N-M Chapter 745: Gifts
Chapter 745: Gifts
**Chapter 745: Gifts**
When seeing off Wizard Augusta, the expression on this Seventh-Ring Great Wizard’s face made Jie Ming unable to resist taking a few extra glances.
It was an expression that was difficult to describe precisely.
His brows were slightly raised, his eyes opened a little wider than usual, his lips were pressed together, yet the corners of his mouth carried a faint upward curve.
It was as if he had suddenly encountered something completely beyond expectation. The matter itself wasn’t bad, but it felt far too outrageous. Wizard Augusta had probably only intended to casually give a few pointers to his junior brother’s disciple as a simple favor.
Who could have known that this kid would undergo a visible improvement on the spot—outrageous enough to make even a Seventh-Ring Great Wizard like him wonder if he was seeing things.
After all, the wizard system was unlike the cultivation system, where a single enlightenment could produce visible changes.
Wizard Augusta stared at Jie Ming for two seconds, ultimately saying nothing. He simply held his teacup, waved his hand, and turned to leave.
Jie Ming watched him walk far away before returning to his position beside the flowerbed.
However, after his martial uncle’s enlightening words, the faint irritation in his chest had completely dissipated when he looked at the banquet before him again. The banquet was still the same banquet, the people toasting were still the same group, and the acts of greeting, probing, and exchanging benefits had not changed in the slightest. Yet his state of mind was no longer the same. After understanding the position these retired Sixth-Ring Wizards held within wizard civilization, Jie Ming no longer felt that their power struggles were meaningless time-wasting.
On the contrary, these old fellows were not idling away their days. They were simply continuing to maintain the operation of this vast civilization in their own way. The method was different, but it was by no means without value.
He stood beside the flowerbed, maintaining a polite and indifferent smile on his face. As he recalled Wizard Augusta’s words in his mind, Jie Ming’s thoughts gradually drifted off course:
“I think… I’ve been tricked?”
A long time ago, he had discovered a data mismatch issue.
According to the publicly released military records of the Star Ring Federation regarding the average spiritual force intensity and physical strength of Sixth-Ring Wizards, he had already comprehensively surpassed those standards over a thousand years ago.
It could even be said that his various metrics had long since far exceeded the average Sixth-Ring line marked in the data.
In the years since, as he continued cultivating, his Dharma Form advanced, and both his spirit and physique grew stronger by the day, completely leaving the so-called “Sixth-Ring standard” far behind.
Although in terms of knowledge accumulation, he still lagged behind true veteran Sixth-Ring Wizards.
In terms of combat power, however, techniques such as Trigram Fire Annihilation Divine Light, Return to Ruins Armor, Light God Transformation, and Dharma Form True Body—supplemented by the cultivation system—should have been more than enough for him to suppress most ordinary Sixth-Ring Wizards in pure fighting strength.
Yet reality was nothing like that.
Every Sixth-Ring Wizard Jie Ming had encountered so far, whether friend or foe, had brought him immense pressure.
Not a single one of those Sixth-Ring Wizards was easy to deal with.
Every clash had forced him to go all out.
Even now, if he faced the “Annihilation Hand” he had once killed, he would still feel that he had more chances of losing than winning.
The Annihilation Hand specialized in large-scale destructive attacks. That pure destructive power sweeping down like a tidal wave— even with his thousand-meter true body, he might not be able to withstand it head-on.
Against the Imaginary Wizard he had once barely defeated, he might be able to remain undefeated by relying on the Imaginary law resistance evolved from his body forging methods, but winning would be nearly impossible.
He was unafraid of imaginary attacks, and the imaginary wizard was unafraid of his strikes. Neither could do anything to the other.
Unless the Imaginary Wizard and Annihilation Hand were foolish enough to give him several seconds of free opportunity to activate the Annihilation Mode of Light God Transformation.
But opponents of that level—how could they possibly make such a low-level mistake in actual combat?
He had once suspected that the “Sixth-Ring Wizard baseline” in the data had become outdated and invalid.
His various metrics had already exceeded the average, so why was fighting still so strenuous?
It was only after the information revealed in his martial uncle’s words earlier that Jie Ming finally understood.
The so-called Sixth-Ring baseline referred not to the monsters on the battlefield who could destroy heaven and earth at will, but to the retired Sixth-Ring Wizards before him. They were the vast majority of the entire Sixth-Ring group.
It was this enormous base that had forcibly dragged the average level of the entire Sixth-Ring tier down by more than one grade.
As for the Sixth-Ring Wizards he encountered on the battlefield?
They were not “ordinary Sixth-Ring Wizards” at all.
They were the elite of the elite, screened from this massive base, those who could still continue fighting.
Anyone who could survive on the front lines of the endless chaotic void was a monster who had crawled out of mountains of corpses and seas of blood.
Their combat power could not be measured by the words “standard baseline.”
All of Jie Ming’s previous confusion had originated from one simple fact: he had mistaken the elite for the average.
So Jie Ming genuinely felt that he had been tricked.
Tricked by the military’s crappy data that didn’t even mark its sources, and tricked by the survivor bias he had carried all along.
Those monsters who shone brilliantly on the battlefield had collectively put on a grand performance of “we are all ordinary Sixth-Ring Wizards.”
While Jie Ming was immersed in his own thoughts, a wave of suppressed yet irrepressible exclamations suddenly rose from the crowd.
The sound was like a stone falling into a calm lake, sending ripples spreading outward and quickly reaching every corner of the banquet.
Jie Ming keenly sensed that the number of gazes landing on him had suddenly increased.
These were no longer the previous probing glances mixed with awe and scrutiny, but scorching looks filled with shock, envy, and disbelief. Following the crowd’s line of sight, he immediately understood the reason.
The wedding ceremony had ended, and the bride and groom had begun opening the gifts from the guests.
This was originally just a private habit of the newlyweds and not part of the formal proceedings, but a few close guests would always gather around to watch the excitement. At this moment, David was holding a silver-gray recording crystal that had already been unwrapped.
The technical description within the crystal was activated, and a faint golden light screen immediately unfolded in the air.
Dense runes and formulas flowed slowly, automatically demonstrating the core principles of the technology. Beside them, a clear evaluation result marked the final effect: it could raise an embryo’s soul and elemental affinity aptitude to the tenth grade.
Tenth grade!
Everyone present was no outsider; they naturally understood what those two words meant.
The innate upper limit of talent that mortal beings could bear was tenth grade.
This technology could push the user’s aptitude directly toward or even reach that ceiling.
For medium and small wizard families that centered on bloodline inheritance, what this meant was obvious even to the slowest mind.
From now on, family descendants would no longer rely on luck in a lottery, nor on birthing large numbers of offspring before arduously screening them. As long as there were sufficient resources, every child could stably possess full aptitude.
This could no longer be described with the word “precious.”
This was practically defying heaven and changing fate.
David subconsciously closed the unfolded light screen, but many guests had still caught a glimpse of the technology and the final effect note.
“Tenth grade… stably raised to tenth grade?!”
“What about the failure rate? Stability? None?! A stable version?!!”
“As long as you consume the corresponding resources?!!”
“Wizard Jie Ming… he can even produce this kind of technology?”
Exclamations rose one after another.
Several Sixth-Ring Wizards familiar with the Colmar family could no longer resist gathering around David and lowering their voices to inquire about the details, yet their gazes kept drifting toward Jie Ming.
Clan Leader Colmar’s smile had already shifted from its initial relaxation to something nearly radiant.
While responding to the guests’ congratulations, he carefully signaled David to put the recording crystal away safely, as if it were not a gift, but a treasure vault capable of changing the family’s destiny.
In contrast, the expressions on the faces of the several Sixth-Ring Wizards from the opposing faction were far more interesting.
They had just suffered a loss in the aura confrontation, and now they discovered that a new figure from the opposing camp had casually produced a wedding gift that could benefit an entire family for generations—a full-aptitude cultivation technique.
The gap had grown so large that it left them without even the desire to compare.
It was understandable why the wizards present were so shocked.
Aptitude enhancement technology seemed rather unremarkable in Jie Ming’s hands.
After all, the Black Giants were mass-produced via incubation pools, with aptitude determined by templates, so they had no use for it. The Dragonmen were still in the basic stage of bloodline optimization, so it was not yet their turn. As for Jie Ming himself, he had long passed the age where he needed such methods to improve his talent.
But in normal wizard families, this was a miracle that the vast majority of people would never encounter in their lifetime.
A wizard family like the Colmar was already considered above average among the lower-tier families of the Star Ring Federation.
Even so, giving birth to a tenth-grade aptitude descendant still depended entirely on luck.
With good luck, a genius would appear and the family could leap upward.
With bad luck, several generations might produce no talent, and the family could only contract its power.
The rise and fall of most medium and small families was essentially a series of luck combinations.
A technology that could stably bring offspring to full aptitude was no longer “precious” to them.
Even Jie Ming himself understood the difficulty of this technology. Its original foundation had not been created by him out of thin air. It was a cultivation world aptitude enhancement method he had obtained from the Great Dao Book Pavilion, then gradually localized and modified by combining it with the wizard civilization’s research results on elemental spirits.
Without the Great Dao Book Pavilion, he would not even have had a starting point.
“Jie Ming!”
After closing the light screen, David immediately looked in Jie Ming’s direction.
He led his bride through the crowd toward him, his face still flushed with irrepressible excitement, tightly gripping the recording crystal in his hand. Clan Leader Colmar followed beside him, the smile on the old man’s face more sincere than ever before.
“This gift…” David walked up to him, opened his mouth, then closed it again, seemingly weighing his words repeatedly. Finally, he said in a low voice, “I really don’t know how to thank you.”
Jie Ming smiled and shook his head. “It’s nothing major. I just hope you’re satisfied.”
David gratefully spread his arms and hugged him. “Thanks, friend!”
His wife, Irene, stood quietly at his side. Her gentle eyes also hid a trace of undisguised emotion.
Clan Leader Colmar repeatedly expressed thanks on the side, words such as “Wizard Jie Ming’s kindness to the Colmar family is as heavy as a mountain” and “If there is any need in the future, the Colmar family will definitely assist with full strength” flowing out endlessly.
The other wizards looking over carried such fervent heat in their gazes that it seemed as if they could ignite the very air.