Translator: AnubisTL
The meeting adjourned, and everyone hurried off to carry out their new missions.
The plan was executed with remarkable success.
In the latter half of the year, the Logistics Department and all high-rank wizards completed the first phase of the Memory Anchoring modification.
This time, thanks to the precious time bought by their aggressive early-game hunting, they had managed to drag the war into its sixth year.
After subtracting the first two and a half years for basic research and the six months for the modification surgery, the remaining three full years became a golden research period for the logistics wizards, who could now focus single-mindedly on their work.
Knowing their time was limited and that they could continue their progress after the next "awakening," every researcher's efficiency was pushed to the absolute limit.
By the time the seventh reincarnation finally ended because the Scythe-Skull Race's numbers neared the threshold, the theoretical framework and most of the safety simulations for the second phase of the Memory Anchoring technology were complete, leaving them just one step away from physical testing.
The eighth reincarnation saw a significant change.
Jieming noticed that the wizards' coordinated combat had become much smoother.
Even without a clear inheritance of memories, the "key cognitions" and "strong emotional imprints" preserved through the first phase of the modification acted as invisible bonds, connecting the fragmented experiences from different reincarnations.
Combined with Jieming's meticulous intelligence support, the entire legion's operations displayed an astonishing level of "proficiency" and "foresight."
As a result, the pace of research soared once again.
Memory Anchoring Phase Two technology was successfully completed and implemented by the mid-stage of this reincarnation. Compared to Phase One, it optimized the implantation structure and reduced surgical trauma. Most importantly, it began attempting to establish weak associations between specific, structured "knowledge packets" and the soul anchoring points. This allowed recipients to have a certain probability of recalling key "conclusions" or "methods" after reincarnation, even if the procedural details remained blurred.
By the late stage of the eighth reincarnation, an even more subversive breakthrough arrived—Phase Three technology, or rather, the "Time Anchoring" wizardry model, was announced as complete.
It was no longer a biochemical modification requiring surgery, but a standardized wizardry that anyone, including combat wizards, could learn and cast upon themselves. Its core principle was to transform the "anchors" bound to the soul in Phase Two technology into programmable, injectable, standardized rune structures.
Wizards only needed a few days to master this model. By casting it upon themselves, they could engrave a "memory firewall" deep within their souls, specifically designed against the phenomenon of "time reversal."
From that moment on, time reversal could no longer wash away their memories.
They would enter the next cycle with their consciousness intact, carrying all the experiences from the previous one.
When Jieming first saw that complex wizardry model—suspended in the public knowledge base, radiating a steady, silver-gray light—his heart filled with indescribable emotion.
The wizard civilization's capacity for learning and creation had, without anyone noticing, revealed its terrifying fangs.
Starting from the physiological mechanisms of a researched alien race, they had, in just a few reincarnations, refined and sublimated it into a law technique for universal use by their own civilization.
Although this "Time Anchoring technique" was highly specialized, targeting only the specific form of "time reversal" in this plane, the profound understanding it contained regarding the interaction between time, memory, and the soul—its ingenuity and universality—was enough to make it a precious reference for the wizards present to study other time-based wizardry.
Of course, on this battlefield where every second counted, no one had the leisure to explore other time domains.
Its value was now crystal clear.
The wizard legion, having achieved "Time Anchoring," was completely freed from restraint.
The ninth round, the tenth... the very nature of the war had fundamentally changed.
Wizards no longer needed to carefully control their pace, worrying that their research would be interrupted. They could commit to battle without reservation, crushing their enemies with the most brutal methods, for all experience, all data, and all research progress would be carried forward in their entirety to the next round.
Jieming's workload plummeted. He no longer needed to meticulously record every detail, nor did he have to worry about how to condense massive amounts of intelligence into summaries. The wizards themselves had become the best chroniclers.
More often than not, he existed as a super database and a cross-domain knowledge integrator, assisting various research groups in retrieving historical data, verifying hypotheses, and proposing new directions for interdisciplinary study.
War became a mere auxiliary to research, and the objective of that research was now unified as never before: to completely analyze the root cause and mechanism of this plane's time reversal, and to find and understand the "Behind-the-Scenes Will."
Under the terrifying efficiency of countless intelligences converging, with time able to be "refilled" infinitely, the secrets of the once-formidable Scythe-Skull Race were peeled away, layer by layer.
Their biological traits, social structure, information networks, energy systems, and modes of interaction with the plane's laws... everything had been thoroughly dissected.
The wizards had even simulated a partial generation algorithm for the "time ripples," allowing them to predict the approximate timing of the next massive time reversal hours in advance.
Research into the time reversal itself had also reached the level of the laws. It was confirmed as a rule-based phenomenon acting on the entire plane, its trigger conditions deeply tied to the overall population of the Scythe-Skull Race and a certain "Civilization Survival Anxiety Index." From this perspective, the so-called time reversal was more like a complex emergency procedure.
Yet, when all the superficial mechanisms were clarified, a most critical bottleneck, like an insurmountable wall, stood before all the researchers.
Fifteenth time passing through the spatial rift.
Jieming opened his eyes, feeling the stable fluctuations of the "Time Anchoring" wizardry within his body, confirming that he had returned with the complete memories of the fourteenth round.
He skillfully exchanged intelligence crystals with Frost—now it was more of a ritual, because both of them remembered everything.
Jieming flew skillfully toward the depths of the Wizard Camp.
Every wizard he passed along the way had eyes that shone with clear reason and a definite sense of purpose, completely devoid of their initial bewilderment.
They nodded to one another in greeting before swiftly immersing themselves in a new round of work.
Everything was orderly and astonishingly efficient.
Yet, Jieming's heart, though calm, was tinged with a lingering heaviness.
He arrived at the Central Analysis Hall. A massive holographic projection displayed all the research findings to date regarding this plane, time reversal, and the Scythe-Skull Race.
This information was woven into an incredibly complex yet exceptionally clear giant web on the projection.
Each node of the web glowed brightly, representing a problem already solved.
Only the center of the web—the area representing the "Manipulator" or "Core Will"—remained a blank space.
"Still... no clues..." a familiar voice sounded beside him. It was Allison.
Her eyes also held a hint of weariness—not physical exhaustion, but the mental fatigue born of focusing on an unsolvable problem for too long.
Jieming shook his head, his gaze sweeping across the other core researchers in the hall. Their faces all bore the same expression.
"We've tried everything," the great wizard specializing in the domain of soul and consciousness sighed, pointing to the projection. "Every method we could conceive to find traces of a 'Behind-the-Scenes Will'—all based on the Scythe-Skull Race's individuals, their social networks, pheromone historical residues, and even our own large-scale soul resonance detections... we've tried them all."
"The results are consistent: there is no evidence of any higher-dimensional 'Will' existing beyond the level of the 'species' collective unconscious.' The rule of time reversal is etched into the plane laws themselves, operating like a natural phenomenon."
"The 'memory retention' and 'behavioral adjustment' of the Scythe-Skull Race are more akin to a collective adaptive evolution based on biological instinct under this set of rules, and... some non-intelligent 'rule feedback' that we have yet to fully understand."
"But those 'adjustments' that clearly defy the instincts of lower-level creatures—forcibly boosting morale, and even seeming to predict some of our high-level research trends..." Jieming's brow furrowed deeply. "If it's just non-intelligent rule feedback, could it be so 'precise' and 'targeted'?"
This was precisely the bottleneck. All the phenomena could be explained by a combination of complex rules and collective adaptation.
Yet, there were always subtle details—traces of "intent"—that made the top-rank wizards intuitively feel there must be a "Manipulator" behind it all.
However, every detection method they used pointed to nothingness.
"This... is truly a problem..." Jieming couldn't help but sigh.
Fifteen reincarnations, decades of exhaustive research—they had nearly drained this plane of all its surface secrets, only to get stuck at the final and most critical step.
They had solved most of the puzzle, but they couldn't find the one who set it.
(End of the Chapter)
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