Chapter 711: Obtaining a Grand Magic
Locke looked at the various projections of light of the mind on the chessboard. He swept his gaze around, nodded, and said with understanding, "I see."
"Every one of these pieces is an aggregate of a light of the mind."
Locke was not a psychic school wizard and so did not know the precise value these lights of the mind held within psychic school magic, nor the quality of their composition.
He could only recognize that these pieces had been formed from the condensed lights of the mind of the subjects of the Silent Plane's empire.
Nine of them were pieces formed from the condensed lights of the mind at the Second Circle level. These pieces were of equal standing in the mind network to the emperor's piece, but appeared to have been sealed for a very long time and had never been opened up by the emperor.
Locke walked across the chessboard. A full moon hung itself above the board, indirectly controlling this mind network.
The nine pieces rotated around Locke, and the information they represented entered his mind, nine great dukes.
Nine grand dukes.
That meant that within the mind network of the Silent Plane, nine positions were hidden. These nine positions should have been present within this mind network, allowing the Silent Plane to produce nine more Second Circle-level existences.
Below these nine Second Circle-level pieces, there were three hundred First Circle-level pieces.
But at present, none of these three hundred pieces were linked to any actual person either.
In other words, the emperor had completely hidden every important piece within this mind network, leaving only his own piece representing the emperor.
'This mind network is fundamentally a half-completed work. If it were completed following this mind network's design...'
Locke thought, "It would increase the Silent Plane's total magic pressure to over ten times its current level."
"The Silent Plane would very likely undergo a plane-level upgrade."
Locke looked at the permission space of the mind network. The chessboard was extending downward, spreading countless threads of spiritual light downward to connect with the tens of billions of ordinary people of the Silent Plane.
These threads of spiritual light converged and condensed into chess pieces, only at this moment, because the entire mortal world had been borrowed dry by him, the mind network had become a tree without roots.
"Emperor, this mind network was originally meant to gather the lights of the mind of all living beings across the entire plane, converging them onto the corresponding pieces. But it seems you have tampered with its permissions, intending to gather all the lights of the mind onto yourself."
Locke turned to look at the emperor.
The emperor beneath the armor seemed somewhat guilty, but insisted stubbornly, "Gathering the power of an entire civilization and concentrating it in myself, that is the only way to let me reach higher places. I can lead the civilization to greater heights, which is why I am a one-man civilization."
Locke gave a slight shake of his head. "Stop deceiving me."
"You are not the creator of this mind network at all, so you understand what it does without understanding why it does it."
"Otherwise you would not have failed to see through the true purpose of my Spiritual Cultivation Society. At the time I was only trying to probe you. I had no idea you would show no reaction to my probing whatsoever. It was at that moment I knew you were not the builder of this mind network."
Locke pointed at the piece representing the emperor and said, "You wanted to gather all the lights of the mind toward yourself. But you never managed it. After all these years of operating this, the result is that you gathered almost none at all."
"Emperor, you usurped this system."
"Or rather, perhaps I should not call you emperor. I am correct, am I not, Grand Duke Westminster?"
The emperor beneath the armor gave a shudder.
Among the nine pieces, the one corresponding to Grand Duke Westminster suddenly broke free of Locke's control and flew toward the emperor.
Locke extended a hand, and a World Stone fell into his palm. "This mind network is fundamentally a Grand Magic."
"Emperor, this mind network is a Grand Magic crafted in earnest by a wizard. But its owner died, and this Grand Magic became a magical artifact, which opened the possibility of someone else becoming its new master. And you became its second master."
Locke, in the state of acting from one's heart without overstepping, understood everything with a single touch and a single word.
He had sharply perceived the connection that the emperor was desperately concealing, the connection between himself and the piece of Grand Duke Westminster, and directly using his special state, he summoned the World Stone at the core of this Grand Magic.
The World Stone the emperor had been searching for over two hundred years without ever finding.
The emperor looked at the World Stone in Locke's hand and said in astonishment, "I searched this permission space for over two hundred years and never found that World Stone."
Locke snapped his fingers, and in an instant the entire mental chessboard began to rise continuously.
The emperor asked, "What are you trying to do?"
Locke said, "I want to see the truth of this world!"
Very few wizards could likely find this permission space.
Given the emperor's character, if he had not needed him to provide energy and maintain the existence of the mind network, he would certainly have died before opening the permission space of the mind network, putting his greatest secret before another's eyes.
And the moment he entered this mental space, he immediately understood one thing.
This mental space had been created to solve a problem.
The true face of the Silent Plane was something he had likely never seen before.
As the mental chessboard rose, the emperor said in a panic, "Wait, it cannot rise any further. It cannot exceed the canopy set by the mind network..."
In the next instant, it was as though some kind of limit had been broken through.
The mental chessboard continued to rise higher, and then Locke saw the true sky of this world, the true sky beneath the dark clouds.
First came the dark clouds produced by industrial pollution, and then above the dark clouds was a brownish-yellow sky, like a sea of sulfur.
This mass of sky was in constant flux, its shape perpetually shifting, with the sun appearing right at its center.
The whole scene resembled one of Van Gogh's abstract paintings.
This was simply not a normal sky.
Or rather, the Silent Plane simply had no normal sky.
All the sky that Locke and the other competitors had seen previously was entirely conjured by the mind network.
That brownish-yellow sky appeared to be a mixture of multiple highly toxic substances.
When the emperor saw the true face of this plane being witnessed by Locke, he immediately lowered his head and removed the helmet from his head, revealing a face corroded beyond recognition.
"This is what that sky did. A very long time ago, our world had a normal sky. But later, it is said that during the formation stage of our world's sky, a rather large comet plane passed alongside our world."
"That comet plane grazed the surface of our world's sky and damaged certain concepts within our sky, and as a result our world has no longer had a normal sky."
"From the brownish-yellow void in that sky, strange things frequently flow down. My face was disfigured while blocking the things that flowed down from that sky."
Locke looked toward that brownish-yellow sky. "Nre-element light particles?"
The emperor asked, "What is that?"
"A form of gaseous pollution," Locke pondered. He had encountered this form of gaseous pollution element in the Emerald Dream when battling the Life Nightmare.
He had not expected to encounter it again in the Silent Chalice.
So it seemed the sky of the Silent Plane had a kind of innate deficiency from the formation stage, something like a developmental abnormality.
This had caused the sky to have a void, and from that void, Nre-element particles would flow down.
Nre-element particles, as a highly pollutant substance, when combined with anything, would produce corresponding pollution compounds.
Even the Ancient War Tree and the Ancient Life Tree could be polluted by them.
The Life Nightmare had once been polluted in this way.
At this very moment, the young Ancient Life Tree at the center of Locke's Forest Sanctuary transmitted to him a bone-deep fear.
It seemed that upon seeing that brownish-yellow sky, it was extremely afraid.
So the mind network was a plan to patch the sky.
Locke understood this Grand Magic in an instant. Using the mortal world of the Silent Plane as its foundation, the mind network continuously elevated itself, erecting a barrier in the sky and using the energy of the light of the mind to create a Second Sky.
This gave the life of the Silent Plane the possibility of seeing blue sky and white clouds.
It also blocked the Nre-element pollution flowing down from the true sky above the canopy of the mind network.
Although the pollution was still there and increasing at every moment, all of it was like being stuffed into a room by the emperor where no one could see it. As long as the room was not filled to bursting, the pollution was considered dealt with.
It was somewhat like an ostrich burying its head in the ground, but it was genuinely a method born of desperation.
That was probably why the emperor had panicked so visibly when he saw him raising the mental chessboard earlier.
Ironically, the mind network had come into existence so that the people of the Silent Plane could see blue sky and white clouds.
And yet the people of the Silent Plane had developed their industry, filling the sky with dark clouds and coal ash, and so blue sky and white clouds had become invisible once again.
So this world was destined to perish because the canopy of the mind network would inevitably be crushed under the pressure someday.
Were the people of the Silent Plane destined to one day face the pollution compounds of the Nre-element?
No, that was not quite right.
'First, if it were only this, then even in previous Silent Chalice competitions, where each competitor was focused entirely on the match and paid no attention to the true nature of this plane being hidden from view, the Silent Witch should still have been able to discover it.'
'Second, even if the Nre-element particle pollution compounds eventually crushed the mind network, that would at most cause a massive ecological extinction. Whether it could even wipe out humanity from this world entirely is uncertain. So this should not be the reason this world is destined to be destroyed.'
Locke thought, 'Furthermore, an ecological extinction, a downgrade from a life plane to an ordinary plane, is a completely different concept from the destruction of a plane entirely.'
'The Nre-element pollution, while enormously destructive to ecology, cannot blow this plane apart. So the destroyer must be something else.'
'Only, this true sky is genuinely a very troublesome thing.'
Locke thought, "The sky created by the mind network can only serve as a temporary isolation. Like an ostrich, it pretends to have solved the problem, but the problem still hangs above everyone's heads."
He did a mental calculation of the mind network's theoretical maximum tolerance. Under the emperor's approach, it could sustain approximately three thousand more years.
But if the emperor were willing to open all the pieces within the mind network, the ones condensed from the hidden lights of the mind, to everyone, it would be different.
In that case, this mind network could sustain over ten thousand years.
For many civilizations, that would already be the best possible ultimate solution.
Because the history of many civilizations had not even exceeded ten thousand years.
Over ten thousand years was sufficient for many civilizations.
It even encompassed their beginning and their end.
Locke assessed the tier of this mind network. 'This does not look like an initial-forging Grand Magic. Because even though this mind network has been suppressed by the emperor, its vastness still surpasses mine and Edgar's and Smith's and Georgina's Grand Magics.'
Inside the Moon of Evolution, Antoine and Witch Preston were presiding over the operation of the Grand Magic for Locke.
Witch Preston was extremely surprised that the true face of the Silent Plane was completely different from what she had seen before.
Because earlier she had been in the upper reaches of the crystal wall system looking down from above, and so could not see the brownish-yellow sky hole.
And after entering the mortal world's earth, looking upward she could only see the canopy constructed by the light of the mind, so she had never seen the true sky.
Only within this permission space of the light of the mind, because Locke had raised the height of the mental chessboard, did she finally see the true face of this world.
But at this moment, Antoine suddenly spoke. "Locke, this mind network is a star-forged Grand Magic."
Locke closed his eyes and communicated with Antoine within his own Grand Magic, "Star-forged... that would be the void-forged stage."
"This is a second-forging Grand Magic. It is difficult to believe that the person who forged this Grand Magic back then was only a native of this world who had received a partial inheritance from the wizard civilization of the Age of Enlightenment."
Antoine was unmoved. "Wizard civilization does not refer only to the civilization of the wizard world. It encompasses all those who have received the inheritance of our civilization. Even if he once fought alone in a place none of us knew about, he was still a wizard."
"He was one of us. And there are many, many such people in the infinite void."
Locke asked, "But Antoine, how can you be certain this is a star-forged Grand Magic rather than simply an initial-forging magic with a large volume of capital flow?"
Antoine said, "The second forging is called void-forging because it adds something to one's Grand Magic called currency."
"Before a Grand Magic has its own currency, as an asset it is enormously cumbersome and extremely inconvenient to use. But once it has currency, the energy dissipation rate will decrease further, the instantaneous magic pressure output multiplier will rise, and energy compatibility will improve further."
"The other five major indicators will generally also be elevated."
"For a Grand Magic, currency is a power system. That is to say, within one's own Grand Magic, one establishes one's own power system. This power system makes the power of every individual under the Grand Magic compatible with each other, links them together, and also makes them compatible with and linked to one's own power, the world's power, and all the internal power, forming a unified whole."
"This process is the second forging."
"Before that, a Grand Magic's system is complex and chaotic, and the energy is also very disordered. So a wizard needs to incorporate four spells infused with Grand Magic Runes into their Grand Magic to patch it."
"A wizard also needs to find more individuals who are part of this natural phenomenon of a Grand Magic, to reduce its energy dissipation. And a wizard needs to summarize their own magical discipline, draw upon it abstractly to produce a symbolic system, and design a power system that unifies all the individual components within the Grand Magic, further reducing the energy dissipation of this phenomenon."
Antoine said, "That is the void-forging."
"Locke, an ordinary colonized world, even one larger than the Silent Plane, would not necessarily have a power system reaching the First Circle level. Yet the Silent Plane has a Second Circle one, and moreover this Second Circle existence is not an isolated anomaly. There is a corresponding power level system to match it."
"In other words, this gene lock system is the currency within this mind network."
Locke nodded. "I see."
He thought of the great wizard Sulla's Underworld Scorpion Woman, and shared with Antoine the embryonic form of the Grand Magic that the great wizard Sulla had constructed back then.
After Antoine heard this, he said, "This wizard Sulla's ancestors must have been quite remarkable."
"At the very least, a sun ring wizard. The construction method used is very interesting. That mage system is in essence a rudimentary foundation for void-forging. Although that power system is more apparent than real, and is not a genuine power system."
"To complete the void-forging, the power system within one's Grand Magic must be capable of producing a First Circle crystallization stage practitioner."
"That is the standard for void-forging."
"The spell system that great wizard Sulla produced could not produce even a single First Circle practitioner. And in truth, that was not a genuine power system. Rather than saying those mages were using magic, it would be more accurate to say that great wizard Sulla had given them a portion of the permissions to his own magic, allowing them to use great wizard Sulla's magic."
Locke said, "So the mage system I saw in the mage plane cannot be counted as a genuine power system."
Antoine said, "That is indeed the case. The ability to draw upon certain power and cast spells does not constitute a power system. The standards for what constitutes a power system could fill many books."
"But I still say that Sulla's ancestors must have had quite a background. Otherwise he would not have instilled in his descendants the habit of laying the foundation for the second forging at the same time as constructing the Grand Magic. It is a pity that his descendants do not appear to be particularly capable."
Locke nodded. The Land of Six Towers was indeed not particularly impressive, having fallen into an overall decline.
Witch Preston looked toward Antoine with surprise. She rarely saw Antoine this serious.
Was this really the same Antoine?
The Antoine now speaking with Locke seemed like an old pedant, straight-faced and earnest, with a demeanor resembling a veteran cadre.
There was no trace remaining of the arrogant and brash manner he had once had.
Inside the Moon of Evolution, Antoine said to Locke, "Locke, I can work together with you to reverse-analyze this mind network. This would lay an even greater advantage for you in this competition, and even after you win, we can obtain considerable benefits from it."
"There would be significant gains for both of us. After all, opportunities to freely analyze a fully void-forged Grand Magic are rare."
"This can help us advance rapidly."
"Only, Locke, help me ask that native, what happened in the end to the wizard who constructed this Grand Magic. I am genuinely very curious. Where did this compatriot of ours, who fought alone in an unseen corner, eventually go?"
Locke nodded. "I am very curious about this as well."
Witch Preston finally found an opening to speak. "He probably died of old age normally. Even a Second Circle wizard has a lifespan limit."
"In the wizard world, one can find someone to help extend one's life. But if you are alone in the Silent Plane, then everything depends on yourself. The days of leaving civilization and living on an isolated island are very difficult."
Locke opened his eyes, looked at the emperor's true face before him, and asked, "Grand Duke Westminster, let me ask you. Where did the true builder of this system go? The original emperor, that is?"
At this moment, the piece of the light of the mind corresponding to the emperor suddenly broke free of his control. The emperor was left only with his true position within the mind network, indicated by his own light of the mind, which was the piece of Grand Duke Westminster formed from the condensation of his light of the mind.
When Locke realized he was not the first-generation emperor, he immediately understood that the position of emperor within this system was interchangeable.
And Grand Duke Westminster had never truly mastered the emperor's position.
Locke looked at the emperor's piece that had appeared in his hand and gave a slight shake of his head. "Grand Duke, you have modified this piece beyond recognition."
"More apparent than real. But you never truly held it."
The surface of the emperor's piece cracked apart, then revealed its true form, a silver-white image of a plain sovereign holding a blank scroll.
Grand Duke Westminster had modified this emperor piece into a terrifying cold black image clad entirely in armor.
But the light of the mind corresponding to the emperor had never been significantly modified by him.
Because this was the core of this system.
Grand Duke Westminster did not dare make arbitrary modifications, since doing so would very likely cause the system to collapse.
And because he could not understand it.
At this moment, Locke became the one the light of the mind corresponding to the emperor's piece was aligned to, which meant he had become the emperor within this system.
Because the original owner of the mind network had died and it had become a magical artifact, Locke, using the form of wielding a magical artifact, came to possess a second Grand Magic.
However, whether it was because this system had gone unmanaged for too long, or because it had been too severely abused by Grand Duke Westminster, receiving this system only gave him an additional initial-forging tier.
That meant he was currently a Second Circle wizard with two initial-forging tiers.
Although it sounded strange to say it, this was indeed a feature of the Second Circle.
Tiers could be layered upon tiers, and different numbers of forgings could be stacked together.
The Second Circle could continuously open new tiers, not only upward but also downward, and even in lateral directions.
Locke had originally only intended to use the Moon of Evolution to control the mind network, yet had not expected this to be a proper Grand Magic that had transformed into a magical artifact, rather than some crude contraption put together by a native.
This was even better.
He could now directly control this Grand Magic.
If the world-scale realm he indirectly controlled was also counted, he now possessed three initial-forging tiers.
He could indeed be called the most powerful existence in the current world, specifically the Silent Plane.
Locke looked at the emperor, clasped his hands behind his back, and his expression became unfathomable. "Grand Duke, although you stripped me of my title as Duke Schiller, I am the emperor now."
"Speak. Tell me, who was the first emperor? How did you come to obtain this mind network?"
"If you refuse to answer, then you are a treacherous rebel who defies the imperial decree!"
Grand Duke Westminster's body shook, his inner turmoil clearly immense.
Shameless!
You beast!
Was there a more shameless person in this world?