Translator: AnubisTL
"This place likely witnessed a powerful battle," Jieming mused, his mind piecing together the evidence.
Such devastating destruction, capable of shattering the earth meridian and extinguishing a living volcano, couldn't have been wrought by ordinary creatures.
This must be the aftermath of the fierce battle that occurred when the wizards of the Noren Workshop were cleansing the plane and capturing a greater demon.
The overwhelming assault had even destroyed the volcano's energy core, plunging it into eternal dormancy.
Yet as Jieming gazed upon the now-lifeless volcano, his eyes suddenly lit up, a surge of excitement welling up within him.
For in the immortal cultivation world, a place like this—where the earth meridian is severed, countless lives perished unjustly, and residual energies of various kinds linger—is the perfect breeding ground for a special type of malevolent qi!
Malevolent qi itself is a conceptual material, a treacherous and complex energy in the cultivator's system, often born from a mixture of resentment, blood qi, destructive force, and specific environmental factors.
It isn't purely negative, but its corrosive nature is extreme; if not properly refined, it will backlash against the cultivator.
However, if properly contained and refined, it can become an excellent resource for certain special cultivation techniques.
The Golden Garden, for example, was specifically created by Jieming to generate and collect the Hundred Flowers Dew.
This volcano, however, due to its unique history, served as a source for the birth of some types of malevolent qi.
Jieming immediately produced a large quantity of materials and laid down a complex formation arts array around the entire volcano.
He formed hand seals, circulated his true essence, and activated the formation.
As the magic incantation flowed, invisible waves radiated from the center of the formation, permeating every inch of the volcano's land and every corpse.
Gray mist, invisible to the naked eye and carrying the stench of death, resentment, and mixed energies, slowly emerged from the fractured earth meridians deep within the volcano and from the corpses of magical beasts.
Guided by the formation arts' power, they converged toward the volcano's center like a hundred rivers flowing into the sea.
Collected by Jieming using the Malevolent Energy Gathering Technique, they ultimately condensed into a thin stream that flowed into the Gangsha Gathering Gourd in his hand.
"Such potent malevolent qi!" Jieming's heart surged with delight.
Without pause, he watched the malevolent qi continuously gather under the formation's influence. He simultaneously activated the Malevolent Energy Gathering Technique to draw it into the Gangsha Gathering Gourd and the Malevolent Qi Refining Technique to classify the qi within the gourd.
The entire process lasted several days. In the deathly silent volcano, Jieming worked tirelessly, day and night, to gather and refine the malevolent qi.
As the malevolent qi and death qi were continuously drawn out, the air around the volcano seemed to grow clearer, and the oppressive, eerie atmosphere gradually diminished.
Finally, when the concentration of malevolent qi and death qi within the volcano reached a point where the Malevolent Energy Gathering Technique could no longer capture it efficiently, Jieming ceased his cultivation.
He raised his hand to catch the slowly descending Gangsha Gathering Gourd. Gently shaking it, he felt the surging malevolent qi within, a satisfied expression crossing his face.
The amount of malevolent qi collected in this single round was equivalent to a month's worth of Hundred Flowers Dew he had gathered in the Golden Garden.
"Indeed, while artificially created environments can also gather malevolent qi, in terms of conceptual quantity, they still fall short of these naturally formed, accidental death zones."
He stored the Gangsha Gathering Gourd, which now felt noticeably heavier, into his dimensional space.
After initially suppressing the malevolent qi and death qi within the volcano, Jieming didn't stop there.
From a conceptual standpoint, as long as this special region remained in its current state, it would continue to generate new malevolent qi indefinitely over time.
After days of meticulous work, Jieming finally established a "regular malevolent qi production zone" around the dead volcano. He carefully laid out a complex array of magic formations.
These formations were not for attack or defense, but for protection and stability.
First, he deployed several concealment formations around the volcano's perimeter. These fifth-tier formations, purchased from the magic network, were sufficient to prevent the special energy fluctuations here from being easily detected by creatures from the Purgatory Sulfur Plane.
Next, he carved dozens of Malevolent Qi Gathering Runes and Soul-Guiding Formations at key nodes within the volcano.
These formations slowly guided the negative energy drifting through heaven and earth, attracting any new malevolent qi that might spontaneously arise. They channeled this energy deep into the volcano's core, where it was refined into a higher purity form.
Simultaneously, these formations helped stabilize the residual energy in the earth meridian, ensuring the volcano's "dead silence" state could be maintained long-term, transforming it into his unique cradle for cultivating malevolent qi.
In essence, these formations worked by slowly gathering relevant concepts based on the local terrain and specific conditions.
The drawback, however, was that all these formations relied on spiritual energy to operate and could not be left unattended indefinitely.
Fortunately, Jieming was not required to guard them day and night.
Jieming calculated briefly and found that the Malevolent Qi Attraction Formation didn't require much true essence to operate.
If he filled these formations with true essence, they could run for one to two months.
Since he already had to visit once a month to collect malevolent qi, this wasn't too much of a burden.
As all the formations and magic formations were completed, the entire dead volcano was enveloped in these faintly visible rune chains.
From a distance, it still appeared as the same dark and silent peak, but in Jieming's perception, it had transformed into a highly efficient conceptual material transformation factory.
Having completed the dead volcano's setup, Jieming was about to continue his search for more locations where malevolent qi might be found when his communication witchcraft device suddenly rang.
Seeing an unfamiliar contact, Jieming paused, momentarily unable to react.
Then he remembered—it was likely the leader of the construction team he had invited earlier.
Upon answering, Jieming learned that the project he had commissioned them for was complete and awaiting his inspection.
"I'm on my way!"
Hanging up, Jieming immediately turned and flew at full speed toward the location where the wizard squad he had hired was carrying out the initial planar transformation project.
When Jieming arrived, he couldn't help but be stunned by the scene before him.
In just over a year, the engineering squad of low-tier wizards had completed a breathtaking transformation of this region.
The area, once riddled with active volcanoes and rugged mountain ranges, had been leveled into a vast, flat expanse. Yet surprisingly few structures stood upon it.
At first glance, the only visible change was a massive, perfectly smooth metallic plain.
This plain was cast from refined, specialized metal, its obsidian-like luster gleaming coldly under the sulfur-choked sky.
The surface was as flat and reflective as a colossal mirror, mirroring the crimson clouds above.
Its polished surface, utterly devoid of imperfections, stood in stark contrast to the jagged, scorched earth that characterized the rest of the Purgatory Sulfur Plane.
The sheer scale of this metallic region was vast enough to accommodate a major city.
As Jieming gazed at the plain, he couldn't help but recall the black ground he had often seen at Noren Academy. So this is one of the common techniques for planar transformation, he thought.
But Jieming knew this was far more than just a flat surface.
He walked to the center of the metal plain and gently placed his palm against it.
As alchemy and analysis art activated, a faint but orderly energy fluctuation pulsed up from beneath the ground, precise and structured.
His mental power permeated the metal foundation, like probing a vast spiderweb, allowing him to "see" the intricate, crisscrossing structure within.
In reality, this massive metal foundation was embedded with numerous permanent magic arrays.
These arrays were not exposed on the surface but were cleverly embedded within the metal layers, distributed like veins throughout the foundation at various depths.
They were composed of countless energy conduits and rune links, forming a vast and intricate energy network.
However, as this was an early-stage modification, most of these arrays were not particularly powerful.
Beyond their basic defensive capabilities, they primarily served as "amplifiers" and a "structural framework."
Jieming walked to the center of the foundation, closed his eyes, and felt the pulse of the internal array network beneath his feet.
These embedded arrays were designed to amplify the effects of future magic formations that Jieming would construct in the blank spaces, ultimately allowing them to influence the entire plane.
They were like giant amplifiers buried underground.
Whether it was the elemental pool, alchemy workshop, or various plane-level defensive arrays he would later build here,
as long as their core formation arrays were embedded into this foundational network, their effects would be amplified by the network, their range and power increasing exponentially. This would ultimately allow them to influence the entire Purgatory Sulfur Plane!
This was precisely the foundation Jieming was laying for his future planar transformation, the construction of a massive magic formation.
During his inspection, Jieming also noticed several reserved interfaces and energy nodes.
According to the wizard leading the construction team, these initial construction efforts could actually accommodate more advanced functions, such as magic formations that amplify communication with the plane origin.
Such formations would allow wizards to perceive and influence the plane origin more deeply, draw upon its power more efficiently, and even perform preliminary modifications to the plane's rules.
However, these advanced formations required mental power far beyond that of a low-tier wizard, reaching the level of a sixth-tier wizard, to be truly controlled and used safely.
"I haven't reached sixth-tier wizard status yet anyway, so I won't need them for now. There's no rush to build them," Jieming thought silently.
Constructing such formations would require immense resources. If he couldn't fully control them, it could lead to energy backlash or even rejection by the plane origin.
When he first discussed the project with the engineering team, he had excluded these complex formations that exceeded his current needs, prioritizing resources for the most basic and practical aspects.
He looked at the progress before him with satisfaction.
Though only the initial phase of construction, it had already taken on a substantial scale.
(End of the Chapter)
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