My physics masters couldn't possibly be grand mages.

Night had completely fallen.

Neither of them spoke on the way back. The streetlights cast long, yellowish shadows in the mist.

Char walked ahead, his consciousness sensing the presence of the book in his storage space. He walked steadily, but his heart was beating faster than usual.

He didn't truly breathe a sigh of relief until the door closed behind him.

He locked the door, drew the curtains, and took the antique-style lantern from the storage space, placing it on the coffee table. A dim, yellowish light spread out, filling the small room.

Then, the book with the leather cover appeared on the table.

Meditation Method

Einstein sat down on the sofa, looked at the book, and his lips twitched slightly—not a smile, but more like a confirmation.

"Is that why you ran there?"

Xia grinned: "Once the personnel list is announced, the relevant personnel go to the principal's office for a reprimand and to receive the 'Meditation Method.' That's standard procedure. Otherwise, why would I go if I knew I'd get a scolding?"

Will they find out?

"The maximum storage distance in the storage space is one meter." A sly glint flashed in Xia's eyes. "I didn't even touch the table."

"Simmons is a third-tier mage, and he didn't even realize it. If he were to suspect me, he would first have to suspect whether there is a mysterious mage of a higher rank than him behind me."

If he dared to investigate, he could have intercepted us at any time on our way back.

But we returned safely. Clearly, he didn't want to get into trouble over a book on meditation.

Einstein picked up the book and opened it.

Char continued, "This book is incredibly expensive on the black market. Getting my hands on this thing means my three years here weren't wasted."

If we can successfully inscribe one or two truth runes using the "Meditation Method..."

He hadn't finished speaking.

He was met with silence...

Xia Ya turned his head in slight surprise and saw the old man slowly leaning back in his chair, his eyes closed, motionless, as if he had fallen into a deep sleep...

The room was eerily quiet. Only the second hand of the grandfather clock ticked away.

Char paused for a moment, then carefully removed the book "The Method of Meditation" from Einstein's hands, trying not to disturb him.

After all, he wasn't sure whether the old man had entered a meditative state or fallen asleep.

By the light of the lantern, he slowly opened the book.

The book looks thick, but it doesn't actually contain much about meditation; most of it is general knowledge about the magical world.

He quickly flipped through the chapters, found the section on "meditation," read it silently twice, and then put the book back into his storage space.

He slowly closed his eyes, focusing his attention on the space between his eyebrows, the place said to house the "sea of ​​consciousness"...

It's quite difficult to clear your mind of distractions during your first meditation session, especially in a quiet environment, where it's easy to let your mind wander.

He tried many methods, but none of them worked.

But eventually, he began to focus his attention on his breathing.

The simple actions of breathing in and out repeated in his mind. As time passed, Xia felt the surroundings becoming increasingly quiet, and his soul seemed to gradually leave his body and enter a special space...

At first there was nothing.

Then, things began to emerge from the darkness.

Countless 0s and 1s emerged from nothingness, swirling, combining, and disintegrating around him.

They converged into a slowly rotating geometric shape, its surface flowing with mysterious symbols. He didn't recognize the symbols, but he could sense that they were meaningful.

That is the foundation of all magic—the runes of truth.

He tried to "read" them. The numbers flowed before his eyes, seemingly random, but after staring at them for a while, he suddenly felt they were "familiar".

His mind involuntarily began to calculate, not as if he were solving a problem, but as if he were using his own understanding to sense some underlying laws of the world.

He began to try to depict it.

He chose the rune that felt most "familiar" to him. Three spirals, intertwined, with a single point at the center.

He tried to draw the first stroke in his mind.

It's difficult. It's like writing on sandpaper with a pen that's run out of ink; every stroke requires force, and every stroke wears you down.

He felt his consciousness trembling, as if something was rejecting the appearance of this shape.

The first stroke wasn't even finished before it fell apart.

He took a deep breath and tried again.

This time he slowed down, not pushing hard, but feeling the direction the lines should go.

The curvature of the spiral, the angle of intersection, and the center point.

They are not random; they follow a certain... pattern.

He recalled how he felt when doing physics problems. It wasn't about memorizing answers, but about understanding what the problem was trying to tell him.

A spiral slowly took shape in his consciousness.

This time it didn't dissipate. It hovered there, its outline blurred, like an unfired clay piece. But he could feel it—it was there.

Then it starts to rotate.

It was slow, as if it were confirming its own shape. As it rotated, the blurry lines became clearer, and the center dot lit up briefly, like a heartbeat.

He succeeded.

At that moment, he "knew" the meaning of the rune—energy release and transformation.

In an instant, countless 0s and 1s surged toward him, transforming into a strange energy that flowed into his limbs and bones.

That's... magic.

The next moment, an overwhelming exhaustion swept over him, and his head began to feel heavy. A sore sensation came from deep within his brow.

He did not struggle and ended his meditation.

When he opened his eyes, he felt that the space beside him was empty.

Einstein was no longer on the sofa chair next to me.

The light from the lantern had dimmed considerably.

The pipe, still warm, sat on the table.

A rustling sound came from above.

Xia rubbed his eyes and followed the sound upstairs. The wooden door to the attic was ajar, and a sliver of dim light shone through the crack.

Push open the door.

Einstein sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by torn pages from books. Every page was covered in drawings.

It wasn't graffiti; it was a dense mass of symbols, arrows, formulas, and geometric shapes. His gray overcoat was draped over the back of the chair, and his shirt sleeves were rolled up to his forearms.

The attic is old. The blackboard in the corner was left by the previous occupant; the edges are cracked, but it's still usable. The blackboard is already half-filled with writing.

The kerosene lamp hung on a nail next to the blackboard, casting long shadows on the formulas.

"When did you wake up?" Xia asked.

Einstein didn't look up. He was squatting on the other side of the blackboard, wiping away a patch of writing with an old rag before rewriting. A pencil was tucked behind his ear, and his fingers were covered in chalk dust.

"You succeeded?" Einstein asked, his gaze still fixed on the blackboard.

Xia was stunned for a moment before realizing what he meant.

"I've depicted one," he said, trying to make his tone sound calm, "the release and transformation of energy. Did you succeed?"

"I meditated for a while and then quit."

"Withdraw?" Xia pondered the question carefully.

Normally, a mage meditates until their mental energy is exhausted before exiting, but this sounds like he quit voluntarily.

Einstein nodded.

"I mainly memorized the geometric structure of those runes," he said. "Have you noticed that those runes are, in a sense, computable?"

He turned his head, his gray-blue eyes showing no weariness, only a calm light that could almost be described as "hunger".

"I need more paper. And a good pen."

"I need to understand these things in a different way. I need to know why there are twenty-four of them, and not twenty-five, or twenty-three."

Xia opened his mouth, as if to say something.

For example, "You've only been exposed to magic for a few hours," or "It usually takes a magician decades to understand all the runes."

But he didn't say it.

Because of what was written on the blackboard, he swallowed back the words that were about to come out...