High School of Demon Hunting

Chapter 2418: Chapter 639: The Characteristics of Time

”Before explaining the basic principles of time conversion, you must first understand what time is.”

The elder wizard with grayish white beard tapped his fingers gently, knocking on the pocket watch floating in front of him. An invisible spell light flashed, and one by one, various-sized dials emerged from the pocket watch, floating toward the eight directions. They hung around the two young wizards, closely packed together, filling every gap in Zheng Qing’s vision in an instant.

The time on each dial was different, and the tick-tock sounds of the second hands intertwined, wandering amidst chaos with a touch of order, giving one the feeling of standing on a beach listening to the ebb and flow of the sea.

Time is like water, indeed a very fitting description.

This thought flashed across Zheng Qing’s mind.

The monotone voice of Master Bao Yangzi echoed again: ”Time is both a dimensional concept and a widely used metric, and is also one of the fundamental rules that allow many magical effects to occur.

The various magical theories popular in the wizard world today—whether it’s classical mystical theories, the Information Unification Theory, or the most widely influential Dimension Theory—each have their own paths to explain the concept of ’time’. Each path is quite profound, capable of guiding you far.

What I am telling you today is not simply one of them.

To enable you to deeply comprehend some truths of time in the shortest time, this lesson will involve many intersecting theories. You only need to understand the part taught in class; deeper aspects should not be studied further until you can analyze this world to a certain extent.

This is also why I do not agree with you contacting the concept of time conversion now.

In theory, given your current level of magical knowledge, now is not the best time for you to approach this kind of high-level magic. But just in case, if you accidentally get lost in a certain period of time and want to maintain sufficient clarity and rationality, you must have enough understanding of the concept of time, so... ahem.”

Perhaps realizing that his opening was somewhat verbose, Bao Yangzi softly coughed, pinched his beard gently, and with a slight twist — crack! — the ticking hands on the surrounding dials simultaneously stopped.

The entire world seemed to freeze at this moment.

”Did you feel any change?” The elder looked at the two young wizards with a questioning gaze.

Zheng Qing frowned, hesitated slightly, then honestly shook his head: ”No... except the hands stopped.”

Jiang Yu looked at Zheng Qing in surprise, properly raised his hand, and countered: ”But I just saw those hands did not stop?”

Bao Yangzi pinched his beard with satisfaction.

”This is the first understanding I want to teach you about time.” The elder snapped his fingers, and in Zheng Qing’s perception, the small hands on the surrounding dials resumed their even ticking: ”Time is an objective existence limited by the cognitive state of the observer. This world progresses within time, rather than time advancing.

What does that mean?

Determinists believe there is no distinction between past, present, and future in time. The flowing of the river of time is an illusion, it simply stays there, allowing everyone to observe its existence. According to this theory, time and space should be indistinguishable, both ’fixed’ existences — this viewpoint would challenge many people’s perception of the passage of time.

Interestingly, in some aspects, Dimension Theory supports determinism in this outcome.

To Dimensionism wizards, time is a concept limited by dimension and tier. As long as your tier is high enough and the dimensions you can perceive are rich enough, time becomes an optional existence. Its existence or non-existence depends on whether you need it. Like when cooking, you need to decide whether to add salt.

Whether you add it or not, the salt is there.

In the eyes of true wizards, time does not decay or flow, it has neither past nor future; they are all fixed from beginning to end. Because of its constancy, it can be finely divided into smaller scales to describe all concepts within its scope.

This is also why many wizards now believe time can measure everything...”

A teacup swayed over to the elder Bao Yangzi, interrupting his continuous explanation. The elder looked perplexed toward the desk, only to see the dean of Jiuyou Academy smilingly raising his own teacup:

”Take a sip, take a sip, you’ve said quite a lot... a bit too profound for these kids. Take a break, let them relax a bit.”

Zheng Qing sat stiffly, ashamed to lift his head to see the expressions of the two elder wizards, keeping to himself with his head down, commanding his shorthand quill to madly record every word said by Master Bao Yangzi, planning to consult Doctor Xiao later.

Beside him, Jiang Yu wasn’t much better off.

Master Bao Yangzi furrowed his brow, grabbed the teacup, drank it in one gulp, smacked his lips, and summarized: ”In short, remember, the first characteristic of time is its objective existence... then the second characteristic...”

The elder wizard pinched the teacup in his hand and forcefully smashed it to the ground.

Bam!

The crisp sound of the teacup shattering startled the two young wizards to look up quickly. Zheng Qing’s face wore a worried expression, fearing his stupidity had exhausted the elder’s patience.

”Did you see this teacup?”

Master Bao Yangzi pointed at the fragments on the ground, concisely said: ”Under normal circumstances, the flow of time is like this — the teacup goes from complete to shattered — the complete teacup is in the past, the dropping teacup is in the present, the broken teacup is in the future.

Here, we casually add a discussion on another important concept, Magic Theory’s Second Law... who will describe this concept?”

The two young wizards raised their hands almost simultaneously.

Zheng Qing secretly rejoiced, as the first time he heard this concept was last Spring when he arrived early before school, while completing the Gini Cottage task, hearing Xiao Xiao and Sister Korma discussing the several laws of Magic Theory, as later Sister Korma advanced to Big Wizard with a magic circle built on this law, leaving a very deep impression on him.

”The second theorem of Magic Theory, namely magic power cannot spontaneously transfer from lower dimensional individuals to higher dimensional individuals...” Having received permission, Zheng Qing answered without hesitation, but was immediately interrupted with a rough gesture by the elder after saying the first sentence.

”That’s enough, right there.”

Master Bao Yangzi stopped the boy from reciting further, swiped his hand in front of him, and instantly three clear lines of text appeared in the void:

—— Magic power cannot spontaneously transfer from lower-dimensional individuals to higher-dimensional individuals (under normal circumstances, magic power falls from high dimension to low dimension)

—— Time cannot spontaneously revert from the future to the past (under normal circumstances, time proceeds from past to future)

—— The world moves from order to chaos