Free Web NovelChapter 545: Chapter 466: Tension and Preparation
After adjusting his mood, Jeming stared at the distant sky.
The massive space rift stretching across the sky, like a pitch-black maw tearing through the heavens, hung silently at the edge of the Ship Plane.
The rim of the rift flowed with unstable streams of purple-blue energy, occasionally erupting with bursts of annihilating sparks—high-energy particle streams from the friction of two high-dimensional spaces forcibly interfacing.
His breathing unwittingly quickened.
His lungs expanded, contracted, then expanded again.
The sound of air rushing through the trachea amplified in his eardrums, rough and heavy like an old bellows.
It wasn’t until this sound abruptly intruded into his consciousness that Jeming was startled awake.
Had I... just zoned out?
He looked down at his own hands.
The skin shimmered with an abnormal reddish hue, as if molten lava was slowly coursing beneath.
The breath he exhaled condensed into a mist before him, no, it was a heatwave distorting the air, hot enough to instantly scald ordinary human flesh.
"I... I’m nervous..."
Jeming mumbled as he exhaled, with a hint of unfamiliar surprise in his tone.
Yes, this was nervousness.
Muscles slightly tense, blood circulation accelerating, mental focus heightened yet difficult to completely control attention...
All of these physiological reactions pointed to an emotion that was nearly ancient to him now.
How long has it been?
When was the last time he felt like this?
It was when he first traversed into this world, standing before the towering gates of Nolun Academy, awaiting the moment that would decide his fate.
Back then, his hands were cold, and his heart pounded like a drum.
Then, it was the first time participating in a Plane War, following the academy’s legion into Nolun’s 147th Plane.
In those few minutes before the battle, his breathing was chaotic too.
But after that?
How long has it been since he felt such emotions?
Five hundred years?
Or a thousand?
Jeming had long become accustomed to handling everything as a wizard, and had grown used to being coldly rational in the face of every situation.
Calmly analyzing enemy and ally advantages during crises, calculating resource expenditure, designing emergency plans, executing optimal solutions.
Even when faced with certain death, he would enter a state of transcendent calm—confidence bestowed by knowledge, and instinct honed by long years.
But this time, it was different.
"The opponent is a wizard," he realized.
Not an unintelligent Magical Beast, not Otherworld creatures reliant on innate talents, not those native civilizations that could be crushed by technology.
A wizard.
Like him, armored in rationality, wielding knowledge as a blade, pursuing truth through endless ages.
Fear naturally sprouted: because one never knows what tricks another wizard might have up their sleeve.
But at the same time, another emotion coursed through his veins.
Excitement.
The power of a wizard comes from knowledge.
Then... defeating another wizard suggests surpassing them academically?
Proof that the path chosen, the technology developed, the system constructed has demonstrated superiority in actual battle?
This kind of proof was more electrifying than destroying a hundred native civilizations.
The fear of death intertwined with the thirst for academic victory, forming a dense current that surged up his spine.
Jeming took a deep breath, attempting to calm down, but only intensified the heat of the air he exhaled.
He lifted his head, looking around.
Indeed.
It wasn’t just him.
On the vast assembly square of the Ship Plane, hundreds of thousands of wizards stood in silent ranks.
They wore wizard robes of various colors, adorned with accessories flashing elemental glows, with witchcraft artifacts of diverse forms floating at their sides.
Wizards preferred silence, so even with so many present, there was no noise, no commotion.
But Jeming could "see."
Those subtle finger tremors, those overly frequent adjustments of witchcraft artifact positions, those moments of sharp light flashing deep in their pupils.
An invisible pressure filled the air, ripples produced by the mental fields of hundreds of thousands of high-intelligence beings all highly tense at the same time.
The entire plane felt like a bow poised to release.
"Jeming."
A voice came from the left, elegant with a faint, undetectable trill of joy.
Senior Sister Viola turned her head, looking at him.
Today, she wore a form-fitting wizard robe, her long hair coiled in an exquisite bun, revealing her slender, fair neck.
On the surface, she remained the composed and elegant High Tier Witch.
But on closer inspection, one would notice her right index finger unconsciously tapping against a crystal potion bottle at her waist, and deep in her silver-gray eyes, some emotion quietly simmered.
She lifted her left hand, covering her lips slightly, concealing the involuntary smile curled up from overexcitement, her gaze tightly locked on Jeming.
"You’re going to battle wearing just that?"
Jeming looked down at himself.
A dark gray standard wizard robe of sturdy material, enchanted with basic cleansing, constant temperature, and elemental resistance runes, considered above average at the workshops of Nolun Academy.
But compared to the surrounding wizards...
The one on the left was decked out in liquid metal armor plates, each one slowly morphing, reflecting a rainbow-like sheen.
The one on the right was encased by three layers of nested transparent force fields, the surface crawling with countless miniature runes emitting disquieting energy waves.
Further away, someone had wings of light unfurled behind them, others stood atop rotating gear arrays, some almost entirely encased in writhing biomass armor.
Elemental brilliance burst freely on the square, illuminating the originally dark sky like the arrival of an aurora.
Jeming’s attire was plain to the point of impoverishment.
"It’s enough." He answered calmly, then raised his hand, pressing against his chest.
The surface of the wizard robe rippled.
Underneath the seemingly flat fabric, dozens of meticulously arranged slots emerged.
Jeming began retrieving witchcraft artifacts from his Inner Grotto Heaven.
Various metal plates and crystal pieces were deftly embedded into the slots by Jeming.
Five on the chest, storing the Ruins Armor.
Two on each side of the abdomen, for Void Step.
A Talisman Witchcraft of Acceleration embedded at the collar.
On the outer sides of each wrist, three dark red rhombus crystals were fixed, each crystal sealing five Fire Extinction Divine Lights inside.
When everything was in place, the surface of the wizard robe returned to smoothness, with no apparent abnormality.
Only Jeming could sense the faint yet steady energy pulses emitted by the witchcraft artifacts clinging to his skin, like a mechanical skeleton hidden beneath his clothing.
He knew his own strengths and weaknesses.
In terms of the reserve of conventional witchcraft, the depth of understanding of basic laws, the speed of constructing complex techniques in real-time, he was likely not to surpass those of the same rank now.
But he had the knowledge from the Great Dao Book Pavilion, the unique technology fusing cultivation immortality logic with wizard runes he developed.
These witchcraft artifacts were his advantages and confidence.
"Time is nearly up."
A deep voice came from ahead.
Professor Clark had turned around sometime, his eyes that seemed to penetrate fate sweeping over Jeming and Viola, finally settling on the distant space rift.
"Check your defenses," Clark succinctly instructed, "once you enter, the battle begins."
Professor Clark’s voice wasn’t loud, but at the sound of it, Jeming and Viola instantly tensed to the extreme.
Almost simultaneously, hundreds of thousands of wizards began to move.
Some chanted softly, others quickly sealed, and some directly activated long-prepared trigger-based witchcraft.
Surging elemental torrents shot into the sky: fire, frost, lightning, gravity, light, sound, illusions, emotions...
Countless forces briefly awakened, transforming into layered shields, auras, force fields, and enhancement techniques, wrapping every wizard into a radiant warband.
