Chapter 468 — An Even More Terrible Beast

At this point Pi Yun came over from the side, the little old man still tugging at his ever-thinning beard, a thoughtful look on his face: "What actually puzzles me most is something else. The mind seal ought to act upon the subject himself — yet once the subject has poured magic into the rune substrate, how is it that the magic, having left the subject, simply dissolves into nothing? Can magic that has already left the body still carry some residue of 'thought'? Does it decide it ought not to exist, and so dismantle itself?"

Listening to Pi Yun, Kamal could not help nodding along. It was indeed a confounding phenomenon. That the subject himself could not cast a divine art because of the mind seal was understandable enough; but when the subject used the experimental apparatus to cast one, the magic had to leave the body and enter another system to operate. In other words, when the apparatus was used, "the operation of magic" was an accomplished fact — and yet that accomplished fact had dissolved into nothing because of the subject's own mind seal. Why?

Watching Kamal and Pi Yun sink into puzzlement and speculation, Gao Yang's mind raced. This was the first time he had felt his own brainpower fall behind when confronted with this world's native knowledge. The mind seal phenomenon did put him in mind of the observer effect — it was that trait of "an established fact being rewritten under the observer's influence" that forced the association. Yet the mind seal's effect was not quite the same as the observer effect he knew. It occurred not only in the macroscopic world but displayed a far higher degree of idealism: the subject's awareness of his own action was actually the first condition determining whether the phenomenon occurred at all!?

This world... truly had far too many inconceivable places.

And the differences between the two worlds did not stop there. On Earth, everything connected with quantum theory had, at its first appearance, thrown the scientific community into violent turmoil; researchers had all been tormented by that terrifying phenomenon until they could neither eat nor sleep. And in this world...

Kamal and Pi Yun were merely puzzled by the phenomenon. Their state of mind seemed not to have been affected in the least.

The reason was simple: in the field of magic, things that defied common sense were simply too numerous. This world had not yet raised that rock-solid "tower of magical dynamics"; its researchers did not yet know the terror of having one's entire worldview overturned...

Gao Yang looked away from the two researchers, and a faint sigh rose in his heart: perhaps he had let loose another beast. And this beast... might well be more terrible than "supernatural power returned to mortals"...

His thoughts drifted and spread — from the magic that seemed to have dissolved itself under the observer's influence, to the mind seal that seemed a lock upon thought; from the nature of gods, to the bond between men and gods. His thoughts ranged further and further, until a voice suddenly sounded in his mind:

"...I hope you... are ready to face it..."

Gao Yang started awake and jerked his head up, staring toward the floor-to-ceiling window of the laboratory.

His gaze passed over the energy barrier of the Fortress of Defiance, over the chaotic gloom of the Shadow Realm, over those floating shards of shattered stone, and fixed, dead intent, upon the corpse of the giant deer Amon.

(Time again for a book plug! The title is "Drink This Bowl of Meng Po's Soup" — I'll just copy the blurb:

Ye Bei is a yin-yang master — the kind without a business license.

Relying on an innate mysterious jade pendant, he brews up a bowl of Meng Po's soup and administers psychological counseling (physical) to all manner of demons and monsters.

It was occupational hazard that kept him flirting so recklessly with the line between life and death—until one day Ye Bei discovered that he simply could not die...

Let me tell you all, the supernatural stuff really is a thrill to read—especially when you are reading it alone. I know there are barely any chapters yet, but it feels like it has serious potential.

Anyway, if my praise jinxes it dead, we can just call that a supernatural phenomenon.)

:.: