txolops Chapter 730: Future Path and Anomaly
Chapter 730: Future Path and Anomaly
**Chapter 730: Future Path and Anomaly**
After finishing their discussion about Viola, the laboratory fell silent for a moment.
Clark placed the rune pen, which had automatically finished recording the data, back onto the pen rack and turned around, his gaze landing on Jie Ming.
“What are your plans going forward?”
Jie Ming hesitated for a moment before speaking, somewhat embarrassed.
“Actually… I’ve been thinking about following the mentor’s path.”
As he said this, Jie Ming felt a twinge of guilt, knowing full well that even with the boost from his Dao Integration state, he was still far too distant from a genius of Clark’s caliber.
Clark’s expression remained unchanged upon hearing this—neither surprised nor particularly encouraging. He simply nodded calmly. “That unique learning state of yours is indeed very well-suited to my path. Your learning efficiency is at least two orders of magnitude higher than that of ordinary wizards of the same rank, and the breadth of knowledge you absorb far exceeds what a conventional specialization route requires. From this perspective, choosing to study all laws rather than specializing in one is quite appropriate.”
He then shifted his tone:
“However, I must warn you that following my path will involve enormous difficulties. Researching all laws versus specializing in one—the resources and time consumed are not on the same scale.” Jie Ming thought for a moment and asked, “How long did it take you, Mentor?”
“Based on my own ability to earn resources, during my sixth-ring wizard stage I spent nearly a hundred thousand years collecting resources and studying,” Clark said in an even tone. “For most of those hundred thousand years, I wasn’t studying—I was earning. Earning military merits, earning resources, earning knowledge, and then pouring everything I earned into the study of the next law.”
A hundred thousand years…
Jie Ming silently repeated the number in his heart.
He had seen the lifespan scale of high-ranking wizards before, and at his current stage he could be said to possess endless longevity as well.
Yet hearing “a hundred thousand years” from Clark’s mouth still gave him the feeling of being struck directly by the number.
Then he understood.
No wonder every time he had seen his mentor before, Clark was either processing experimental data, writing papers, or holding remote meetings with people via the magic network terminal.
In the past, he had thought it was simply personal diligence. Now he realized it wasn’t diligence at all—it was the entry threshold for the all-laws route.
“However, you don’t need to follow my path exactly,” Clark said, seemingly seeing through his thoughts, his tone still steady. “You can walk your own path. My path is merely one of many possibilities, not the only solution, and not necessarily the optimal one.”
Jie Ming nodded, though his mind was thinking of something else entirely.
He did indeed need to walk his own path.
The path that combined the immortal cultivation system with the wizard system.
This path had never been walked by a second person in wizard civilization, nor could it ever be, because the Great Dao Book Pavilion was only in his hands. Yet among all the paths he had seen so far on the wizard side, his mentor Clark’s all-laws route was undeniably the strongest.
To be able to suppress a seventh-ring living plane wizard while only at the sixth ring—this was still only sixth-ring strength. The potential afterward would only be even more exaggerated.
Therefore, on the wizard half of the path, he would naturally imitate and draw upon his mentor’s route as much as possible.
As for the other half—the immortal cultivation system—he would have to rely on flipping through the books in the Great Dao Book Pavilion one by one himself.
Clark glanced at him, apparently already seeing that he had no intention of giving up.
But he offered no further persuasion.
High-ranking wizards had no upper limit to their lifespans, and advanced wizards faced no mandatory conscription requirements.
As long as one wasn’t killed, one could live as long as one wished. There was plenty of time for trial and error.
A hundred thousand years might be an insurmountable chasm to mortals, but to wizards it was merely one phase in a long career.
Moreover, although he didn’t know the specifics, Clark knew that the resources Jie Ming held in his hands were not few. His starting line was even no lower than Clark’s own had been back then.
If he wanted to walk this path, then let him walk it.
If he couldn’t get through, there would still be time to change direction.
Even if he ultimately failed, the knowledge accumulated along the way would be real and tangible. For a wizard, there was never any mistake in accumulating knowledge.
“Mentor, I’ll take my leave first.”
Jie Ming performed a farewell salute and turned to walk toward the laboratory door.
He had just reached the doorway and had not yet raised his hand to push it open when a very soft “hmm?” suddenly came from behind him.
Jie Ming turned his head.
Clark stood in place, his brows slightly furrowed as he looked up at the laboratory ceiling.
It was an expression Jie Ming rarely saw on Clark’s face.
There was some vigilance and gravity to it, but far more prominent was puzzlement.
Like a scholar reading a book who suddenly noticed an ant that shouldn’t be there on the edge of the page.
It posed no real threat, yet made one want to pick it away.
Jie Ming subconsciously looked up at the ceiling as well, but there was nothing there.
It was just the standard white laboratory ceiling, embedded with several rows of cool blue lighting runes, without even a single crack.
He quietly activated his True-False Void-Piercing Pupil. A faint silver star vortex rotated gently in the depths of his pupils. Layer by layer, the ceiling in his vision was peeled away.
Surface building materials, rune circuits, energy flow, spatial structure…
Still nothing.
Clark suddenly waved his hand casually.
The motion was light and effortless, like swatting away a mosquito that had flown in front of him.
Yet in the vision of Jie Ming’s True-False Void-Piercing Pupil, what he saw was nothing of the sort.
The law tentacles that originally blanketed the entire plane converged toward a single point the instant Clark waved his hand. Countless tentacles silently closed together at a spot above Clark’s head, like an enormous hand gently clenching once before quickly loosening and spreading back out to their original positions.
But… there was nothing at the spot that had been grasped.
At least, Jie Ming saw nothing.
“Mentor?”
He probed cautiously.
Clark withdrew his hand. His brows had already smoothed out again, returning to that unchanging indifferent expression.
“It’s nothing serious—just a little bug,” he said. “It has nothing to do with you. You should go back and think carefully about advancing to the sixth ring. Even if you truly want to follow my line of thinking, you’ll at least need to reach the sixth ring first.”
Jie Ming did not press the matter.
Because when Clark said “it has nothing to do with you,” it truly had nothing to do with him… at least not at his current stage. He nodded, saluted once more, pushed open the laboratory door, and walked out.
The door closed behind him. The glowing plants lining both sides of the corridor still emitted soft fluorescence.
The shadow girl had appeared again at the corridor corner at some point, quietly waiting to guide him.
Jie Ming followed her toward the teleportation array, yet his mind kept replaying the scene he had just witnessed.
What Clark called a “little bug,” he hadn’t even managed to see clearly.
But he knew Clark’s personality well enough to understand that he would never act without reason.
In the world of wizards, not understanding meant weakness.
Originally, Jie Ming had felt somewhat pleased with himself—especially after hearing about the farce the Wizard Broadleaf had caused trying to obtain body forging methods. He had been secretly proud of his current strength.
Yet his mentor Clark’s action just now had truly calmed him down.
“I… still have a long way to go…”
He stepped onto the spatial teleportation array. Silver-white light lit up from the edges of the array patterns.
The sulfur scent of the Infernal Sulfur Plane slowly replaced the complex mixed-race atmosphere of Clark’s plane amid the light.
The laboratory’s cool blue lighting refocused before his eyes. The Reflection Dimension theory notes he had left unfinished before departing were still spread out on the workbench. The Five Aggregates Rainbow Mirror, which had been processing data, floated quietly in mid-air. Upon seeing him return, it automatically drifted over and gently rubbed against his hand.
Jie Ming sat down before beginning work, organizing in his mind what needed to be done next.
The optimization of the Dragonman bloodline runes needed to be put on the agenda.
Practical testing of Reflection Dimension knowledge required arranging experiments.
There was also that activated test tube.
But before all that, there was one matter that was the prerequisite for everything else.
That was the matter of advancing to the sixth ring.