**Chapter 25: Calm Before the Storm**
“Dear Father and Mother, when you see this message, I might already be on an operating table as an experiment subject. But don’t be sad—as family, you’ll probably be dragged in as test subjects too. I’m sure we’ll reunite soon…”
Honestly, after hearing Amy’s devastating “news” and confirming it was about him, this was Jie Ming’s knee-jerk reaction.
After that, his life felt like sitting on a guillotine, constantly awaiting the blade’s fall.
After all, he was now the “mysterious apprentice who shocked the academy”!
He’d expected the academy’s wizards to come for him immediately, questioning the material’s origins or his alchemical training.
Worst case, they’d discover issues with his power system and take him in for study.
As for escaping? Forget it. From two months of study, he knew how terrifying Noren Academy’s combat strength was.
As the supreme authority over Noren Plane 13 and dozens of nearby minor planes, the academy’s dean was a Level Seven Wizard.
And he, Jie Ming, holder of the Great Dao Book Pavilion, was only at Qi Refinement Layer Two.
So, after this fiasco, he’d completely abandoned thoughts of resistance or escape. Instead, he began mentally preparing explanations, ready to spill everything and seek “protection” if confronted.
“I just hope whoever comes for me gives me a chance to explain.”
Various possibilities flashed through his mind, leaving him in constant dread, awaiting an inevitable reckoning.
Yet, half a month passed, and all was calm.
The workshop remained its dull, busy self. Instructor Clark was still the expressionless instructor, Amy still chattered about the latest gossip, and Viktor still calculated tasks meticulously.
No wizard, not even a senior apprentice, showed any special interest in him.
This puzzled Jie Ming.
“Could it be… inventing a special material isn’t enough to draw the academy’s attention?” He began convincing himself.
It wasn’t impossible.
After all, not just in his past life but in the wizarding world too, material science was a bottomless “pit.”
Beyond discovering naturally occurring exotic materials in other planes, creating a new material with unique properties through recombination, purification, or synthesis was unimaginably difficult.
It required seven parts deep knowledge and theory, three parts relentless effort and experimentation… and ninety parts sheer luck.
So, an apprentice stumbling upon an exceptional material through talent or pure luck wasn’t entirely unthinkable, right?
Jie Ming kept telling himself this, but his actions didn’t relax.
His Internal Circulation system ran nonstop, sealing his aura completely, ensuring no trace of his cultivator fluctuations leaked.
To guard against potential mind control or soul infiltration, he even carefully coated his body with a nearly invisible protective film of refined gold using alchemy.
He knew these were mostly psychological comforts.
If the academy’s high-level wizards truly suspected him and dug deeper, they had countless ways to pierce his disguises.
He was like a small boat before a storm, calm on the surface but roiling with inner turmoil, bracing for the waves that could crash at any moment.
Amid this constant dread, the “storm” didn’t arrive, but an unexpected incident suddenly erupted.
That afternoon, during a public class, Jie Ming was in the alchemy workshop practicing shaping composite materials into standard forms.
To increase difficulty, several apprentices nearby were using an old “Elemental Dust Separator”—a device for extracting specific elemental particles from air or materials—to enchant their composite materials.
Suddenly, a piercing alarm blared!
Jie Ming’s heart lurched—it was a warning of equipment overload or failure!
Instinctively extending his mental energy to the machine, he detected an uncontrolled energy surge in its core runes, causing energy blockages and turbulence.
A corrosive gray dust, carried by the chaotic energy, was spreading outward like a tide!
“Watch out!” Jie Ming shouted instinctively, his body reacting before his mind.
He leaped back, agile as a cheetah, diving behind a sturdy load-bearing pillar.
As he retreated, he glimpsed Amy near the separator, staring blankly at it, not yet reacting.
His right hand shot out like lightning, grabbing her arm and yanking her back with undeniable force.
Amy yelped, stumbling as Jie Ming dragged her behind the pillar.
Immediately after, a visible gray mist spread from the separator!
“What is this stuff?!”
Apprentices who couldn’t escape in time screamed in pain.
The corrosive dust, though limited in range, was terrifying, eating into flesh on contact, emitting sizzling smoke!
Some apprentices, dodging, were hit by chaotic energy surges, convulsing as they collapsed.
The scene descended into chaos and panic.
Hiding behind the pillar, Jie Ming avoided a wave of energy erosion. Seeing the gray mist spread across the room, he frowned.
The separator’s alarms continued, its energy fluctuations growing wilder.
His accumulated knowledge let him quickly grasp the machine’s core rune structure and the trajectory of the runaway energy.
He identified key blockage nodes, knowing that without swift action, the machine would either explode or cause a larger leak!