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Join the ServerVictor picked up the issue of “The Journal of Magical Theory” featuring Lia’s paper from the wastebasket for the third time.
He violently flattened the crumpled parchment, his knuckles turning white from the force.
The rustling of the paper sounded exceptionally harsh in the deathly silent room.
His gaze was glued to the prophecy about the “condensed state” at the end of the parchment.
A macroscopic quantum state.
Condensing innumerable particles into a single, perfectly synchronized whole.
In his mind, this was a lie more absurd than “the world is made of particles.”
Particles were chaotic, disorderly, probabilistic, the most undisciplined vagrants in the universe.
How could they possibly act in unison, like a well-trained legion?
This completely violated the aesthetics of waves that he believed in.
Waves were harmonious, continuous, elegant.
“An impossible thought experiment.”
Victor’s throat was dry as he muttered to himself.
It was the phrase he had repeated most to himself these past few days, as if chanting a spell that would never work.
However, that term, “condensed state,” like an invisible vine, had already entangled his thoughts, tightening its grip with every breath.
He couldn’t forget Henry’s paper on black-body radiation.
That paper, like a heavy hammer falling from the sky, had artlessly smashed the foundation of the wave edifice he had so meticulously constructed.
He had lost.
In the purest of theoretical deductions, he had been utterly defeated.
He could not lose again.
If Henry had dealt a fatal blow to the Wave School from a theoretical standpoint, then he, Victor, would inflict the most thorough humiliation upon the Particle School from an experimental one.
He would personally turn this so-called “condensed state” prophecy into a laughable lie.
He would prove to the entire kingdom that when the temperature dropped to its limit, the so-called “light quanta” would only be completely annihilated due to energy depletion, not condense into some ridiculous “macroscopic quantum state.”
A plan grew wildly in his mind, like a twisted plant breaking through the soil in the darkness.
He would build a laboratory, an unprecedented laboratory capable of reaching “absolute zero.”
He wanted everyone to see that even the conjectures of Lia Farrien, hailed as the “Seeker of Truth,” would be shattered to pieces in the face of cold reality.
***
The next day, Victor walked out of his room.
He used magic to shave off the beard he hadn’t tended to in days and changed into a brand-new, crisp mage’s robe.
The sharp light returned to his once-cloudy eyes.
He first sought out Isabelle.
The female mage who had invented the “Frost Box” and had been thoroughly defeated in the dispute between direct and alternating current.
Isabelle’s resentment toward Lia and Klein was deeper than the centuries-old sludge in the capital’s sewers.
“I need to build a device that can reach extreme low temperatures, and I need your help.”
Victor got straight to the point, stating his intentions directly.
Isabelle was adjusting a small refrigeration array.
Hearing his words, her movements paused.
She looked up, a hint of vigilance flashing in her eyes.
“What are you trying to do?”
“I want to expose a lie.” Victor handed over the flattened copy of “The Journal of Magical Theory.” “A lie that is enough to completely discredit the entire Particle School.”
Isabelle took the parchment and scanned it quickly.
When she saw the prophecy at the end of the paper, a cold smile appeared on her face.
“Sounds interesting.”
“I’m in.”
She joined without a second thought.
A group of mages and alchemists, who had been swept aside by Lia and Klein in the battle over direct current standards, quickly gathered.
Their enthusiasm for this project even surpassed Victor’s own.
They yearned for revenge, yearned to see a look of failure and astonishment on the face of that perpetually calm and detached young lady.
Soon, a secret team led by Victor, comprising almost all the top refrigeration experts in the kingdom, was quietly formed in an abandoned mine on the outskirts of the royal capital.
The forces of the Wave School unhesitatingly poured a portion of their funds into this project.
They named this place “The Trial Ground of Lies.”
Over the next few months, a massive amount of funds and resources flowed into this underground laboratory like a tide.
Isabelle and her team designed a multi-stage refrigeration system that could be described as genius.
They first used conventional alchemical reagents to pre-cool a sealed magical vacuum chamber.
Then, they used a “Frost Box” rune array, improved over a hundred times, for deep cooling, pushing the temperature to an unprecedented low.
Finally, they utilized an extremely complex and precise set of magic to further strip the last bit of energy from the atoms in the system by precisely controlling drastic changes in the magnetic field within milliseconds.
It was an engineering project of intimidating scale.
Each complete experimental run consumed enough magisteel crystals to bankrupt an ordinary nobleman.
But no one backed down.
Fail, adjust the parameters, fail again, adjust again.
In the vast underground mine, there was only the low hum of the instruments and the mages’ extremely suppressed breathing.
Victor practically lived in the laboratory.
His eyes were bloodshot, and he had lost a significant amount of weight, his mage robe hanging loosely on his frame.
But the fire in his eyes burned brighter and hotter with each failure.
He could already see it: the moment the reading on the magical thermometer reached its end, that so-called “condensed state” prophecy would be mercilessly popped by cold reality like a colorful soap bubble.
He would personally deliver the magic crystal recording that moment to Henry.
He would make Henry, and the entire Particle School, taste the bitterness of having their beliefs crumble before their very eyes.
***
Meanwhile, inside Klein’s mage tower.
The afternoon sun was warm and bright.
Adèle was looking at the latest financial report released by the kingdom’s Ministry of Finance with a puzzled expression.
“Strange,” she muttered to herself.
“Why have the prices of alchemy materials used for cooling, like ‘Frost Cores’ and ‘Tears of Extreme Cold,’ risen so much recently? They’ve almost doubled.”
She looked up at Klein, who was peeling an apple for Lia with a small silver knife.
Without raising his head, Klein’s movements were steady and elegant, the long apple peel spiraling down unbroken.
“Supply and demand determine the price. That’s the law of the market.”
“But why would demand suddenly become so great?” Adèle pressed, confused. “Did all the nobles in the capital agree to replace the Frost Boxes in their homes this season?”
Lia accepted the small, cut pieces of apple from Klein, speared a piece with a silver fork, and put it in her mouth.
She took a bite, her voice slightly muffled.
“Perhaps someone wants to open the kingdom’s largest popsicle factory.”
Klein reached out a finger and gently wiped a bit of apple juice from the corner of Lia’s mouth, the gesture perfectly natural.
“Perhaps,” he said, looking at Lia, a faint hint of a smile in his azure eyes. “After all, summer is coming.”
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