**Chapter 702: Conjecture**
When Jie Ming returned to the rift in the plane barrier, the Nest was lazily floating in the depths of the void.
This enormous azure behemoth had spread its body open, its volu nearly comparable to a gas giant planet.
Its translucent outer mbrane rose and fell slowly, resembling a deep-sea jellyfish breathing within a dark ocean.
Around it drifted the wreckage of warships that had yet to be fully digested. Shattered armor plates and lted engine cores were drawn into its body by countless tiny tentacles, transforming into streams of glowing energy.
Sensing Jie Ming’s approach, the Nest’s surface rippled with a gentle azure wave, as if in greeting.
Jie Ming nodded slightly toward it before descending to the edge of the rift.
The area had already been temporarily converted by the Black Giant Priests into a war platform.
Hundreds of dark-gold tal pillars were embedded along the edges of the void fissure, intertwining into a stable formation array that firmly suppressed the plane’s chaotic turbulence outside. At the center of the platform, a circular binding array operated slowly. Dozens of rune chains floated in mid-air, emitting low and oppressive energy fluctuations. Jie Ming raised his hand, and the Divine Armant 0-001 landed heavily in the center of the array.
The instant the several-hundred-ter-tall dark-gray war armor touched the platform, the entire formation lit up at once.
The chains automatically coiled around the armor’s limbs and torso, preventing it from reactivating under unknown circumstances.
Only after completing all this did Jie Ming slowly raise his head. The golden vertical eye between his brows opened abruptly.
All-Purpose Eye, activate!
Pale golden light spread like a tide, completely enveloping the war armor. Layer after layer of information unfolded within his consciousness.
The alloy structure of the war armor’s outer shell was rapidly analyzed.
The shell material shared more than eighty percent homology with the armor of the Tentacle Tree Civilization’s main warships, yet the technological disparity was astonishing.
If the Tentacle Tree Civilization’s technology resembled a crude imitation counterfeit, then the war armor before him was the genuine original. Energy channeling structures, shield frequency modulation modules, core drive logic…
The more Jie Ming examined it, the graver his expression beca.
It was not because he had discovered anything special. Quite the opposite—it was precisely because he had found nothing special at all.
Jie Ming slowly narrowed his eyes as his thoughts returned to his earlier speculations.
At the beginning, both he and the Tentacle Tree Civilization had assud these Divine Armants were legacies left behind by so already-extinct advanced civilization. Such occurrences were not uncommon in the endless void.
When a civilization collapsed, its surviving technology and equipnt would be discovered by later generations, analyzed, inherited, and used as the foundation for further developnt.
This logic had originally held no issues.
The problem lay in the fact that what the Divine Armants did after activation could not be called “combat” at all—it was outright “extermination.”
They indiscriminately wiped out all surrounding life.
From Jie Ming’s direct contact, at least the one he faced made no distinction between friend and foe, nor did any permission verification exist. It would only madly absorb all nearby biomass and life energy, converting every living thing into fuel.
If there had been only one such instance, it could still be explained as a test unit, a runaway weapon, or so defective model.
Yet the Tentacle Tree Civilization had discovered more than a dozen.
Moreover, according to the information from the Incense Fire Divine Dao, every Divine Armant encountered by the seventh-rank Black Giants dispatched by Jie Ming possessed identical characteristics.
This ant… it was not an anomaly. These things had been designed this way from the mont of their creation.
Jie Ming’s gaze settled on the cold outer shell of the Divine Armant. His fingertips tapped lightly against the armor surface.
A low tallic echo spread across the platform.
“So these things were never relics…” he murmured to himself.
He finally realized his previous line of thinking had been completely off course.
These objects were not equipnt left behind by a civilization at all.
They were extinction devices deliberately left in place after the war had ended.
A type of “scorched-earth weapon” buried within the planets.
When the enemy retook the planet and attempted to restore civilization, they would activate.
They would absorb all life on the planet as energy, then transform the entire world—along with its entire population—into a weapon.
The purpose was not even to win, but to ensure that no one could win.
At this thought, Jie Ming’s eyes gradually grew cold.
This implied that the war which had erupted in this plane was far larger in scale than he had estimated.
It had not been an ordinary war between civilizations, but a true war of extermination.
Buzz…
At that mont, several beams of teleportation light lit up one after another behind him.
Molten Mountain was the first to erge from the light.
The ten-thousand-ter-tall Black Giant stepped onto the platform, causing the entire space to tremble faintly.
The liquid tal covering his body still carried dark-red embers from the high-temperature battle. In so areas it continued to flow slowly, like steel freshly drawn from a furnace.
His chest vertical opening parted slightly. A Divine Armant over three hundred ters tall was extracted from within his body.
This war armor had clearly suffered extre destruction.
Large sections of its outer shell were charred black, and the left arm joint twitched continuously, as if so rampaging energy still lingered inside.
Soon after, the other two seventh-rank Black Giants returned one after another.
Two more Divine Armants.
One had its entire right shoulder missing. The spatial structure at the fracture remained unstably distorted, occasionally splitting into tiny black fissures.
Jie Ming swept his gaze over them and had already synchronized their battle records through the Incense Fire Divine Dao system.
The results were largely the sa as his own.
Aside from one governor who ultimately did not dare press the extinction button, the other two locations had successfully activated their Divine Armants.
Their ability types differed, however. The one Jie Ming encountered specialized in matter manipulation, Molten Mountain’s could unleash disordered energy radiation, and the last directly created spatial collapses.
Each possessed the potential to destroy an entire star domain.
Fortunately, such attacks were still insufficient against seventh-rank Black Giants.
After reviewing the reports, Jie Ming nodded slowly.
He then raised his hand, and the three new Divine Armants were simultaneously incorporated into the binding array.
“Thanks to that governor who didn’t dare sacrifice the entire planet,” Molten Mountain’s deep voice rumbled across the platform.
“He preserved all of the Tentacle Tree Civilization’s statistical data on the Divine Armants.”
As he spoke, he handed over a data crystal.
“There are currently sixteen known coordinates for the Tentacle Tree Civilization.”
Jie Ming accepted the crystal. With a sweep of his spiritual sense, large amounts of star maps and coordinate data unfolded rapidly.
He wasted no ti, directly linking all the coordinates into the Incense Fire Divine Dao. Once marked, he synchronized and issued them to the Black Giant Priests across all regions. “Dispatch a recovery team to each coordinate. Each team is to carry ten sixth-rank Black Giant Priests responsible for on-site analysis and the recovery of all Divine Armants.”
After completing all arrangents, Jie Ming turned and left the center of the platform.
On the other side, a temporary isolation pod floated quietly.
The pod door opened, and the Tentacle Tree elder inside visibly froze.
He had been holding a bowl of hot soup in a daze. Upon seeing Jie Ming, all his tentacles stiffened instantly. He hurriedly lowered his head, pressing his tree crown into the most standard posture of submission.
“Your na,” Jie Ming said.
“Lu… Luli.”
The old tree’s voice trembled slightly.
“Forr Vice Chief Executive of the Pri Mother Star Governor’s Mansion and Defense Coordinator of the Second Colonial Zone. Later transferred to Core First Star to oversee the Divine Armant project.” Jie Ming glanced over the information.
Unlike Furnace Core, Luli appeared noticeably younger.
The patterns on his bark had not yet fully aged, and the tips of his tentacles lacked the grayish-white hue typical of long-term experinters.
More importantly… there was still sothing “alive” in his eyes.
Fear.
This showed he had not yet been completely dragged into the abyss by power.
Jie Ming spoke calmly, “You made the correct decision.”
Luli’s body shook.
He naturally understood what was being referred to.
If he had released the neurotoxin as well, the entire planet would likely have beco another dead zone by now.
Jie Ming continued, “Your civilization may be preserved and will even receive better resources and technology than before.”
Hearing this, Luli abruptly lifted his crystalline eyes, but quickly lowered his head again the next instant.
“On the condition…” Jie Ming’s tone remained even.
“…that the Tentacle Tree Civilization must be completely restructured, with all resources placed under unified allocation. From today onward, your civilization belongs to my forces.”
The isolation pod fell silent for a few seconds.
Then Luli slowly lowered his head.
“…I accept.”
When he spoke these words, there was even a faint trace of relief.
He knew all too well how deeply rotten the internal structure of the Tentacle Tree Civilization had beco.
The various governors hoarded troops and acted independently. Colonial zones blockaded one another. Resources were siphoned off at every level.
The so-called civilized community was nothing more than a group of regional warlords wearing the skin of an alliance.
The Divine Armant research had pushed the entire civilization into complete madness.
Now that soone had forcibly shattered it all…
To him, it felt more like liberation.
“However…”
Luli hesitated.
“I do not know the exact locations of the Supre Executives and the others.”
“Before your forces attacked the core planet, they had already severed all conventional communications.”
Jie Ming looked at him.
“Tell everything you know.”
Luli nodded.
“They only have two choices: attempt to escape the plane through other regions of the plane barrier, or head to the core region of the plane.” As he spoke, his tentacles gently traced the structure of a star map.
“The stellar density there is extrely high, with severe gravitational turbulence. Conventional detection has difficulty covering it. So of our civilization’s earliest colonial facilities were abandoned in that area.”
“If they wish to hide, that would be the most suitable location.”
Jie Ming’s eyes flickered slightly.
The plane core—the galactic core region of this universe-type plane.
Due to the excessively high stellar density, it was filled with high radiation and powerful gravity, and space itself was extrely unstable.
For ordinary civilizations, it was a natural forbidden zone.
For fugitives, however, it was an ideal hiding place.
Viola had been monitoring the plane’s periphery the entire ti. If anyone had tried to break through the plane barrier to escape, she could not have remained unaware.
Since there was no news, it ant those people were still inside the plane.
At this thought, Jie Ming raised his hand. Countless silver-gray streams of light flew out from within his body.
These were the new-model Prowlers.
The mont these reconnaissance units, which had fused with Strange rules, appeared, they entered a state of rule concealnt.
Their existence seed to straddle both the material layer and the rule layer simultaneously, making it impossible for even space itself to accurately lock onto their positions.
Jie Ming raised his hand, synchronizing all the coordinates provided by Luli into the reconnaissance network, then issued the order:
“Proceed to the plane’s core region and search star system by star system.”
“Lock onto all life signals and locate those high-level figures.”
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