Jie Ming grimaced as he sat up, one hand propping himself against the ground, the other pressing against his re-healed forehead that still throbbed with a faint ache. The pain of his head exploding was actually secondary.
His body refinement method was already well-accustomed to such flesh wounds.
What truly made him inhale sharply was the stabbing pain in his soul.
In that instant, the "head" of his soul had also burst simultaneously.
Soul injuries were different from physical ones. Even though his body refinement method provided some protection to the soul, the pain of his soul being overwhelmed by excessive information still made his scalp tingle.
If he hadn't experienced a complete "death" before, granting his body refinement method partial death resistance, he would have wasted a Substitute Doll just now.
Jie Ming held his forehead and rapidly reviewed everything that had happened in that span of less than a nanosecond within his spiritual sea.
The moment the Fate Law was activated, his perceptual field was completely flooded with information.
Nearly infinite information within the Nolen Workshop's search range surged into his consciousness at the same instant.
Just recalling it made Jie Ming feel a dull ache in his brain.
He now understood that he had done something foolish.
It was indeed not easy to find planes in the Endless Chaotic Void, but those planes were real and existed.
Every plane had its own complete law system, elemental structure, spatial parameters, and causal trajectories, not to mention the massive number of living beings inside some planes.
Using the Fate Law to "see" which direction a plane could be found was equivalent to seeing, in an instant, all the information of every plane within the search range.
The quantity was nearly truly infinite.
Such an amount of information—even if he switched to an eighth-level wizard to endure it, the result wouldn't be much different.
It was lucky that he only exploded his head.
Jie Ming leaned against the wall as he stood up, withdrew his true body, compressed himself back into human form, then sat cross-legged, sinking his consciousness into his spiritual sea. The sight within his spiritual sea made him smile bitterly.
The Ring of Truth was trembling slightly, with over a dozen fine cracks on its surface. The golden threads of laws twisted unnaturally at the cracks.
The golden thread of the Spiritual Qi Law was still in good shape, only its light had dimmed a bit. But several other golden threads of laws had been shaken loose from the Ring of Truth by nearly half.
His entire spiritual sea looked like it had just experienced an earthquake.
Fortunately, the self-healing ability of the spiritual sea under the Dao Integration Realm was strong enough, and his body refinement method had already begun to evolve adaptively to heal such injuries. Jie Ming roughly estimated that it should only take a few years to fully recover.
For a fatal injury, this cost was already minimal.
He leaned against the wall of the meditation room, took a few slow deep breaths to calm the lingering ache in his soul.
He had already known the danger of Fate knowledge before.
When he first started learning, every piece of Fate knowledge warned him in the beginning that the Fate Law was not something to be used recklessly. He had indeed remembered it, and had always maintained the proper reverence for Fate knowledge.
But Fate knowledge was too convenient.
Processing information, predicting attacks, tracking causality… this convenience gradually eroded his original vigilance toward Fate knowledge. At first, he only used it as an aid in small directions.
Later, Jie Ming used it more and more smoothly, more and more boldly.
Previously, in the Strange World, through self-integration, Jie Ming had sensed the danger.
But he had to admit that sometimes excessive convenience indeed made one let their guard down.
Thinking of this, Jie Ming couldn't help but let out a self-mocking laugh.
"Fate does not deceive."
"It will only tell you everything you ask for, exactly as it is."
"As for the cost behind it… that is your own business."
Jie Ming closed his eyes and began to regulate his breathing.
His spiritual sea still needed a few years to fully recover.
Before that, the search for planes had to be shelved temporarily.
"…"
On the communication light screen, Viola was bent over the table, laughing so hard her waist curved.
"Hahaha… Jie Ming, you actually blew your own head off?"
She laughed so hard her shoulders shook continuously, her silver-gray hair trembling, and even a few tears squeezed out of the corners of her eyes.
"I've heard similar stories before, but I thought someone made them up."
"I never thought such a thing would happen right beside me. Good heavens… hahahahahahaha!!"
She gestured wildly with both hands imitating the scene: "Tell me, was the explosion spectacular? You… hahahahahahaha!"
Viola laughed again in the middle of her sentence. "Jie Ming, did you think your head was tougher?"
Jie Ming's forehead twitched slightly.
He was silent for a few seconds, then said calmly:
"Senior Sister."
"Hm?"
"Are you done laughing?"
"No."
Viola answered matter-of-factly.
"I can mock you for life about this!"
Jie Ming's mouth twitched slightly.
He suddenly felt that confessing this problem might have been a mistake.
Ten years had passed since that incident.
The walls of the meditation room, once stained with blood, had long been replaced with new metal plates.
The cracks on the Ring of Truth had fully healed after prolonged self-restoration.
But these ten years were not smooth.
In the first few years, due to the severe damage to his spiritual sea, his Law-Crystallization Domain and personal cultivation had almost stagnated.
Only after his injuries fully recovered did he return to his original training rhythm.
Because the development of his Law-Crystallization Domain was far below expectations, he had truthfully reported the details of his injury to his mentor and senior sister during this once-a-century routine communication.
Only he hadn't expected…
Viola's first reaction was not concern, but laughter.
"Wait, this reaction isn't really surprising…" Jie Ming silently complained to himself.
On the other light screen, Clark had remained silent the entire time.
Only after Viola had almost finished laughing did the mentor finally speak slowly.
"Jie Ming."
Clark's voice was still steady, but heavier than usual.
"Tell me the whole story from the beginning."
Jie Ming nodded and did not hide anything.
He started from his fusion of the planar origin, then his search for ownerless planes, and his attempt to use Fate knowledge to assist the search.
Finally, his head exploded, his spiritual sea was heavily damaged, and it took several years to heal.
He narrated all the details faithfully.
Throughout the process, Clark listened quietly.
After Jie Ming finished, the lab was silent for a long time.