As they gradually approached and finally stopped at a wide junction of the sewer pipes ahead of Jie Ming, he could at last make out their figures.
They were cloaked in various disguises, but the unique wizardly resonance emanating from them indicated they were no longer hiding.
Jie Ming stepped out from the shadows, his footsteps echoing clearly in the silent sewer.
The four figures, initially wary of one another, froze in unison at the sound of his steps, then turned sharply.
“I figured there were plenty of wizards in the capital, but for all of you to infiltrate such high positions—should I say, as expected of geniuses?”
Jie Ming approached slowly, breaking the silence among them. “We don’t have much time. Since you all seem hesitant, let me, a nobody, take the lead…”
“You’re hardly a nobody.”
A clear, melodious voice interrupted him. Jie Ming turned toward the petite figure.
She wore a black robe that concealed her face, but her voice and frame suggested she was a woman.
“No one would call the person who topped the contribution leaderboard a nobody, right, Mr. Jie Ming?”The other three paused briefly at the mention of Jie Ming’s identity, then nodded in realization, their curious gazes turning toward him.
Jie Ming, hearing her words, was genuinely surprised.
While the name “Jie Ming” was indeed well-known among the wizards of Noren Workshop, he was certain that, outside of the apprentices from Academy 13, no one should know his specific details or appearance.
Moreover, he had altered his appearance, currently using the guise of an adventurer named “Jack.”
But when the figure unveiled her black robe, revealing her face and the comforting aura emanating from her, realization flashed in Jie Ming’s eyes.
“So it’s Miss Mary… or rather, Miss Anya.”
“Eh?”
The human viscount’s daughter, Miss Mary, with her powerful affinity, suddenly suppressed her comforting aura, revealing her ethereal and vibrant true essence—it was indeed Anya!
Anya likely identified him due to her innate ability to sense the unique life aura emanating from him.
After all, back at the plaza of Noren Workshop, she had spotted him in a crowd with that same innate perception.
She looked at Jie Ming with curiosity. “How did you recognize me?”
“Your aura is too distinctive. Despite some disguise, that affinity for life energy—I’ve only ever sensed it from you,” Jie Ming said with a smile.
Anya frowned. “No way, is my disguise that bad?”
Jie Ming didn’t respond.
Of course, he wouldn’t tell her that the real reason he recognized her was her gaze.
Back at the banquet, when “Miss Mary” thought she was discreetly watching him, Jie Ming had already noticed.
After all, the longing in her eyes for an experimental subject was far too conspicuous to someone like Jie Ming, who had recently been collecting mortal dust aura.
With the two setting an example, the remaining three no longer concealed themselves.
The disguise on another tall figure dissipated like mist, revealing her stunningly beautiful face—the proud leader of the elven delegation.
A flash of surprise and realization crossed her eyes before she gave a soft, playful smile. “Jie Ming? What a surprise… I didn’t expect to run into the top-ranked here. I’m Seraphina.”
As she spoke, Seraphina’s form flickered like an unstable image before reverting to her appearance as a level-10 genius.
“I haven’t been top-ranked for a while. I’m barely in the top ten now,” Jie Ming said, waving his hand. “Your reputation precedes you.”
Seraphina’s introduction was like a signal, and the other two promptly shed their disguises without hesitation.
The rugged, boisterous beastman warrior’s fur and wild aura faded, revealing a refined, scholarly face—it was Kaelern!
He grinned, a hint of self-mockery in his voice. “Finally meeting some comrades. I thought I was the only fool pretending to be a brute down here.”
Then, the hearty, stocky female dwarf’s dwarven sturdiness dissolved, revealing a somewhat unfamiliar male figure.
Jie Ming studied him uncertainly, but Kaelern recognized him. “Rex? It’s been ages since I’ve seen you without your alchemical construct.”
Rex?
Jie Ming discreetly assessed the man’s aura, unable to reconcile him with the towering mechanical figure.
Rex’s eyes gleamed with a piercing, all-seeing wisdom. “Didn’t expect to meet you all here. Seems we’re all on the same page.”
Five of Noren Workshop’s genius wizards now reunited in the sewers of Elosia’s capital.
Jie Ming looked at the four familiar yet unfamiliar faces and couldn’t help but let out a soft chuckle.
He recalled his earlier musings—it seemed this world hadn’t secretly updated its version. Those he perceived as threats were indeed geniuses on his level.
His laughter drew everyone’s attention.
Jie Ming coughed awkwardly into his hand, then spoke with a touch of emotion. “Looks like our goals align. Truly, great minds think alike.”
“No, no, no… you’re giving me too much credit.”
“Who’s thinking alike with a lunatic like you?”
“I’m not that crazy…”
“Hey! Don’t slander me! I’m not that insane!”
To Jie Ming’s surprise, his words caused the other four to bristle as if stung, some even instinctively stepping back to distance themselves from him.
“?”
Jie Ming tilted his head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Kaelern, with his good-natured demeanor, pursed his lips and said, “You know we’re only level-1 wizards, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you, a level-1 wizard, scheming against hundreds of beings ranging from level 4 to level 7—don’t you think that’s a bit too crazy?”
“Huh?” Jie Ming’s mind reeled. “Leaving aside that you guys are also plotting against deities, what’s there to be afraid of? Are you even proper wizards?!”
“Because we’re proper wizards, we wouldn’t do this!” Seraphina couldn’t help but retort. “As wizards, isn’t the most important thing to rationally weigh the costs and benefits of an action? We’re not like those brainless combat brutes…”
Kaelern’s expression was equally helpless. “Sure, we’re all scheming against deities, but the nature of it is different. Our original plan was, at most, to sneakily poison the well. But looking at the arrays you’ve set up, it’s like you’re planning to shove manure in their faces!”
“Uh…” Jie Ming faltered.
Recalling the arrays he’d discovered, his expression turned odd.
It seemed… he might have misunderstood.
From the moment Jie Ming was thrown into the Elosia plane, a question had lingered in his mind: how could a group of wizard apprentices like them exert a meaningful, even decisive, influence on the war in such a vast mid-tier plane cluster?
He was well aware that, even if they advanced to level-1 formal wizards in this plane, their combat strength would, at best, match the legendary powerhouses of this world.
That might sound impressive, enough to dominate the mortal world.
But Elosia wasn’t just home to mortals—it housed tens of thousands of angels and hundreds of deities behind them.
Even a single angel, equivalent to a level-3 being, could drive him to a dead end.
And if a deity led angels to descend personally, their group of wizard apprentices, even combined, would be nothing more than dogs to be beaten by the angels under the deity’s command.
Relying solely on destruction and combat, their contributions would be negligible, almost insignificant.
Thus, from the start, Jie Ming realized they couldn’t approach this plane war with conventional combat strategies.
He needed a clever breakthrough, a key to leverage the entire plane’s core with minimal effort.
After thoroughly studying Elosia’s divine faith network and the complex relationship between its deities and faith, a bold idea formed in Jie Ming’s mind: he could contaminate the faith, indirectly affecting the deities!
In the Elosia plane, aside from the sole native deity—God Above Gods—all other deities were faith-based gods.
This meant their power stemmed entirely from mortal faith, making them highly susceptible to the purity of that faith.
Even the sole native deity, God Above Gods, had absorbed some mortal faith over the years due to deliberate indulgence and neglect by other deities.
While this boosted the deity’s power, it also meant it wasn’t entirely transcendent.
Jie Ming’s plan was simple: manipulate the faith to affect Elosia’s entire divine pantheon.
The higher the deity, the more faith they collected, and thus, the greater the impact of contamination.
Of course, he knew that even with his utmost effort, the impact on deities would be minimal, perhaps lasting only a moment.
But he didn’t need a significant impact—just enough to distract them.
Even a moment’s distraction would suffice!
Outside the Elosia plane cluster, half of Noren Workshop’s high-tier wizards were waiting.
With their power, a single level-7 wizard could sweep through the entire plane cluster, crushing mortals, angels, and even faith gods into dust.
The reason they hadn’t acted was to prevent Elosia’s deities from panicking and triggering the plane’s origin to destroy it entirely.
Mentor Clark had once told Jie Ming that in such stalemates, wizards typically had three ways to seize a plane’s origin: employ a higher-tier wizard, weaken the plane’s origin power, or have a wizard ascend to level 6 within the plane.
In essence, all three methods aimed to prevent beings above level 6 in the plane from instantly triggering the origin to destroy it.
Jie Ming’s plan followed the same principle.
As long as contaminated faith could distract the deities, even for a moment, it would be enough!
The high-tier wizards waiting outside could seize that opportunity to suppress and capture Elosia’s deities.
Though he had no communication with the outside, Jie Ming trusted that, with the wisdom and understanding of plane wars among those high-tier wizards, they wouldn’t miss this chance.
Especially after his preliminary study of Elosia’s divine faith network, he deeply understood the wizards’ craving for “deities” as high-value experimental subjects.
That craving was enough to make them seize any fleeting opportunity.
Until now, Jie Ming had assumed the other four shared his mindset, working toward the same goal in their own ways.
But now, it seemed he was mistaken.
“Initially, we only planned to stir negative emotions among the mortal races in this plane, making the faith they provide impure,” the other four explained as they headed toward the array nodes.
Rex, previously disguised as the female dwarf, sighed. “Like me—I’ve already roused most of the dwarves’ ‘sloth’ emotions.”
Seraphina and Kaelern nodded, having similarly incited negative emotions among the races they impersonated.
“So those three arrays…” Jie Ming’s mouth twitched.
“They’re just simple energy diffusion arrays, meant to spread the energy from their props across the human kingdom, stirring human negative emotions,” Anya said with a sigh.
“The three of them worked hard to delay negotiations to buy enough time to set up the arrays. I was a bit late to act, so I planned to hitch a ride on their work, but I didn’t expect you to outright change the arrays’ essence.”
“So now we’re stuck on your crazy train. If we don’t want our efforts wasted, we have no choice but to follow your lead.”
At this stage, novice wizards in the Elosia plane had four ways to earn contribution points.
The first was straightforward killing and destruction, but with their strength, this yielded few points and risked being counter-killed if unlucky.
The second was to consider the broader situation, finding ways to make Elosia’s races provide more armies for the wizard camp to kill.
The third was what geniuses like Anya and Kaelern had initially planned—indirectly affecting deities by influencing the mortal world.
While the effect was small, given the deities’ importance, the contribution points were substantial.
The fourth was Jie Ming’s approach, also targeting deities but with far more extreme and intense methods.
“Uh…”
Jie Ming finally understood. How many proper wizard apprentices would, like him, spend so much time researching the divine faith network during a critical moment for earning contribution points?
He had calculated the energy diffusion effects of those three arrays, assuming others shared his ideas, only to realize it was a misunderstanding.
He had even thought their array craftsmanship was lacking and kindly “improved” their runes a bit.