X
Join our Discord server and get release updates for every novel you follow.
Join the ServerThe atmosphere in the Magic Association’s office was visibly heavy.
President Samuel rubbed his throbbing temples, looking at the application submitted by Victor, which was ornately worded but filled with the smell of gunpowder.
The Debate of Truth.
In the history of magic, this term was always associated with confrontation, and even bloodshed.
Victor had requested, in the highest name of the Magic Association, to organize a debate to determine the origin of the world.
He wanted to, under the watch of the entire nation, completely expel the concept of the particle from the temple of physics.
“President, we cannot approve this,” a council member said with concern. “The order in the Royal Capital has just stabilized. Another ‘Day of Collapse,’ I’m afraid…”
Samuel was well aware of the risks.
But there was another, even greater pressure.
Ever since Horace’s paper was published, the entire academic world had been completely divided.
The debate between the Particle and Wave Factions was no longer a street brawl, but had escalated to a fundamental opposition of theoretical systems.
Every day, mages lost control of their magic because they could not reconcile the two contradictory theories.
The beds at St. Mungo’s Hospital had been in short supply for half a month.
If this chaos was not given an outlet for release and was allowed to fester, the entire magical system of the kingdom would begin to rot from within.
“Approve it,” Samuel finally made his decision, his voice hoarse. “Rather than letting it rot, it’s better to cut it open with our own hands.”
He needed a result, no matter what that result was.
The Magic Association’s decision, like a huge stone thrown into a lake, stirred up a monstrous wave throughout the Royal Capital.
The Truth Daily, with an unprecedented amount of coverage, reported on this century-defining duel that was about to take place in the Royal Grand Auditorium of Science.
The newspaper even created a special column called “Clash of Truths,” publishing daily submissions from supporters of both factions.
For a time, the scholars, mages, and even the common people of the entire Royal Capital were swept into this torrent of ideas.
Victor and his Wave Faction seized this opportunity and launched a massive publicity campaign.
They bought the front page of the Truth Daily for three consecutive days.
In the largest font, they expounded on their core argument.
The essence of the universe is a continuous sea of waves.
The so-called particle is just a macroscopic illusion of highly concentrated energy under specific conditions.
“Imagine a huge wave suddenly rising on a calm sea. It seems to be an independent entity, but we all know that its essence is still seawater.”
“The electron diffraction experiment is the final bible, the apocalypse written by God himself, declaring that the wave is the only truth of the universe.”
In order to make his theory look impeccable, Victor even resorted to personal attacks on the pioneers of particle theory.
Against the strongest evidence of the Particle Faction—the V-shaped trajectory of Compton scattering—he proposed a radical and bold model.
“That’s not two particles colliding.”
“That’s two highly concentrated ‘wave packets’ undergoing a drastic exchange and redistribution of energy at the moment of encounter, thus presenting two separate trajectories on a macroscopic level.”
This explanation sounded a bit like sophistry.
Many neutral scholars felt that this “wave packet collision” model lacked rigorous mathematical support and was more like a quibble for the sake of victory.
But for the fervent supporters of the Wave Faction, this was enough.
They just needed a reason to convince themselves, a weapon to attack their opponents.
Victor’s theory perfectly met their needs.
Meanwhile, at Eisenberg Manor.
Horace frowned as he read Victor’s rant in the newspaper. He hadn’t expected his paper to trigger such a violent storm.
As a pure scholar, he had only faithfully recorded and verified the experimental phenomenon.
He had never intended to completely deny the existence of particles.
The complexity of the world far exceeded any single model.
“Dear, are you going to intervene?” Eleonora brought him a cup of hot tea and asked softly.
“I must intervene,” Horace put down the newspaper. “But not as a participant, but as an arbitrator.”
He could not let this search for truth devolve into a destructive partisan struggle.
He immediately contacted Samuel and offered to serve as an arbitrator for this debate, to ensure its absolute fairness.
Samuel was overjoyed.
With Horace, a highly respected Ninth-Circle Archmage, presiding, he could at least suppress those restless extremists.
And the other central figure in this storm, de Broglie, felt an unprecedented unease.
He had only proposed a conjecture about the harmonious beauty of the universe.
He never expected that this conjecture would become a sharp sword capable of tearing the world apart.
The Wave Faction revered him as a prophet.
The Particle Faction regarded him as an enemy worth winning over.
Countless invitations flew in like snowflakes; both sides wanted to pull him into their camp.
De Broglie ultimately chose to refuse.
Citing the fact that the “Institute for Microscopic Matter Research” had just been established and he was busy with research, he politely declined all invitations and announced that he would observe the debate as a neutral party.
He just wanted to know where his theory would lead the world.
As the day of the debate approached, the atmosphere in the Royal Capital became increasingly frenzied.
The underground betting market of the magic world opened up all sorts of strange odds.
A bet on who would win between Henry and Victor had even odds.
A bet on how many high-level mages would switch sides due to “cognitive restructuring” during the debate.
Someone even started a pool on whether the first mage to collapse would be from the school of elementalism or the school of evocation.
This debate about truth had completely turned into a carnival for the whole population.
Everyone was looking forward to that day, to see whether the particle would smash the wave, or the wave would engulf the particle.
The clamor of the Wave Faction, like the thunder of summer, resounded through the Royal Capital.
And the camp of the Particle Faction was shrouded in a repressive silence.
Henry locked himself in his laboratory and didn’t come out for two whole days.
When he reappeared, his eyes were bloodshot, but his gaze had regained its sharpness.
He summoned all the core members of the Particle Faction and held an emergency meeting in an inconspicuous conference room at the Royal Academy of Sciences.
“We were carried away,” Henry’s voice was hoarse but unusually firm. “By that damn diffraction ring.”
“We almost forgot that we also hold irrefutable evidence that the other side cannot explain.”
He walked to the blackboard and drew a clear, straight line with a piece of chalk.
“The cloud chamber.”
“When an electron passes through a cloud chamber filled with supersaturated vapor, it leaves a unique, continuous track.”
“May I ask Master Victor, if an electron is a diffuse wave, how does it manage to condense water vapor only along a straight line?”
“Does its wave function have a pair of eyes that can accurately follow a line?”
“This is the most direct and irrefutable evidence of the ‘indivisibility’ of the particle!”
Henry’s words were like a shot of adrenaline, revitalizing all the dejected members of the Particle Faction.
They were not powerless.
“And the photoelectric effect!” another professor stood up excitedly.
“One photon for one electron! Clean and neat! A one-to-one energy exchange! How can this be explained by waves? Does the light wave play rock-paper-scissors when it hits a metal surface, picking only one lucky winner?”
“Compton scattering!” someone else added.
“The momentum conservation we calculated is accurate to several decimal places! Wave packets? Can such a vague thing obey such a strict law of conservation of momentum? What a joke!”
The atmosphere in the conference room became lively again.
They took stock of the weapons in their hands, and their confidence returned bit by bit.
They realized that they were not lambs to the slaughter.
This war was far from being decided.
The debate in the magic world also gave birth to many strange and bizarre theories.
A neutral scholar published an article in Magitech Theory titled The Pilot Wave Hypothesis.
He boldly proposed that perhaps particles and waves coexist. There is a real, observable particle.
But its trajectory is guided in the dark by an invisible, ghost-like “phase wave.”
In the double-slit experiment, it is this “phase wave” that passes through both slits and interferes, thus manipulating the particle from behind the scenes, causing it to land in specific locations.
This theory sounded like adding a mystical setting to physics, but it surprisingly could explain the experimental evidence of both factions.
Within the Particle Faction, there were also some different voices.
Some speculated that electrons might not be non-intelligent, inanimate objects.
They might possess a “field perception” ability that surpasses our understanding.
When flying towards the double slits, it could “perceive” in advance that there were two choices ahead, and adjust its own trajectory based on this perception, thus exhibiting wave-like behavior.
But this theory, because it could not be described by any mathematical formula, was quickly rejected by Henry.
“We are physicists, mages, not charlatans,” Henry said coldly. “A conjecture that cannot produce a formula is worthless.”
While the two factions were actively preparing for the battle, the Magic Association was also making final preparations for this unprecedented debate.
The Grand Auditorium of the Royal Academy of Sciences was set up like a heavily guarded fortress.
On the dome and walls of the auditorium, dozens of ancient rune arrays for suppressing magic storms were inscribed with spirit ink.
In terms of strength, these arrays could probably withstand the bombardment of an Eighth-Circle spell for at least half an hour.
Around the auditorium, the top healing team from St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries was arranged.
Each of them carried precious potions for stabilizing the sea of consciousness, ready to rush into the venue at any time to rescue the unlucky ones who were on the verge of collapse due to “cognitive restructuring.”
President Samuel personally inspected every security detail.
He did not want a repeat of the tragedy of the “Bloody Debate” from three hundred years ago during his term.
That time, due to the debate over “heliocentrism” versus “geocentrism,” a full thirty-seven high-level mages had their heads explode on the spot, splattering blood all over the council.
History must not repeat itself.
At least, not when such thorough preparations had been made.
Now, in a tense and orderly atmosphere, the Royal Capital was heading towards the final day of judgment.
Loving this chapter? You'll be hooked on My Star, Your Star! Click to explore more!
Read : My Star, Your Star
If You Notice any translation issues or inconsistency in names, genders, or POV etc? Let us know here in the comments or on our Discord server, and we’ll fix it in current and future chapters. Thanks for helping us to improve! 🙂