Chapter 560: The Aftermath of Battle
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 560: The Aftermath of Battle
The battle at the hotel had come to an end.
However, the ripple effects of the conflict were far from over.
This clash could be described as the heaviest blow Magic City had dealt with in recent memory; those roiling thunderclouds had truly terrified the ordinary people in the outside world.
The hotel itself wasn't faring much better. The atrium floor needed repairs, the building's infrastructure was in shambles, and the residual power from that Over-consumption Spellbook had shattered the exterior facade and damaged surrounding structures. All in all, it was a massive engineering project.
The Jack-of-all-trades Club promptly released an official statement regarding the incident.
Their handling of the situation was impeccable. The auction preview wasn't suspended for long; only a few exhibits in the atrium area needed to be relocated. Fortunately, the battle hadn't affected many of the auction items; the brunt of the damage was sustained by the hotel itself. Afterward, they issued formal apologies and offered compensation to all the guests.
This included the destruction of the high-end suites on that floor and the structural damage spanning multiple levels, which put a significant strain on the hotel's accommodations.
Since it was only the first day of the preview, not many guests had been affected in their rooms. The manager went up personally to soothe each one and proactively negotiate follow-up solutions, handling the matter with seamless professionalism.
As for the damaged parts of the hotel… that required temporary repairs by specialists. Since the ones in control here were transcendents, they could utilize supernatural means for the restoration, ensuring absolute efficiency. The hotel promised to complete the repairs by tonight, deploying soundproofing spells in the meantime so that no noise would disturb the guests' rest.
Because of its relationship with the Witch Academy, the hotel saw a high volume of transcendent students. Brawls weren't exactly rare here; damaged walls and cracked floors were common occurrences. Consequently, the hotel kept a construction repair squad on standby. However, this time… the scale of the destruction was simply too vast.
Even if they called in every repair squad currently on leave, finishing in a single night would be a stretch.
Still… it was enough to maintain a facade of decency. The Jack-of-all-trades Club planned to close the hotel for a major overhaul after the auction. They would take this opportunity to reinforce and renovate the long-standing landmark of Magic City from the ground up.
And that was just the impact on the hotel itself.
Meanwhile, the invited guests couldn't stop talking about it.
Gossip flew everywhere as various factions tapped into their connections and intelligence networks to dig for details.
The battle had shown many people just how brutal a fight between transcendents could be. This was especially true for the ordinary people; although they had been evacuated to safety at the start, the battle's reach was so wide that there was no way they could have missed the commotion.
It was a stroke of luck that the hotel had undergone structural reinforcement after being taken over by the Witch Academy. Otherwise, it never would have survived the full force of an Over-consumption Spellbook without collapsing. In the end, the damage was limited to the severe destruction of the top-floor facade and the loss of facilities like lightning rods.
Of course, the battle had been directed at people, not the surrounding architecture; the hotel had merely been caught in the aftershocks.
Information regarding the two combatants was quickly unearthed.
The one who had exuded terrifying power from start to finish, wreathed in electricity and churning the very weather of Magic City, was named Liliana. She was a powerful teaching assistant at the Witch Academy. Before taking that position, her combat ranking in the academy's arena had been legendary.
At the mention of her name, many people remembered. She wasn't just famous within the Witch Academy; she was well-known among other transcendent academies as well, mostly because the academy's strongest students basically made a habit of going around looking for trouble with other schools.
This had led to a situation where, in the eyes of ordinary people, the Three Top Academies were prestigious, while the fourth-ranked Witch Academy was nearly dismissed as a "wild chicken" school due to its reputation.
However, at the level of transcendent students, they saw things clearly. They often isolated the Witch Academy—not because the witches weren't qualified to play with them, but because the witches were too strong and loved to play dirty. The other schools simply couldn't afford to keep up.
Of course, while the upperclassmen of other academies knew this in their hearts, they refused to admit it for the sake of their pride. This often led to underclassmen being misled, and then… well, there was no "then" for them.
As for the other combatant… the white-haired girl named Yang Yuehan, many people were gradually beginning to recall her story.
She was another miracle of the Witch Academy!
She had been enrolled for only six months, was exempt from courses, and frequently skipped exams. Yet, in such a short time, she had leaped from student to teaching assistant, becoming the first precedent in the academy's history of a lower-year student achieving that rank.
Rumor had it she had used the back door, using her beauty to seduce a newly appointed transcendent mentor and becoming his girlfriend. Supposedly, that mentor had then ignored all objections during the teaching assistant interview to hire her.
Such a miracle was almost impossible to replicate, yet it had encouraged many students to try and imitate her. To date, there hadn't been a single success; most were simply lectured by their mentors.
At this moment, many who had failed realized what their mentors meant when they were rejected with the words: "You aren't Xiao Han; you aren't as excellent as her."
At the very least, in terms of raw strength, they truly couldn't compare to Xiao Han…
And this was after only six months!
In half a year, she had grown to the point where she could crush the established powerhouses of the Witch Academy. They could hardly imagine what the scene would be like by the time Xiao Han was ready to graduate.
As this information spread, the most shocked were the invited lower-year students and the freshmen.
All their previous slander now seemed like a joke. The person they had once blackmailed or smeared due to outside influence could now crush them with a single hand.
By being invited here, the greatest "worldliness" they had gained was escaping the mindless narrative-pushing on the academy network and witnessing the true gap between themselves and others with their own eyes.
She had used her actions to prove the upper limit of what a freshman could achieve in six months. From this day forward, no one in the Witch Academy would dare call themselves a genius.
With a single sentence, she had solidified her status and mocked her opponent's incompetence.
One could say that the phrase "Miss Number 02" was the final, lethal blow to her opponent.
The conflict had started because of the number on that bidding plate. Many had seen Liliana making a scene at the entrance, but no one expected it to be the fuse for all of this.
Liliana had paid the price for her arrogance. She had proven with her own strength that her previous behavior was nothing more than incompetent rage, and the final result proved that she truly deserved that Number 02 plate.
While the rumors outside were burning hot, the club reporters who had arrived early were frantic with excitement. They could already envision their news articles causing a sensation on the academy network!
As word of the battle spread, the auction itself entered the vision of even more people. Perhaps this was the strange mindset of transcendents; they didn't think the hotel was "bad" just because a fight had broken out there.
While everyone's attention was fixed on the gossip, I had been moved into a brand-new suite under the hotel's arrangements.
After all, the suites on the original floor had mostly been caught in the crossfire. I had no idea how much Liliana would have to pay for the full repairs. Luckily, I had shifted the blame quickly; otherwise, given my usual lack of concern for money, I really didn't know if I could afford it.
But as for the damage to the hotel… I certainly had no subjective intent to destroy anything.
Because I had just touched upon the perception of Time Sense, I had used Body Cultivation power throughout the entire fight. I hadn't affected the surrounding environment much, but because of that, my combat style looked… a bit lacking in special effects. However, the hits from the Book in the Box in my hand were definitely "corner to the bone."
After that somewhat exhilarating battle, I realized that the power of Body Cultivation truly couldn't be described by common logic. Physical strength wasn't a body cultivator's only weapon.
Perception was a pathway, and the techniques built upon that pathway were the true methods of a body cultivator. Or rather, in the absence of other power systems, physical fitness and bodily strength were indeed the weapons with the best affinity for Body Cultivation, but they were by no means the only ones.
During this Mental State Manifestation, I hadn't manifested the Tree of Great Knowledge. In fact, halfway through, I had actively cast aside the combat assistance it provided. I felt that using such means against Liliana was a bit like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
I even noticed that her combat rhythm was somewhat rigid. When faced with unknown techniques, she became flustered. Meanwhile, I could easily obtain all the information on her spellbooks, her common spells, her combat style, and so on.
I suddenly realized that the methods I used merely as combat support were her only reliance in battle. So, toward the end, I stopped viewing her as an enemy or even an opponent.
She wasn't quite worthy.
Ultimately, the greatest gain she provided me was the insight gained from the unrestrained use of Time Sense.
Time Sense isn't just simple thought acceleration. It is the Seventh Sense of Body Cultivation—a perceptual behavior. Just as the original five senses correspond to sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, and the Sixth Sense is a Mindscape perception targeting living individuals derived from those five pathways, the Seventh Sense breaks away from external targets to perceive time itself on an equal footing with the other senses.
All life can perceive the passage of time, but that feeling is mostly a cognitive illusion—a logic derived from other perceptions. Only by awakening Time Sense and defining the scale of time through physical perception can one break this illusion and truly possess a sense to perceive the flow of time.
This ability is simply too heaven-defying. Only those who have truly touched this domain can understand its terror.
Even though my Time Sense is still just a prototype—merely scratching the surface of time—it is already enough to deal a "dimensionality reduction strike" of extra perception against those who haven't touched this field.
The simplest application is adjusting my own perceived time. But this ability to adjust one's own perception isn't the entirety of Time Sense; it's just a subset, a pathway through which I recognize Time Sense. That's why I say the Seventh Sense is still just a prototype.
The Knowledge Shadow was right: "If you need time, then time will come looking for you." This was the catalyst for me touching Time Sense. Because I was qualified to reach it, that sentence served as the perfect inspiration.
To an average person, however, those words would just seem like nonsense. They might even think I'd gone mad. After all, humans cannot understand things outside their own cognition, and language cannot perfectly express the meaning I want to convey.
Now, inside this massive suite, I took a walk around and found that it didn't have the sauna Jiao Xiaoshuang had mentioned. I was a bit disappointed; my plan to steam in a sauna had fallen through. In the end, I chose to take a bath to let my body relax after the exercise.
My livestream was still running. The Witch sisters watching were still discussing the battle from earlier.
Even though they were already Transcendent Witches and, from a power level perspective, my fight looked no different than children brawling, they were still watching with great interest. They occasionally offered critiques and hadn't stopped even now.
They didn't care about the children in the Witch Academy fighting, playing petty tricks, or acting arrogant. After all… whether those kids could even become Transcendent Witches was still up in the air.
Once they became witches, the others would be tolerant of their pasts. Every witch needs to grow, and witches are generally very forgiving of "naughty" behavior. After all, who hasn't been immature?
The arrogance of today would be their "dark history" in the future. It was better to collect as much of it as possible; such was the mindset and joy of a long-lived species.
A witch would never criticize another for being immature, because that period is the most carefree time in a witch's life—the source of their vitality. And the Witch race has the strength in the Void to guarantee a safe environment for them to grow. Witches are notoriously protective of their own.
"Speaking of which, Xiao Han's fighting style is very unique. That book… it's Natalie's masterpiece, right? I remember that girl has been bragging about it lately. What a lively one."
The livestream comments continued to scroll.
"First time seeing someone smash people with a book. Xiao Han, you won't mind if I ask Natalie to custom-make a similar one for me, right?"
"The power of Body Cultivation is truly mysterious. Did she manifest a Mindscape earlier? Why didn't I see that tree? That was the Tree of Great Knowledge, wasn't it?"
"Xiao Han probably didn't think it was worth using against that girl. By the way, who's mentoring this child Liliana? Are any sisters going over to check on her?"
I watched the comments fly by. It seemed none of the Witch sisters mentioned the Seventh Sense of Body Cultivation. Perhaps most of them weren't body cultivators and didn't notice, or maybe they just thought it was impossible for me to grow that quickly.
"Um… sisters, that's all for today's stream~ I'm going to take a bath now, so I'm signing off." I spoke up.
"Not streaming the bath? I want to see Xiao Han's jade feet."
"Are you a pervert? You won't even let Xiao Han off!"
"Xiao Han has a girlfriend, you know. Watch out, she might be on her way with a blade to settle the score!"
"I just said I wanted to see. Xiao Han's girlfriend probably gets to play with them every day. How am I the pervert?"