NFBE Chapter 632: The Dune Plane and Group 2's Research Focus
Chapter 632: The Dune Plane and Group 2's Research Focus
Within the peach garden, several wizards were on patrol, alongside golems of various types fashioned from peach trees, all keeping a watchful eye on their surroundings.The moment Locke and the other three wizards approached, a First Circle crystallization-stage patrol wizard immediately sent a beam of magical radiance toward them.
Once the letter of authorization that Witch Yekaterina had given Locke responded with a corresponding beam of magical radiance of its own, every trace of wariness in the patrol wizards' eyes vanished at once.
The patrol leader nodded to Locke, Witch Mason, and the others as they landed, saying, "This is the summit of Little Peach Mountain, the Little Peach Mountain Garden, administered by the Security Division."
"However, our captain, Second Circle Wizard Paul, has been called away temporarily to give a lecture at the Seven-Color Nursery and is not present at the moment."
"The four of you, with your authorization forms, may pass through Peach Tree Gate No. 31 and enter the colonial world you need to reach."
"All matters pertaining to your safety are your own responsibility from here. That has nothing to do with our Security Division."
"That said, all the worlds accessible from here have undergone special processing. None of them are uncharted, undeveloped worlds. As a result, the world laws of these various worlds bear no hostility toward us wizards. Any gateway to a world that poses a direct threat to a wizard's life will not be opened here."
Locke gave a small nod and said, "Thank you for the reminder."
The Security Division was the domain of the Executive Patrol Group. The patrol unit of seven full wizards standing before him was composed mostly of Executive Patrol Group wizards, in all likelihood.
Golden Crown Mountain was truly a great institution with many factions.
Locke and Witch Mason entered the Little Peach Mountain garden and made their way inside until they found the thirty-first peach tree gate. The branches of this particular peach tree curved downward and met the ground, forming an archway of twisted peach wood.
The magical seal on Locke's authorization form automatically emitted a beam of magical radiance, and immediately beyond the peach tree archway there appeared a scene of endless yellow sand stretching in every direction.
The peach tree archway had clearly connected to another world.
Locke led the three wizards through. The moment they crossed over, they found the peach tree archway gone behind them, replaced by a vast expanse of swirling yellow sand.
The sky was yellow sand. The ground was yellow sand. As far as the eye could see, in every direction, there was nothing but yellow sand.
The moment Witch Mason opened her mouth, she inhaled a mouthful of grit and immediately began coughing.
Locke glanced at her, deployed his Everlasting Defensive Field alongside his Life Force Field, and enveloped all four of them within it.
The torrents of yellow sand crashed against the Life Force Field, producing a relentless series of violent impacts.
Witch Mason managed with some difficulty to clear the sand from her body, and only then was she able to speak. "What is going on with this world? We step through and it's nothing but desert. And there isn't a single living thing anywhere!"
Witch Freya furrowed her brow and said, "And the sunlight is absolutely vicious!"
She quickly retrieved from her star ring a tin of salve potion prepared by a potion master and applied it to her skin.
"The sun in this world is far too large. Team Leader!"
Locke raised his head and looked at the sun above. The sun of this world was not a spherical orb hanging high in the sky. Instead, it was more like a mountain range resting upon the horizon of this world, enormous in scale, its scorching heat burning the land below. There was no atmosphere, no cloud layer, no moisture of any kind.
The entire land was nothing but yellow sand, and in some areas the desert had already produced vast quantities of glass.
Just how hostile was this world?
Suffice it to say that a third-class wizard apprentice arriving in this world ran the risk of being killed outright within an hour by the shards of glass mixed into the sand. Or perhaps even earlier than that, they would simply be cooked alive by the intense heat. Locke suspected that even a first-class wizard apprentice might perish here from the temperature alone. It was merely a question of how long it would take.
Locke extended his palm and sensed that the world contained almost no magical tides whatsoever. Inside it, magical energy could barely be replenished from the external environment, and one could only rely on the magical energy stored within one's own body.
It was clear that Witch Mason and the other two had noticed this as well.
But Locke's situation differed from theirs, because within the eyeball of his right eye lay a gateway to his half-plane, and within that half-plane was a five-thousand-mu Forest Sanctuary. If the magical energy within his own body ran dry, he could draw upon the forest's. And when the forest's magical energy ran dry, he could draw upon the magical tides of the half-plane itself.
The entire Forest Sanctuary had already achieved its own internal energy cycle, like a magical tide production engine running ceaselessly day and night. He had absolutely no need to worry about being unable to replenish his magical energy.
Wizard Barrett said quietly, "This is basically a plane on the verge of death. What kind of research could Group 2 possibly be doing here?"
Locke tossed a Shadow Eye Grass high into the air and at the same time protected the grass with his Life Force Field, then closed his left eye and linked his left eye's vision to the grass's.
As the eye grass rose higher and higher, a bird's-eye view of this world spread across Locke's field of vision. "Barrett is right. It isn't that this region is a desert. The entire world has already become a wasteland of yellow sand or heaps of glass shards."
"Some regions still have surging lava erupting from cracks in the ground, rather like this plane is bleeding."
"There are almost no plants, and no structures of any kind remaining. Plant communities are themselves an important source of magical tide production, which is why the magical tides of this world have nearly vanished. The only supplement to this world's magical tides comes from traces of magical energy leaking up from underground. But the problem is that the sun, now far too close, has destroyed this plane's atmosphere, meaning that even the large quantities of magical energy leaking up from below cannot be retained by this plane."
"Magical energy leaks out continuously through the gaps in the atmosphere."
As the Shadow Eye Grass rose higher, the jade-green barrier of the Life Force Field began to warp and distort under the ravaging heat.
The eye grass flipped upward, and what it revealed was that high above this plane, there was a massive hole torn through the atmosphere.
Furthermore, the elemental barrier that should have protected the plane and shielded it from void energy and external forces had suffered numerous gaping breaches as well.
The sky of this plane was already fragmented and incomplete. In many places overhead, the plane's elemental barrier was directly exposed, rather than the yellow-sand-colored sky one would otherwise see.
The edges of the eye grass, particularly its green leaf portions, began to curl as it climbed too high.
Locke looked downward with his right eye and spotted a tiny ball of cactus growing there. "Well... though this world cannot truly be called completely dead. I hadn't expected it, but there are still small plants surviving with great difficulty in these little corners. That is rather remarkable."
No sooner had Locke spoken than an enormous storm bore down on them, triggered by the intense solar heat. Because the entire world had become a smooth desert with almost nothing to impede the wind, this gale set off a massive sandstorm.
The scale of it was beyond imagination.
In his previous life, and throughout the wizard world as well, Locke had never witnessed a sandstorm of such enormous extent. Stretching to heights of thousands of meters, it looked as though it could annihilate everything in its path.
Taller than mountain ranges, the sandstorm bore down on the four of them like a mountain crashing toward them.
Any living creature caught before such a natural catastrophe would surely be smashed to dust, or before that, be swept away by the gale and shredded apart by countless sand and glass particles.
Yet the four of them had no particular cause for concern.
For all its vast scale, the sandstorm ahead contained no magical energy.
A threat of this level would be a terrifying assault to a first-class wizard apprentice, or even to an ordinary First Circle wizard.
But to four First Circle crystallization-stage wizards, it was no more than a small wave, merely a minor inconvenience.
Up to this point, Witch Mason and Witch Freya had found the place troublesome at most.
The absurdly immense sandstorm came crashing down upon all four of them, and in an instant everyone was engulfed. Yet all four had their Everlasting Defensive Fields deployed around them.
They were like alloy metal in the midst of a great wave, utterly unmoved no matter how vast or ferocious the wave might be.
Instead, they pierced straight through the sandstorm and flew through the air.
Witch Mason's Everlasting Defensive Field was the Cherry Dragon Barrier. A cherry tree dragon coiled around her body and wrapped itself about her, deflecting all the wind and sand.
The Cherry Dragon Barrier also came with a built-in flight ability.
So she simply flew upward, piercing through that extraordinary sandstorm standing fifteen hundred meters tall.
Wizard Barrett's Everlasting Defensive Field was the Bamboo Sea Sword Formation. Five bamboo swords circled around him and cut off all the sand and dust.
However, he failed to react in time and was temporarily buried by the sandstorm and flowing sand.
Witch Freya's Everlasting Defensive Field was the Water Cloud Barrier.
Surrounding her was a realm where clouds and water met, beautiful as an ink wash painting, water and sky blending into one.
This Water Cloud Barrier also possessed automatic flight capability, and it sent all the approaching sand and dust bouncing back directly.
Witch Freya and Witch Mason looked down at the rolling currents of sand beneath their feet. Witch Freya smiled and said, "It looks like the Team Leader and Barrett have been buried in there."
Witch Mason nodded. "The Team Leader has gone to rescue Barrett. Barrett didn't use his flight magic quickly enough. That fellow can be awfully slow to react sometimes."
Witch Freya laughed and said, "I was actually going to let Barrett claw his way out from under the sandstorm on his own. That would have been about two thousand meters of crawling. I could have mocked him thoroughly."
"Who would have thought the Team Leader would be so kind-hearted? Going off to rescue him like that."
The two women exchanged a glance and smiled.
In the next instant, a massive axe of Nature's Force cleaved upward from beneath the sea of sand below them.
The sea of sand split directly in two, and a great canyon opened up.
All four were First Circle crystallization-stage wizards of the wizard world, and their power, relative to this medium-scale half-ruined world, was already on the level of gods and demons.
Locke had used Nature's Force and, with a single axe blow, reshaped the terrain. Then, using the Plant Mimicry: Green Dragon, he carried Wizard Barrett up into the air.
Wizard Barrett glared at Witch Mason and Witch Freya and said, "Oh, so this is what good friends do. The moment I was in danger, not one of you except the Team Leader came to help me. I actually thought I was about to be swept by the sandstorm into the underground of this world."
Witch Freya let out a snicker. "It was just a sandstorm from some native world. That hardly qualifies as danger. At worst you would have come out looking like a dusty mess. With your Everlasting Defensive Field active, there was nothing for you to fear."
Witch Mason nodded with an expression of wholehearted agreement.
Locke also knew that what they said was true.
The Everlasting Defensive Field was the most uniquely defining feature that wizards possessed among the many worlds of the endless void at the First Circle stage.
Among First Circle life-forms, those wizards with an Everlasting Defensive Field simply had stronger defensive ability and greater staying power, and that was precisely what allowed them to venture into all manner of dangerous and unusual worlds.
The sandstorm that had just raged before them, for instance, posed a terrifying threat to other First Circle life-forms.
But to wizards whose passive defense was already their strongest shield, a shield that could remain deployed continuously for a long, long time with almost no consumption, it was a minor skirmish at most.
Wizard Barrett let out a cold snort. "The Team Leader is the only one who treats me well. The two of you just wanted to watch me make a fool of myself. If I had been swept down into the underground currents, I'd like to see how you would have found me and pulled me out!"
Wizard Barrett looked at the sandstorm rolling away into the distance and felt his irritation rising.
The sandstorm of this world had already formed into a wall of dust and sand that swept across the entire world, driven by the near-total absence of anything to obstruct it. With the entire world having become desert, it had naturally given rise to a super sandstorm wall that would never dissipate, roaming constantly across the surface of the desert.
Wizard Barrett stared at the distant sandstorm with open displeasure. He raised his left hand, extended his thumb, and stretched out his index finger, which bore a small Parasitic Tomato ring, forming a hand-gun gesture.
He then let out a whistle and at the same time calculated in his mind the combined internal force of the sandstorm.
In the next moment, a colossal vacuum tore straight through the middle of the sandstorm. With its internal structure breached, the remaining portions of the sandstorm lost their coherent support and collapsed toward the ground like a great beast from which the skeleton had been pulled, leaving behind ring upon ring of sand dune ruins.
In a single instant, Wizard Barrett had destroyed the internal driving force of that extraordinary sandstorm.
"And that's done." Wizard Barrett let out a small breath. "My Wind Howl Tomato really is something. I paid a hundred thousand magic stones for it."
"The complementary botanical magic is Wind Howl Flower Cannon."
Witch Mason offered a well-meaning reminder. "Barrett, replenishing magical energy is extremely difficult here. How could you have used up roughly half your magical energy just to dispel a sandstorm..."
Wizard Barrett said, "I can always replenish magical energy with a potion. I..."
Locke smiled and said, "There's no need to waste a vial of potion. I have a cheaper and simpler method."
With a wave of his hand, the magical energy drawn from the Forest Sanctuary descended like rain.
A jade-green rainfall settled down around Locke.
Wizard Barrett immediately began absorbing the magical energy frantically, rapidly replenishing the magical power he had expended.
Witch Mason and Witch Freya stared in surprise.
Witch Freya said, "I had almost forgotten. The Team Leader's Forest Sanctuary contains an extraordinary volume of magical pressure energy all on its own. Even in a miserable place like this, he can replenish his magical energy independently. That certainly puts our minds at ease."
Witch Mason said, "It's more than that. Locke's Forest Sanctuary itself is a magical energy generator."
"It can produce energy for us continuously without end."
At that moment, a fifth wizard approached, carrying the magical pressure of a Second Circle wizard. It was Wizard Cis, the team leader of Group 2.
Wizard Cis said, "Really? I never expected you to have such a remarkable ability, Locke."
Wizard Cis came from a distance, a pair of wings fashioned from a cluster of banana trees spreading behind him. The banana tree branches had formed three pairs of wings mimicking the shape of avian magical creatures.
Wizard Cis looked at Locke and said, "I felt your magical pressure from very far away. I was just making my way over to escort you all to my research station, when, well, cough, the two of you went ahead and destroyed one of the sandstorms here. Truly spirited, as one expects from young people."
Wizard Barrett laughed with a slightly embarrassed expression.
Locke said to Wizard Cis, "Wizard Cis, sir, my teacher has instructed me to bring my team here to assist with your research in Group 2."
Wizard Cis nodded and said, "It was actually I who suggested this to the Throne. What surprised me was that the Throne agreed immediately. Though no one can ever guess what the Throne is thinking."
"It is excellent that you have come, Locke. Group 2 is precisely in need of talent like yours."
Wizard Cis glanced at the remaining three and, feeling that this was somewhat impolite, added, "And the other three talented individuals in your team as well."
"In any case, follow me. You should all have botanical magic suited for long-distance flight, I take it? My research station is quite far from here."
"We had to relocate the research station for certain reasons."
Locke gave a small nod, and all four of them activated their flight magic and followed behind Wizard Cis. Wizard Barrett summoned a peach-type magical plant that arranged itself beneath his feet into a magic carpet of peach blossom petals, riding the wind forward.
This was the First Circle botanical magic, Peach Blossom Flying Carpet.
Witch Mason's and Witch Freya's Everlasting Defensive Fields both came with built-in flight ability.
Along the way, Locke looked out at the endless yellow sand in every direction and asked, "Wizard Cis, if you don't mind my asking, how did this plane end up like this?"
Wizard Cis smiled and said, "There's nothing particularly unusual about it. This medium-scale plane was originally just a normal life-bearing plane, covered in green grass, teeming with creatures, blanketed in tropical rainforest in every direction, with a beautiful blue sky above."
"But that was a very long time ago. Now all that remains are dried-up oceans and a land of sand dunes. Though there are still some plants and animals that have managed to survive."
"We call this place the Dune Plane."
"The Dune Plane ended up this way because it drifted too close to the Solar Plane within the void and was captured by the Solar Plane's gravitational pull."
"Although the Dune Plane was captured by the Solar Plane's gravity, it has not yet been fully consumed because its own gravitational force has not disappeared. The two are still locked in a state of mutual opposition."
"It is simply that the sun has drawn so close that it has cooked everything here and destroyed the fundamental structure of this world."
"Golden Crown Mountain has carried out some degree of planar modification, so the Dune Plane now orbits around the Solar Plane rather than being drawn fully into it. This void orbital pattern holds considerable research value for Golden Crown Mountain."
"As for our Group 2, the greatest research value lies not there but in this particular environment. Group 2 is studying how to create a viable plant ecology capable of surviving in this extreme and hostile environment. You might think of it as an attempt to terraform this desert, to transform barren wasteland into an oasis under these severe conditions."
"This research has three primary goals that we aim to achieve."
"First, to advance the field of ecology."
"Second, to cultivate various drought-resistant plant varieties."
"Third, to verify the influence of plant communities on this world, and to determine whether magical tides can be regenerated through plant communities. This is extremely valuable for the wizard world and for fundamental research."