High School of Demon Hunting-Chapter 2419 - 640: The Asymmetry of Time in the Magic Power Dimension

"...The second theorem of Magic Theory, that is, magic power cannot spontaneously transfer from a low-dimensional individual to a high-dimensional individual—note, this is a ’one-way movement,’ meaning that under normal circumstances, magic power flows from high dimensions to low dimensions—similarly, time’s flow from ’past’ to ’future’ also possesses a natural ’one-way movement’ characteristic."

"...Notice this word—’one-way’—this implies that in the dimension of time, one side has ’direction,’ the other ’has no direction,’ it’s ’asymmetrical’; this also means that even if you go from the past, to the present, back to the past, and then return to the present, the whole process is still ’one-way,’ with no ’breaks’ or ’parallels’ in the timeline. Nor is there the parallel world you imagine."

"...The past is certain, certainty is a convergent state, orderly, controllable, observable; the future is uncertain, uncertainty is a divergent state, disorderly, chaotic, unobservable... This process of moving from order to disorder is one of the most essential concepts of this world."

"...Perhaps someone might say, since the future is unobservable, what does divination reveal about the future? Here, I need to emphasize one point: the so-called unobservable future means the future holds unlimited possibilities, and we cannot observe all possibilities; what the divination skill reveals is the greatest possibility among all, but not an absolute result. For the future, anything is possible."

At this point in the explanation, Baoyangzi paused, giving the two young wizards some time to take notes. The three large words hanging mid-air had already been densely framed with many explanatory terms.

The elder glanced at his ’board work,’ pinched his beard in satisfaction, then lowered his head and curled his fingers.

The fragments of the teacup on the ground slowly rose piece by piece, piecing and adhering together until they reached the elder wizard’s hand, already restored to its original state, becoming a flawless cup once more.

Zheng Qing looked up, just in time to see this scene.

"This isn’t Time Reversal." A voice from behind the desk came from Old Yao as a reminder: "Just a small restorative transformation spell... Another cup?"

The last sentence was directed at Master Baoyangzi.

The elder wizard stroked his grizzly beard, nodding almost imperceptibly, then looked at the two young wizards again: "...From the perspective of Dimension Theory, orderly, controllable states are adjectives describing low-dimensional phenomena; disorderly, chaotic states describe high-dimensional phenomena... In other words, the past is a special low-dimensional state, the future a special high-dimensional state... This distinction between high and low dimensions is the magical basis for our return from the future to the past."

He paused again, took a small sip of clear tea from his cup.

"Isn’t this self-contradictory?" Zheng Qing took advantage of this brief gap, couldn’t help raising his feather pen, full of confusion: "If the transition from past to future is from low dimension to high dimension, doesn’t that mean..."

He was stuck, momentarily unable to think of the appropriate adjective.

"Means that past magic power must be greater than future magic power to achieve such a low-dimensional to high-dimensional reverse phenomenon." Jiang Yu evidently shared a similar confusion: "But according to your earlier analysis... the past is low-dimensional, shouldn’t low-dimensional magic be less than high-dimensional magic? This sounds as strange as water flowing uphill!"

"Yes, yes, that’s exactly it." Zheng Qing nodded repeatedly.

"Very perceptive."

Baoyangzi’s face showed a satisfied smile: "True magic theory is indeed counterintuitive like this. First, I can confirm one thing, past magic power is indeed stronger than future magic power, which is also why the most powerful wizards are called ’the Ancient Ones’; secondly, magic power should indeed flow from high dimensions to low dimensions, which is a fundamental concept of adhering to magic laws; finally, convergent magic power might be stronger than divergent magic power. These three points together we term as ’asymmetry’ in the dimension of magic power over time. We know the past, but not the future, this reflects the asymmetry of time. Similarly, high dimensions and low dimensions, convergence and divergence, order and disorder, control and chaos, observable and unobservable, etc., all describe this ’asymmetry’."

Zheng Qing’s mouth opened slightly.

The elder’s previous words ’convergent magic power might be stronger than divergent magic power’ sparked some inspiration in his mind, before he could decide whether to voice that word, Jiang Yu next to him had already answered first.

"Forbidden Curse!"

The witch’s urgent tone carried a touch of realization, her crisp voice sounded like a string of pearls falling onto a jade plate: "A forbidden curse is a concept converged to the extreme... The past timeline is also a state of extreme convergence! The instantaneous magic power of a forbidden curse far exceeds any known magic power in the world, but the total of all the world’s magic power is certainly stronger than any one forbidden curse!"

"It truly isn’t contradictory anymore." Zheng Qing kept his head down frantically taking notes, muttering to himself for supplementation: "The so-called ’past low-dimensional magic power above future high-dimensional magic power’ is a relative concept... The magic power on a convergent timeline far exceeds the magic power of the divergent future."

"Very good, very good."

The elder wizard rubbed the teacup in his hand, took the opportunity to pull it into a brown teaching rod, waved it in the air, pointing to the second concept he just listed: "Now, let us introduce the next concept, the relative rate of time flow!

We mentioned earlier that the ’natural direction’ of time for everyone is from past to future.

But under this premise, the ’time flow rate’ experienced by each person is different—an obvious example, for children, they feel time moving very slowly, every year is extremely long; but for adults, time passes very quickly, each year as short as a month in childhood.

There is a concept of ’Time Acceleration’ in classical magic theory that describes this phenomenon. Of course, some call it ’Life Acceleration.’

This concept states that from the moment each person is born, the time they experience will maintain a constant acceleration; as they age, time passes faster under the influence of this acceleration. Naturally, there are paradoxes in certain situations with this concept, but it doesn’t affect its effectiveness in a broad sense.

This is mentioned because it has a famous theorem still widely used today—strong magic power will increase the time acceleration around the wizard, the stronger the magic power, the faster the time acceleration.

This also means that for a Legendary Wizard or a higher-order wizard, the time he perceives is fundamentally different from an Ordinary Wizard. The ancients used phrases like ’Great Dream Thousand Years,’ ’Ten Thousand Years in a Blink,’ ’A day in the sky, a year on Earth’ to describe this situation.

When a wizard advances to the realm of Big Wizard, they need to ’store’ their true form in their small world for years because they are too ’great’ and ’heavy,’ time will warp and accelerate around them, so to maintain a ’relatively harmonious’ state with the real world, they need to make some degree of compromise.

In a sense, this relationship between strength and weakness also embodies the ’asymmetry’ aspect."

Ps, am I really writing a novel here (self-doubt ing...) Writing a complete news report before I already felt quite excessive..._(:з」∠)_

Ps, after drawing conclusions for the next Chapter, I’m now a believer myself (╯‵□′)╯︵┻━┻