13: Chapter 13: The Magic Called a Miracle

It wasn't "reduced." It was "drained" dry!

The mana monitor on the wall flashed frantically, its reading soaring to the warning line.

The crystal canisters storing backup mana around the Third Training Room began to shatter with a crackling sound, the liquid mana inside forcibly extracted by an invisible force, turning into a silvery-white misty turbulence that surged toward the card in Su Bai's hand.

The space of the entire Third Training Room began to twist.

It wasn't a hallucination. It wasn't a metaphor. It was a physical distortion.

Zhao Dahai found his vision suddenly becoming strange—he saw Lin Xiao's face three meters away from him, but at the same time, it was also five centimeters away.

Two contradictory pieces of spatial information entered his optic nerves simultaneously, turning his brain into mush.

Lin Xiao's feeling was more intuitive.

She looked down at her hands.

Her fingers were lengthening. Then shortening. Then lengthening again. It was like looking at a rubber painting repeatedly kneaded by a mischievous child.

Lin Weiwei's face had turned completely pale.

She felt that something was awakening. A kind of power capable of folding a person, skin and bone, into an unobservable high-dimensional space, and then reconstructing them into another form of existence from the atomic level.

Spatial Tide!

This was the highest-level phenomenon theoretically achievable by Spatial Circuit cards.

It only existed in theory!

And now—it was right here in this Third Training Room.

Triggered by a Tier 1 card.

"Stop—!"

Lin Weiwei's words weren't even finished.

The light suddenly dissipated.

It was as if someone had pressed the pause button.

All the light. All the spatial distortion. All the mana turbulence. Everything vanished in an instant.

The Third Training Room returned to normal.

Lin Xiao looked at her hands. Normal. Three fingers. Zhao Dahai touched his face. Normal. He hadn't swapped positions with Lin Xiao.

The monitor reading on the wall returned to zero, as if nothing had just happened.

Nothing had happened at all.

Su Bai's card lay quietly in his palm.

A dark pink card face. Silvery-white patterns. A smiling Kyubey.

Exactly the same as before.

It was so quiet that it felt as if that terrifying Spatial Tide just now was merely a collective hallucination.

"...No physical medium," Su Bai muttered to himself, his tone tinged with regret. "Kyubey's physical doll hasn't been made yet, so there was nowhere for the energy to be released, and it just had to dissipate. Well, but just as I guessed, magic won't attack its own."

Then he looked up at the three of them.

"See? It activated. I told you negative emotions are very useful."

The Third Training Room was silent for about ten seconds.

Then Lin Weiwei suddenly turned her head to look at Lin Xiao. Lin Xiao turned to look at Lin Weiwei at the same time.

They read the exact same signal in each other's eyes—this was impossible. This was absolutely impossible. A Tier 1 Card Creator apprentice absolutely could not master this level of Spatial Circuit.

But facts were facts.

Those few smoothly operating spatial axes still left afterimages on their retinas.

That terrifying mana conductivity was still in the monitor's data records.

That suffocating feeling of a Spatial Tide, as if they could be folded into an indescribable object at any moment—was still in their bones.

Su Bai was a bit confused.

"Have you studied high-level Spatial theory?" Lin Weiwei's voice trembled slightly.

"Self-taught."

"How long have you been self-teaching?"

"About—three days?"

Lin Weiwei took a deep breath.

Three days.

It had taken her three years to barely master the basic applications of Master Li Qingyue's fourth set of diagrams.

Five years to complete her first paper on Spatial Circuit optimization.

And this Tier 1 academic failure—self-taught for three days—had created something with higher mana conductivity than a Tier 4 Spatial card—she couldn't believe it. She wouldn't believe it even if it killed her.

Lin Xiao couldn't believe it either. Because she had seen with her own eyes that Su Bai had only bought those three master textbooks three days ago. Three books. Three days. And then he drew a circuit that could cause a Spatial Tide. There were at least—at least five hundred thousand impossibilities missing in between.

The three of them looked at each other. In the silence, a consensus quietly formed.

It wasn't "Su Bai is a genius."

It was "What kind of luck did Su Bai stumble upon?"

The black market.

Ancient texts.

The legacy left behind by some fallen ancient Card Creator.

Any explanation was ten thousand times more reasonable than "self-taught for three days and created a Spatial Circuit that surpassed Master Li Qingyue."

This kid must have had heaven-defying luck and copied some lost ancient Spatial Circuit.

Lin Weiwei convinced herself.

Lin Xiao and Zhao Dahai also convinced themselves.

After all, this was much more comfortable than accepting that "Su Bai is a genius of the century."

Lin Weiwei calmed her breathing.

Although her fingers were still trembling slightly.

She looked at Su Bai again, and her gaze had completely changed. The playfulness and disdain of a "cat looking at a hamster" from just a moment ago were gone. Replaced by an extremely serious scrutiny—like evaluating an unpolished raw diamond that already showed astonishing brilliance inside.

"...Honestly, the design concept of collecting shame energy is extremely perverted," she began, her voice somewhat hoarse, "and completely unreliable. The density of spirit particles in anger is the highest—this is basic common sense."

Su Bai was about to retort.

Lin Weiwei raised her hand to stop him.

"But—"

She paused.

"I have never seen that circuit before."

When she said these four words, her voice was very low. Very soft. Carrying a trace of trembling she hadn't even realized herself. It was an arrogant Tier 4 Card Creator specializing in Spatial Circuits bowing her head—to a Tier 1 academic failure.

Then she turned to Lin Xiao. Her expression returned to being capable and professional.

"Xiao Xiao."

"Ye-yes?"

"Use the family's funds," Lin Weiwei's voice was resolute. "Starting today, we are fully investing in him."

Lin Xiao was stunned. Zhao Dahai was also stunned. Su Bai blinked.

"Investing?"

"Whatever physical materials you need, our Lin family will cover it all," Lin Weiwei stared at Su Bai with burning eyes. "Although I don't think your direction is very good, this Spatial Circuit is worth our full investment."

Su Bai thought for a moment. Then he nodded.

"Okay. Then let's make Kyubey's physical doll first. I'll send you the material list later—oh right, I need some materials above Tier 4, which will probably cost quite a bit, and also—"

"Fine, add me as a friend!" Lin Weiwei interrupted him.

"One more thing." Su Bai suddenly remembered something and said solemnly.

"What?" Lin Weiwei frowned slightly.

"Cousin." Su Bai looked at her seriously. "The shame you felt just now was really effective. If there's a chance in the future, I hope you can cooperate with the testing again—"

Lin Weiwei's expression collapsed once again.

"—Get out of here!!!"

The roar of the Tier 4 Card Creator echoed in the Third Training Room.

The mana fluctuation monitor on the wall jumped once again.