Chapter 491: Chapter 423: Breakthrough and New Problems (Two-in-One) (3)
A wizard can master this model in just a few days and then cast spells on themselves to engrave a "Memory Firewall" deep within their soul against the specific phenomenon of "Time Reversal".
From then on, time reversal will no longer be able to wash away their memories.
They will enter the next cycle with complete awareness, carrying all the experiences of the previous cycle with them.
When Jeming first saw the complex witchcraft model suspended in the public knowledge base, emitting a stable silvery-gray glow, he was filled with indescribable emotion.
The learning and creation abilities of the Wizard Civilization had unknowingly revealed terrifying fangs.
Starting from a physiological mechanism of a researched foreign race, in just a few cycles, they had refined and sublimated it into a law-based skill that could be universally used by their own civilization.
Although this "Time Anchoring Technique" is highly specialized, targeting the specific form of "Time Reversal" in this plane, its understanding of the interaction between time, memory, and the soul is both exquisite and universal, enough to become a valuable reference for wizards present to study other time-based witchcraft.
Of course, on this battlefield where every second counts, no one had time to expand into other time domains.
Its value is incomparably clear at this moment.
The wizard legion that acquired "Time Anchoring" was completely liberated.
The ninth round, the tenth round... the nature of the war underwent a fundamental transformation.
Wizards no longer needed to cautiously control the pace, worrying that their research might be interrupted.
They could fight unreservedly, crushing the enemy in the most violent manner because all experiences, all data, and all research progress would be completely brought into the next cycle.
Jeming’s workload sharply decreased.
He no longer needed to meticulously record everything, nor worry about how to condense massive amounts of intelligence into summaries.
Wizards themselves became the best recorders.
More often, he was a super database and cross-domain knowledge integrator, assisting various research groups with accessing historical data, verifying hypotheses, and proposing new cross-disciplinary research directions.
The war became an auxiliary to research, with an unprecedented unity of research purpose: to thoroughly analyze the origin and mechanism of time reversal in this plane, and to find and understand that "unknown manipulator".
With countless wisdom converging and the terrifying efficiency where time could be infinitely "refilled", the secrets of the Reaper Race, which once posed a thorny problem, were peeled away layer by layer.
Their biological characteristics, social structure, information network, energy system, and modes of interaction with plane laws...
Everything was thoroughly researched and understood.
Wizards even simulated part of the generation algorithm of "time ripples", capable of predicting the approximate time point of the next large-scale time reversal several hours in advance.
Research on time reversal itself also delved into the level of laws.
It was confirmed to be a regulatory phenomenon acting on a plane-wide scale, with its trigger conditions deeply tied to the overall population size of the Reaper Race and a certain "civilization survival anxiety index".
From this perspective, the so-called time reversal is more like a complex emergency protocol.
However, when all surface mechanisms were clarified, a core bottleneck, like an insurmountable wall, loomed before all researchers.
The fifteenth time passing through the space fissure.
Jeming opened his eyes, feeling the stable fluctuations from the "Time Anchoring" witchcraft within him, confirming he had returned with the complete memory of the fourteenth cycle.
He skillfully exchanged an intelligence crystal with Frost—now more of a ritual, since both remembered everything.
Jeming flew skillfully into the depths of the Wizard Camp.
Every wizard he met along the way had eyes glinting with clear rationality and a sense of clear purpose, no longer confused as at the beginning.
They nodded to each other and swiftly engaged in a new round of work.
Everything was in perfect order and highly efficient.
Yet Jeming’s mood bore a trace of unshakable gravity amidst the calm.
He arrived at the central analysis hall, where the gigantic three-dimensional projection displayed all the research findings so far about this plane, about time reversal, and about the Reaper Race.
This information was woven into a highly complex yet exceedingly clear giant net on the three-dimensional projection.
Every node of the giant net shone brightly, representing resolved problems.
Only the center of the giant net, the area representing the "Manipulator" or "Core Will", was a blank space.
"Still... no clues..." A familiar voice sounded beside him, it was Alison.
Her eyes also carried a trace of fatigue, not from physical exhaustion, but spiritual fatigue from long-time focus on unresolved puzzles.
Jeming shook his head, his gaze sweeping over the other core researchers in the hall, who bore similar expressions.
"All methods based on individual Reaper Race, social networks, residual pheromone history, and even our proactive super-large-scale soul resonance detection... all conceivable ways to find traces of the ’manipulative will’, we’ve tried."
The Great Wizard, specializing in soul and consciousness realms, sighed, pointing at the projection, "The results are consistent: no evidence of any high-dimensional ’will entity’ beyond the ’collective subconscious of the population’. The law of time reversal is etched in the plane’s laws, operating like a natural phenomenon."
"The ’memory retention’ and ’behavioral adjustment’ of the Reaper Race are more like group adaptive evolution based on biological instinct under this operating rule, and... a kind of non-intelligent ’rule feedback’ that we have not fully understood."
"But those obvious manipulations, which violate the basic biological instincts, boost morale forcefully, and even seem to predict certain high-level research directions of ours..." Jeming frowned, "If it’s just non-intelligent rule feedback, can it be so ’precise’ and ’targeted’?"
This is precisely where the bottleneck lies. All phenomena can be explained by complex rules and group adaptability.
But there are always subtle details with traces of "intent" that make the top wizards instinctively feel that there should be a "Manipulator" behind it all.
However, all detection methods pointed to nothingness.
"This... is really troublesome..." Jeming couldn’t help but sigh.
Fifteen cycles, decades of intense research, nearly exhausting all surface secrets of this plane, but stuck at the last, crucial step.
They unraveled most of the mystery but could not find the one who set the puzzle.
(That’s all for this Chapter today)
