I, a cultivator, have ended up in the wizarding world

Chapter 656: A Catastrophe-Level Harvest!

"It seems that as long as we follow its strange characteristics, we can subdue it quite easily even without a sealing array."

Jemin clapped his hands, sat up in bed, and expressed satisfaction at having discovered yet another strange characteristic.

He glanced down at his chest.

There wasn't a single red mark on his skin; everything was normal, as if the silent battle had never happened.

Looking at the thin metal sheet in his hand that sealed the Man from the Gap, Jemin thought for a moment and then turned to look in the direction of the basement.

A short while later, the sound of footsteps climbing the stairs came from outside the bedroom door.

Soon, as the door opened, a metal box with hands and feet walked up to Jemin.

The metal box leaped onto the bed, knelt respectfully before Jemin, opened its "skull," and took out another metal piece that sealed the Shadow Thief.

Jemin picked it up casually, feeling the mutual attraction between the two metal pieces, and an idea came to mind.

He stood up, walked to the window, and opened it.

The cold wind of midnight, carrying salty and damp air, surged in from the sea. Most of the lights in the old town had been extinguished, with only a few gas lamps struggling in the thick fog, emitting a dim and stubborn glow.

Jemin's body floated out of the window, like a leaf swept up by the night wind, silently rising into the night sky.

The distance beneath his feet seemed to compress in his perception; in just a few breaths, the rooftops of the old town had shrunk into a blurry silhouette beneath him. A faint glow slowly emanated from his body, blocking the prying eyes that peered into the darkness from around him.

He flew towards the sea, his figure quickly disappearing into the thick fog.

The winds at sea are much fiercer than those on land.

The thick fog, like the breath of some enormous creature, slowly swelled between the sea and the sky.

Jemin hovered about 300 nautical miles above the coast. The seawater beneath his feet was as black as ink, with not a trace of reflection.

It was as if what lay below was not the sea, but a bottomless abyss.

He raised his right hand, palm down.

The alchemical sorcery model in the mind's eye was activated.

Water molecules in the air and substances in the sea are recombined by an invisible force.

Under the control of mental power, molecules collided rapidly, and the liquid in the ocean quickly solidified into a tangible entity.

The grayish-white stone slab began to spread outwards from below his palm, like a stone flower silently blooming in the dark night.

Soon, a circular stone platform with a diameter of about 500 meters was erected on the sea.

The surface is as smooth as a mirror, with slightly higher edges and a slightly lower center, naturally forming a basin structure.

Jemin walked on it, his fingers tracing lines in the air.

Runes took shape stroke by stroke under his fingertips, each stroke infused with precise mental control.

As energy runes lit up, sealing arrays fell one after another onto the stone surface, interlocking and weaving an invisible net. Isolation, blockage, suppression… various sealing arrays were layered upon each other, each line precisely embedded in the gap of the next, fitting together seamlessly. Jemin used not only the standard runes of this plane's psychic association, but also added sealing arrays from the wizarding world.

He had thoroughly studied the association's technology, but when dealing with such a high-risk experiment, he trusted the things he knew best. A moment later, the sealing array was finally complete.

After doing all this, Jemin stood in the very center of the flat surface and took out two sealing metal pieces from his pocket.

The person on the right is the shadow thief.

On the left is the newly recruited person from the crevice.

He placed the two containers in the fixed position in the center of the magic circle, then stepped back to the edge of the magic circle and took a deep breath.

As his mental energy became more active, Jemin simultaneously activated the seal release technique.

The silver-white metal sheet sprang up automatically, from which a thick, dark film of shadow emerged and spread across the stone surface like a pool of living ink. The runes on the surface of another metal sheet flickered a few times before extinguishing, and an almost invisible black line "squeezed" out from the sheet. It slowly unfolded in the air, eventually returning to its original flat, thin, humanoid shape.

When they were first released, the two strange creatures seemed to have no interaction with each other.

The shadow thief glides slowly across the flat surface, moving towards the side of the man in the crevice; the man in the crevice, meanwhile, clings to the stone surface, infiltrating towards the edge of the flat surface. Then, when the distance between them shrinks to a certain critical point…

Their "bodies" turned towards each other at the same time, as if gazing at each other from afar.

Immediately afterwards, their energy fluctuations began to synchronize, and both sides adjusted their frequencies simultaneously, converging in the same direction.

The moment they synchronized, the two strange creatures flew up at the same time, like two metal pieces suddenly attracted by a magnetic force, and crashed into each other at an astonishing speed.

Their bodies collided silently in mid-air, yet merged into one the instant they made contact.

The shadow membrane enveloped the humanoid membrane, and the humanoid membrane embedded itself into the core of the shadow membrane; the boundary between the two began to merge.

The fusion between the two was initially slow, like two liquids of different densities slowly mixing.

Probing, merging, and permeating each other.

However, the energy surge suddenly accelerated, like a whirlpool suddenly bursting open beneath a calm lake.

Black light surged outward from the core where the two merged, obscuring the moonlight and swallowing the silvery trail of light on the sea surface.

The sky, already midnight, suddenly grew even darker.

It was a kind of black that made people's gaze involuntarily drift away, as if even the light itself felt superfluous.

It was so profound that it seemed as if reality had torn a rift leading to nothingness in this area.

A large area of ​​the sea nearby seemed to be shrouded in an inescapable gloom, even the waves appeared dark.

A sudden chill descended, penetrating to the bone.

The temperature of the seawater around the rocky flat area dropped by at least ten degrees in that instant, and a thin layer of frost condensed on the surface of the flat area.

The night sky overhead, already pitch black, now appeared even thicker, as if someone had poured an even darker bottle of ink into a bottle of ink. The natural light was disappearing.

The concept of "light" itself is being eroded by some force.

The energy sphere floating above Jemin's head emitted a soft white light, but now, the edges of that light began to blur.

It's like someone using an eraser to rub away inch by inch on a pencil drawing, from the edge to the center, gradually fading away.

Jemin's all-powerful eye was operating at full speed, and the destiny system was calculating at high speed deep within his consciousness, with data pouring in like a waterfall.

The strange, newly emerged power before our eyes is surging.

The threshold of hazard level was easily crossed.

Jemin could clearly sense the increasing momentum of that power, which was growing at a speed like a rocket.

These two bizarre fusions crossed the gap between the hazardous and catastrophic levels in just a few seconds.

After entering the disaster level, the strange power increase did not slow down, but instead continued to climb at an even faster rate.

Jemin frowned slightly, somewhat surprised.

He had originally estimated that the fusion of the two bizarre entities would at most reach the mid-stage of the Cataclysmic level, but the current rate of growth showed that his estimate was too conservative. High-stage Cataclysmic level, peak Cataclysmic level... and then, yet another boundary was ruthlessly broken through.

A catastrophe-level anomaly!

The sea surface around Ping underwent extremely strange changes.

The seawater no longer reflected any light, as if all the light around had been swallowed by darkness.

Looking out at the sea, what I saw was not water, but a pure, thin, textureless void of darkness.

Jemin felt an uncontrollable smile creeping onto his face, like a connoisseur who had just unearthed a priceless treasure from a junk market. However, before he could fully express his joy, the darkness before him had already completed its transformation.

The original solid form dissolves into nothingness. The shadow of the shadow thief and the seam of the slit merging together leave behind only a pure darkness without outline or boundary, yet chilling to the bone.

Even he felt an overwhelming sense of awe rising up his spine the moment their eyes met.

Through the analysis of the all-seeing eye, Jemin understood that it was not fear brought about by external forces, but rather a fear that was infinitely amplified by something engraved in the instincts of all life—a fear of darkness, of confined spaces, of those "unseen places" deep in the shadows, which was then materialized into the all-consuming blackness before his eyes.

"So that's how it is. It's a kind of eeriness born from the instinctive fear of an individual organism? In that case, although it looks like darkness, it should be called a shadow eeriness..."

As Jemin marveled, the fully evolved shadow began to change strangely.

From that boundless darkness, claws reached out.

One, two, ten, a hundred...

It stretched out from the depths of that darkness, long and twisted, like the deepest nightmares that all humans have in their childhood, staring into the cracks of a closet, now materialized and reaching out to grab him.

Each claw is blurry, as if it is constantly changing shape, but their "gripping power" is real.

Jemin felt countless claws grab his arms, waist, and ankles, dragging him into the heart of that darkness.

As soon as he came into contact with that darkness, Jemin’s body began to disintegrate under the pulling and corrosive force, like paper soaked in water, breaking apart little by little from the edges.

His body is being eroded.

Where the claws gripped, his presence blurred, boundaries disappeared, shapes distorted, and his form repeatedly jumped between stability and instability. Looking at the changes and erosion affecting his body, Jemin felt somewhat surprised.

Although his conjured body was far from his true form, it had undergone layers of strengthening through body tempering techniques and internal circulation, making it far more resistant than any known creature in this plane. Surprisingly, it couldn't withstand this kind of erosion.

The claws were eroding at an increasingly rapid pace.

Most of his body had begun to become translucent, the muscle texture beneath his skin blurred, like a pencil sketch being erased. "This is a Cataclysmic event..." Jemin murmured.

After analyzing the situation with his all-seeing eye, Jemin had a general understanding of the strange shadow in front of him.

In reality, this shadowy creature's strength is not stable; during the day, it might only be a normal disaster-level creature.

However, it is extremely compatible with the eerie nature of the night... and can even be described as complementary.

The eeriness of the night is the absolute dominance of the "state of no light," and this fusion is the embodiment of "fear of shadows."

During the day, because the shadows are not deep enough, people's fear of shadows is not as intense.

But at midnight, in absolute darkness without a single ray of natural light, it is a true catastrophe.

Jemin could almost picture the scene of this thing appearing in the city.

At midnight, it was born from some dark corner, spreading slowly like an opaque fog.

The dim gaslight and electric lights not only failed to dispel it, but instead cast even deeper shadows on the ground and walls.

And those shadows are its nourishment.

The fear of darkness in people's hearts nourishes it, allowing it to engulf the entire city in minutes.

If no one stops it, a city can become a ghost town overnight.

"Luckily, I was the one who met you first." Jemin looked at the churning darkness, his tone returning to calm.

Then, he released the restraint.

Dark golden light burst forth from his body, and Jemin's figure suddenly grew larger, his dual-faced form taking shape above the sea. The thousand-meter-tall form hovered silently in mid-air, its spine piercing the low-hanging clouds. Every contour seemed to be cast from refined gold that had been tempered in a furnace for a hundred years, appearing exceptionally profound and solemn.

When its true form looked down at the sea below, it exuded a sense of oppression that made all things bow down.

The stone beneath my feet was flat and had sunk several meters when the Dharma image appeared.

Fortunately, Jemin had anticipated this possibility and had made the stone flat enough to remain intact during its manufacture. Above him stretched the boundless night sky, and the darkness that had once been so thick as to be almost solidified appeared thin and powerless before him.

The faint light emanating from the Dharma Image naturally spread outwards. It couldn't even be considered a supernatural power; it was simply the result of a sufficiently powerful force naturally dissipating. This faint light flowed so calmly, yet it was enough to push back the surrounding shadows inch by inch.

The darkness that tried to erode the light was torn apart and disintegrated the moment it came into contact with the dark golden light, as if it had hit an invisible wall of bronze and iron.

The darkness within a radius of several hundred meters around the Dharma image was dispelled the instant it appeared.

The shadows rolled violently and eerily on the sea surface.

Its darkness shrank under the pressure of the dark golden light, trying to escape again, but the light of the Dharma form was like an inescapable mountain, blocking all possible escape routes.

Then, driven by instinct, it tried to break free.

It rushed toward the edge of the barrier, trying to reintegrate itself into the rules of the world and the darkness.

That was its natural sanctuary, its most instinctive judgment of itself after merging: the vast world belonged to it, and all the dark places were its dens.

Once you integrate into the rules, you can be free!

At that moment, the runes carved on the stone surface activated simultaneously, and azure light rose from the surface, forming a closed energy barrier at the edge of the magic circle.

The isolation barrier, like an invisible wall, stands motionless between it and the rules of the world.

The shadowy creature crashed into the edge of the wall, producing a resounding boom that made the air tremble, before bouncing back.

It surged and tore at the inner wall of the barrier, but no matter what it did, it could not break through the blockade.

The true form of the Dharma flickered, crossed the barrier, and stood outside it.

Jemin lowered his head slightly, his handsome Taoist face looking down at the strange creature trapped by the magic array.

Then, he reached his hand down.

Within that eerie, shadowy "vision," Jemin, outside the barrier, was slowly extending a hand toward it.

As the hand approached, it seemed to grow larger and larger due to the distortion of the perspective and the oppressive force of the Dharma image itself.

Until it was like a mountain, like the sky itself bending down, like the whole world at this moment being reduced to the outline of that hand... and then, the barrier, along with the darkness within it, was firmly grasped.

Bring your five fingers together.

The energy barrier of the magic circle shattered like a bubble under the convergence of those five fingers, but under the pressure of the true body's power, the eerie shadow couldn't even escape.

Close, clench, compress.

In reality, Jemin's true form slowly receded, and the dark golden radiance gradually subsided.

The kilometer-long Dharma form rapidly compressed, its outline reforming into the size of an ordinary human.

He stood calmly in the center of that flat, rocky area, the sea breeze lifting the hem of his clothes and brushing against his cheek.

Jemin stood on the stone platform, looked down at his palm.

A seal floated there, completely black, condensed and dense, reflecting a subtle luster under the moonlight.

It's about the size of a glass marble, quiet and completely harmless.

The all-seeing eye scanned the area and confirmed that the seal structure was stable, energy fluctuations were suppressed within a safe range, and the fusion of the strange entities was in a deep dormant state.

"Hmph hmph hmph... Hehehehe!!!"

Then, Jemin couldn't help but burst into unrestrained laughter, the sound drifting away on the sea breeze and dissolving into the depths of the night. "I never expected this," he murmured, clutching the seal in his palm, feeling the suppressed power within, like a sleeping deep sea, his voice filled with barely concealed joy, "to have such a gain."

The waves crashed against the edge of the rock, one after another, as if applauding him.

I didn't expect to get a complete Cataclysmic-level monster so quickly.

This is more than just obtaining a high-level research sample.

This also means that he can break down each step of its transformation from a hazard level to a catastrophe level, and can try to understand the bizarre evolutionary laws of this plane.

and……

Jemin looked down at the small black ball in his palm, then looked up at the thick fog on the sea surface, churned up by the power of the Dharma Body. A more important research direction was gradually taking shape in his mind: if a hazard-level anomaly could be fused to reach the catastrophe-level, then... what if the fused entity wasn't hazard-level?

If the starting point for fusion is higher, if the number of strange entities participating in the fusion is greater, if the process is artificially intervened and catalyzed... Jemin put the small ball into his inner cave, and he couldn't suppress the smile on his lips.

He turned to face the direction of the foggy city, his figure becoming a blur before disappearing into the thick fog.

The stone platform on the sea stood alone behind him, like a tombstone that no one worshipped.

The thick fog surged up again, engulfing the calm and dark seawater as if nothing had ever happened.