Viren led the way ahead, smiling at Jie Ming as he spoke.
“Actually, a lot of people have been hoping you’d arrive soon.”
Jie Ming raised an eyebrow slightly. “Oh? That can’t be. I shouldn’t be all that well-known.”
Viren chuckled and pushed up his glasses. “You’re seriously underestimating your reputation. Lately, the papers you’ve published in the Star Ring Federation, along with the Blood Sacrifice Method system, have sparked quite a heated discussion across academic circles. Quite a few mentors have even been privately betting whether you’ll produce another astonishing research result this time. There are also several materials science masters who specifically told me to notify them the moment you arrived.”
He smiled at Jie Ming again. “Of course, don’t worry—I didn’t agree to that last request. After all, as an important guest of this exchange conference, you shouldn’t be disturbed by just anyone. Besides, having traveled all this way, you ought to rest first.”
Hearing this, Jie Ming couldn’t help but laugh. “It seems my reputation is a bit bigger than I imagined.”
Of course, whether that reputation brought benefits was another matter entirely. At least from Jie Ming’s recent experience, this reputation had brought him nothing good.
Soon, the two reached the back of the hall. Viren gestured toward a heavily guarded door. “This way.”
In front of the door was a detection device. Viren placed his ID card on it to confirm his identity, then turned to Jie Ming.
“Please place your invitation on it to verify your identity.”
Jie Ming stepped forward curiously. “This is...?”
“Behind this door is a teleportation array specially prepared by the Academic Exchange Committee, which can send you directly to the venue. The identity verification process is a form of protection for the attending wizards. After all, the Academic Exchange Committee has always been committed to safeguarding the wizards participating in the conference,” Viren explained immediately.
“Is that so? I see.” Jie Ming nodded with a smile and took out his invitation, placing it on the detection device.
He didn’t dispute Viren’s claim about being “committed to protecting participating wizards.”
In reality, although he had been the target of two assassination attempts along the way, Jie Ming had indeed clearly felt the Academic Exchange Committee’s protection.
After all, if not for the Committee’s restrictions, if the other side had truly wanted to assassinate him, it wouldn’t have been a matter of some Black Wizards. The person behind the scenes could command a seventh-rank Fate wizard. If they had struck without any restraint, Jie Ming was certain he absolutely wouldn’t have escaped.
Yet the two attempts had only mobilized Black Wizards, and the highest among them had been sixth-rank.
Moreover, judging from the fact that the pursuit had stopped afterward, the other side hadn’t even had that seventh-rank Fate wizard remotely influence fate during the assassinations.
As for relying solely on those Black Wizards... if Jie Ming had previously thought that the weakest sixth-rank fighters were the administrative sixth-rank wizards promoted through vast resources, then this experience had taught him what it meant for there to always be someone weaker.
Those administrative sixth-rank wizards who had been promoted using family resources at least still had some leftover resources to boost their combat power. But these sixth-rank Black Wizards were, one after another, truly poor.
Although these sixth-rank Black Wizards always appeared in groups, aside from the poor souls who had just broken through to sixth-rank and hadn’t yet had time to develop their Law-Crystallization Domain, combat power of that level was nothing to Jie Ming—indeed, any proper sixth-rank wizard who had advanced through their own ability could handle it.
A talented wizard who could be actively invited by the Academic Exchange Conference would probably have been able to deal with such a situation as early as the fifth rank.
Without exaggeration, it was only because Jie Ming was an “outsider” that some people had itchy fingers and wanted to test him. If Jie Ming had been one of their “own people” from the Void Architecture Academy or the Anti-Entropy Alliance, there probably wouldn’t have been even the so-called testing.
Of course, if the Academic Exchange Conference didn’t have proper protection in place, Jie Ming wouldn’t have come alone.
After identity verification was complete, the two passed through the door and entered the hall inside. There, a large cross-plane teleportation array floated quietly at the center of the hall. Tens of thousands of spatial runes revolved slowly, radiating a soft blue-white glow.
As the two stepped onto the teleportation array, a silver-white light rose, and space trembled faintly.
The next instant, the scene before Jie Ming had changed completely.
What met his eyes was a vast and prosperous city.
The sky was a gentle blend of pale gold and light blue, with a sun hanging high in the sky, releasing warm radiance. Beneath his feet was a broad, translucent crystal avenue that wound into the distance. Hills undulated on both sides, covered in dense vegetation. The city’s buildings were scattered among the mountains and forests.
Some were built into the mountain slopes, towering like palaces; others stood by streams, resembling small forest lodges. Every building seemed to have grown naturally from the mountain itself, blending seamlessly with the surroundings without the slightest sense of incongruity.
Jie Ming looked around.
On the spatial teleportation arrays around him, wizards from different factions kept arriving.
On a floating platform not far away, several wizards in uniforms of various wizard factions were gathered around a huge light screen, fiercely competing over something.
Some of them were jointly deducing, making a complex spatial model shift constantly. Others nearby were rapidly modifying parameters, occasionally bursting into new discussions.
The wizards passing by, however, appeared exceptionally calm, as if they were completely accustomed to such scenes.
“That is Wizard Savien, an expert in spatial knowledge,” Viren said, glancing at the moderator surrounded by the crowd on the floating platform, and explained with a smile. “Wizard Savien’s way of doing things is rather... direct, so he often does this.”
Jie Ming was somewhat surprised to hear that. Because spatial law was so useful, just about every wizard had at least some understanding of it. Given that many wizards were highly skilled in spatial knowledge, for someone to be respectfully called an expert meant his level of research in that field was undoubtedly extraordinary.
Thinking back, Jie Ming immediately remembered that many of the spatial knowledge textbooks he had studied bore this name in the author column.
“Wizard Savien? I recall having studied quite a few textbooks written by this wizard. Truly... I never thought I’d get to meet the actual person here.”
Viren smiled. “After all, it’s an academic exchange conference. For every keynote speech, they invite a few big names to anchor the stage.”
Jie Ming couldn’t help but laugh at Viren’s colloquial phrasing. “Then it seems this academic exchange conference will include topics related to spatial knowledge. That’s something I’m genuinely looking forward to.”