**Chapter 66: Wanderings**
Time passes swiftly.
Not long after deciding on the magical treasure he would craft, Jie Ming applied to leave Noren Academy and set out on his journey.
After all, Noren Academy was a self-contained small world, its nature extraordinarily stable. Seeing the sun rise was already a pleasant surprise, and as for moonlight, starlight, or a rainbow after rain, unless someone deliberately conjured them, they were unthinkable.
Thus, to gather the materials needed for his magical treasure, Jie Ming had no choice but to leave Noren Academy and travel far and wide.
Fortunately, as a candidate under the second-level training protocol, Jie Ming held privileges equivalent to those of a formal wizard, allowing him to request departure.
Otherwise, the mere task of collecting raw materials would have been a headache.
However, instead of immediately gathering materials after leaving the academy, Jie Ming followed his application and began exploring various regions.
Since transmigrating to this world, he had spent his early years in a small town, surrounded by the scenery of a medieval village.
That was until one day when a lord’s attendant abruptly arrived at his home, informing him that his wizard talent had been detected.Yet, whether traveling to the lord’s manor or arriving at Noren Academy, he had been whisked away through teleportation arrays.
Back then, Jie Ming’s heart was filled with unease, leaving him no inclination to savor the customs and cultures of this world.
“Now, though, it’s clear that the wizard civilization’s system for training reserves is remarkably thorough,” Jie Ming remarked after departing a city, unable to suppress his admiration.
His travels didn’t last long. He soon realized that in Noren Plane 13, every city, regardless of region, seemed cast from the same mold.
Aside from clothing variations due to differing climates, everything else—from cultural customs to city planning, even the number and distribution of surrounding villages—was strikingly uniform.
Wizards controlled the civilization’s productivity with exquisite precision. Most people could eat and drink their fill with sufficient effort, but excessive wealth was hard to attain.
Basic education covered only fundamental literacy and mathematics, ensuring new academy arrivals needed no further remedial instruction.
Even in the most remote villages, wizards ensured children had access to proper healthcare and basic education.
Of course, the style of education varied by economic level.
In small mountain villages, education might come from “a cultured old village chief, returned from the city, teaching literacy for free.”
In the town where Jie Ming grew up, schools were established, offering a year’s education for a modest fee.
“It’s almost absurd. I thought artificial souls would be rare, but this entire plane is riddled with the wizards’ eyes…”
Indeed, whether a village chief or a city lord, every town’s key political figures were “artificial humans.”
Though their intelligence and bodies were indistinguishable from ordinary people, through systematic study, Jie Ming could faintly discern that these were artificial beings crafted via the Alchemy Technique.
Both body and soul were alchemical creations. Though somewhat crude, with some showing slight discord between body and soul, they were undeniably artificial.
“Of course. Ordinary humans are too unpredictable. Only artificial beings can perfectly execute the wizards’ policies.”
At this thought, Jie Ming shivered.
He felt fortunate that, since transmigrating, he had been cautious, never revealing anything too unusual in public.
“In that case, I owe that lord from back then. If he hadn’t ‘promptly’ revealed the truth of this world, who knows what might have happened.”
When the second-level wizard lord’s attendant appeared at his doorstep, Jie Ming had only broken through to the first layer of Qi Refinement a month earlier.
Had the attendant arrived a few days later, Jie Ming, emboldened by his newfound strength, might have ventured out to train. The consequences were easy to imagine.
As for how the lord knew of his talent, Jie Ming pieced it together during his travels.
The uniform layout of cities and towns wasn’t just for efficient governance. They formed massive magical arrays across each region.
These arrays could assess the aptitude of those within, so lords needed only to periodically activate detection arrays to gather ample data, sparing them the effort of testing each resident individually.
“Climate, terrain, ecosystems, cultural customs, economic levels… everything is meticulously arranged. Is this the extent of the wizards’ transformation of a controlled plane?”
Scanning a forest with his Eye of Detection, Jie Ming confirmed its species distribution matched another forest thousands of kilometers away. He couldn’t help but sigh.
With this realization, he abandoned further travels.
If even wild creatures were strictly controlled, continuing his wanderings held little meaning. It was time to focus on his true purpose.
Based on his understanding of the Five Aggregates Rainbow Mirror and hints from the Great Dao Book Pavilion, each light concept needed to be condensed three to five times to amass enough “weight” as the treasure’s foundation.
The light of dawn was the easiest to collect, nearly completed before leaving the academy.
His second target was the light of moonlight.
Moonlight embodied the concepts of “Serenity of Concealment” and “Enduring Continuity,” representing a soft glow that moves silently through darkness, persisting without fading.
The ideal collection time was a full moon night, with clear, water-like moonlight, unobstructed by clouds, in a tranquil, pure environment far from human activity.
With his exceptional mobility, Jie Ming chose a remote highland, far from towns and untouched by human presence.
Here, the night sky was exceptionally clear, and during a full moon, moonlight blanketed the earth like silver frost.
The wizard world was a cluster of planes, each with unique structures. Most were flat, with a round sky and square earth, while only a few resembled planets.
This didn’t mean these planes lacked suns or moons. Rather, in most planes, the sun and moon were projections of the fire and water elemental planes, not conventional celestial bodies.
As for stars, their presence varied by plane.
In some, stars were divine kingdoms of native gods, but in most, they were projections of nearby planes.