136 Duel

"That’s right. This is the interpretation method," Charles whistled. "Did you really think that the things Professor taught can only be used to explain music scores and ancient languages? It’s teaching you how to ‘read!’ If it can help you interpret music scores and runes, why can’t it explain the changes of aether?"

Ye Qingxuan did not reply. His expressions changed as he pondered, but his brows quickly furrowed again. "Senior, cast a note for me."

Charles obeyed.

Once again, Ye Qingxuan was hit in the face with frost, but this time he did not move at all. As if fossilized, he let the rays of frost hit him with immense pain.

"I think I feel something," Ye Qingxuan murmured, looking up. "Again."

"Okay." Frost again!

Whack! This time, Ye Qingxuan finally moved but he was too late. He had just started to raise his hand when the frost covered his face. It burned, but he started laughing.

It was as if he had been running in the dark and found an open door. The sunlight that fell on his face was weak, but the world was completely different now. He finally understood why the translation method skipped many steps in order to quickly achieve an unclear rune instead of a developed one. It was to reduce his time of interpreting to its limit. He must ignore practically ninety percent of all information to be one tenth of a second faster.

"Again!"

"Okay."

As Charles raised his hand, Ye Qingxuan’s expression changed. He begged, "Don’t do it to my face. It hurts!"

"Too late." Charles continued raising his hand, planning on covering his face with frost.

Shocked, Ye Qingxuan gave up on begging for mercy, and quickly began chanting. He subconsciously gathered aether before him like a shield. The surface was smooth and sturdy. Rune: Mirror.

Whack! The cool blue rays landed on the mirror, refracted, and disappeared along with the mirror. Coldness spread, and the flying dust turned to ice particles and fell on the ground.

Ye Qingxuan froze while Charles’s smile stiffened.

"Didn’t you say you were going for my face?" Ye Qingxuan asked faintly. "Why did you aim for my chest? That wasn’t what we agreed on."

"Aha…I pitied you and changed to somewhere meatier," Charles chuckled dryly. "Can’t believe you improved so quickly that you could even tell where I was aiming!"

The corners of Ye Qingxuan’s lips twitched. "If I didn’t interpret it, I’d have to get hit by your frost for no reason again, right?"

"What do you mean ‘no reason’? What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!" Charles praised himself shamelessly. "I’m doing this for your own good!"

"…" Ye Qingxuan was secretly amazed at his reaction in that second. He could not believe how fast his reaction speed became in a time of crisis.

When he had subconsciously sensed the rippling aether from Charles, his body reacted instinctively. His brain had not even processed the information when he went into defense mode.

"Junior, it seems like you’ve been enlightened!" Grinning cheekily, Charles asked, "Did you find the secret trick?"

"I guess. I just have to pretend you’re a music score and interpret that, right?"

"Basically, but…I won’t be like a music score and stand here without moving!" With that, Charles finished chanting. The boxes of screws around them began shaking. The aether’s magnetic field pulled the screws toward Charles’s hand. They spun at his fingertips, whistling and rumbling, ready to attack!

For the first time, Ye Qingxuan felt just how terrifying Charles’s talent was. He had never seen anyone else who could control hundreds of screws with just one note. Charles had done so without any preparation—everything had happened with a simple raise of the hand.

"Since you know the method now, I don’t have to go easy on you anymore," Charles’ voice came from behind the layers of screws. "Next, I’ll be entering destruction mode. Watch out."

"Wait, I’m not ready yet!" Seeing the dense wall of bullets, the hair on Ye Qingxuan’s neck rose.

"Okay, I’ll wait."

Ye Qingxuan relaxed at those words, but then the screws whistled, shooting forward at his limbs and chest without any warning.

Even though he had given up on Charles’ morality, seeing him act so perversely gave Ye Qingxuan a chill. There was no more trust between people!

"Do you have to do that?" Clutching his head, Ye began darting around. "I’ve only learned the first measure of Bolero!"

"You think the Professor only taught you the first measure?" Charles was able to hold a conversation even as he shot out screws continuously. "He has taught you the entire thing."

"How can it be that short?"

"Quite the contrary. There is no music score longer than Bolero." Charles cackled. "Because the rest of the melody is a repeat of the first measure. With each repeat, you have to put twice as much effort in manipulation. The number and length of strands will also multiply. So you can overlap the melody as many times as you’d like. There’s no limit as long as you can control it."

As Ye Qingxuan dodged painfully, he began to interpret the aether’s pattern at a furious speed, predicting where the screws would land. At the same time, he subconsciously calculated how much manipulation power was needed for each repeat.

"Are you kidding?" His eyes and mouth opened wide. "With that exponential increase, the eighth measure would need 128 times the amount needed for the first measure! Only the devil can do that!"

Charles used one sentence to shut him up. "Professor’s limit is the seventeenth measure."

--

He could not keep getting hit like this. Ye Qingxuan could already feel the pain of being hit all over as he dodged pathetically. Charles was analyzing him just as he was analyzing Charles. He could see Charles’s every movement clearly. This meant that he could not hide his moves from him either.

This training was tailored for him. He could get rid of the threads and use Black Friday to catch Charles off guard. But how was that different from admitting defeat?

There were now two choices before him: surrender, put on girl’s clothing, and buy dinner for this *sshole, or actually fight him!

"You’re going down!" Ye Qingxuan jumped out toward the flying screws, eyes determined.

--

"Can’t take it anymore?" Behind the numerous hovering screws, Charles shook his head. He studied the youth, but his senses were faster than his eyes. He could feel everything, even the dust flying in the dim room. He did not need to see the threads to feel the change in aether.

The aether flowed like a river under his feet, under the stone floor, under the dirt, even deeper… and it swirled like a hurricane above his head, above the building, high up in the sky.

It changed freely in this vast world, joining together and scattering with sounds. Countless droplets of light hovered in this world, reflecting on everything and turning this world into something beautiful!

It was a beauty that the average person would not be able to see, even with the help of perception threads, but to Charles, it was average and standard. He could analyze Ye Qingxuan’s aether completely just with his instinctive feeling. That was why he felt sympathy.

"Why are you still like that?" Charles asked. He sighed, thinking, "A pity that you could use this on an idiot like Edmund, but it won’t work here."

"Junior." His fingers moved slightly. Pulled by the magnetic force, the screws grouped to the front like a shield. It vibrated and reflected the screws that Ye Qingxuan had shot forward using the same rune Magnet. Then he covered his eyes, ready to defend.

Ye Qingxuan had grasped this moment and was going to launch an attack of light, a technique that had always worked.

With the sound of icicles shooting through the ground, dozens of mirrors appeared out of thin air. A burst of light exploded from the youth’s hands, the blinding light swallowed Charles.

Charles could feel and see the piercing light even with his eyes closed. His heart skipped a beat. This light could seriously blind someone if looked at directly. How was Ye Qingxuan able to push the rune effect to this intensity after just becoming a student a month ago? Children could not be underestimated these days…

He sighed inwardly. Ye Qingxuan had the upper hand now. But unfortunately, the essence of this game did not lie in the upper hand, but in the counter-attack or even…lying!

This was a game more strategic than musician duels. It could not be won just by aggressive attacks. With both sides using Bolero, they were both in the same environment, receiving the same information, and knowing each other like the back of their own hands.

It was like chess. When both knew their opponent’s ‘next step,’ the difficulty level would skyrocket. This was a technique that combined strategies from the School of Revelations and Abstinence. It could not be won by the School of Modification’s chaotic bombing!

With the connection of perception threads, Charles knew everything about Ye Qingxuan’s tactics. "Sorry, junior." He shook his head and sighed. "You’re definitely crossdressing today!"

First blinding him with Mirror and Light and then Magnet…wait, was this multiple casting? Quickly, Charles felt a strange ripple through his thread. It was the chaos created by two runes forced together.

"Oh, no way, right?" Charles was slightly stunned, thinking, "Where did you learn this? It’s unique to the School of Modifications, created by those lunatics crazy for destruction!"

Ye Qingxuan put his hands together. When he slowly pulled his hands apart, a blinding electric arc shot out. He smiled at Charles from behind the electric light. "Don’t be so impatient…who’s going to crossdress hasn’t been decided yet."