Cultivating in the Wizard World

Two days earlier.

Jeming and Viola followed behind Professor Clark, passing through the side door of the command room, walking deeper along the corridor.

When they reached the end of the corridor, Clark stopped in front of a seemingly ordinary metal wall.

He raised his hand and gently pressed a spot on the wall.

The wall, as if released from some illusion technique, silently opened a hidden door just wide enough for one person to pass through.

Behind the door was an extremely simple device, presumably an elevator.

Though calling it an "elevator" was pitiful—it was merely a metal platform, surrounded by a deep shaft, with nothing but endless darkness above and below.

Clark stepped onto it first.

Viola followed closely, not forgetting to give Jeming a look that said, "Don't just stand there."

Jeming took a deep breath and stepped onto the platform.

After Clark confirmed the permissions with the array on the platform, it began to descend.

Jeming clearly felt a steady force pulling them at a constant speed towards the depths of the earth.

The rock walls of the shaft rapidly moved upwards, occasionally revealing runes embedded within the rock layers, emitting a faint glow—the traces of the reinforcement technique.

One minute passed.

Five minutes.

Ten minutes.

Jeming silently calculated the time, his amazement growing.

At the speed of this descending device, after ten minutes of descent... they must have already gone more than fifty kilometers underground by now.

Beside him, Viola had also put away her usual lazy expression, with a gleam of thought sparkling in her silver-gray eyes.

Finally, after nearly another ten minutes of descent,

the platform trembled slightly and came to a stop.

The rock wall in front automatically split open to the sides, revealing a spacious exit.

Clark stepped out.

Jeming and Viola exchanged a glance and followed closely behind.

Then, both of them froze simultaneously.

In front of them lay an excessively vast underground cavern.

No, the word "vast" couldn't even begin to describe it.

Jeming strained his eyes to look far ahead but failed to see the edge of the plain cavern.

The entire cavern was so large it seemed to have swallowed an entire sky underground.

The cavern's walls were smooth as mirrors, obviously carved by human hands.

There were no unnecessary decorations, no facilities for living, just one thing...

An array.

An enormous array covering the ground before their eyes, with a diameter of over a thousand kilometers.

Gentle white light emanated from every line of the array, illuminating this underground megastructure.

The light was soft yet not dim, gentle yet not glaring, like moonlight spilling over a tranquil lake.

Jeming stared at the array for a while, and his pupils suddenly constricted.

The exceedingly complex patterns, the multiply nested structures, the familiar core rune composition pulsating with some sort of spiritual rhythm...

"This is..." Jeming had an idea in his heart.

Viola recognized it too.

Her silver-gray eyes widened, her breath even halting for a moment.

"Starfall's... Enlightenment Technique?" she blurted out.

Exactly.

Even though the array before them appeared modified, optimized, and adjusted countless times, even though its scale had been magnified tens of thousands of times...

But the core framework of this array, with its unique "spiritual" flavor, was identical to the technique Starfall used to animate his plane into a living plane!

Jeming and Viola exchanged glances, both seeing the same shock and realization in each other's eyes.

Enlightenment Technique.

It was because of this technique that Starfall received the First Level cultivation protocol.

And within the entire Nolun Workshop, the number of people who truly mastered its core technology could be counted on one hand.

Starfall himself was naturally one of them.

Clark, along with his apprentices, gained access to the core rune construction of the Enlightenment Technique because of Starfall's gratitude.

Professor Clark had spent a long time continuously assisting in guiding Starfall's living plane.

In the short term, he was arguably the person most knowledgeable about the Enlightenment Technique besides Starfall in this world.

And Jeming and Viola had also deeply studied parts of this technique's essence.

Though not as proficient as Clark and Starfall, at least they recognized it and understood its principles.

At this moment, in this secret space kilometers deep underground, seeing such an enormous Enlightenment Technique array...

What Clark... or rather, what Nolun Workshop intended to do needed no further explanation.

"Professor..." Viola struggled to speak, her voice almost faint, "You're not thinking of..."

Clark turned, looking at their shocked faces, a slight smile forming at the corner of his lips.

"It seems you have guessed."

He raised his hand and pointed upward.

There lay the thick rock layers, endless darkness, and the surface battlegrounds where a fierce reconnaissance war was currently underway.

"From the very beginning, the workshop had a dual plan."

His voice was calm, yet carried a certainty of total control:

"Openly, we made some High Tier Wizards disappear, indeed setting up a super-wide area refining array. The existence of this camp seems to be merely a cover for setting up the super-wide area refining array. But in reality, the camp, which appears to be a decoy, also conceals another layer of trump card."

He paused for a moment, then continued:

"Moreover, thanks to the mutual apprehension between both sides. They're tightly surveilling our High Tier Wizards, but this actually helps us—combat power at my level, as long as I don't leave the camp, staying in a 'monitored' state is the least suspicious."

Jeming listened, as fragmented pieces of information in his mind stitched together into a complete picture.

He looked up at the colossal array spanning thousands of kilometers, and opened his mouth with a slightly hoarse voice:

"So, the true trump card of the workshop... was never the super-wide area refining array?"

"Not exactly, the refining array is real," Professor Clark corrected, "But strictly speaking it's not the trump card, rather it is..."

He looked meaningfully at the center of the array, where an extremely faint, almost imperceptible spiritual light was gently flickering:

"...nourishment."

Jeming's pupils contracted sharply.

Viola also instantly understood something.

"You mean..." her voice trembled slightly with shock, "the true purpose of the super-wide area refining array was never to counter the opponent's trump card, but to provide materials for... for this array..." she pointed at the enlightenment technique array.

Clark nodded slightly:

"This plane is essentially a simple splicing of over a dozen abandoned planes. Elements are scarce, and traces of life have long vanished years ago. To perform an awakening technique on such a 'dead object,' the biggest challenge is—there isn't enough suitable substance and energy to construct a soul."

He looked at the giant array emitting a gentle white light:

"So, we need the super-wide area refining array. Use it to decompose the elements of this plane, recomposing them into usable substances and energy to nurture new life as nutrients."

Jeming felt his heartbeat accelerate.

He understood the true nature of the entire strategy of the workshop.

The first layer of overt reconnaissance warfare was to mislead the opponent's judgment on the super-wide area refining array.

And the second layer, the secret super-wide area refining array, was to cover the true trump card.

Everything was for the third layer, which was to cover the giant array beneath their feet.

From the first day of the war, the workshop never planned to use conventional means to contend with the other side's trump card.

Because all the Wizards in the Nolun Workshop knew that the technology of the three major forces did not have any decisive differences, relying solely on conventional technology as a trump card to open the gap, to fight two with one, is almost impossible.

But since conventional technology cannot be effective, unconventional technology must be used.

What they were doing was to make this abandoned plane, which serves as a battlefield, come 'alive' by itself!

Once this monstrous conglomerate of over a dozen planes has its own soul and will, it will become a truly 'living plane,' what level of combat power will it possess?

Although theoretically all living planes are only Sixth Level creatures, the difference in size itself is enough to cause a qualitative change in 'quantity', enough to influence the battlefield of Eighth Level Wizards.

But then, another problem emerged in his mind.

"Professor," he said, "even if the refining array gathers enough substance and energy... can the awakening technique really work on this plane?"

He pointed upward.

That is the surface, the battlefield crudely spliced from over a dozen abandoned planes:

"The plane itself is comprised of over a dozen abandoned planes. When they were spliced together, the method was quite crude. Some junctions between the planes are still filled with space turbulence, lacking even the most basic spatial stability."