High School of Demon Hunting

Generally speaking, love is a luxury.

It is not like private jets, personal bodyguards, or grand balls, luxuries that cost you tangible wealth. It drains your energy, your wisdom, and even your life—what it costs is your intangible wealth.

Moreover, like those luxuries that drain your tangible wealth, it continuously consumes your riches. If you reduce your investment in this area for some time, this luxury called love will fade rapidly, even faster than your genuine leather coat would decay.

Of course, this luxury can also be like well-aged wine, the longer it is allowed to settle, the more delicious and appetizing the fermented flavor becomes.

Most people, for their entire lives, consume their intangible wealth to exchange for that pitiful tangible wealth, in order to maintain their existence in this world. Only those who do not need to expend too much intangible wealth are able to pile up this expensive consumable with romance and time.

But wizards are different. They are not ordinary people; they know magic.

In the preface of his nineteenth-century book ”Timeline — The Baseline of Magic,” the Great Wizard Lev Tomaxi wrote, ”...apart from time, there is no other real magic in the world. And love is the closest existence to the true essence of magic...”

Perhaps because of a monotonous and pure student life before high school, Zheng Qing was full of confusion at this restless age. And Elena was like a lighthouse in the darkness, giving direction to his lost self.

Mini skirts, high heels, long wavy hair, clothes that were different every day, she was filled with the mysterious allure of the opposite sex. Sometimes Zheng Qing felt like a sailor enchanted by a sea demon, fully aware of the dark depths of the sea before him, yet still he jumped in without hesitation.

Originally, everything was going well.

Just as boys imagine it to be.

Being in love is sweet, sometimes mixed with a hint of chill, but most of the time it exudes an intoxicating fragrance. But due to the sensitivity of young people, Zheng Qing sometimes felt that Elena was not serious enough about the relationship.

Though it couldn’t be called perfunctory, it was completely different from those hot-blooded young couples he had seen who seemed to be always together.

Especially lately, Elena’s habit of repeatedly going missing was seriously upsetting the young cost student.

He decided to give the Gypsy witch the cold shoulder.

But just a week later, Zheng Qing regretted it.

Because while he deliberately avoided the witch, the witch did not go out of her way to look for him.

This made him feel like his punch had landed on cotton.

He missed the relaxed feeling of being with Elena, as if he was sublimely intoxicated without the pain of the hangover. He missed the days when his heart raced, he missed her daily changing attire, her tall figure, her charming smile.

”If you miss her, just go find her. I’ve never seen a guy so petty!” Xin Fat Man was baffled by the young cost student’s dilemma, ”Isn’t it normal for a guy to apologize to a girl?”

”You don’t understand,” Zheng Qing looked at Fat Man with a slightly melancholic gaze. ”When you get a girlfriend, you’ll understand, guys have pride too...”

That comment was a bit hurtful.

Fat Man, enraged, threw Fat Cat off of him and stormed out the door.

Fat Cat angrily meowed at Zheng Qing.

The young cost student paid no attention to the two fatties but turned to Xiao Xiao, his dormitory mate who had experience with love and was knowledgeable, hoping to obtain a true scripture.

With his black shell notebook in hand, Xiao Xiao buried his head behind it and said in a muffled voice, ”Love, just like time, is the greatest magic.”

”The representation of time is existence, only with existence does time have meaning.”

”And the representation of love is to listen, to love is to learn to listen.”

”If you can’t even listen, how can you say you love her?”

Good, that answer was very ’Doctor’. Zheng Qing found a theoretical basis for his compromise, and suddenly, courage swelled in his heart. He muttered to himself, ”Yeah, I should hear her explanation, right?”

And so, without realizing it, he came to the library, to the spot where he and Elena often studied talismans together.

That familiar figure was sitting in the familiar seat, flipping through something.

Zheng Qing struggled to restrain himself from turning and fleeing, continuously mumbling words like ’existence,’ ’listen,’ ’time,’ words with unclear meaning, and casually pulled the thickest and heaviest book from a nearby shelf, making his way to that seat.

”You’re reading ’Hu Gong’s Four Texts’.”

Zheng Qing placed the thick ’On Origin’ he was carrying in the old spot in front of Elena, glanced at the book in Elena’s hands, and asked as if it was an offhand question.

”Yes,” Elena used the end of her pen to lift her long hair, responding with equal composure, ”You’ve said it before, the basics of all talismans are in here, as long as you don’t lose heart, any wizard can master it.”

”Oh, maybe I’m sometimes too dogmatic.” Zheng Qing used a lot of effort to pry open ’On Origin’—a philosophical book discussing the origin of magic, and he highly doubted whether he could understand even the preface—but that was okay, he wasn’t there to read. His full attention was on the Gypsy witch sitting across from him: