Translator: AnubisTL
Jieming's days seemed to settle back into a peaceful rhythm.
Until one day, he received a mission notification from Mentor Clark.
"Not another strategic reserve supply run, is it?!" Jieming eyed Mentor Clark warily.
The last mission had exhausted him completely, leaving him with lingering psychological trauma.
"If it's that kind of work again, I'm refusing. I'm far too busy right now..."
"Relax," Mentor Clark said, looking up from a chaotic pile of research papers and rubbing the bridge of his nose. "The war situation in the Shadow Plane is progressing smoothly, and there are no immediate wartime demands."
"It's almost time for the annual Aptitude Transformation Potion distribution. This time, you'll be responsible for administering the potion across a designated region. The academy will provide the distribution equipment and route. It's a simple task that won't take up much of your time."
Jieming found this even more puzzling. Mentor Clark was right—administering the Aptitude Transformation Potion was usually a straightforward matter.
The so-called Aptitude Transformation Potion was a standard method used by wizards to modify planes.
As wizards expanded their exploration and conquest across the infinite planes, their demand for fresh talent grew exponentially.
The attrition of war, the occupation of conquered planes, the transformation of new knowledge, and breakthroughs in scientific research all required a constant influx of skilled individuals.
Given the exceedingly low probability of naturally occurring wizard talent within human populations, wizard civilization had developed an efficient "population optimization" mechanism.
Since time immemorial, wizards had habitually conducted periodic, large-scale deployments of Aptitude Transformation Potions across the planes they ruled.
These diluted potions were released across entire planes like rain, gradually raising the average aptitude level of the human populations within.
This transformation was subtle and gradual, not intended for immediate results.
Moreover, individuals with higher aptitudes who interbred were slightly more likely to produce offspring with even greater potential. Through sustained application over time, it was believed that one day the entire human population of a plane could achieve transcendent universality, with everyone capable of practicing meditation techniques.
The subordinate planes of the Noren Workshop were divided into two categories.
One group consisted of the core planes, the historically significant planes numbered before 10. These planes had undergone extensive transformation over millennia, not only achieving universal transcendent talent but also boasting an exceptionally high average level of innate talent among their populations.
The other group comprised planes established later through expansion and reconstruction, ranging from Plane No. 10 to Plane No. 130-plus, such as Jieming's Noren Plane No. 13.
In Jieming's Noren Plane No. 13, the duration of aptitude transformation was relatively short compared to the core planes, lasting roughly 200 to 300 years. Consequently, the average increase in human aptitude within the plane remained modest, and the proportion of individuals capable of attaining transcendence remained low.
For this reason, the wizards maintained the plane's medieval living standards and technological level, deliberately concealing the existence of transcendence to ensure social stability.
Only when the proportion of the population capable of practicing meditation techniques reached a certain threshold would the wizards gradually reveal the existence of transcendent powers, guiding ordinary people to engage with transcendent forces.
As the proportion of transcendents increased further, it would even raise the technological and productive levels of the plane to accommodate the growing needs and desires of its transcendent population.
In core planes where every inhabitant possessed at least first-tier innate talent, the technological level could reach levels similar to the futuristic worlds depicted in science fiction novels.
By then, even the most ordinary people in the plane would be able to wield transcendent power, allowing for the unrestricted distribution of transcendent-powered devices and sparking a technological leap.
Of course, besides the humans of the orthodox wizard planes, the wizard civilization also commanded numerous servitor races.
Though their strength varied, the proportion of transcendents among these servitor races was typically astonishingly high, often maintained at 100%.
Moreover, during their conquests across the multiverse, the wizard civilization had acquired considerable knowledge on how to elevate ordinary humans to transcendence. They even possessed numerous techniques for transforming ordinary humans into transcendents.
Yet despite these convenient methods, the wizard civilization never lowered the threshold for creating transcendents.
As the wizard civilization developed, these alternative paths to transcendence were gradually phased out or absorbed into the wizard system.
The primary reason for this choice was simple: the wizard civilization was too powerful.
While methods that allowed ordinary people to gain transcendent power were effective, most only produced weak transcendents, making them too inefficient.
For the existing wizard civilization, weak transcendents who couldn't advance knowledge were utterly meaningless, only increasing administrative costs.
For example, an ordinary alchemy wizard, once mastering the Human Transmutation Technique and Artificial Soul Technique, could mass-produce armies of transcendents single-handedly, provided they had sufficient resources.
A sixth-tier alchemy wizard like Clark could even mass-produce fourth-tier wizard-level transcendents on an assembly line, and his elite units could also reach the sixth-tier.
For such beings, even transcendent knowledge that allowed mortals to mass-produce transcendents held no value.
Therefore, unless the number of talented individuals in the entire civilization grew so large that it became impossible to conceal, wizards would never open the path to transcendence for ordinary people without innate talent.
After years of development, the wizards finally concluded that only high-rank wizards truly mattered within their civilization.
Institutions like wizard academies were essentially cradles for nurturing high-level wizards, and wizard apprentices were merely expendable resources in the selection process.
Thus, even in newly developed planes like Noren Plane No. 13, where the number of talented individuals was exceptionally low, Noren Academy maintained its minimum requirement of third-tier talent for apprentices, showing no intention of lowering its standards.
After all, the assessment of wizard talent directly correlated with innate mental power and soul strength. While high talent didn't guarantee intelligence, those with intelligence invariably possessed at least moderate talent.
Cultivating individuals with substandard talent was deemed by the wizards to be a poor "cost-effectiveness" investment. Their sole purpose was to produce more talented offspring.
This was the wizard civilization—a civilization so rational it bordered on cold-bloodedness.
As a beneficiary of this system, Jieming had no objections.
Though it seemed to block the paths of most, even by his moral standards, the wizards treated their talentless kin quite well.
(End of the Chapter)