strictlysupreme Chapter 731: Thoughts and Audience
Chapter 731: Thoughts and Audience
**Chapter 731: Thoughts and Audience**
In the laboratory, Jie Ming sat at his workbench. A long list of unfinished tasks was densely displayed on the semi-transparent light screen in front of him, yet not a single word registered in his mind.
His gaze rested on the screen, but his thoughts had sunk deep into his spiritual sea.
His Ring of Truth had already been completely entwined by law golden threads into pure gold. The embryonic form of a law solidification domain rotated slowly within it, like an embryo sealed within a mother’s womb—only one final push away from taking complete shape.
In theory, he could advance to the sixth ring at any moment.
His mastery of all four elemental laws had exceeded one hundred percent, while his abyss-type and life-type laws had far surpassed that threshold.
Any one of them would be more than enough to serve as the core law for advancing to the sixth ring.
But Jie Ming wanted to use the Spiritual Qi Law to complete his advancement.
After all, it was the root of his entire power system.
It was the only true intersection between the immortal cultivation system and the wizard system, and the most fundamental link between him and the Great Dao Book Pavilion. If he advanced using the four elemental laws, he would become a powerful sixth-ring wizard—perhaps even an outrageously powerful one.
But that was not enough.
The path he wanted to walk was a different one.
To support that path, the foundation had to be something entirely his own, something that would not be confined by any existing law system.
Only the Spiritual Qi Law met that requirement.
However, the Spiritual Qi Law did not exist in the wizard world.
There was no concept of “Spiritual Qi” in the wizard world, no ready-made laws to reference, and even the basic theoretical framework had to be built by him bit by bit.
He had pushed the Spiritual Qi Law from zero to eighty percent mastery by relying on the construction of the Incense Fire Divine Dao and the passive comprehension of the Dao’s origin granted by his Dao Integration realm. But after reaching eighty percent, the boost from the Dao Integration state had clearly slowed down.
The Spiritual Qi Law was not a native law of the wizard world, so the enhancement from his Dao Integration state was far less pronounced than it was for the four elemental laws. The remaining twenty percent could only be completed through his own research.
More specifically, he needed to install a new subsystem into the Incense Fire Divine Dao.
The Incense Fire Divine Dao was currently the most successful application example of the Spiritual Qi Law and served as his core experimental platform for studying it.
Every time he built a new subsystem, his understanding of the Spiritual Qi Law would deepen another layer, and his law mastery would increase accordingly. He had already installed three.
Cross-spatial energy transmission system (Divine Descent System).
Fate Subsystem.
Dao Soldier System.
They corresponded to applications of Spiritual Qi in different dimensions and formed the most basic framework of the Incense Fire Divine Dao.
To push his mastery of the Spiritual Qi Law from eighty percent to one hundred percent, he needed one more new subsystem.
One that would allow him to gain a deeper understanding of the essence of Spiritual Qi during the research process.
The problem was—what exactly should this subsystem be?
With too many options available, Jie Ming found himself troubled instead.
Rubbing his brow, he casually opened the light screen and began scrolling through his long-accumulated list of unfinished tasks.
He scanned through them one by one until his fingertip suddenly stopped on a particular item.
Follow-up processing of the Tentacle Tree Plane.
This matter had been shelved for several years.
Although the Tentacle Tree Plane and the Infernal Sulfur Plane had completed their preliminary fusion, the current state was only transitional. It would still require a long period for the laws of both sides to slowly merge.
As a result, the continent of the Infernal Sulfur Plane now resembled a massive floating island embedded within a certain star region of the Tentacle Tree Plane.
He had been busy studying Reflection Dimension knowledge before, so the follow-up plan had never been finalized.
Jie Ming stared at the item for a few seconds, and a thought suddenly flashed through his mind.
The Tentacle Tree Plane was an ultra-large universe-type plane with five hundred billion stars.
Five hundred billion stars…
Jie Ming’s eyes slowly brightened.
He had figured out what subsystem to install into the Incense Fire Divine Dao!
In the following period, Jie Ming’s daily rhythm became extremely monotonous.
The automated factories on the Infernal Sulfur Plane operated twenty-four hours a day without rest.
Batch after batch of liquid mithril was cast from the elemental pools into standard specifications, then flowed into the Star Ring Federation’s arms market through Black’s channels in exchange for massive amounts of low-level military merits and rare materials.
At the same time, he also sold high-purity Spiritual Qi extracted from the Infernal Sulfur Plane in bulk through the trading platform on the magic network terminal. Ever since Wizard Starfall had obtained a first-class cultivation agreement by studying the properties of Spiritual Qi, Spiritual Qi had become a rare resource in wizard civilization, with prices remaining consistently high.
The batch he had just listed was snapped up by several sixth-ring wizard research teams in no time.
By the time he finally stopped, his previously empty account had accumulated enough startup funds to support the next phase of experiments.
“I’ll repay Mentor’s debt a little later. He probably doesn’t need this small amount right now.”
Thinking this, Jie Ming used the funds to purchase the required materials and began arranging the next round of experiments.
It was at this moment that Furnace Fence, the former planetary governor of the Tentacle Tree Civilization, received Jie Ming’s summons.
He had been in the community center of the Seventh Resettlement Zone, giving onboarding training to a group of newly matured Tentacle Trees.
He glanced at the meeting coordinates on his network terminal, and his tentacles instinctively curled.
Because the coordinates were neither on the familiar main continent of the Infernal Sulfur Plane nor in the main control room he had visited several times before.
It was a coordinate he had no impression of at all.
Furnace Fence suppressed the doubt in his heart, handed the training over to his deputy, and stepped onto the teleportation array alone.
When the light of the teleportation array faded, his portable protective suit activated automatically, unfolding a layer of semi-transparent membrane around his body.
The scorching heat waves were kept outside, yet the scene before him still caused his crystal eyes to widen involuntarily.
He stood on the surface of an extremely harsh planet.
Beneath his feet was a semi-solidified lava crust, with dark orange light glowing from the cracks. In the distance, a volcano was erupting magma columns dozens of meters high, and gray volcanic ash covered half the sky.
Through the gaps in the volcanic ash, he saw the enormous star overhead.
Its apparent diameter was much larger than any star he had seen elsewhere, so close it felt almost oppressive—like a crimson giant eye suspended in the firmament. Based on his experience serving in the colonial fleet, this should be a lava planet whose orbital path was extremely close to its star.
The environment was extremely hostile, with an atmosphere primarily composed of sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide. The surface temperature was high enough to instantly carbonize any carbon-based lifeform.
Yet in such a place completely unsuitable for any biological survival, the scene now appeared almost prosperous.
Dozens to hundreds of meters tall, massive numbers of black giants carried various materials, moving back and forth across the lava plains.
Every step they took left deep pits on the ground, splashing with molten lava.
On several temporarily constructed teleportation array platforms, new black giants continuously emerged carrying materials, while others who had finished their deliveries walked back empty-handed. The vertical openings on their chests opened and closed slightly in the high-temperature air, producing overlapping low, resonant hums.
Around the periphery of the star overhead, a thin ring had already been constructed.
The ring looked like a stellar ring encircling the star, but it was not formed from natural debris. Instead, it was a complete array structure reflecting a dark golden metallic luster.
Its surface was engraved with dense runes. The ring body had already enclosed most of the star’s outer perimeter, leaving only a small gap—making the star look as if it were wearing an incomplete metal ring.
“Please follow me. Master is over here.”
While Furnace Fence was still in shock, a black giant priest had already walked out from the busy construction site and led him forward.
On a temporarily leveled command platform, Furnace Fence saw Jie Ming.
Jie Ming was floating at the edge of the platform, one hand adjusting parameters on a light screen in front of him while the other held a clump of plasma sample he had just collected from the star’s surface.
Hearing the movement, he raised his head. Upon seeing Furnace Fence, his attitude was far gentler than the other had expected. He even proactively extended his hand in greeting. “You didn’t actually need to come in person. It’s not that important an order anyway.”
Jie Ming casually tossed the sample in his hand to a nearby black giant priest and turned to face Furnace Fence directly.
Furnace Fence immediately lowered his canopy to the standard angle of submission, his tentacles pressed flat against the ground.
“This is to express my respect for you, Your Excellency.”
Jie Ming neither confirmed nor denied it, nor did he stop him.
He could roughly guess what Furnace Fence was thinking.
Given the current situation, it was not Jie Ming who needed the Tentacle Tree Civilization, but the Tentacle Tree Civilization that needed him.
Such an unequal relationship would instinctively drive the weaker party to seek more respect to obtain a sense of security.
He did not need Furnace Fence’s respect, but there was no need to reject it and needlessly increase the other party’s unease.
“It’s nothing major,” Jie Ming said casually. “Don’t you still have many clansmen placed on planets? During the Dragonman mission earlier, I had the engineering team temporarily seal several major colonial star systems from the original Tentacle Tree Plane. It’s about time to begin the transfer now.”
Furnace Fence’s crystal eyes blinked.
“Transfer to where, Your Excellency?”
“Transfer to the new star system I recently created.”
Furnace Fence clearly froze for a moment.
He had lived for nearly two hundred years and felt he had seen quite a lot, but the phrase “creating a new star system” still exceeded his expectations.