Chapter 671: First Battle

Jie Ming’s spiritual power swept across the energy fluctuations of the three individuals. All of them were sixth-ring wizards.

Two men and one woman, wearing wizard robes of different styles, maintained vigilant distances from one another.

“Lucky enough not to run into people from the same faction, but I still can’t let my guard down…” Jie Ming lowered his gaze.

The four of them glided silently through the low sky, passing over the projected streets.

The surrounding environment grew increasingly dark. A viscous, dark substance began to appear in the air, spreading like ink in water and devouring the light bit by bit.

Suddenly, rain began to fall.

Raindrops descended from the dark purple sky, each one carrying heavy energy fluctuations. They struck the ground with dull thuds. Upon contact, the raindrops turned into mist that did not settle but instead floated upward against gravity, forming layers of constantly twisting and shifting fog curtains in the air.

“Looks like it’s not friendly…”

Jie Ming could sense the city’s energy field targeting them—an instinctive repulsion similar to a human body’s immune system attacking foreign pathogens.

It seemed the Hollow City had also detected the wizards’ presence and responded without hesitation.

Soon, the group landed at the head of a bridge.

It was a stone arch bridge with a narrow deck and low stone railings on both sides.

The river water beneath the bridge began to change as they approached. By the time they landed, the originally clear water had transformed into a layer of black, viscous, flowing substance writhing in the riverbed.

On the other side of the bridge lay a straight stone slab road lined with low shops, their signs tilted and windows pitch black.

In the middle of the bridge stood a figure.

It was a massive silhouette holding a black umbrella.

The figure was at least three meters tall, dressed in a black robe of indeterminate material whose hem dragged extremely long across the ground.

Where its face—or where a face should have been—was a flat, featureless black plane.

The black umbrella it held had a canopy over two meters in diameter, with black metal ribs and a handle made of some kind of animal bone segments.

Two of the sixth-ring wizards landed slightly closer to the bridge deck and stepped into the shadow beneath the umbrella the moment they set foot on it. The instant their feet touched the ground, changes began in their bodies.

Their skin lost its healthy luster within seconds, turning into a dull, waxy yellow. Wrinkles spread from the corners of their eyes and mouths like spiderwebs, crawling across their entire faces.

Their hair turned white from the roots, dyeing their black hair gray-white in less than a second.

Muscles atrophied, bones grew brittle, and blood vessels hardened.

Their bodies were visibly aging at a rapid pace.

Jie Ming’s eyes widened involuntarily.

He could clearly sense the fluctuations of the “Death” Law and understood the cause of these changes in the wizards.

It was “Death” itself activating within their bodies simultaneously, tearing away every label belonging to “life” one by one.

One of the sixth-ring wizards calmly lowered his head to look at his own withering hands, then raised the hand that had already shriveled to nothing but bone and a thin layer of skin, and casually flicked it.

Muscle sloughed off the bones like a garment worn too long finally falling apart.

Yet he did not look at the pieces of flesh on the ground. Instead, he used the hand exposing bare finger bones to draw a rune in the void.

That seemingly simple rune easily blocked the Death Law attempting to invade further.

Once the affecting Death Law was isolated, the fallen pieces of flesh vaporized in an instant and reassembled into new muscle tissue. It spread outward from the surface of the bones, covering his entire hand in less than two seconds.

The new muscle was fuller and more powerful than before, with skin that even carried a healthy rosy glow.

The other sixth-ring wizard responded more brutally. He directly abandoned his already aged body, transforming along the fluctuations of the Death Law into a body composed of death power, thereby gaining complete immunity to the Strange’s attack.

Jie Ming stood at the head of the bridge, with the All-Purpose Eye and Fate Subsystem operating simultaneously. Massive amounts of data flowed rapidly through his consciousness.

He quickly understood the operating rules of this Strange.

In truth, it was quite simple. The main body of this Strange was actually the umbrella itself.

The area covered by the shadow beneath the umbrella was a domain completely dominated by the concept of “natural death.”

Within this domain, all life forms would automatically enter the death process.

Disaster Grade.

Undoubtedly Disaster Grade.

And not an ordinary one.

Although its area of influence was not large, the lethality of this umbrella-holder was strong enough to affect sixth-ring wizards.

Its Death Law was pure to the point of having almost no impurities. If judged by wizard standards, its mastery of the Death Law was probably over one hundred and fifty percent.

The so-called Law Mastery for wizards was not the percentage of “all” knowledge a wizard held regarding a single law, but rather the “progress bar” for the standard of advancing to sixth-ring wizard. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

Reaching 100% Law Mastery only meant the wizard had the foundation to advance to sixth-ring.

For a sixth-ring wizard to advance to seventh-ring, the expansion and deepening of their own law knowledge was essentially research and understanding of deeper layers of law knowledge.

If looking purely at the level of law mastery, this Strange’s control over the law even surpassed many wizards who had just advanced to sixth-ring. Even though Stranges were rule-based beings born from the plane’s origin, possessing such law mastery was extremely rare.

Therefore, relying on its considerable law mastery, this thing could indeed harm sixth-ring wizards.

…In theory.

In practice… the two sixth-ring wizards had proven with facts that this possibility existed only in theory.

For them, the Death Law had indeed activated, and their bodies had indeed died.

But they did not care.

If one body died, they simply grew another.

Even if their souls were affected, as long as the proportion of “death” was not too high, there would be no real problem.

Their self-awareness had not wavered, and their power had not suffered any substantial impact.

The Death Law had killed their physical bodies, but the moment they were killed, they directly overwrote the result with something else. This was the nature of high-ranking wizards—as their rank and age increased, their methods grew richer, and they also became increasingly difficult to kill.

After analyzing the essence of this Strange, Jie Ming felt quite tempted.

Unfortunately, just as he was about to make a move, the two sixth-ring wizards had already acted.

The wizard who had transformed himself into a death-energy being had countless cracks split open across his body. From these cracks surged a large number of semi-transparent, viscous tentacles. These tentacles broke through the umbrella-holder’s defenses cleanly and wrapped directly around the umbrella’s canopy.

At the same instant, the other wizard stretched out his hand, fingers spread, and made a grasping motion toward the shadow beneath the umbrella-holder.

The shadow representing the Death Law domain was “compressed” the moment he clenched his fist.

Originally, this shadow had no fixed boundaries and could freely expand or contract with the angle of light.

Now, under that seemingly ordinary grasp, its range was fixed and its nature was altered.

The shadow cast by the umbrella was instead taken control of by this wizard, forming snakes made of shadow that bound the umbrella-holder in reverse. The umbrella-holder’s body stiffened.

No expression could be seen on its featureless face, but the black umbrella trembling violently in its hand revealed an emotion similar to “confusion” or “panic.”

It tried to retract the umbrella, but the semi-transparent tentacles gripped too tightly. The canopy emitted a piercing metallic tearing sound during the struggle. As for escape… that had become impossible the moment its body was bound by its own shadow.

The two sixth-ring wizards exerted their power simultaneously with terrifying efficiency.

The tentacles dragged both the umbrella canopy and the umbrella-holder toward the wizard controlling the shadows.

The shadow-controlling wizard closed his hand in the void, like closing an open book.

The umbrella-holder’s body collapsed within his closing palm, shrinking from a three-meter-tall giant figure into a thumb-sized black bead that floated above his palm.

The entire sealing process ended almost in the blink of an eye.

Jie Ming stood at the head of the bridge, watching the slowly dissipating remnants of the Death Law on the black bead, and slightly regretfully lowered his already raised hand.

The two wizards had been too fast; he hadn’t even gotten the chance to act.

Yet after the regret passed, the corners of his mouth curled upward slightly from excessive delight.

Encountering a Strange of this level right upon entering was exciting in itself.

A Disaster Grade Death Law Strange with terrifyingly high law mastery.

In the wizard world, to study such a high-level law entity up close would either require paying a huge price or waiting in line for several hundred years in some big shot’s private plane.

But here, in this newly born Hollow City, Stranges of this level were sprouting from the cracks like wild grass. And this was only the beginning.

There were even more such Stranges within the city.

He lowered his hand and slipped it into the pocket of his robe.

The All-Purpose Eye and Fate Subsystem continued operating, though at reduced power, maintained in a standby state ready to activate fully at any moment. Jie Ming raised his head, his gaze piercing through the pouring rain toward the deeper parts of the city.

In this area, the dark purple sky was replaced by an even thicker darkness. The anti-gravity floating water mist formed countless twisting, changing patterns within the darkness.

In the depths of those patterns, he could sense even more energy fluctuations rapidly awakening.

It seemed the wizards’ actions had angered the city.

For ordinary intruders, this would be a disaster, but for the wizards…

“This is… exactly what I wanted.”

With anticipation, Jie Ming stepped forward across the bridge. His footsteps rang lightly on the rain-soaked stone slabs.

The three sixth-ring wizards had already entered the street on the other side ahead of him.

Their figures blurred within the rain curtain and were soon swallowed by the twisting water mist.