Don't disturb the sorcerer's scientific research

Chapter 204: Time Stopped Makes Jia Xiu Very Excited
Time stops.

A word that's hard not to associate with.

Schools, hospitals, buses, road rollers...

But what exactly is this "time-stopping dark room" thing?

It was already inappropriate, but when these two words are combined, it becomes even more inappropriate.

Could it be... some kind of magical imprisonment game?

impossible.

Jia Xiu quickly dismissed his own idea.

It uses a name that evokes all sorts of suggestive ideas, but the content is actually perfectly normal. The sect leader has done this kind of deceptive thing several times before.

They only gave the name of the spell after the upgrade, without providing any detailed description.

This made Jia Xiu even more convinced that the content inside was definitely legitimate.

To find out the truth, Jia Xiu directly activated the upgraded version of the dark room.

Although I had anticipated that what was inside would be unexpected, it was still inevitable that things would turn out differently once I actually entered this experimental space.

[Unable to identify the registration status of this spell]

High-risk virus detected

For safety reasons, it is recommended to enable the protection function.

……

Jia Xiu now has ample reason to suspect that the sect leader is also incredibly bored every day, and may be locked in some dark room surrounded by nothingness, unable to do anything, and using all his idle time to come up with a prank.

He was probably the only one who could be tricked by the sect leader. Every time he leveled up, he would be forced to watch the sect leader's newest and most amazing little ideas.

Perhaps the sect leader is even more eager for him to level up than he is to do so himself...

Jia Xiu gave a perfunctory, awkward laugh to show his "approval" of the sect leader's design, and then skillfully chose to ignore the risks and continue the installation.

Who would have thought that, even after two lifetimes in a place where prostitution is legal, he would still ignore the risks?

In a way, it feels like home...

As the spell was officially activated, something else that felt very familiar appeared.

A new set of function runes appeared in the small dark room, and a pop-up window appeared next to it.

"Triggering this will enable the time-stop feature in the new version. [Next]"

It seems that this sect leader may have come from the same place as him.

The tutorials for adding new features are exactly the same as those tutorials for app updates.

But if that's the case, where on Earth would anyone who understands magic come from?

That could also be because his memories were completely read, and he learned the ways of internet companies from his previous memories.

If that's the case, then hopefully the sect leader won't learn anything more abstract about Earth's specialties from his memories.

As a working person who has time but no money, and money but no time, spending all my spare time "wasting my life" on the internet, I've been exposed to far too much abstract content.

If the sect leader is truly a local deity who has read his memories, then perhaps the most abnormal god in this world is about to be born here.

Completely out of muscle memory, Jia Xiu triggered the next step.

The reason why muscle memory is muscle memory is because it doesn't require conscious thought.

Before Jia Xiu's brain could even process what was happening, he had already clicked "next" more than a dozen times in a row.

They skipped all the feature tutorials.

I didn't get into it at all.

His understanding of the introductory content was almost as "detailed" as his understanding of the software user license agreement.

Seeing this, Jia Xiu sighed.

He doesn't even look at the properly installed functions, so it's even less likely that he would install functions that ignore the risks.

He decided to use the most traditional, not necessarily the most efficient, but certainly useful method to learn the time-stop function—to try triggering each new rune.

After a few minutes of haphazard interaction, Jia Xiu quickly figured out the new function.

It is not complicated, but it is very powerful.

With the new feature, he can now pause the experiment at any point during the spell's effect.

The spell's state is preserved in that single moment.

Furthermore, he can observe all the details that occur in that instant, and through this segmented, node-by-node study of spells, he can gain a more comprehensive and detailed understanding of the basic principles by which magic works.

In the small dark room, in the distance, was the target that Jia Xiu was most used to using, the nobleman whose saintly qualities remained unchanged—Hannash.

Although I have faced many opponents in the past six months, one always feels a sense of nostalgia for the enemies one faced when one first started out.

Therefore, when testing spells that do not have specific requirements for the target race, Jaxiu always uses Hannah as the target.

In the future, any magical achievements Jia Xiu makes should be credited to Hannah with a fraction of a percent of the credit, and it's worth mentioning it when expressing gratitude.

A flaming arrow hovered in mid-air between Hannah and Jassi.

It was Jia Xiu who just fired it to test the time stop function.

The arrow, condensed with magic, hovered in the air in a peculiar state, its flames fixed in a single, rising moment, making it appear almost unreal.

This "time-stop" effect is actually quite accurate.

Jia Xiu continued experimenting and discovered that he could not only pause the spell, but also "fast forward" or "rewind" the spell in effect to find any state he wanted.

Furthermore, he could see something resembling coding on the current flaming arrow.

Did you secretly upgrade your Eye of the Rune without telling him?
There are no words on it.

This encoding was neither a programming language he was familiar with, nor binary.

It appears to be some kind of state marker for the elements, composed of certain patterns.

Encoding, encoding...

Jia Xiu suddenly realized that if he understood magic through code, and code corresponded to runes, then according to the process of using code, computers could not directly "read" the code; it needed to be converted into a binary form that the machine could execute.

So, what we can see on the fire arrow now is the "binary code" that this spell is executing at this moment. Of course, its form is not binary; it's something that we can't understand at all yet.

Since there is a final execution state and an initial programming code state, it is only natural that there should be a process of transforming code into "machine code".

A process that can explain how a spell works.

A massively important discovery!

Upon realizing this, Jia Xiu became so excited that he experienced a bit of tinnitus.

It's important to understand that magic, as a discipline, is indeed rigorous. Compared to the previous generation, who hid in dark spires and relied on limited observations and mystical self-created concepts to apply magic, it is far more rigorous.

However, compared to mathematics, a subject that is clear-cut and straightforward, magic can be described as quite "savage and free".

In fact, many fundamental principles of magic have not been fully grasped; they are only empirical formulas or empirical theorems that have not been fully proven.

As long as no loopholes or counterexamples have been found that render this approach unusable, we can use it as is for now, regardless of the specific principles involved; as long as it works, that's fine. The reason this phenomenon occurs is because humanity, or more precisely, not only humanity, but all races that use magic, face a difficult problem.

The means of observing magic are very limited.

Once a spell takes effect, it takes effect. The only clear states are the initial and final states. However, some spells can capture changes at several key points in the intermediate states.

For example, the fairly basic spell Hand of the Mage has been broken down into magic shaping, a fixed hand shape, and several control links. Spellcasters have researched a lot about what happens at each step. Although they cannot say that they have completely mastered it, Hand of the Mage can be considered a spell with a very clear principle.

More often than not, the intermediate state is a complete mess, impossible to understand.

For example, teleportation.

Yes, as one of the most widely used spells, the exact nature of teleportation is still uncertain.

During the process of being transported from one place to another, the exact state of the transported object remains uncertain, with spellcasters from different schools offering various conjectures.

Even more outrageous is that different methods of teleportation were developed based on these different conjectures, and all of them are usable and can be found in various places.

As a result, the current understanding of teleportation in the magical world is that there are many incomplete but "reliable" ways of understanding the fundamental principles. These approaches to the truth from different angles can only be described as incomplete, not wrong.

We haven't quite figured out the processes and principles behind commonly used modes of transportation.

When Jia Xiu first learned of this situation, his already negative feelings towards teleportation (due to dizziness) became even stronger.

But I came to terms with it later.

He remembered something: if he remembered correctly, the exact reason why airplanes can fly was not fully understood in principle; there were explanations, but none of them were complete.

There is still considerable room for improvement in fluid mechanics.

But you still have to take the plane.

At least the survival rate is much higher when teleportation malfunctions. So far, there have been no recorded cases of teleportation failures resulting in teleportation to unknown locations, only cases of teleportation to the wrong place.

Although being in the wrong place can be dangerous, the overall survival rate is still much better than falling from the sky.

It is said that some spellcasters are actually looking forward to situations where they can't find their way after being teleported, such as being teleported to another dimension.

It directly "ascended" from intraplane teleportation to interplanetary teleportation.

If it can be used stably, that would be a great achievement.

At this moment, Jia Xiuzheng was intently searching for the process of the Flame Arrow spell changing from code to that unknown encoding.

It's not easy to find.

From the perspective of someone who used to work in the gaming industry, I have to criticize the interaction design of the game's creator.

It's a function that requires very precise instantaneous location, yet it doesn't provide a method for precise location.

The only way to fine-tune it is with the fast forward and rewind runes. How much you adjust depends entirely on your hand strength; a slight tremor and you might adjust it too much.

Judging from the fact that the node could not be found in half a day, the process from code to encoding should be very short.

Jia Xiu was sweating profusely from fast-forwarding and retreating.

The more I adjusted, the more anxious I became, and the more anxious I became, the more my hands trembled.

I feel like I have OCD and I have to adjust the volume to an integer value.

It took forever to get the integer value, and I felt really uncomfortable.

Could it be that this unlucky sect leader is planning to "squeeze out features in small increments"? Not important, but useful features can be saved for the next level to greatly motivate the research team to upgrade?
He's already been proactive enough.

After trying for about twenty minutes in the dark room, Jia Xiu finally located the moment he desperately wanted to see.

The process from code to encoding.

The process from rune to element execution.

It is also the process that contains the fundamental principle of how magic works.

Once you figure this out, Jia Xiu's name is destined to fill several future magic textbooks.

So that young spellcasters a hundred years from now will get a headache just from hearing the name Jia Xiu, and while they're having a headache, they'll also have to pray for Jia Xiu's blessing during finals week...

The Spellcasters' Association would have been eager to send the Larvin Award, representing the highest honor in the world of magic, to his home.

The treatment cannot be the same. Other major magical achievements, after being researched, must first be nominated, then queue up, and wait for the award to be given to someone else.

What he's doing requires the association to be eager to award him a prize the year the paper is published.

Suppressing his excitement, Jia Xiu watched the process of converting the Fire Arrow spell code...

"Um……"

Jia Xiu stroked his chin, realizing that things didn't seem so simple.

"hiss……"

After watching for a few more minutes, Jia Xiu scratched his head.

"Eh……"

After remaining silent for several minutes, Jia Xiu pulled out several strands of hair.

No, very wrong.

I don't understand this at all!
From his perspective, this node is no different from gibberish.

Chaotic, disordered, unlike any form of code he had ever encountered.

It feels even more absurd than asking him to write code for a computer by punching holes in paper.

After being bombarded by a massive amount of unfamiliar knowledge, Jia Xiu took a moment to calm down.

Thinking about how to study this thing.

First of all, it can be directly determined that there are many blurry and unclear parts in the code we see.

If I'm not mistaken, the numbers are insufficient.

If your intelligence isn't high enough when learning magic, the runes you get will be vague rather than clear code.

As for the remaining clear parts, since it is encoding, it is assumed that the basic principles of the spell are logical.

Jia Xiu could only make this assumption.

If he didn't do it this way, he really couldn't think of any other way to understand these things.

The first step is to find a clear correspondence between this part and the source code.

Even if it appears disordered at first glance, it should still be a series of parts corresponding to each other.

Once you figure out where one corresponds to another, that's a major breakthrough.

However, there is another annoying thing.

Jia Xiu was certain that the moment he had found was definitely a moment in the entire process from code to encoding, not at the beginning or after the transformation was completed.

Because there are still some places that retain the code format he can recognize.

By North!

Does this mean he has to manually find the start and end points?
Jia Xiu slapped his forehead, immediately entering a state of deep contemplation. He decided to ignore what these things were for now, memorize them all by rote, and then slowly try to find the patterns...

(End of this chapter)