Chapter 633: Flipping the Table

Chapter 633: Flipping the Table

The male wizard in the deep blue robe stood at the end of the corridor, hands clasped behind his back, his gaze slowly sweeping across the crooked graffiti. “Everyone,” he spoke, his voice not loud, yet it drew everyone’s attention.

“We have already spent nearly six hours here.”

The people present immediately understood what he meant.

Six hours was indeed too long for a task that required handling multiple locations.

The wizard teams that had chosen more popular locations were probably already done with one or two Strange and on their way to the next target.

“You all should have a clear idea of these Strange’s strength levels,” the deep blue-robed male wizard continued. “To be honest, their raw power isn’t strong. Whether it’s the salty finger or the graffiti, their energy levels aren’t high. It’s just that their characteristics are rather troublesome… especially that state of merging into rules without a physical body, which leaves us with strength but nowhere to apply it.”

The young female wizard nodded. “If we hadn’t restricted our output energy level, even with such troublesome characteristics, they wouldn’t be this difficult to handle.”

“The problem lies exactly here,” the deep blue-robed male wizard turned around to face everyone. “These things are not difficult to deal with in essence. If we delay too long, other teams that have finished handling their Strange will very likely come over and get involved. If we’re unlucky, we might be judged as having failed to complete the task and lose our exploration quota… We cannot just watch as other teams snatch away all the exploration slots for the Strange Plane.”

He spoke very bluntly, but no one present felt it was inappropriate.

They were all high-ranking wizards, not hot-blooded youths.

In this mission, resolving the Strange and saving civilians was the surface objective, but everyone knew the true core driving force. It was the research opportunity on that Strange Plane.

A completely new and unknown existence deeply connected to laws—this was far more attractive to wizards than any wealth or military merit. Even if they didn’t lose their quota, but because they dragged on too long in this town, other teams entered the Strange Plane first and harvested all the valuable research samples clean…

That would also be a massive loss.

“So, I have a suggestion,” the deep blue-robed male wizard’s gaze sharpened. “Since we can’t find its exact location, then let’s flip the table.”

“Flip the table?” The burly male wizard raised an eyebrow.

“Correct!”

The deep blue-robed male wizard raised his hand and drew a circle in the air. A pale blue arc of light appeared at his fingertips, outlining a continuously shrinking ring.

“We will shrink the barrier, continuously reducing it from a one-hundred-kilometer diameter. At the same time, each of us will deploy our own Law Solidification Domain, clinging tightly to the inner wall of the barrier like a fishing net, compressing the activity space of these two Strange bit by bit.”

“Once the barrier shrinks to a certain extent, even if they’ve merged into the rules, they won’t be able to hide anymore. In such a small area, when our barrier and domains ‘squeeze’ the rules of this region out, they will have nowhere left to hide.”

“At that time, they will have nowhere to escape.”

The corridor fell silent for a moment.

“This plan is feasible,” the Curse Witch was the first to voice her support.

“I agree as well,” the slender male wizard pushed up the bridge of his nose. “Theoretically speaking, for a Strange that has merged into rules, its range of activity must be limited to the rule regions it can influence.”

“If we continuously compress this area, they will either be forced to manifest or be squeezed into our domains. Either way, it’s far better than searching aimlessly like we are now.”

“But there is one problem,” Jie Ming raised a hand. “What about me?”

Everyone’s gazes turned toward Jie Ming, who stood at the edge of the corridor.

The deep blue-robed male wizard also looked at him, his eyes carrying a trace of apology. “Jie Ming, it’s not that I don’t trust your strength. But Law Solidification Domain is the signature ability of sixth-ring wizards. You have not yet reached that level.”

“During the process of shrinking the barrier, we need each person to deploy their own domain to fill the gaps in the barrier and ensure the Strange cannot slip through the cracks. Your position…”

“I understand,” Jie Ming nodded, his tone calm. “I don’t have a Law Solidification Domain. Forcibly participating would only risk becoming a breach point. So you all go shrink the barrier. I’ll stay in the town.”

“Not just stay in the town,” the deep blue-robed male wizard added. “We need you to continue monitoring the town. While we shrink the barrier, these two Strange will very likely try to create chaos by harming the townspeople or use them as hostages. You must ensure the people in the town are not affected during this process.”

“Leave it to me.”

Jie Ming said nothing more. His figure flickered and disappeared from the corridor.

Town center, fountain square.

Jie Ming once again sat cross-legged on the stone edge of the fountain, his spiritual force spreading out in all directions like a tide.

This time, he focused his main attention on the interior of the town, making his scan even more precise than before.

Every family, every street, every building appeared in his perception in a nearly transparent state.

His Fate Subsystem operated at full power, and the causal network covered every corner of the town.

Any trace of abnormality, any fate line that deviated from its normal trajectory, would be captured by him at the first moment.

High in the sky, eight figures spread out.

The deep blue-robed male wizard stood at the very center, both hands raised high. A complex rune array emerged in his palms.

That was the core of barrier control. All nodes of the outer barrier were connected to his spiritual force through this core.

“Begin contraction,” his voice reached everyone’s ears.

Thus, the barrier began to move.

The massive energy barrier with a one-hundred-kilometer radius, centered on the town, began to slowly contract inward.

To be honest, this method would be nothing short of a fantasy for many low-ranking wizards.

After all, the greatest feature of a barrier was its ability to form a solid wall, but its drawback was that its size was relatively fixed.

Yet high-ranking wizards, relying on their knowledge, had forcibly broken this “rule.”

Even so, even high-ranking wizards did not dare proceed too quickly in this process, as it required extremely precise control.

The contraction speed could not be too fast, or the energy barrier would become unstable. The contraction range had to be uniform, or gaps would form.

Moreover, during this process, they had to continuously filter out various materials that needed to be expelled.

After all, if nothing was expelled outward, by the end, the air pressure intensity alone would be enough to kill the people inside the town.

As someone inside the barrier, Jie Ming could feel the change.

The energy density permeating the air was slowly rising, like water levels gradually climbing.

This was a natural phenomenon caused by the barrier’s contraction increasing the energy concentration per unit area.

The salty finger showed no reaction.

At least from Jie Ming’s perception, that “salty” concept still drifted loosely in the town’s air without any change due to the barrier’s contraction.

It was like a fish lying at the bottom of the water, completely unaware of the movements on the surface.

But the graffiti Strange was different.

When the barrier contracted to a fifty-kilometer radius, Jie Ming’s Fate Subsystem captured the first trace of abnormality.

A causal line trembled slightly at the northeast corner of the town, as if someone had gently plucked a string on the other end.

Jie Ming’s spiritual force immediately focused there.

It was the outer wall of an abandoned warehouse. There had originally been some blurry graffiti traces on the wall, but now those traces were slowly changing. New graffiti was emerging.

Jie Ming did not hesitate. His spiritual force condensed into an extremely fine, sharp blade and precisely sliced toward that wall.

He directly stripped the entire section of wall material containing the not-yet-fully-formed graffiti from the building.

With a soft “crack,” that piece of stone wall, along with the newly emerging graffiti on it, was neatly cut off. It flipped several times in the air before being crushed into powder by Jie Ming’s spiritual force.

The “medium” was destroyed, and the graffiti Strange’s attempt was interrupted.

But that was only the beginning.

In the following time, the graffiti Strange seemed to realize the danger and began to probe frantically.

It attempted to manifest new graffiti in every corner of the town—some on the outer walls of residences, some on the surfaces of stone slab roads, and some even on the wooden floors inside residents’ homes.

Each time, Jie Ming erased them before the graffiti could fully emerge.

His spiritual force covered the entire town. With the Fate Subsystem fully active, his reaction speed was so fast that even sixth-ring wizards might not keep up. Every abnormal causal fluctuation was captured by him at the first instant, and every emerging graffiti was erased by him at the first instant.

The townspeople didn’t even know what was happening.

Some people only heard a strange sound outside, pushed open the door, and found a piece of their outer wall missing.

But they didn’t pay much attention, thinking it had simply fallen due to age and disrepair.

The barrier continued to contract.

The frequency of the graffiti Strange’s probing suddenly decreased after the barrier shrank to a ten-kilometer radius.

However, Jie Ming could feel that the other party had not given up but was instead accumulating power.

The force compressed into an increasingly smaller space was becoming irritable.

Jie Ming promptly reported this situation to the surrounding wizards.

“Continue contracting,” the deep blue-robed male wizard’s voice sounded in the spiritual channel, carrying a trace of barely noticeable delight. “It’s starting to panic. This means our direction is correct.”

Radius five kilometers, three kilometers, one kilometer…

When the barrier contracted to a one-kilometer radius, Jie Ming could clearly feel the air in the town becoming “thick.”

Wizards were continuously expelling air outward. Of course, it wasn’t physically thick, but a certain conceptual density was increasing. It was like salt diluted in a large amount of water; as the water continuously evaporated, the concentration grew higher and higher.

He closed his eyes and used his spiritual force to sense that strangeness.

He could clearly feel two sensations.

One was very weak, like a candle flickering in the wind, forced to huddle together under the barrier’s compression.

…That was the salty finger.

The other was very strong, occupying more than ninety percent of the abnormal sensation within the compressed area.

It was not as calm as the salty finger but was constantly struggling, twisting, and trying to find a breakthrough point.

Without a doubt, that was the graffiti Strange.

“Continue shrinking,” Jie Ming said in the channel. “The salty finger has already been compressed very small. The graffiti is still resisting, but it can’t escape.”

The barrier continued to contract.

When the barrier’s diameter shrank to fifty meters, a change occurred.

The air above the fountain square suddenly shook violently, as if something had been forcibly squeezed out from an invisible level.

Jie Ming opened his eyes.

In the center of the square, beside the fountain, a pale finger appeared out of thin air.

It was not inserted into any container but simply floated about one meter above the ground. The nail crevices were damp, with liquid slowly dripping down.

The salty finger could no longer endure and had manifested first.

Jie Ming stroked his chin with interest. It seemed this Strange’s fusion with the laws was not particularly deep and required a certain range. Now, it no longer had enough rule space to hide itself.

The compression of the barrier and the eight wizards’ Law Solidification Domains had squeezed the rule region it relied on for hiding to the point of near non-existence.

The finger trembled slightly in the air. Waves of curse fluctuations spread out in all directions from it—that was its instinctive means of attack. But as soon as the curse waves spread out, they were bounced back by the inner wall of the barrier, as if hitting an invisible wall.

“The salty finger has manifested,” Jie Ming reported in the channel. “It is emitting curse fluctuations, but they are being blocked by the barrier. No effect on the townspeople.”

“What about the graffiti?” the deep blue-robed male wizard asked.

The moment his words fell, a chaotic burst of colors suddenly exploded in the air above the square.

The graffiti appeared.

But this time, the graffiti did not appear on walls or stone slabs. Instead, it floated directly in the air.

Those crooked lines, unevenly applied colors, and child-like brushstrokes directly outlined bizarre images in the void. The images kept changing.

One moment it was a twisted human face, with misplaced features—eyes growing where the mouth should be, and the mouth on the forehead.

The next moment it was a chaotic patch of color blocks, as if someone had poured all the paints together and stirred them randomly.

Seeming to realize that it truly could no longer hide, the graffiti began to imitate the images of several wizards.

Jie Ming saw the nine of them appear crookedly in the air, their postures highly matching their actual distribution in the square. The graffiti was trying to replicate their appearances and then twist those replicas.

One graffiti figure’s arm was stretched out, becoming as thin and long as a noodle.

One graffiti figure’s head was flattened, turning into a pancake.

One graffiti figure’s body was twisted into a fried dough twist.

But these twists had no effect on the wizards in reality.

At this moment, the eight sixth-ring wizards were no longer restraining their power, and each person’s Law Solidification Domain had been activated.

The graffiti Strange’s attacks were neutralized by the power at the law level the instant they touched those domains, without raising even a ripple.

Seeing that its attacks were ineffective, the graffiti Strange grew even more violent.

It discovered that it could not harm the high-ranking wizards surrounding it in the sky, so it turned all its attention toward…

Jie Ming.