Chapter 665: Another Wizard and the Notebook

Downtown, on the rooftop of a certain high-rise building.

The short-statured black-robed figure who had once conversed with Professor Victor in the alternate space stood at the edge of the roof. The wind blew back his hood, revealing a face whose exact age was impossible to determine.

His hands rested on the railing as he leaned slightly forward. His gaze pierced through the thin mist slowly regathering above Mist Capital, landing on that massive circular cloud hole.

The edges of the cloud hole were smooth as a mirror. A patch of clear blue sky lay exposed within it, as if someone had used a compass to cut a perfect blue circle out of a gray canvas.

He stared at it for a long time.

Suddenly, he smiled, his eyes filled with genuine admiration.

His eyes narrowed into two curved arcs, and two shallow dimples appeared on his round face.

“What exquisite control of power,” he said softly, his voice largely scattered by the wind atop the building. “To so perfectly reach the power deployment limit allowed by that eighth-ring wizard, while ensuring none of the force affected the surroundings.”

He gazed quietly at the cloud hole, as if appreciating a work of art.

His admiration was well-founded.

As the total amount of power increased, the more one tried to keep it within a certain threshold, the more difficult it became.

Releasing scattered bits of power was something any wizard could control with precision.

But to take a force capable of blasting an entire building into the air and dispersing the thick fog covering the whole city, and to stabilize it precisely at a certain level—ensuring it did not exceed that threshold by even the slightest fraction…

The computational power and energy required for that might well exceed what was needed to release the power itself.

“Truly a formidable younger generation. No wonder he’s a wizard who could obtain an entry ticket with only fifth-ring strength.”

The short black-robed man withdrew his gaze. He turned around, leaned back against the railing with his hands in his pockets, and looked up at the gray sky.

There was no doubt that this short black-robed man was the wizard who had been hiding beside Professor Victor all along.

Looking toward the now-empty psychiatric hospital below the cloud hole, his expression grew somewhat wistful, as if recalling something unpleasant. “Come to think of it, I got along quite well with that professor,” his voice lowered, almost as if speaking to himself. “His technical skills were quite good too. With just a bit of support, he managed to bring about so many changes.”

“Although he was walking his path too hastily, the direction was correct. What a shame.”

He lowered his head and glanced at the extinguished kerosene lamp beside his foot.

It had been his medium for entering the alternate space. Now that the space had collapsed, the lamp had lost its function.

He lightly kicked it with his foot. The kerosene lamp fell from the rooftop and shattered with a crisp sound on the street below.

“This round, I’ll count it as my loss.” He turned around to face north.

The sky in that direction had thicker clouds and denser fog.

His gaze lingered there for a few seconds, as if checking something, before he regretfully shook his head. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

“Never mind. Let’s leave this city to that young fellow.”

With that, he took a step.

His foot stepped onto empty air. Transparent ripples appeared in the atmosphere, as if an invisible staircase had unfolded beneath his feet. He walked upward step by step, his pace unhurried and his posture relaxed, like an old man taking a leisurely stroll in his own backyard.

“What a shame that the faction I just established is gone just like that.” He muttered as he walked, his tone carrying little regret—more like tallying up an account that had already been settled. “If I go to another city, should I follow that kid’s example and try to join the official side?” He paused, tilting his head in thought.

“Feels pretty good. From this kid’s situation, it seems more effective…”

His figure grew smaller and smaller in the high sky, eventually merging into the clouds and disappearing.

The ripples left in the air spread outward ring by ring, gradually fading until nothing remained.

Jie Ming stood at the entrance of the old bookstore, one hand pushing open the wooden door while the other still gripped the doorknob.

Suddenly, his body paused slightly. He turned his head northward, his gaze crossing the street and landing in the direction of the dense cluster of high-rises in the city center. A dark golden light flashed deep within his pupils as various actively enhanced detection methods activated and deactivated in an instant.

But Jie Ming saw nothing.

The sky in that area looked no different from anywhere else. Everything appeared normal, with no anomalies worth noting.

Yet Jie Ming clearly knew he had sensed something.

It was a “disturbance” at the level of fate.

Like someone gently plucking a string in the web of fate lines and then letting go.

The string was still vibrating, but the one who plucked it had already departed.

“Hmm… It seems that wizard senior is quite a good sport.”

Jie Ming nodded at the doorway, then pushed the door and walked inside.

The wooden door closed behind him with the familiar creak of its hinges.

He walked over to the rocking chair with practiced ease and sat down.

The wooden boards let out a soft groan under the weight. The rocking chair swayed back and forth twice before stabilizing.

Jie Ming first took out the various Strange items he had previously obtained from his spatial expansion pouch. He let the test tubes sealing the Strange grow limbs on their own and head to the underground laboratory to settle themselves in place.

Once that was done, he retrieved the black-covered notebook from his inner world cave-heaven, opened it, and began reading from the first page.

Jie Ming had already roughly scanned the actual content recorded in the notebook with his spiritual power.

However, the notebook still contained Professor Victor’s spiritual will. The information hidden within that spiritual will could not be parsed through casual spiritual power scanning alone.

Only by reading carefully and following the professor’s line of thought could one obtain the hidden information inside.

The professor’s handwriting was very neat, with clear strokes and almost no traces of corrections.

Each page’s entries followed a fixed format: date, experiment number, objective, method, results, analysis, and next steps. It was like writing a diary, yet also like compiling a technical manual.

Jie Ming skipped past the earlier records on Strange fragment analysis, bypassing the data and conclusions he had already verified in his own research, and turned directly to the last third of the notebook.

There, the professor had stopped recording experimental data and began writing more personal entries.

【……What exactly are the Strange?】

【This is a question that seems simple but has never truly been answered.

The Spirit Medium Association defines them as “supernatural phenomena that threaten human survival.”

This definition is very practical, but it is made from the “human perspective,” not from the “essence of the Strange.”

What if we reverse the viewpoint? From the Strange’s perspective, what are humans?】