Chapter 75 - 71: Epic of Witchcraft
The corner of Stone Soul’s mouth seemed to twitch slightly. "That’s right. Secret Divination and Divination."
The topic thus began. "The essence of Ancient Witchcraft is the imitation of Talent Witchcraft used by Magic Creatures."
He raised his right hand, splaying his fingers. "Take the most primitive [Magic Hand], for example... Mi-ya!"
A faint light suddenly appeared, coalescing into a translucent, ethereal hand in front of him.
This hand seized a large stone in the center of the lecture stage—one that was about half a person’s height and weighed several tons—and then exerted its force.
The stone was thrown high into the air, tracing an arc as it flew out of the circular platform and crashed heavily to the ground.
"BOOM!"
A loud crash echoed in the night sky.
Even standing in the back row, Mo Ning could feel the vibrations through the soles of his feet.
Stone Soul didn’t stop, his words coming even faster.
"This kind of Witchcraft may seem powerful, but it wastes over 40% of its Magic Power. Its utilization efficiency is extremely low."
"But the pioneers of Witchcraft created the Spirit Seal. Using the Spirit Seal as a foundation, they improved upon [Magic Hand] and developed thousands of new forms of Witchcraft."
Stone Soul simply crooked his right hand, and a faint glimmer of light instantly shone from his fingertips.
"One common approach for improvement is to first use a ’Floating Spirit Seal’ to control a light object."
A silver Metal Flying Disc rose into the air, hovering unsteadily up and down.
"But the Flying Disc isn’t stable enough. It can’t meet a Wizard’s requirements for precision control."
Stone Soul made a spinning gesture, and another point of light appeared.
"If we add an ’Air Spin Spirit Seal’ and make the Flying Disc spin, we can further increase its stability."
The Flying Disc began to rotate, becoming a blurry silver shadow in the blink of an eye. The friction with the air produced a low WHIRR.
Under the effect of centrifugal force, its altitude stabilized.
Stone Soul continued his demonstration. "Let’s say we add a ’Pushing Spirit Seal.’ We could make it go even faster..."
The Flying Disc’s rotational speed increased abruptly. The air was torn apart, emitting a sharp HISS.
"I want to be able to control it freely, so I’ll also need to add a ’Traction Spirit Seal’..."
As Stone Soul said this, he suddenly shouted, "Sa-la!"
The next second.
The Flying Disc vanished.
No.
It hadn’t vanished. It had turned into a bolt of lightning.
The Flying Disc zipped wildly around the circular auditorium at a speed impossible for the naked eye to follow.
"BANG—BANG—BANG—!"
A series of explosions erupted. Because the sounds were so fast and dense, they practically merged into a continuous, unbroken roar.
The Flying Disc skimmed across the surface of the thick stone pillars, leaving behind a series of clearly visible cracks.
The newcomers all noticed this, and the color drained from their faces in an instant.
Even a fool could imagine that if that Flying Disc were aimed at them, they wouldn’t be able to escape it, even in heavy armor.
Stone Soul’s voice rang out again, still devoid of any inflection:
"[Floating], [Air Spin], [Pushing], and [Traction] are all basic Spirit Seals derived from [Magic Hand]. Recombining them results in a brand-new Level Zero Witchcraft—[Flying Disc Cutting Technique]."
"This new type of Witchcraft consumes only one-tenth of the Magic Power of [Magic Hand], yet its power is significantly greater."
The entire audience was silent.
This incredibly vivid performance had given all the newcomers the most profound, bone-deep understanding of the meaning of "Secret Divination and Divination."
While the others were just watching the spectacle, Mo Ning had an unexpected gain.
A beam of light, visible only to him, projected from his [Insightful Secret Eye], revealing a complete Divination Model.
It was the model for [Flying Disc Cutting Technique].
That’s right!
Mo Ning had actually obtained the model for a Level Zero Witchcraft!
Just now, each time Stone Soul demonstrated a Spirit Seal—the points of light the newcomers saw—it had actually contained a clear structure of light filaments within it.
It was the Spirit Seal model.
And it wasn’t just the model. It was built layer by layer, starting from the most fundamental Demon Seeds:
Each Demon Seed began as a point of light. These points drew close to one another, combined into a Demon Seed Group, then condensed into a higher-level node, and finally formed a Spirit Seal.
The other newcomers couldn’t see these details at all.
Even if they had noticed, with so many points of light clustered together, how could they possibly distinguish anything?
But in the [Insightful Secret Eye], everything was perfectly clear.
’Honestly,’ Mo Ning found it a bit incredible.
He thought for a moment and attributed it to Stone Soul’s rigorous teaching attitude, perhaps mixed with a tiny bit of showing off.
Stone Soul himself probably never imagined that someone could learn the model just by glancing at the points of light a few times.
Stone Soul had demonstrated four points of light, and he had easily learned four types of Spirit Seals.
And that wasn’t all.
How Spirit Seals were combined into a complete Witchcraft Model was also an extremely profound field of study.
The method of combining two Spirit Seals has a specialized term—Linked Seal.
According to Mo Ning’s understanding, over the long course of history, Wizards had created thousands of ways to form Linked Seals.
For a model containing hundreds of Spirit Seals, the number of possible Linked Seal methods was astronomical.
Choosing the most appropriate Linked Seal method to maximize a Witchcraft Model’s power and efficiency has always been a key area of research for Wizards.
And Stone Soul had just completely demonstrated the Linked Seal method for the four Spirit Seals, with every detail observed with perfect clarity by the [Insightful Secret Eye].
For Mo Ning, this was equivalent to saving at least 100 Black Tower Points.
The Sub-zero Level Tricks in the Mysteries Hall were very cheap; for 2 or 3 Black Tower Points, you could have a Trick’s model poured directly into your brain.
But Level Zero Witchcraft was true Witchcraft, and the starting price to have a model poured was 100 Black Tower Points.
Of course, for now, he had only grasped the Divination Model.
Next, he would need to thoroughly study the principles and establish the Witchcraft Model in his Spiritual World before he could say he had truly learned [Flying Disc Cutting Technique].
Mo Ning stared at the Divination Model, vaguely feeling a flash of Spiritual Light in his mind, but he couldn’t quite grasp it.
At that moment, Stone Soul brought the topic back to the main thread of the History of Witchcraft:
"The transition from the Ancient Witchcraft system, which mimicked nature, to the Divination Witchcraft system, with Secret Divination and Divination at its core, was not something that happened overnight."
"As everyone knows, thirty-two thousand years ago..."
Starting from this number, the profound history of the Wizard World unfolded before the many newcomers.
"The first pioneer—Lord Linghuan—created the epoch-making Divination Visualization Technique. This was the landmark event that marked the birth of the Era of Divination."
"That year was defined as year one of the ’Wizard New Era.’ The Witchcraft that existed before the New Era was filled with ignorance and bloodshed."
"It took Divination Wizards a full two thousand years and countless sacrifices to finally sweep the Ancient Wizards completely into the dustbin of history."
The phrase "swept into the dustbin of history" carried a certain grim chill.
The newcomers who knew a little about the History of Witchcraft had more or less heard of this two-thousand-year-long period of blood and strife.
Conflicts of ideology are never just simple debates. The revolution of the Magic System was accompanied by the burials of countless pioneers.
Stone Soul’s lecture officially got to the main point:
"Next, I will briefly introduce Ancient Witchcraft, explain how the pioneers built the foundation of the Divination system, and intersperse my lecture with explanations of important concepts within that system."
"The reason I say Ancient Witchcraft is full of ignorance and bloodshed is that Ancient Wizards frequently used innocent humans as experimental materials in their research."
"Take the Ancient Wizards of the Necromancy School, for example. They often captured entire villages of commoners and transformed the poor souls into Living Corpses."
The moment his voice fell—
"WHOOSH!"
The brazier atop a stone pillar behind him suddenly spewed a thick serpent of fire.
The fire serpent soared into the night sky, trailing a long tail of flames, before plummeting straight toward the center of the Lecture Hall.
"BANG—!"
The fire serpent exploded.
Countless sparks scattered in all directions, but instead of falling to the ground and extinguishing, they hung suspended in midair, coalescing and intertwining.
In the blink of an eye, a massive Light Curtain formed from crimson light unfurled behind Stone Soul.
On the screen.
A tall, thin figure wrapped in a Black Robe stood outside a village.
Behind him, a dense horde of skeleton soldiers crawled out from the ground, wielding rusty swords and blades, their eye sockets flickering with eerie green will-o’-the-wisps.
The villagers were terrified. The elderly hid in their houses clutching children, women screamed and cried, and a portion of the able-bodied young men, armed with hoes and wooden clubs, stood trembling at the village entrance, attempting a final resistance.
This was clearly a scene of an Ancient Necromancer capturing living people to use as experimental materials.
The newcomers were seeing something like this for the first time.
Everyone’s gaze was nailed to the image, forgetting even to breathe.
Mo Ning narrowed his eyes and praised inwardly, ’They even managed to create a video. The Academy’s teaching philosophy is truly advanced.’
This teaching method, which visualized historical scenes, was a hundred times more shocking than any dry, written description.
The scene on the Light Curtain continued to play out.
The skeleton soldiers surged toward the village entrance like a tide. The young men with their farming tools didn’t last a single clash. Screams of pain and cries of despair intertwined.
Afterward, the villagers were marched out of the village—men, women, old, and young. Not a single one was left behind.
The Light Curtain rippled, then blurred for a moment. The scene transitioned.
The villagers were taken into a gloomy forest and forced into a sinister old castle.
The horrifyingly cruel experiments began.
One by one, villagers were strapped to cold stone tables. The Ancient Wizard stood aside, expressionless, pouring bottle after bottle of potions with unknown ingredients into their mouths.
Wails of agony rose and fell.
The sounds were too real—sharp and desperate, filled with the fear and unwillingness of those on the verge of death.
The newcomers present felt their scalps tingle with fear.
But that wasn’t the most terrifying part.
The Ancient Wizard held sharp instruments, peeling off the test subjects’ skin, cutting open their bellies, and removing their internal organs, only to stuff them with all sorts of strange objects that glowed with a bizarre light.
Although the image was heavily distorted, as if the Academy had censored it, what was shown wasn’t even one-tenth of the real thing.
But the bloody scenes, the bodies cut open and stitched back together, and the screams squeezed from the depths of the test subjects’ throats subjected the newcomers to an unprecedented visual shock.
"BLEGH—!"
Someone finally couldn’t take it anymore, bending over and dry-heaving.
Mo Ning felt like throwing up a little, too.
He activated his [High Mountain Breathing Technique] slightly, and the feeling of nausea was easily and completely dispelled.
The Ink Tube Pen in his hand danced rapidly, and lines of Secret Spirit Text poured out:
"The images of the Ancient Wizard performing human modification demonstrated in class have given me some inspiration."
"What if one were to use Spiritual Materials, including metals, to create Spiritual Prosthetics, and then create a ’Divination Calculation Unit’ for it?"
"Finally, by implanting the Spiritual Prosthetics into a human body and using Witchcraft to connect the nerves to the control core, one could obtain immense combat power."
*****
「Deep within the Black Tower.」
「Inside the Observation Room.」
Nasha rested her chin on one hand, her emerald eyes fixed on the inspiration Mo Ning was writing on the scale pattern paper, visible within the sphere of light.
Her gaze was intense.
"This kid..."
The Sharp-eared Female Apprentice murmured to herself, her voice so low only she could hear, "He’s a natural-born talent for researching Witchcraft."
The concept of "Spiritual Prosthetics" was nothing new.
In Black Tower Academy alone, no fewer than one hundred Wizards had attempted it.
The experimental plans adopted by the Wizards were highly similar—create prosthetics that mimic the human body, implant artificial nerves made of Spiritual Materials, and then connect the artificial nerves to the human nervous system.
This plan seemed highly feasible.
But the Wizards soon encountered a major problem: the brain needed to precisely control every spiritual joint and every spiritual tendon of the prosthetic, causing the consumption of Spiritual Power to far exceed expectations.
This path was clearly a dead end.
The Wizards discovered they could only take another path—install a control core in the prosthetic, so the brain would only need to issue a vague command, and the prosthetic would automatically complete the task.
And as it turned out, this was indeed the correct path.
Nasha saw with her own eyes that when Mo Ning recorded his inspiration, he seemed to have instinctively foreseen that the "direct brain control" approach wouldn’t work, so he directly wrote "Divination Calculation Unit" on the paper.
A conclusion that many Wizards needed experiments to reach, this kid had somehow understood it from the very beginning.
Such talent made the Sharp-eared Female Apprentice burn with envy.