Jiang Lin and Elune walked side by side out of the Seventh Training Ground. The moonlight roses lining the tree-lined path emitted a faint silver glow under the midday sun.
Elune glanced at him from the side, her pale purple eyes filled with a hint of curiosity.
“You only just learned Space Perception yesterday, and you're already moving on to something new today?”
“There are seven basic formulas in total. I've already mastered Space Perception and Spatial Ripple, so there are five left.”
As he walked, Jiang Lin pulled out Zoe’s notes and pointed to the table of contents with his fingertip.
“Space Folding, spatial cutting, spatial anchoring, spatial oscillation, and spatial teleportation. I’ll learn the first three today.”
Elune was silent for a moment before speaking in a nearly numb tone.
“You do realize that for a normal spatial magic apprentice, there’s usually at least a month-long gap between learning each new formula?
“Because spatial magic consumes so much mental energy, practicing too frequently can dull your perception.”
“Hmm... maybe my spirit is just stronger than average?”
Elune stopped talking.
She was gradually getting used to this guy saying the most outrageous things in the most casual tone.
The two arrived at the Moonlight Tower. Inside Zoe's research room, the silver-haired, silver-eyed spatial magic tutor was standing in front of a crystal container. A faint silver light swirled around her fingertips as she seemed to be adjusting some parameters.
Hearing the knock, she simply said “come in” without looking up.
Seeing it was Jiang Lin, Zoe withdrew the magic from her fingertips, her pale silver eyes lingering on him for a moment.
“Rested up?”
“Yes.” Jiang Lin walked over to the crystal container. “I want to learn Space Folding today.”
Zoe was silent for a good while before asking:
“To what extent have you mastered Space Perception? Perform it once for me.”
Jiang Lin raised his right hand. There were no hand signs or chanting; he simply willed it.
A ripple of pale silver light expanded from his palm, instantly covering the entire research room. It then penetrated the walls, extending into the corridors, stairs, and several dozen meters outside the tower.
The light lasted for three full breaths before slowly dissipating.
Zoe's pupils constricted slightly.
She reached out into the dissipating circle of silver light. The spatial fluctuations touching her fingertips were stable and long-lasting, like a silently flowing underground river.
“This level of stability...” Her voice carried a hint of disbelief. “It’s impossible to achieve this without years of continuous practice. How did you reach this level in just one day?”
“Maybe I'm just talented?”
Zoe stared at him for a long time, eventually letting out a long sigh as if she had given up on seeking an answer to that question.
She turned and walked to her workbench, pulling a fresh piece of parchment from a mountain of blueprints and spreading it across the surface.
“Space Folding is one of the most core formulas in the spatial magic system.
“Its principle is to temporarily compress the spatial distance between two spatial anchors, allowing an object to move from one end to the other in an extremely short time.
“Effectively, it’s similar to a teleportation array, but the essence is completely different.”
She picked up a quill and drew two dots on the parchment, then connected them with a line.
“A teleportation array establishes a stable spatial tunnel, and objects move from the start to the finish through this tunnel.
“Space Folding, on the other hand, temporarily erases the spatial distance between the start and the finish, allowing an object to directly cross that segment of space.
“The former requires a complex array structure and a massive amount of magic essence for support, while the latter only requires the caster’s own spatial control.”
She drew a circle between the two dots, highlighting that segment of space.
“However, the difficulty of Space Folding lies in the fact that you must precisely control the range and duration of the fold.
“Even a slight deviation will cause a violent backlash when the space recovers. At best, the spell fails; at worst, the caster themselves is sucked into a spatial turbulence.”
Jiang Lin stared at the parchment, the two circled dots reflected in his golden eyes.
“How precise does it need to be?”
“It depends on how far you want to fold. With your current 4th-rank early stage magic essence level, you can fold about ten meters of space at most.
“Within this range, the error cannot exceed the width of a single hair.
“Exceeding this error will result in a spatial oscillation strong enough to tear your arm apart when the space snaps back.”
Zoe set down the quill and walked back to the crystal container, pressing her hand against its surface.
“I will demonstrate once. Pay attention to the flow of the space elements, especially the extremely brief 'gap' that appears the moment the fold occurs.
“That gap is the key you need to precisely capture and control within the magic formula.”
She closed her eyes, and the surrounding space elements began to gather and swirl in a strange, rhythmic pattern.
Pale silver light condensed at her fingertips, growing brighter and denser until it finally transformed into a razor-thin silver thread.
The thread trembled slightly at her fingertip before extending forward like a living thing, sinking into the surface of the crystal container.
Inside the container, the imprisoned spatial rift suddenly shook violently. Distorted silver-white light flashed wildly, as if something were struggling inside.
Then, the entire area touched by the silver thread vanished into thin air.
The two points of light that were originally on opposite sides of the container crossed the erased segment of space in that instant, coming into direct contact with each other.
The entire process lasted less than a tenth of a breath.
When the space recovered, the spatial rift inside the container had calmed down. Only a few faint ripples remaining at the edges proved that what had just happened wasn't an illusion.
“Did you see it?”
Zoe withdrew her hand and turned her pale silver eyes toward Jiang Lin.
“The moment the fold happens, a 'gap' appears in the space elements.
“You must inject your magic essence into it the instant that gap appears, guiding it to fold in the way you want.
“The timing is fleeting. Too early and you’ll trigger a spatial oscillation; too late and you won’t trigger the fold at all.”
Jiang Lin didn't speak. He simply stared at the slowly dissipating ripples inside the crystal container.
His limit-broken Space Perception allowed him to 'see' far more detail than an ordinary person the moment Zoe cast the spell.
The flow trajectories of those space elements during the fold, the precise timing of the 'gap' appearing and disappearing, and how Zoe used that silver thread to guide the gap's direction and range.
Everything was clearly etched into his mind.
He closed his eyes, replaying every detail he had just seen in his head.
Once, twice, three times.
Then he opened his eyes, walked to the crystal container, and pressed his fingertip against the cold surface.
The magic essence circuits began to take shape at his fingertip as pale silver light slowly condensed.
He wasn't in a hurry to trigger the formula. Instead, he first established a resonance between his magic essence and the spatial rift inside the container.
The active space elements were like iron filings drawn to a magnet, swarming toward his fingertip and forming a very faint silver halo.
Time passed minute by minute. Jiang Lin, lost in his continuous attempts, once again lost track of time.
In the blink of an eye, an entire afternoon had passed.
Finally, Jiang Lin found the 'gap'.
It was a minute, nearly imperceptible pause in the flow of space elements—like a hidden reef beneath the surface of a river that caused the water to briefly divert and form a tiny whirlpool as it passed.
Jiang Lin injected his magic essence into the center of that whirlpool, using Space Perception to precisely guide its direction, causing it to leap from one point on the left side of the container to another point on the right.
The entire process was incredibly fast—so fast that Elune, watching from the side, couldn't even see what had happened. Her vision blurred for a split second, and the two points of light inside the container were already touching.
Then, the space recovered, and everything returned to calm.
Zoe looked at the human youth whose hand was still pressed against the crystal container, her expression becoming somewhat peculiar.
If one counted the time he spent learning Space Perception, it had taken him less than a day in total to master a formula that usually took a normal spatial magic apprentice months or even a year just to be initiated.
“Have you really never studied spatial magic before?”
she asked.
“Never.”
Zoe was silent for a long time, eventually just shaking her head.
“It seems Carlos was right. You really are a monster.”
【Space Folding (Uninitiated) → (Initiated)】
Jiang Lin withdrew his hand and opened his system panel once more.
【Space Folding (Initiated → Superlative)】
【Space Folding (Superlative) → Space Folding (Limit-broken)】
【Space affinity slightly increased.】
The next second, Jiang Lin opened his eyes.
He raised his right hand and made a gentle swiping motion in the air before him.
Wherever his fingertip passed, space folded silently. A faint silver thread flashed through the air, directly connecting the pot of moonlight roses by the research room door to the vase on the windowsill.
Then, with a mere thought, the pot of moonlight roses appeared on the windowsill out of thin air. There was no magic essence fluctuation and no spatial oscillation throughout the entire process—only a soft 'clack' as the bottom of the pot met the windowsill.
The look in Zoe's eyes changed.
If Jiang Lin's previous performance had only shocked her, this scene now made her feel a sense of unreality bordering on the absurd.
If being 'initiated' just now was shocking, his current performance was something she simply couldn't comprehend.
“What did you just do?”
Her voice carried a faint tremble.
“An advanced application of Space Folding.”
Jiang Lin walked to the windowsill and put the pot of moonlight roses back in its original place.
“By expanding the folding range from a line to a plane, I can fold multiple objects simultaneously. Though I still can't do it over very long distances.”
Hearing this, Zoe paced around her office for a long time before looking out the window.
“When can you leave?”
Jiang Lin was stunned for a moment.
“Leave?”
“Leave this place and go back to wherever you're supposed to be.”
Zoe turned around and walked toward her workbench, her back showing a rare hint of exhaustion.
“I have nothing left to teach you. For everything after Space Folding, just read the notes yourself. Come ask me if there’s something you don't understand.”
She paused and added,
“Though I suspect there won't be anything you don't understand.”
Jiang Lin bowed slightly toward Zoe’s back.
“Thank you for your guidance, Teacher.”
Zoe didn't look back; she just waved her hand, signaling for him to get lost.
When Jiang Lin and Elune walked out of the research room, the corridor was already lit with pale blue moonlight lamps.
The two walked side by side down the stone steps of the Moonlight Tower, their footsteps echoing through the hollow structure.
Elune said,
“It looks like Master Zoe was quite discouraged by you.”
“Is that so? I thought she just didn't want to teach me anymore.”
“Well, I think she’s completely broken. She might even be hiding in her office right now, crying her eyes out.”
“Sigh, she’ll probably get used to it after a few more days, right?”
“I think it’s going to be difficult to change her perception of the world in such a short time.”
“It seems having too much talent is also a kind of trouble.”
Elune glanced at him, her pale purple eyes reflecting the moonlight and his golden silhouette.
“Are you always like this?”
“Like what?”
“Turning the impossible into the possible, and then saying 'it’s just my natural talent'.”
Jiang Lin rested his chin in his hand and thought for a moment.
“Sigh, accomplishing what you all consider 'impossible' is just my daily routine.
“After all, you aren't geniuses, so it’s normal that you don't understand.”
Elune choked on her words.
She decided she wouldn't discuss the topic of talent with Jiang Lin again for the rest of the day.
By the time Jiang Lin and Elune returned to the building, the sky had completely darkened.
In the living room, Little Black was lying on the windowsill, its tail flicking lazily every now and then.
Hearing the door open, it lazily lifted an eyelid to glance at them before closing its eyes to rest again.
Jiang Lin sat on the sofa, took Zoe's notes from his spatial ring, and flipped to the section on spatial cutting.
Spatial cutting, as the name implies, is the forceful division of space in a target area, creating a brief, physically destructive spatial rift.
Unlike the 'compression' of Space Folding, the essence of spatial cutting is 'tearing'.
It involves forcibly separating originally continuous space to create a vacuum fault that cannot be crossed.
Zoe's notes read:
“The formula structure for spatial cutting is more complex than Space Folding. The core lies in applying reverse tension to spatial nodes.
“When the tension exceeds the elastic modulus of space itself, the space will tear at that point.
“Within 0.3 seconds of the formula's completion, extremely sharp spatial blades will form at the edges of the rift, capable of cutting through most substances. Afterward, the space will heal itself, and the rift will vanish.”
Jiang Lin flipped to the next page, which featured a complete magic essence circuit diagram for the spatial cutting formula. A dense web of lines intersected to form a complex network, with seven core nodes arranged asymmetrically. Beside each node were annotations written by Zoe in red ink.
He began attempting to construct the magic essence circuit according to the structure in the notes.
A first wisp of pale silver spatial magic essence condensed at his fingertip, slowly extending along the first magic essence track.
His control was significantly stronger than before. The formula didn't collapse at the third track, nor did it collapse at the fifth.
However, when the magic essence reached the end of the seventh track, the entire formula suddenly shook violently, as if something were expanding inside, about to explode.
He immediately cut off the magic essence supply. The formula vanished silently, leaving only a faint circle of silver-white residual light at his fingertip.
...
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