For the hundred-odd years that followed, Jie Ming’s life fell into a rather regular cycle.
Recuperate from the injuries to his soul; once recovered, use the Fate Law to observe the endless chaotic void, let the vast flood of information batter his consciousness, injure his soul all over again, and then go back to recuperating.
As soon as the injuries had healed somewhat, he would repeat the earlier attempt.
The whole process could hardly be called easy.
After every observation, Jie Ming had to spend a good deal of time repairing his soul.
Through all this, Jie Ming’s Body Forging Method was also evolving at a furious pace.
The Body Forging Method’s evolution made Jie Ming’s soul tougher and tougher, able to withstand more and more of the information’s impact.
But that also meant that, faced with a near-infinite onslaught of information, Jie Ming had to endure that much more pain.
Of course, since he could take in more information each time, the effect of each session was also stronger than the last; but it also meant that the damage to his soul, far from decreasing, only grew.
Fortunately, on the other hand, the Body Forging Method was adapting ever more strongly to the injuries to his soul as well; even the speed at which the injuries healed grew faster and faster under the Body Forging Method’s adaptive evolution.
In other words, a soul injury that would leave anyone else gravely wounded or even dead counted, in Jie Ming’s case, as only a moderate one.
The drawback was that each time his soul blew up, it blew up worse.
After all, a greater tolerance for injury also meant a greater tolerance for information, so the threshold at which his soul shattered kept climbing higher as well.
Still, on the whole, apart from the considerable suffering Jie Ming himself went through, the rest counted as good news.
On another front, Jie Ming’s research and study of the Mustard Seed Dao-Holding True Body Art over these years had not been fruitless either.
In the intervals between nursing his soul’s injuries, Jie Ming had never set the research on the Mustard Seed Dao-Holding True Body Art aside.
Although his soul was in poor condition and he could not carry out high-intensity deductions, even relying solely on the Great Ascension Realm’s amplification of the Dao Integration state, over so long a stretch of time Jie Ming had still managed to gain a good deal.
Overall, the pace of research could not be called fast, but it was still far better than back when he had been a sixth-level wizard.
At last, half a year after yet another use of the extreme learning method, the injuries to Jie Ming’s soul healed completely.
“Not bad at all. My soul’s self-healing ability has improved quite noticeably.” Feeling the speed of his soul’s recovery, Jie Ming let out a breath.
At his current rate of soul recovery, when faced with an injury he was nearly on a par with an ordinary wizard taking high-level soul-healing potions nonstop.
Sitting in the laboratory, Jie Ming sank his consciousness into his spiritual sea and inspected the golden thread that represented the Fate Law.
After this period of extreme learning, the once slender golden thread had grown markedly. Although it still looked insignificant next to the other laws, at least it was no longer as hard to push forward as it had been.
Jie Ming made a rough estimate.
His mastery count in the Fate Law had reached roughly ten points.
“Not bad.” He nodded in satisfaction.
Compared with the other laws, the level of his Fate Law really was nothing much.
After all, after so many years of growing on their own, even the lowest in mastery among the other laws had passed five thousand.
But for the Fate Law, this was already enough.
Enough, at least, to support his next attempt.
Jie Ming began to mobilize the Fate Law, and at the same time a golden light gradually brightened at his forehead.
Fate Subsystem, full power!
Masses of data surged rapidly into his consciousness, and the once scattered fate lines began to show themselves within a special kind of perception.
Unlike with ordinary laws, under the Fate Law’s influence countless interwoven possibilities appeared before Jie Ming as if they were solid.
Each line pointed toward the direction some event would develop in; some were extremely clear, while others were so blurred they could barely be made out.
Jie Ming, quite prudently, made no attempt to observe fate in its entirety.
Doing so was neither necessary nor easy to bear, and it had no real practical effect besides.
He locked his target directly onto the Mustard Seed Dao-Holding True Body Art.
As the Fate Subsystem kept sifting, one fate line connected to the research on this immortal art gradually stood out from the multitude.
Jie Ming observed it carefully for a while, then began trying to intervene.
He did not forcibly change the outcome of events; he only made tiny adjustments to this fate line, nudging it to drift in a direction more favorable to his own research.
This kind of intervention did not mean he could create knowledge out of thin air. Rather, when his research ran into difficulties or bottlenecks, he would be more likely to get a flash of inspiration, or more likely to come across an opening for a breakthrough.
But these adjustments were all incidental; Jie Ming kept on searching for something along this fate line.
A moment later, the Fate Subsystem finally captured a special node.
Jie Ming looked at the information surfacing on the node, and his expression gradually turned odd.
He confirmed it once more, then shut down most of the fate lines, leaving only that node.
“So that’s how it is…”
He said no more. He merely adjusted the node, recorded the relevant information, and then sat back down at the experiment bench.
This time he was in no hurry to continue his research, and instead showed a rare patience.
Now that the key node had been found, all that remained was to wait.
…
…
Several months later.
A frontline camp in the zone controlled by the Behemoth Alliance.
Jack finished a routine patrol and returned to his temporary quarters.
The whole way back, he looked weighed down with worry.
Ever since that last time on the battlefield, when he had fought a behemoth and by accident smashed a ruin on one of the planes, he had felt as though something had latched onto him.
At first it was only some very slight oddities, and Jack had not paid them much mind.
For instance, when acting alone, he would occasionally hear the sound of water dripping onto the ground behind him.
Sometimes, even when he had clearly confirmed there was no one around, he still felt as if something were standing at the edge of his vision.
Battlefield conditions were complicated; mental interference and law residue were everywhere.
As a combat wizard, he had long been used to operating in all kinds of abnormal environments.
But later, things gradually started to go wrong.
That black figure began to appear.
The first time it appeared, Jack was sorting through his battle records when, out of the corner of his eye, he suddenly glimpsed a figure standing in the doorway.
It wore a tattered black robe and was soaked from head to foot, as if it had just crawled out of the water.
Sensing the undisguised malice radiating from it, Jack attacked at once.
But his magic passed straight through its body and slammed into the wall behind it, alarming the other wizards.
By the time he looked again, the black-robed figure had vanished, and the other wizards said they had detected no other living aura.
After that, it happened more and more often.
Sometimes it was while he was resting, sometimes in the middle of a mission; once, he even saw the black-robed figure in front of several of his comrades.
But none of the others had noticed a thing.