Chapter 6: The Witch Academy Under the Curtain Wall
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 6: The Witch Academy Under the Curtain Wall
Although Sister Bai’s phone was incredibly cool, I wasn't thick-skinned enough to ask to play with it. Setting aside whether there was anything private on there, I hadn't even mastered transcendent power yet—would I even be able to operate a device like that?
Besides, if I could just hold out a little longer, I’d be at the academy soon. They’d issue me my own phone then—at least, that’s what Sister Bai said, and I chose to believe her for now.
"We’re almost there. Xiao Han, get your admission letter ready," Sister Bai suddenly said to me.
"Huh? Oh, okay." Though I was confused as to why, I obediently took the admission letter into my hand. "Does this... serve a purpose?"
"We’re about to pass through the Curtain Wall," Sister Bai explained tersely. "Anyone who isn't a student of the Witch Academy can only pass through the Curtain Wall if they are holding their admission letter."
"Wait, what?" My brain stalled for a few seconds before I processed her words. Ignoring the parts I didn't understand, did she mean I literally needed to hold this letter to enter the academy?
What kind of bizarre screening mechanism was that?
Seeing that Sister Bai didn't seem inclined to explain further, I didn't press the issue. Instead, I looked down at the letter in my hand. I hadn't had the chance to read the whole thing before Sister Bai had whisked me onto the train in a daze. Looking at it now, there was indeed a clause stating that one must personally hold the admission letter to enter the Witch Academy, and that those without a guide should head to a specific station to find...
The rest was a long set of instructions on how to enter the academy. Good grief—if Sister Bai hadn't been guiding me, I probably would have wasted a massive amount of time trying to figure this out.
At that moment, my gaze drifted to the two people across from us. I saw that Senior Sister Deng was stuffing a seemingly pre-prepared admission letter into the boy's hand.
"Every year, the Witch Academy drafts provisional admission letters for genius-tier students. If the academy wasn't on their list of preferred schools, or if they didn't plan on coming, these letters are issued as quest items for those tasked with recruiting new students. Don't make a big deal out of it," Sister Bai said with a smile, as if it were a trivial matter.
So that’s how the Witch Academy operates?
"Other academies do the same thing," Sister Bai added. But before I could breathe a sigh of relief, she continued, "Of course, they’re all just shamelessly copying our Witch Academy."
Shamelessly copying... That’s a massive double standard right there. Who’s the shameless one here?!
I was beyond the point of wanting to complain. I couldn't help but feel—no, I was certain—that the Witch Academy was not a "normal" institution.
But it didn't matter. I wanted transcendent power, and I’d take it wherever I could get it. I just hoped the academy didn't follow some "law of the jungle" survival-of-the-fittest crap. I really wasn't built for that.
I wasn't good at scheming against people, and my mental processing speed was nothing to brag about. I just hoped the academy allowed slackers to exist.
I took a few deep breaths to steady my nerves and looked out the window. In the distance, a massive, technologically advanced city was already visible.
I wondered what exactly this "Curtain Wall" Sister Bai mentioned was.
Curious, I activated my Spirit Vision. In the past, Spirit Vision had been nothing but an endless burden. Back then, I couldn't control it, and it had made daily life an agonizing ordeal.
The things I saw never matched my common sense; they shattered my worldview and drained what little sanity I had left.
It wasn't until later that I slowly mastered the technique, learning how to turn Spirit Vision off and how to autonomously filter out the complex, illogical flood of information while it was active.
Now, through my eyes, the world looked as if a filter had been applied. It was no longer as if information was being carried by sunlight reflecting off physical surfaces into my eyes.
Instead, it felt as if all matter was expressing its own information through abstract concepts, and my "eyes" were a receiving window that let it all come rushing into my mind.
It reconstructed my understanding of the world in a different form, giving me a "concept of distance," a "concept of matter," a "concept of energy," and so on.
This perspective required adaptation and understanding; it needed to be compared against the images seen by normal eyes.
The impact was no less intense than a person born blind suddenly regaining sight after decades. Everything they see overstimulates their nerves, and this never-before-experienced visual input forces them to completely rebuild their perception of the world.
Fortunately, I was a transmigrator. If I had been a newborn in this world, I might have been locked in a mental asylum for life because I wouldn't have known what a "normal" person's world looked like. Without that baseline for comparison, I would have had no way to distinguish between the Surface World and the Inner World.
Now, bolstered by Spirit Vision, I saw the city gradually shift into a "form" I couldn't comprehend—complex material information overwriting the basic characteristics of the original matter.
However, I wasn't interested in the skyscrapers. My entire attention was captured by a massive, translucent energy dome that looked like an inverted bowl.
The high-speed train I was on was about to slam right into it!
I couldn't tell if it was an illusion, but the city inside the dome seemed to have a strange overlap. This massive discrepancy immediately caught my eye.
Was this the Curtain Wall Sister Bai had mentioned?
Under the Curtain Wall was the Magic City, but inside the Curtain Wall was... the Witch Academy?
I was startled by my own guess. But if that were true, then... was the Witch Academy located in a different space entirely?
I watched as the train carried us at high speed into the so-called Curtain Wall. The translucent barrier swallowed the train bit by bit. In the blink of an eye, the wall seemed to sweep right through me.
As the screen of light passed through my body, I instinctively braced myself, but nothing happened. Only the sudden burst of goosebumps on my skin proved that I had actually seen something.
I looked down at the admission letter in my hand. It felt as if something inside it had briefly enveloped my entire body.
Then, I felt the jarring impact of sudden braking, causing my forehead to slam hard against the back of the seat in front of me.
"We’re here," Sister Bai said first. Once the train came to a complete halt, she stood up to leave.
Senior Sister Deng was still tending to the student she had put to sleep; after all, she had to ensure the student she brought arrived safely at the academy.
After stepping off the train, I realized that the "high-speed train" I had been riding had completely changed. The front carriages and the engine were gone; only the carriage we had been in remained. Even its design was different from the one we had boarded.
"Alright, the Witch Academy and the Magic City aren't essentially in the same space. You didn't expect a single train to exist in two spaces simultaneously, did you? Not even in overlapping spaces."
Sister Bai gave me a brief explanation to snap me out of my daze. I decided not to overthink it and stop splitting hairs.
I hurried forward, dragging my suitcase to Sister Bai's side as we headed toward the platform to register our arrival.