Chapter 625

The dark-blue-robed wizard stood at the end of the corridor, his hands behind his back, his gaze slowly sweeping over those crooked graffiti.

"Everyone." He spoke, his voice not loud, but everyone's attention was attracted.

"We have already spent nearly six hours here."

The people present immediately understood what he meant.

Six hours, for a task that requires handling multiple points, is indeed too long.

Other wizard teams that chose more popular points have probably already solved one or two anomalies and are on their way to the next target.

"The strength of those anomalies, everyone should have a count in their hearts." The dark-blue-robed wizard continued. "To be honest, their strength is not strong. Whether it's the salty finger or the graffiti, the energy level itself is not high. It's just that the characteristics are troublesome——especially that state of merging into rules without a physical body, making us unable to use our strength."

The young witch nodded: "If the output energy level hadn't been limited, even if they had such troublesome characteristics, they wouldn't be so tricky."

"The problem lies right here." The dark-blue-robed wizard turned to face everyone. "This thing is essentially not difficult to handle; if we delay for too long, other teams that have finished dealing with anomalies are very likely to find this place and intervene. If we are unlucky, it is very likely that we will be judged as not having completed the task, and lose the exploration quota——we cannot watch other teams snatch away all the exploration quotas of the anomaly plane."

He said it very bluntly, but no one present felt it was inappropriate.

They are all high-tier wizards, not young people who are hot-headed.

In this mission, solving anomalies and saving civilians are the superficial goals, but everyone knows the true core driving force.

It is the research opportunity of that anomaly plane.

A brand-new unknown existence that has a deep connection with laws is more attractive to wizards than any wealth or any military merit.

Even if they didn't lose the quota, but because they dragged on too long in this town, causing other teams to enter the anomaly plane first and harvest all the valuable research samples——

That would also be a huge loss.

"So, I have a proposal." The dark-blue-robed wizard's gaze became sharp. "Since we can't find its specific location, then let's flip the table."

"Flip the table?" The burly wizard raised an eyebrow.

"That's right!"

The dark-blue-robed wizard raised his hand and drew a circle in the air, a pale blue arc of light appeared at his fingertips, outlining a constantly shrinking ring.

"We shrink the Barrier, constantly shrinking from a diameter of one hundred kilometers. At the same time, each of us unfolds our own law solidification domain, sticking to the inner wall of the Barrier, like a fishing net, compressing the activity space of these two anomalies bit by bit."

"When the Barrier shrinks to a certain extent, even if they merge into the rules, they won't be able to hide. In such a small range, when our Barrier and domain 'squeeze' the rules of this area out, they will have no place to hide."

"By that time, they will have nowhere to escape."

The corridor was silent for a moment.

"This plan is feasible." The Cursed Witch was the first to express her position.

"I also think it's feasible." The thin wizard pushed the bridge of his nose. "Theoretically, the activity range of such anomalies that merge into rules is inevitably limited by the rule areas they can influence."

"If we constantly compress this area, they will either be forced to manifest, or be squeezed into our domains. Either way, it's better than searching aimlessly like now."

"But there is a problem." Jie Ming raised a hand. "What about me?"

Everyone's gaze turned to Jie Ming, who was standing at the edge of the corridor.

The dark-blue-robed wizard also looked at him, his gaze carrying a hint of apology: "Jie Ming, it's not that I don't trust your strength.

But the law solidification domain is the iconic ability of a Tier 6 wizard; you haven't reached that level yet."

"In the process of shrinking the Barrier, we need everyone to unfold their own domain to fill the gaps in the Barrier, ensuring that the anomaly won't slip out through the gaps. Your position——"

"I understand." Jie Ming nodded, his tone very calm. "I don't have a law solidification domain; participating by force might instead become a breakthrough point. So you go and shrink the Barrier, and I will stay in the town."

"Not just staying in the town." The dark-blue-robed wizard added. "We need you to continue maintaining monitoring of the town. In the process of us shrinking the Barrier, these two anomalies are very likely to try to create chaos by harming townspeople, or use townspeople as hostages. You need to ensure that the people in the town won't be affected in this process."

"Leave it to me."

Jie Ming didn't say anything more, his figure flickered and disappeared from the corridor.

Town center, fountain square.

Jie Ming sat cross-legged on the stone edge of the fountain again, his spiritual sense spreading in all directions like a tide.

This time, he focused his main attention on the inside of the town, and the scanning was more detailed than before.

Every household, every street, every building appeared in a nearly transparent state in his perception.

His Fate System operated at full power, and the causal network covered every corner of the entire town.

Any trace of abnormality, any fate line that deviated from the normal trajectory, would be captured by him at the first moment.

High in the sky, eight figures dispersed.

The dark-blue-robed wizard stood in the most central position, his hands held high, and a complex rune array appeared in his palms.

That was the Barrier control core, and all the nodes of the outer Barrier were connected to his spiritual sense through this core.

"Start shrinking." His voice reached everyone's ears.

Thus, the Barrier began to move.

The huge energy barrier with a radius of one hundred kilometers, with the town center as the circle center, began to slowly shrink inward.

To be honest, this means is simply a fantasy for many low-tier wizards.

After all, the biggest characteristic of such things as Barriers is that they can form solid ramparts, but the disadvantage is that the size is relatively fixed.

But high-tier wizards, relying on their own knowledge, forcibly broke this "rule."

But even for high-tier wizards, they didn't dare to proceed too fast in this process; after all, this required extremely precise manipulation.

The speed of shrinking cannot be too fast, otherwise the energy barrier will be unstable; the magnitude of shrinking must be uniform, otherwise gaps will be generated.

And in this process, they also have to constantly filter various substances that need to be discharged.

After all, if they don't discharge outward at all, by the end, the air pressure intensity alone would be enough to kill the people in the small town.

As a person inside the Barrier, Jie Ming could feel that change.

The energy density permeating the air was slowly rising, just like the water level rising bit by bit.

That is a natural phenomenon of the increase in energy concentration per unit area caused by the shrinking of the Barrier.

The salty finger had no reaction.

At least from Jie Ming's perception, the concept of "salty" was still loosely permeating the air of the town, and did not produce any changes due to the shrinking of the Barrier.

It was like a fish lying at the bottom of the water, completely unaware of the movement on the water surface.

But the graffiti anomaly was different.

When the Barrier shrank to a radius of fifty kilometers, Jie Ming's Fate System captured the first trace of abnormality.

A causal line trembled slightly in the northeast corner of the town, as if someone had gently plucked a string at that end.

Jie Ming's spiritual sense immediately focused over.

That was the outer wall of an abandoned warehouse, and there were originally some blurred graffiti traces on the wall surface, and at this moment those traces were slowly changing.

New graffiti was emerging.

Jie Ming didn't hesitate, his spiritual sense condensed into an extremely thin blade, precisely cutting toward that wall.

He directly stripped the wall material where the entire graffiti that hadn't had time to take shape was located from the building.

With a soft "click," that piece of stone wall, along with the graffiti that had just emerged on it, was neatly cut off, flipped a few times in the air, and then crushed into powder by Jie Ming with his spiritual sense.

The "medium" was destroyed, and the graffiti anomaly's attempt was interrupted.

But that was just a beginning.

In the following time, the graffiti anomaly seemed to realize the danger and began to test frantically.

It tried to emerge new graffiti in every corner of the town, some on the outer walls of residences, some on the surface of stone roads, and some even on the wooden floor of a resident's home.

Every time, Jie Ming could erase it before the graffiti fully emerged.

His spiritual sense covered the entire town, and with the Fate System fully open, the reaction speed was so fast that even Tier 6 wizards might not be able to keep up.

Every abnormal causal fluctuation was captured by him at the first moment, and every emergence of graffiti was erased by him at the first moment.

The townspeople didn't even know what had happened.

Some people just heard a strange sound from outside, pushed the door to look, and found that a piece of their outer wall was missing.

But they didn't pay much attention, thinking it fell off due to disrepair.

The Barrier continued to shrink.

The frequency of the graffiti anomaly's testing suddenly decreased after the Barrier shrank to a radius of ten kilometers.

However, Jie Ming could feel that the other party hadn't given up, but was accumulating strength.

That force compressed in an increasingly smaller space was becoming irritable.

Jie Ming reported this situation to the surrounding wizards without hesitation.

"Continue shrinking." The dark-blue-robed wizard's voice sounded in the spiritual channel, carrying a hint of imperceptible joy. "It's starting to get anxious. This shows that our direction is correct."

Radius of five kilometers, three kilometers, one kilometer——

When the Barrier shrank to a radius of one kilometer, Jie Ming could clearly feel that the air in the town had become "viscous."

Wizards were constantly discharging air outward; of course, it was not viscous in the physical sense, but the density at a certain conceptual level was increasing.

Just like the salt content originally diluted in a large amount of water, as the water constantly evaporated, the concentration became higher and higher.

He closed his eyes and used his spiritual sense to feel that strangeness.

He could clearly feel two feelings.

One was very weak, like a candle in the wind, and could only shrink together under the squeezing of the Barrier.

————That was the salty finger.

The other was very strong, occupying more than ninety percent of the sense of abnormality in the compressed area.

It was not as calm as the salty finger, but was constantly struggling, twisting, and attempting to find a breakthrough.

Undoubtedly, that was the graffiti anomaly.

"Continue shrinking." Jie Ming said in the channel. "The salty finger has already been compressed very small. The graffiti is still resisting, but it can't run away."

The Barrier continued to shrink.

When the diameter of the Barrier shrank to fifty meters, a change occurred.

The air above the fountain square suddenly vibrated violently, as if something had been forcibly squeezed out from an invisible level.

Jie Ming opened his eyes.

In the center of the square, next to the fountain, a pale finger appeared out of thin air in mid-air.

It was not inserted into any container, just suspended about one meter above the ground, the fingernails were damp, and liquid was slowly dripping.

The salty finger couldn't bear it first and manifested.

Jie Ming touched his chin with interest; it seems that the fusion of this anomaly with laws is not deep, and it requires a certain degree of range.

Now, it no longer had enough rule space to hide itself.

The compression of the Barrier and the law solidification domains of the eight wizards squeezed the rule area it relied on to hide to the point of almost non-existence.

That finger trembled slightly in the air, and waves of curse fluctuations spread from it in all directions; that was its instinctive means of attack.

But the curse waves just spread out and were blocked back by the inner wall of the Barrier, as if hitting an invisible wall.

"The salty finger has manifested." Jie Ming reported in the channel. "It is emitting curse fluctuations, but it is blocked by the Barrier. There is no impact on the townspeople."

"What about the graffiti?" The dark-blue-robed wizard asked.

As soon as the words fell, a piece of chaotic color suddenly exploded above the square.

The graffiti appeared.

But this time the graffiti did not appear on the wall or stone slab, but emerged out of thin air in the air.

Those crooked lines, unevenly applied colors, and child-like brushstrokes directly outlined strange pictures in the void.

The pictures changed constantly.

For a while, it was a twisted human face, with facial features misplaced, eyes growing at the position of the mouth, and the mouth growing on the forehead.

For a while, it was a chaotic block of color, as if someone had poured all the pigments together and stirred them randomly.

It seemed that realizing it could no longer continue to hide, those graffiti began to imitate the images of several wizards.

Jie Ming saw the images of the nine of them crookedly emerging in the air, and the postures were highly consistent with their distribution on the square.

The graffiti was trying to copy their appearance, and then distort these replicas.

The arm of a graffiti human figure was lengthened, pulled as thin as a noodle.

The head of a graffiti human figure was flattened, becoming a pancake.

The body of a graffiti human figure was twisted into a twist.

But these distortions did not cause any impact on the wizards in reality.

At this moment, the eight Tier 6 wizards no longer restrained their power, and everyone's law solidification domain had been opened.

The graffiti anomaly's attack was offset by the power at the law level the moment it touched those domains, and it couldn't even stir up a ripple.

Seeing that the attack was ineffective, the graffiti anomaly became even more irritable.

It found that it couldn't hurt those high-tier wizards surrounding it in the sky, so it turned all its attention to——

Jie Ming.

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