The shock of discovering the factory lingered in Jie Ming's heart for a while.
But he quickly suppressed that wave of emotion. No matter how many Level 9 beings existed, they were the assets of the Multiracial Alliance, and had no direct bearing on the matter at hand. Jie Ming didn't look further and carefully stored the energy instrument into his Inner World, then left the factory together with Viola.
Inside the factory, the Black Giant Priests continued dismantling the remaining recyclable equipment, their movements crisp and efficient.
When they walked out of the factory gate, the sky had already darkened. The light purple sky was dyed a deeper purple-red by the sunset, and the lingering smoke slowly drifted away in the wind. The distant hills undulated in the twilight, appearing especially quiet.
As he walked, Jie Ming casually told Viola about his discovery regarding the plane's indigenous inhabitants.
After listening, Viola blinked, and her expression suddenly became somewhat strange.
"No wonder."
She raised her hand, and a tiny light bead of the ashen Law of Agony slowly condensed at her fingertip. The surface of the light bead seemed to reflect the emotional distribution map of the entire continent, with fine light patterns flowing within.
"Ever since I arrived on this plane, I've felt something was off."
She stared at the light bead, squinting her eyes.
"The distribution of emotional aura across the entire continental plane is extremely uniform. Not like the Octopusmen's concentration in strongholds, nor like ordinary animals that fluctuate with population density—it's on every inch of land."
"Initially, I thought those Octopusmen had mastered some special power, or that there were some deeply hidden natives. Later, during interrogations, I found that the Octopusmen completely lacked such an ability. Now it seems that was exactly..."
She didn't finish the sentence, but Jie Ming understood. He instinctively looked at the weeds remaining in the rock crevices around the factory, then at the low shrubs that had survived the war on the edge of a distant depression, and his scalp suddenly prickled.
Plant people form their groups as microscopic individuals, and these groups then constitute an independent plant person's body.
If each independent plant person's body is a miniature city, then what were the villages of this plane's natives? At what scale did their civilization exist? And... how could they be sure that plant people only existed in that form?
Look around. Over ninety percent of the exposed land on the entire plane was covered by dense green vegetation. If "every plant is a native," then beneath their feet was not a battlefield, but a super urban agglomeration spanning an entire planet, inhabited by countless quadrillions of microscopic residents!
Upon realizing this, Jie Ming instinctively activated the Destiny System and quickly checked if his own fate rules were disturbed abnormally. After confirming there was no issue, he slowly let out a sigh of relief.
It wasn't that he was making a fuss over nothing. Rather, the "Fungal Lord" he had encountered in the Triangle Plane had left too deep an impression on him, even to the point of triggering an instinctive reaction. That being, whose body incorporated concepts and was itself nature, was far too dangerous. If not for the seventh-level wizard leading the expedition reacting in time with a destiny prompt, that expeditionary force would have nearly been wiped out.
And although the sources of their will were opposite, the existence form of these plant people was completely identical to that Fungal Lord. Even if their temperament seemed much milder than the Fungal Lord's, who could say how long that "mildness" would last when it involved the survival of an entire civilization?
"How do you plan to deal with these plant people?"
Jie Ming asked, his voice unconsciously lowering.
Viola retracted the Law of Agony light bead from her fingertip into her body, crossed her arms over her chest, and looked at a patch of shrubs blackened by war on the edge of the distant depression, thinking for a moment.
"Wait until the battlefield is cleaned up, then talk to them."
Her tone was calm.
"After all, this will be my plane in the future. I need to first understand how many households actually live on my territory."
Over the following time, Jie Ming issued orders to the Black Giants and the Tentacle Tree Civilization to accelerate the clean-up operations. The Tentacle Tree Civilization's fleet dispersed into hundreds of small teams, conducting grid searches across the entire plane. Every point with anomalous energy readings was marked and inspected one by one.
But even with just a rough search, it took several months to check the entire surface of a plane. During this time, they discovered many life energy collection fields and small outposts left by the Octopusmen, but no building of the same scale as that factory appeared. The equipment in those facilities was all standard gear, with no second Level 9 artifact.
After the rough clean-up was complete, Jie Ming had the Black Giants and Tentacle Tree Civilization withdraw from the plane through the spatial rift back to the Infernal Sulfur Plane. Then, he and Viola went to a basin deep within the plane.
Surrounded by mountains and concave in terrain, that place was already densely overgrown with vegetation. Moreover, the surrounding mountains had blocked most of the battle's aftermath, making it the most luxuriant plant area on the entire plane after the war.
Inside the basin, large patches of purple-red moss covered the ground, interspersed with clusters of shrubs with spirally arranged leaves. When a gentle breeze blew, a faint vegetal fragrance filled the air.
However, facing this vibrant scene, Jie Ming honestly deployed his Grand Light Phase. Tens of thousands of wizard artifacts formed a giant circular array behind him, like a blazing solar ring suspended in void. The Return to Ruins Armor's energy stabilization field expanded accordingly, covering the entire basin under a protective shield. His true body and Dharma Aspect were also deployed, together with the Light God Transformation, turning his body into a semi-light state.
Ultimately, a thousand-kilometer-tall dark golden giant crouched in the center of the basin, with a five-hundred-kilometer-high dual-layer Dharma Aspect phantom floating behind him—imposing, calm, and filled with a sense of oppression.
It could be said that Jie Ming was now fully armed, having released all his combat power.
Viola, on the other hand, seemed not to have changed much. She merely tied her long hair into a neat ponytail, and spread her Law-Crystallization Domain under her feet. The ashen light was a few degrees milder than during battle, but its coverage was even wider, like a silently spreading mist that enveloped the entire basin.
She hovered at shoulder height of Jie Ming's true body, took a deep breath, and then, using the local plant people language that Jie Ming had deciphered over the past few months, transmitted a message evenly to every plant on the entire plane through her Law-Crystallization Domain as a medium, combined with the partial control over the planar origin she had seized earlier.
The "words" in the transmitted message were very straightforward:
"I have acquired ownership of this plane. You plant people are now my possessions."
"Next, we need to talk formally."
After the message was transmitted, the plants in the entire basin moved. Every shrub, every patch of moss, every towering tree disbanded their forms at the same moment. Leaves silently fell from branches, bark gently peeled from trunks, and all plant tissues began to reassemble before hitting the ground. A green tide converged from the edges of the basin toward the center, as microscopic individuals restructured their bodies at a speed beyond the resolution of the naked eye. Trunks, vines, and leaves recombined within a few breaths, gradually forming a new silhouette.
It was a colossal plant person. Its size was so immense that Jie Ming's thousand-kilometer true body could barely reach its knees. Its body was formed from the aggregation of all plants in the entire basin, covered by a fine network of vines, with branches and leaves gently swaying under the purple sky, each leaf shimmering with a healthy emerald luster. Its facial features were clear and gentle, and the eyes, pieced together from petals of different colors, quietly looked down at Viola and Jie Ming.
Viola did not wait for the other to speak first. She directly repeated the message she had just transmitted through the planar origin, using the plant people's language.
"I have acquired ownership of this plane." Her voice was calm. "From now on, you are no longer the masterless natives of this plane, but a subordinate race belonging to me."
The colossal plant person quietly lowered its head, its giant petal-compounded eyes unblinkingly watching her, not immediately speaking.
Viola did not mind and continued: "As the master of this plane, I will follow the standards of Wizard Civilization, providing a suitable living environment, resource supply, and technical support, protecting you from external invasion, and doing my best to restore your race to a better state."
"In exchange, you need to pay a certain unit of resources as tax every year. When necessary, obey my orders, participate in plane defense, or assist in my research."
She raised her eyes to meet those giant petal-compounded eyes, thought for a moment, and then added a final sentence.
"Also, you can serve as my experimental assistants, participating in some of my research work. The knowledge you learn during the research will still belong to you."
Standing to the side, Jie Ming listened to his senior sister's "negotiation" and couldn't help but cover his face. Although when communicating with races of different customs, in order to prevent misunderstandings, expressions should be as direct as possible. But... this was too direct! So direct that even words like "you are now my possessions" were stated without any embellishment.
He had originally thought that once such words were spoken, both sides would likely turn hostile and fight immediately, and the Grand Light Phase behind his Dharma Aspect had already begun to secretly gather energy.
But the plant person was silent for a long time. Those giant petal-compounded eyes slowly blinked once, and a rustling sound from leaf friction spread slowly from its body.
It did not answer immediately. But from around the basin and from the vegetation connecting to the giant, tiny green lights continuously rose along the connecting vegetation and merged into its massive trunk. Jie Ming could clearly feel an enormous flow of information being transmitted at high speed among those plants.
It seemed these plant people were not without reaction. They were using the consciousness of all the clans in the entire basin to compute and discuss simultaneously. Viola's offered conditions, the battle records between them and the Octopusmen as well as those of Jie Ming and Viola fighting the Octopusmen, the power disparity between the two sides, the cost and benefit of resistance... and the promise that "the knowledge learned during research belongs to them"... every detail was repeatedly simulated and weighed in that vast green ocean.
Finally, the giant plant person spoke: "We accept these conditions."
Jie Ming slowly released his grip on the trigger rune of the Trigram Fire Annihilation Divine Light in his Dharma Aspect's chest. The plant people's choice was understandable. They had shared the battle information observed by other plant people regarding the Octopusmen, effectively "witnessing" how these "wizards" had crushed the entire Octopusman expeditionary force with just two people's strength. Under these circumstances, accepting the conditions to become a subordinate race was far wiser than being utterly exterminated after resistance.
Standing to the side, Jie Ming couldn't help feeling a bit envious. From what had just happened, these plant people were exactly as he had analyzed earlier. Their intelligence increased exponentially with the number of aggregated clans. The wisdom of a single microscopic individual was not high, but when quadrillions of microscopic individuals were connected through a neural network, the collective intelligence they formed rivaled that of a peak sixth-level wizard.
It was this potential that Viola valued when she offered to take them as experimental assistants rather than mere servant races.
Thinking of the new generation of plant people active tissue he had already cultivated in his laboratory on the Infernal Sulfur Plane, Jie Ming's heart also stirred with some anticipation. Though the scale was still small, with enough time and a suitable environment, those little ones would eventually grow into towering giants like the one before him.