High School of Demon Hunting

Zheng Qing is not very sensitive to time.

Part of the reason is that he’s really busy and often ignores the passage of time; part of the reason is that he’s really ’died’ before, so he’s indifferent to the most intimidating consequences of time; and another part of the reason is that he often turns into a cat and wanders around, easily confusing the time difference between cats and humans; finally, the most direct reason should be attributed to the Time Converter, long-term wandering on the timeline desensitizes wizards to time, which has been authoritatively certified by the internal Alliance.

So when he heard that he’d stayed in that room for three hours, he was just a bit stunned and naturally threw this small time difference to the back of his mind.

"So?"

The boy walked slowly in the night, hands behind his back, looking puzzled: "I stayed in there for three hours, feeling like three minutes... What does this have to do with sensitivity testing?"

The little green dragon was obviously not expecting such a mild attitude from the boy, paused for a moment, then spoke again somewhat gloomily.

"Because memory suppresses the acuity of consciousness."

It weighed its words carefully, trying to explain in terms the boy could understand: "Do you remember the phrase I told you before? ’Memory is the gateway to the long river of time’—perhaps to prevent too many talented wizards, and even mortals, from prying into and disturbing the order of the long river of time, nature, or those beings above the long river of time, have derived a law named ’forgetting’: this law selectively erases individual and group historical memories, breaking the ’memory’ stored in everyone’s mind which should have been continuous into discontinuous virtual dimensions, so as to prevent individuals or groups with high insight from over-identifying and interacting with the essence of time through that gateway."

These words resembled the physics definitions Zheng Qing learned in high school.

He mulled over it in his mind for a long time before sorting out the meaning.

The little green dragon very considerately paused for a while, until Zheng Qing circled the lawn below Dormitory Hill before it leisurely spoke again: "——Of course, from another angle, excessive memory burdens the brain and consciousness, slowing down the thinking process. Releasing some redundant memories provides more space for thought activity and relieves pressure on the neural network. It is an important way to maintain the acuity of consciousness.

Let’s use a couple of metaphors.

Take two houses, for instance; your consciousness is like a dog running around inside them. A spacious house keeps the dog lively, while a cramped house makes the dog depressed, sick, or even suicidal.

Or think of a computer—you’re familiar with computers, right?—if the hard drive stores too much information, it makes information retrieval difficult, slows down operation speed, and in severe cases causes the system to crash.

Regarding ’consciousness acuity’, I remember a wizard from First University named William James wrote a book called "Stream of Consciousness Link," which explains the relationship between ’childlike heart’ and ’memory acuity’ from a dimensional perspective. It’s a very interesting perspective; when you have time, you can find it in the library and take a look."

This portion of content was clearly accepted by Zheng Qing faster than the previous.

After just a small circle around the lawn, he spoke up.

"Do you know what that big project at Edge Academy is about?" This question was quite disconnected from the previous topic, seeming rather abrupt.

Crack!

A spark of electricity exploded at the tip of the little green snake’s tail, then struck Zheng Qing’s neck, feeling like a fine needle prick.

"I just have a high stature, I’m not actually that guy, how could I know such secretive matters!"

Its tone carried a hint of dissatisfaction, responding testily: "——Get it straight, I’ve not even been around for a week since breaking shell! My magic power barely touches the registered wizard threshold... how dare you expect me to know about a big project executed by a bunch of legends for several months now?"

"Aren’t you familiar with computers?"

"I even know the five exceptions to Kanpu’s basic deformation theory! Can this be the same? Um, wait, with you asking like this... do you know something?"

Zheng Qing didn’t directly answer this question.

"I remember books say that emotion is an inevitable result of any complex system."

The young assistant stroked the Haha Beads on his wrist, rummaging through his somewhat meagre magic theory vocabulary, trying to piece together the inspiration that just popped up: "——Ordinary alchemy puppets can only perform simple interactions with Fish Wizards, unable to derive more complex emotions, so they are called ’tool people’... however, if you enhance the cognitive and thinking abilities of tool people, they can also have functions akin to ’emotions’..."

"What exactly are you trying to say?" The little green dragon impatiently jabbed him with its tail tip.

"I’ve been pondering, during the previous test, Alex kept using two terms—resonance and matching. If we were simply testing consciousness acuity, it might not require such a mess... what I’m saying is, if we can use specific spells to help tool people derive consciousness, then we should also be able to use specific spells to replace the consciousness of tool people."

"Sounds a bit like possession? Kid, don’t go astray! I would hate to grow up just to be chased by the Alliance along with you..."

Zheng Qing silently rolled his eyes, ignoring the little green dragon’s chatter.

He also felt that Edge Academy wouldn’t be conducting a project infinitely close to Black Magic, but considering the Northern District Wizard’s initial methods which greatly resembled Sacrificial Magic, he suddenly wasn’t so confident in his feeling.

...

...

"What’s that kid doing? Why isn’t he returning to the dormitory?"

"Don’t know."

"Didn’t you just take him there?"

"Don’t know." Zhang Yu repeated the answer he just gave.

Hilda glanced somewhat speechlessly at her team leader, then turned to look at Zheng Qing, who seemed to be planning a third circle, and suddenly felt a bit infuriated: "...Does he not know it’s easy to be attacked by Black Wizards when wandering around open places at night? Does he not know tomorrow is Monday? Really doesn’t put people at ease!"

"It’s our job."

The team leader of the assistant group finally couldn’t ignore the chatter by his ear, glanced at the time: "Hold on another seventy-one minutes, then the School Works Committee will have someone switch with us on shift... I’ve been busy with that Edge Academy project these days and haven’t been paying attention; is the Silent Forest still as quiet as last week this weekend?"

Upon hearing the latter question, Hilda’s expression became slightly more serious.

"No abnormal deaths detected." After simply responding, he hesitated slightly and shook his head: "But we can’t determine if those crows have started to keep a low profile or if the magic tribes in the woods have become more cautious after our warning..."

"Could be they’ve had enough to eat." Zhang Yu’s gaze remained detached, his voice softly providing another possibility: "Like the Fire Dragon, satiated, it won’t leave the Lava Lake for an entire winter."