kind of smile.

And now, he saw the same thing on Clark's face.

It's just that Wei Aola used an existing living plane at the time.

And Clark—he became that plane himself.

Jie Ming was silent for a long time, and finally only squeezed out a sentence: "Hiss—what is this—inherited?"

He paused, looking at the gray-white figure in the light screen, and then at Wei Aola with a complex expression beside him, and added in a low voice: "Seems—not right either?"

Wei Aola did not answer.

But Jie Ming clearly saw the corner of her mouth twitch slightly.

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