After finishing the route planning, Jie Ming did not leave immediately.
He leisurely finished the last piece of meat, drained the hot soup from his bowl, then lowered his head to look at his right hand.
“Now then…”
He gently flexed his fingers, his expression still calm. “Time to deal with the other matter.”
As soon as he finished speaking.
Crack...
A faint, almost inaudible cracking sound came from his fingertip.
The next moment, his puppet body began to collapse at a visible rate.
The food had been poisoned, and not with an ordinary toxin.
It was an extremely rare high-order transcendent poison.
Not only could it evade the perception of a Level 6 wizard, it was also lethal to a Level 6 flesh-and-blood body.
Jie Ming watched as the tip of his index finger silently dissolved.
His skin slid off the bone like wax seared by intense heat, revealing the pitch-black bone underneath.
Then the disintegration spread like an uncontrolled plague, rapidly extending from his limbs to his entire body.
Muscle fibers twitched incessantly, skin peeled away inch by inch.
Jie Ming looked down at his melting right hand, his eyes devoid of any panic.
Instead, a hint of contemplation flickered within them.
He raised his other hand, which had already revealed its alloy skeleton, and carefully scraped off a piece of blackened necrotic tissue with two fingers.
Then he took out a sampling tube and sealed the sample.
At the same time, Jie Ming activated his All-Purpose Eye to begin analyzing the toxin within the flesh.
As the analysis deepened, a trace of surprise gradually appeared in Jie Ming’s eyes.
“That’s not right…”
His spiritual force traced the toxin’s spread trajectory and ultimately discovered that the real target of this substance was not the body at all! At that moment, the toxin was seeping inward along the neural network.
After infecting the flesh to a certain degree, the toxin began to cross the boundary between flesh and soul.
Finally, it followed the extremely secret connection between the puppet and the main body, attempting to cross space and directly lock onto his soul core hidden within his Inner World.
Watching the toxin spread along his spiritual force, Jie Ming’s eyes lit up slightly:
“Interesting.”
Even though half his body had melted into a terrifying wax statue, his voice still carried undiluted interest.
“A poison specifically designed for the soul—highly latent yet capable of affecting the soul through flesh contamination, and it can even trace the connection between puppet and main body.”
“This poison design philosophy… is quite impressive. It could be used in designing curse-type wizardry.”
As he spoke, Jie Ming stored the sampling tube into the Inner World, a hint of approval even appearing at the corner of his mouth.
“This thing is absolutely incomparable to those mass-produced products on the market.”
At that moment, a sharp scream rang out.
“Ah!!!”
Jie Ming turned to see that the restaurant owner had already been scared out of his wits.
When he personally witnessed Jie Ming’s body melting, he collapsed to the ground, his terrified scream nearly lifting the roof.
His legs desperately kicked the floor, trying to drag himself into the back kitchen, but his body kept going limp from fear.
Jie Ming merely glanced at him and shook his head:
“No need to be afraid. This has nothing to do with you.”
With that, he raised his right hand, and the gray-white radiance of the Embers of Nihility - Reversal Palm quietly flickered to life.
A soft gray-white stream of light spread from his palm and swept down over his puppet body.
The next moment, time began to reverse. The body that had largely collapsed restored itself to its original state.
Jie Ming flexed his newly grown right hand and nodded with satisfaction.
Then he placed a few energy crystals on the counter as payment:
“The meal was good. Thanks for the hospitality.”
After speaking, he turned and pushed open the door to leave.
Inside the restaurant, only the owner remained collapsed on the floor, gasping for breath.
He stared at the departing figure, unable to snap out of it for a long time.
Across from the restaurant, inside an inconspicuous gray building.
A tall Level 7 snake-man stood before a floating crystal mirror, staring intently into the restaurant.
The mirror surface displayed everything that had just happened.
When it saw Jie Ming’s body recover as if time had reversed, its snake pupils abruptly contracted into thin slits.
“Impossible!”
The snake-man’s scales tightened all over, and it unhesitatingly dove into the shadows.
But it was too late.
Shhh!!!
A dark golden beam shot through the air from the restaurant entrance, instantly vaporizing the snake-man’s upper body and soul into basic particles. Only half of its snake tail slid forward a few meters by inertia before crashing to the ground, finally falling silent.
Jie Ming slowly withdrew his finger, his expression unchanged.
This snake-man was merely an executor, definitely not the mastermind.
A mere Level 7 snake-man could not have obtained such a high-tier soul-targeting poison.
With that thought, a vertical golden fissure slowly opened on his forehead.
True Illusion Void-Breaking Eye, the Fate System, the Law of Fate—all three systems activated!
Countless pale golden lines extended from the depths of his pupils, weaving into a net of fate covering heaven and earth.
Golden threads extended from the snake-man’s remains, tracing backward through time.
Following the residual causality, Jie Ming ultimately locked onto a hidden chamber deep within the block.
He took a step, and space folded by itself.
When he appeared again, he was standing in the center of the chamber.
The place was dimly lit, the walls covered with gray runes that blocked detection. At the center floated a giant crystal ball.
On the ball’s surface, the real-time scene inside the restaurant was still playing.
Several Black Wizards in deep gray robes stood around the crystal ball.
They had obviously witnessed the entire process.
Seeing Jie Ming vanish from the surveillance image and then appear behind them like a ghost, the air froze instantly.
“Run!”
Someone roared, and several spatial teleportation runes lit up at the same time.
But the silver radiance had barely bloomed when it was forcibly crushed by another, more powerful spatial law.
Boom!
As dark golden runes simultaneously appeared on all four walls of the chamber, the faces of every Black Wizard present changed color. They hadn’t expected this man to seal the location in an instant.
The cage was complete; no one could leave.
Seeing no hope of escape, all the Black Wizards struck at once without hesitation.
Dozens of Level 6 wizardry spells instantly filled the chamber, unleashing wild energy.
Furniture, instruments, and the crystal table shattered in an instant, but only the chamber walls protected by the Return to Ruins Armor remained intact.
Facing this dense barrage, Jie Ming simply walked forward slowly beneath the Return to Ruins Armor.
Countless spells continuously bombarded the stable light screen, but couldn’t even stir a ripple.
He passed through the torrent of destruction as easily as strolling in the rain, and came before a Black Wizard.
Under the wizard’s terrified gaze, Jie Ming raised his hand, ignored all his resistance, and pressed it onto the top of his head.
The Law of Fate seeped in quietly.
Bypassing the soul, he directly read information from the causal layer.
After a moment, Jie Ming slowly furrowed his brow.
Too clean!
The fate trajectories of these people were clean to the point of eeriness.
A normal person’s fate should be interwoven like countless threads. Every choice, every action, would leave a new node.
But these people’s fate seemed to have been thoroughly wiped clean.
All traces of causality that could lead back to the mastermind were neatly cut off at the same point, leaving no mark.
“Troublesome…”
Because of the Stellar Orbit Tribunal’s protection of wizard knowledge, Jie Ming didn’t dare to casually soul-search other wizards. As for interrogation, forget it—these fellows had clearly signed some kind of contract.
That left only the method of using fate-related knowledge to find the fate connection between both parties. But even that had been erased…
“The other party is quite cautious…” Jie Ming slowly withdrew his right hand.
The clues in his mind were rapidly connecting.
It seemed the first batch of Black Wizards hadn’t come for robbery, but for a test.
They were testing both his strength and his fighting style.
And now, the second batch, including the snake-man, was the targeted assassination plan formulated by the other side after receiving intelligence from the first group.
The two actions were layered step by step.
The goal was clear; this was no coincidence.
A chill flashed through Jie Ming’s eyes.
“Since there’s no useful information, there’s no need for you to exist.”
The Trigram Fire Annihilation Divine Light bloomed from his palm, and the entire chamber was instantly engulfed in dark golden radiance.
When the light faded, every Black Wizard had been reduced to basic particles.
Only the gray walls protected by the Return to Ruins Armor still radiated searing residual heat.
Jie Ming stood silent for a moment, then turned and left.
The chamber door slowly opened, revealing the same silent street outside.
He did not linger, soon finding the area’s teleportation array.
The silver-white spatial light rose again, and his figure slowly faded.
“When they make their next move, they’ll leave more clues.”
Jie Ming gazed at the flowing spatial currents, his eyes calm.
“I’d like to see how much longer you can hide.”