Chapter 2803 - 1024: "Breaking the Fourth Wall" Effect
Zheng Qing naturally couldn’t possibly use his own Charm Gun and Fu Bullets to blast his own avatar’s forehead.
But he was very interested in this kind of Magic problem of a low dimension interfering with a high dimension, and the Professor of this class happened to be one of the few Wizards who could answer this doubt.
Just like the other two classes on Saturday afternoon—The Principle of Convergence and the Abusmo Conjecture—the Professor of Introduction to Dimensionism also came from the relevant department.
Therefore, this Professor knew a bit more about a certain student in the class who had a special identity.
After hearing Zheng Qing’s question, he gave the Young Wizard a meaningful look, did not speak directly, but stepped down from the podium, walked to the wall, clenched his fist, and with a bang, struck the exact center of the wall.
The movement was clean and crisp.
Crack!
The entire classroom was stunned by that punch.
A tiny spot suddenly appeared on the pristine white wall; with his punch as the center, spiderweb-like cracks rapidly spread in all directions. An ominous cracking sound came from inside the wall, as if the room might collapse in the very next second.
Zheng Qing, who had been letting his mind wander, was shocked into gaping silence.
The reactions of the other seniors were not much better than his; everyone was dumbfounded, instinctively stood up—some edged toward the classroom door, some held onto their desks, hesitating whether to crawl underneath, and some had their arms half-raised, as though unsure whether to ask the Professor what had just happened.
A group of Sprites in gray robes rushed in in a panic, only to see the Wizard standing before the wall wave his hand at them with his back turned.
"All part of the teaching plan. Off you go."
The Professor’s tone was light, as if he had not just smashed the classroom wall but merely slapped a mosquito—yet this kind of "normal" attitude also made the classmates quietly breathe a sigh of relief. As he spoke, the Professor casually turned a nearby chair into a yellow-skinned lion and threw it out the door.
The Sprites hesitated, looked at each other, and finally filed out of the classroom honestly.
From the corridor came the faint sounds of the yellow-skinned lion, the janitor, and students from other classes, but in the end no one came back in to check what had actually happened.
Very soon.
The Professor, who had been busy for a moment in front of the wall, turned around and revealed his "masterpiece" behind him—he had drawn a picture on the snow-white wall, depicting a mountain peak slowly collapsing after being struck by a Giant’s wooden club. The spot where his punch had landed was exactly where the club met the mountain, the very core of the collapse.
In the entire picture, the Giant, the club, the mountain—everything—was on the wall, possessing only length and width.
Only those collapsing cracks possessed a real, undeniable "height."
"You get it now?"
The Professor’s gaze slid over the students one by one; seeing that everyone seemed deep in thought, he gave a very small nod. Without waiting for anyone to speak, he began explaining on his own: "...Just like I’ve repeatedly emphasized in this class—when we cannot handle some unknown concept, we might as well classify that concept as a dimension. This process of classification can be understood either as ’convergence’ or as ’dimensional reduction.’"
Dimensional reduction is the simplest and most straightforward way for a low dimension to understand a high dimension.
"Just now, a classmate asked about the effect of a low dimension interfering with a high dimension; I wanted you to look at this picture. It’s easy for everyone to substitute this picture into some Two-dimensional World, in which case everything depicted should in theory be two-dimensional. But that punch of mine..."
His finger tapped the center of the punch mark.
He knocked on it lightly.
"—That punch bestowed on this picture a ’height’ it had never possessed, allowing the war in this Two-dimensional World to produce a ’wall-breaking’ effect, as if it had broken through the Bind of the Law and taken effect in a higher dimension. Similarly, I can smear a trace of real Giant’s blood on the body of this Giant, or embed a piece of Obsidian at the spot where the mountain is collapsing—either would let the aftermath of this war, originally occurring in a Two-dimensional World, spread into the Three-dimensional World."
"And that is my first answer to the question Zheng Qing just asked." The Professor leisurely walked back to the podium and wrote a large "1": "...For a Low-dimensional world to leave a mark on a High-dimensional world, it must do so through a ’high-dimensional’ method. Otherwise, like that picture, no matter how three-dimensional the pattern you draw on the canvas appears, it is ultimately only an optical illusion, merely an Illusion Technique... We can say Illusion Techniques are an effective way to understand higher dimensions, but we must never confuse the distance between illusion and reality."
Just like the Blood Symbol Bullet.
Zheng Qing silently repeated this in his heart and suddenly felt a bit curious about his current state. Theoretically, he was still only a bona fide Low Level Wizard, but on the other hand, he possessed many "high-dimensional traits."
Unable to help himself, he turned his head again to look at the picture on the wall.
"—But on the other hand, the influence of a High-dimensional world on a low dimension is indeed uncontrollable!"
On the podium, the Professor slightly raised his voice and emphasized his tone. Zheng Qing quickly pulled his gaze back, only to see that at some point the Professor had picked up a piece of Mulberry paper and was holding it up for everyone to see. Noticing the boy turn back, he snapped his fingers.
A drop of ink appeared out of thin air, fell onto the white paper, and quickly spread.
"...A drop of water from the Three-dimensional World falls into a Two-dimensional World—here we’ll use this sheet of paper as a stand-in—if we don’t consider resistance, it will naturally spread. If the paper is infinitely thin, until it has no height and becomes truly two-dimensional, then that drop of water will likewise spread infinitely, until it fills the entire Two-dimensional World.
In more colloquial terms, this is ’dimensionality-reduction strike.’
A single existence or concept from a High-dimensional world, once it falls into a low dimension and collapses, the energy scattered will fill the entire Low-dimensional world. From the perspective of the Two-dimensional World, it would be roughly equivalent to some point in the world suddenly erupting with an unimaginably vast amount of energy, releasing enough matter to fill the entire world..."
Zheng Qing subconsciously thought of the "Big Bang theory" he had learned in high school; that drop of water the Professor had just dripped onto the paper was almost exactly like the "singularity" in the Big Bang theory.
"—This is the uncontrollability of cross-dimensional influence." The Professor crumpled the sheet now stained with a blot of ink and tossed it into the trash can. He gave Zheng Qing a glance and said with earnest gravity, "So, the reason I’ve said all this is to remind you all not to reach too high and lightly touch powers you cannot control. Otherwise, a single unintentional act on your part might destroy a World."
In Zheng Qing’s mind flashed the red glow of the nearly liquefied Two-dimensional Evolution Laboratory during the freshman intercollegiate hunt, the image of Sepulano spewing blood as he was blown away into the night, and the scene of the Black Prison Inner City being cleaved by a thin, crimson pillar.
He let out a slight sigh.
And rubbed his ears vigorously.
The cyan Little Dragon hanging from his ear let him knead and pinch it without saying a word.