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Join the ServerKlein’s voice was soft.
As soft as a feather landing on the surface of a lake.
But the moment that feather fell, the entire thousand-person auditorium felt an invisible force grip its throat.
The atmosphere seemed to congeal into glue.
Even the soft scratching of the recorder’s quill on parchment in the distance became jarringly sharp.
“Doesn’t need… a medium?”
An old professor in the front row muttered to himself.
The wrinkles on his face were squeezed together from extreme shock.
It was as if he had heard someone declare that fish could swim in fire.
Or that birds could fly through solid rock.
This wasn’t just overturning the “aether.”
This was taking a common sense notion that the magical world had held for a thousand years, throwing it on the ground, and stomping it to pieces.
All classical magic theories were built upon the axiom that “waves require a carrier.”
Water waves need water.
Sound waves need air.
This was a truth even a three-year-old apprentice in his bedwetting years knew.
Now, someone was telling them it was all wrong.
Laurent stood stiffly on the stage.
His purple and gold mage robe looked somewhat comical at this moment.
He had prepared a full three pages of rebuttal.
It was a precise derivation concerning aether density, shear modulus, and vortex theory.
He had even planned how to humiliate this young man with complex formulas when Klein tried to defend himself.
But now.
All those carefully prepared cannons had rotted in his stomach.
Because the other party didn’t play by the rules at all.
Klein had simply flipped the entire battlefield over.
“Wh-what did you say?”
Laurent’s voice was extremely dry.
He even suspected there was something wrong with his hearing.
Klein leaned back in his chair again.
His gaze swept over the ashen-faced academicians on the stage.
“I said, you should take your brains out for an airing.”
“They’re full of the smell of mildew.”
“Like those moss-covered, rotten stones in a cellar that haven’t been moved for hundreds of years.”
A collective gasp was heard in the hall.
This was too arrogant.
This was the Supreme Council of the Magic Association.
The symbol of the entire nation’s wisdom.
And in this young man’s mouth, they had become moldy, rotten stones?
But Klein didn’t care at all.
He raised his hand, his slender fingers tapping虚in the air several times.
As if he were counting the decaying wood on the stage.
“You cling to outdated theories from hundreds of years ago and refuse to let go.”
“You treat them as an untouchable bible.”
“When a new, unexplainable phenomenon appears, what is your first reaction?”
A sarcastic curve appeared on his lips.
“Not excitement.”
“Not curiosity.”
“And certainly not the exploration of unknown truths.”
“But fear.”
The moment these words were uttered, the bodies of several old men on the stage trembled violently.
As if the most secret abscess in their hearts had been pierced.
“You are afraid of your authority being shaken.”
“Afraid that the academic edifice you’ve built your entire life will collapse overnight.”
“Afraid of turning from a lofty master into an ignorant clown.”
“So you choose to lie.”
Klein’s voice suddenly turned cold.
Though the volume was not high, it carried a chill that pierced the soul.
“Using one lie to cover another.”
“Weaving a cage called ‘aether’.”
“Locking the truth outside, and yourselves inside.”
“And even wanting to burn everyone who tries to break the cage at the stake.”
He shook his head, his eyes full of pity.
“This is not just pathetic.”
“It is utterly foolish.”
“Silence!”
A sharp roar broke the silence.
To the left of the stage, the academician with the goatee jumped up.
He was trembling with anger, his face as red as a ripe tomato.
His finger trembled as it pointed at Klein’s nose.
“This is sophistry! Naked sophistry!”
“Without a medium, how do waves propagate? How is energy transmitted?”
“Are you trying to turn rigorous physics into the metaphysics of a street charlatan?”
“Who told you that a spatial ripple must be a wave?”
Klein’s retort came extremely fast.
Like a precise slap, it struck the other party directly across the face.
The goatee-ed academician’s mouth fell open.
A “heh-heh” sound came from his throat, but he couldn’t utter a single word.
“Ripple.”
“It was just a figurative analogy.”
“No one ever stipulated that the essence of spatial magic must fully comply with fluid dynamics.”
“Your imagination is so barren it astounds me.”
Klein stood up.
His black mage robe fell with his movement.
In this white hall of academia, he was like a drop of ink in clear water.
Out of place.
And blindingly conspicuous.
He paced slowly to the edge of the stage.
He looked down at the scholars below.
“The photoelectric effect is objective reality, that is the ironclad proof of particle nature, correct?”
Henry, in the audience, subconsciously nodded.
“Interference and diffraction phenomena are objective reality, that is the ironclad proof of wave nature, correct?”
Victor also nodded stiffly.
“Two pieces of evidence, diametrically opposed, yet both undeniably real, are laid out on the table.”
Klein spread his hands.
“A mind with normal logic should be thinking about why light possesses both these properties simultaneously.”
“It should be thinking, perhaps our cognitive model is too narrow.”
“And you?”
He let out a very soft scoff.
The sound was not loud.
But in the unique acoustic structure of the hall, it clearly drilled into everyone’s ears.
It pricked their eardrums like a fine needle.
“You group of Ninth Circle Archmages who fancy yourselves the pinnacle of wisdom.”
“You choose to brawl like a gang of street thugs fighting for territory.”
“The particle camp wants to burn the wave camp at the stake.”
“The wave camp wants to nail the particle camp to the pillar of shame.”
“You even have to come up with something like the ‘aether,’ this fig leaf, to force an explanation.”
Klein’s gaze lingered on Henry and Victor for a moment.
Both men’s faces instantly turned the color of pig’s liver.
They wished they could find a hole to crawl into.
“This is not the search for truth.”
“This is two wild dogs fighting over a bone.”
The entire hall was in an uproar.
This time, no one dared to refute.
Nor could anyone refute.
This insult was too harsh.
It directly tore away the sacred fig leaf of the so-called “academic dispute.”
Revealing the ugly sores of interests, face, and factional struggles underneath.
Lia sat to the side, still holding half a peeled chestnut in her hand.
She looked at that man.
Those eyes, which usually seemed a little lazy, were now shining with a light that made her heart tremble.
‘Was this guy’s mouth always this venomous?’
Comparing a group of Ninth Circle Archmages to wild dogs.
Only he would probably dare to do such a thing.
But…
Lia popped the chestnut into her mouth, her cheeks puffing out.
‘He cursed them so well.’
“You…”
Laurent’s vision went black with anger.
He felt like he was about to have a stroke.
He wasn’t debating with a junior.
He was being looked down upon by an ancient dragon.
That kind of cognitive crushing from a higher dimension made his proud experience and qualifications worthless.
Liar.
Wild dogs.
These words, like red-hot nails, were driven one by one into his mind.
He could not lose.
He absolutely could not lose here.
If he lost today, the name Laurent would forever be a joke in the history of magic.
“So, the great Klein,”
Laurent squeezed the words out from between his teeth.
“Since we are all foolish wild dogs,”
“can you, the omniscient and omnipotent god, tell us mortals,”
“what is the nature of light, exactly?”
Laurent stared at Klein.
His bloodshot eyes were almost bulging out of their sockets.
“Is it both a particle and a wave?”
“Is this self-contradictory thing the delirious dream of a drunken Creator God?”
“Give us an answer!”
He roared, his voice hoarse and shrill.
“If you can’t give a perfect explanation, then you are also just creating another kind of chaos!”
“You are also just a madman who only knows how to destroy!”
The hall fell into a dead silence again.
All eyes focused on the figure in black.
Horace stopped turning his ring.
Eleonora sat up straight, holding her breath.
The chestnut shell in Laplace’s hand fell to the floor with a crisp sound.
Lia clenched her fists.
Her nails dug into her palms.
She knew the answer.
That answer was too shocking for the world.
She didn’t know, in this era, on this occasion, how Klein would choose to unveil this mysterious veil.
Klein stood where he was.
Faced with Laurent’s hysterical questioning, his face was very calm.
“The nature of light?”
Klein’s voice echoed in the hall.
“Mr. Laurent, you are asking the wrong question.”
He raised his hand.
His fingertips seemed to be touching some law in the void.
At that moment, everyone had an illusion.
As if the rules of the entire world were dancing at his fingertips.
“You shouldn’t ask what ‘light’ is.”
“You should ask—”
Klein paused.
His gaze was like a knife, cutting through the fog of the microscopic world.
“—what do you want to see?”
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