Chapter 674: Fusion and Awakening

The energy fluctuations outside the Mirror Palace grew even more intense.

The ground trembled, new cracks spiderwebbed across the walls, and the suspended water mist churned violently.

Jie Ming closed his eyes, his perception piercing through the Mirror Palace walls to gaze directly at the sky.

The purple sky was also shaking violently, like a flag being torn by a gale, ripples racing from one end to the other without a moment of calm. It seemed Austin was almost finished.

The eighth-ring Archwizard’s fusion with the plane’s anomalies was nearing its end. The tearing and reorganization of the plane’s origin was about to be complete.

The replica sensed the tremors as well.

It rose from its seated position, its robe hem sweeping across the ground without stirring even a speck of dust.

It looked down at Jie Ming, who was still sitting on the floor. On that identical face remained only calm, along with a trace of regretful relief.

“Do your best,” the replica said softly. “Even with my experience, Dao Integration is still a deadly endeavor. Don’t think that a success rate over ninety percent means you can rest easy. The materials we studied contained plenty of cases where people relaxed their vigilance after feeling secure, only to end up Dao-devoured.”

Jie Ming raised his head, the corners of his mouth curving into a smile as he nodded. “Naturally, I will be careful.”

The replica extended its right hand, fingers slightly spread.

It stood there like a traveler seeing someone off, hand outstretched, waiting for the other hand to grasp it.

Jie Ming looked at that hand, his pupils contracting slightly.

The same train of thought allowed him to immediately understand what the replica intended.

“Wow! I didn’t even think of…” Jie Ming hesitated for a moment, but still reached out and clasped the replica’s hand.

He looked at the face identical to his own, the corners of his mouth lifting into a smile that even he found unfamiliar—one that could truly be called heartfelt. “I never knew I was the type to enjoy helping others.”

The replica froze for an instant, then its own mouth curved upward.

“Stop making me laugh,” the replica’s voice grew lighter, as if it had shed every burden. “If I could leave this world and roam freely, I would definitely show you what true struggle for survival looks like…”

The voice halted.

The smile remained, but the light in its eyes dimmed.

“But since I cannot leave this world,” its voice lowered, returning to a calm, declarative tone, “doing those things would be meaningless. In that case, I might as well make my end a little more meaningful. We have always been ‘selfish,’ haven’t we?” 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

Hearing these words, Jie Ming unconsciously tightened his grip on the replica’s hand.

“That’s right,” Jie Ming said, his voice not loud but exceptionally firm. “We have always been ‘selfish.’”

Selfish.

Not in a derogatory sense, but absolute loyalty to one’s own path.

Everything Jie Ming had done—research, transactions, battles, subjugation—had never been for others, but for himself.

For his own research, his own Dao Integration, his own survival.

Just like in this plane: whether Eric, the Professor, or the Spirit Medium Association, they were all fellow travelers he had encountered on this road and lent a hand to when convenient.

But if one day helping them endangered his foundation, he would turn and leave without hesitation.

The replica was the same.

It had not been persuaded by Jie Ming to choose discourse on the Dao; after calculating all possibilities, it had arrived at the optimal solution.

Both hands tightened simultaneously.

The replica voluntarily dispelled its resistance.

From the deepest foundations of its existence, it wove itself into an energy network ready for absorption.

Its body began turning transparent from the edges. Muscles, bones, skin… all physical forms transformed into energy particles within seconds, surging through the channel of their clasped hands into Jie Ming’s body.

Dark golden light erupted from within Jie Ming. As his true body was strengthened by this newly injected “self-awareness,” it instinctively broke free from its compressed state. The Mirror Palace dome was lifted like a sheet of paper under the impact of the light, countless mirrors shattering and flying apart.

The circular building exploded from within. Gravel and glass fragments shot in all directions, trailing meteor-like streaks of light within the dark golden radiance. Jie Ming’s body expanded in the glow, and in the blink of an eye, the thousand-meter-tall dark golden Dharma Form once again stood upon the earth.

The dark golden skin radiated a soft yet resolute light beneath the dim sky of the Hollow City. It was not dazzling, yet nothing could obscure it.

Soon, changes appeared in the details of the two-faced Dharma Form.

At the Dharma Form’s ears, liquid light condensed from dark golden radiance flowed continuously, eventually forming a pair of earrings.

The internal structure of the earrings was exceedingly complex, like two miniature cores operating ceaselessly.

The golden vertical lines at the brows of both faces flashed simultaneously.

Immediately after, the vertical lines split open from the center. The skin on both sides parted like eyelids, revealing the dark golden pupils beneath.

This meant that the pattern at the center of the true body’s brow had become a real eye—a genuine third eye.

Previously, when Jie Ming used fate-related knowledge, he needed to operate the Fate Subsystem and the All-Purpose Eye simultaneously.

Now this vertical pupil remained naturally open, requiring no spiritual power to activate, allowing it to watch over the subtle fluctuations at the fate level for him.

He lowered his head to look at his own dark golden palm, clenching it into a fist and then releasing it.

After absorbing another version of himself, his control over “self” had become even more perfect.

If Dao Integration was compared to a ship sailing through a storm, the previous Jie Ming had been a giant vessel with a sturdy hull, complete equipment, and well-trained crew. Now, in addition to this giant ship, he also possessed a complete nautical chart.

Moreover, this chart had not been drawn by someone else, but personally charted by him after walking the path himself.

The final piece of the puzzle before Dao Integration was now complete.

Jie Ming’s Dharma Form stood atop the ruins of the amusement park. The dark golden light completely dispelled all anomalous projections within several hundred miles around.

Those illusory pedestrians melted like snow and ice in the radiance, revealing the lifeless open ground beneath.

“Indeed, this is truly the greatest harvest I’ve obtained since arriving in this plane!”

Jie Ming marveled inwardly. He now fully understood why the fate lines he had seen had guided him in such a way.

The gains here had already far surpassed the Hollow City itself.

Fate-type knowledge truly is convenient.

The moment this thought emerged, the vertical pupil at his brow suddenly moved.

The pupil contracted sharply from a diffuse state into a pinpoint, but what it aimed at was not an external target, but the depths of Jie Ming’s own consciousness.

Jie Ming’s body stiffened abruptly.

He suddenly recalled the warnings in the Great Dao Book Pavilion.

Every classic text on fate and numerology began its first page not by teaching how to deduce the secrets of heaven, but by teaching how to restrain the impulse to use it. Even in the wizard civilization, the introductory textbooks on fate-type knowledge carried explicit warnings.

Those who rely entirely on fate will eventually be controlled by fate.

This was not a moral warning, but a technical inevitability.

Once you grew accustomed to letting fate show the way, you would gradually forget how to walk the path yourself.

And the gifts bestowed by fate would, sooner or later, demand their corresponding price.

The few wizards Jie Ming had encountered in the wizard world who excelled in fate laws all used fate knowledge with considerable restraint.

After all, those who did not restrain themselves were probably already dead.

“It even has the auxiliary function of illuminating the mind and revealing one’s nature? What an excellent divine ability…”

Jie Ming took a deep breath. The vertical pupil slowly closed at his brow, reverting from an open eye back into a golden vertical line.

The instant the vertical pupil closed, the comfortable sensation of “everything under control” was replaced by a slightly dazed clarity.

The Dharma Form also began to shrink.

Within the dark golden light, Jie Ming returned to normal human size.

At the center of his brow appeared a golden vertical line.

With the shifting of light and shadow around him, this vertical line looked like an eye constantly opening and closing.

Jie Ming casually used the nearby wreckage as material and, with Alchemy Technique, forged a wizard robe to drape over himself.

His body slowly rose into the air, hovering in midair as his gaze swept across the entire Hollow City.

The disturbances in other directions had already died down.

The combat fluctuations that had erupted throughout the city now remained only as sporadic sparks. Occasionally a ball of light would explode at the end of a street, only to quickly dissipate. It seemed the wizards had finished clearing the secondary anomalies in their respective areas and were beginning to converge toward the city center.

Figures rose from the ground one after another, hovering in the sky above the Hollow City.

Each person had varying numbers of sealed containers floating beside them, in their hands, or at their feet.

The glow of the containers intertwined beneath the dark purple sky, forming a mottled pattern of light and shadow.

All eyes turned toward the very center of the city, looking at the the Hollow City.

This anomaly itself was indeed completely different from the others.

From the city’s administrative boundary to the municipal square, the entire anomaly’s diameter exceeded one hundred kilometers. It was a complete city in its own right. Looking at this massive anomalous city, the wizards’ expressions grew subtle.

This would be troublesome…

If they ground it down slowly with low output, given the volume of the Hollow City size plus the anomaly’s resistance, it could hold out for a very long time.

Judging from the environmental changes when the wizards had attacked earlier, grinding it down at the level of a third-ring wizard would take at least several months to completely wear away the anomalous energy.

But the wizards had little time left.

The purple in the sky was shifting from deep and intense to faint and thin. Austin’s fusion was entering its final stages.

Once that eighth-ring Archwizard completed his preliminary lifeform transformation, they would be driven out.

Yet if they used high-tier wizardry to forcibly blast through it, with the destructive power present among the wizards, evaporating the entire city along with dozens of kilometers of crust beneath it would be no problem at all.

The issue was that anomalies were essentially living beings, not inanimate objects.

Faced with powerful attacks, this massive city was very likely to instinctively contract to evade, causing the wizards’ wide-area attacks to suffer enormous dissipation.

In that case, the energy aftershocks would trigger a chain collapse of the world’s environment.

Their mission was to clear the anomaly, not to shatter the world.

If they were lucky and the damage was minor, Austin might simply impose a light punishment, deduct their reward, and throw them out.

If they were unlucky and the attack aftershocks interfered with Austin’s fusion, causing that eighth-ring Archwizard’s transformation to fail…

No one wanted to test what a furious Austin would do.

A seventh-ring Archwizard’s voice rang out across the sky, deep and resonant, carrying a metallic vibration: “Does anyone have a solution? Time is running out.”

Silence fell over the scene.

The wizards present were not without means to deal with it, but whether setting up sealing arrays or anything else, they would require a certain amount of time under the constraint of limited output.