High School of Demon Hunting

The previous owner of the Two-Dimensional Evolution Lab was Chen Ang, whom Zheng Qing knew.

After the freshman hunting competition ended, during one of his visits to Su Shijun’s office, Zheng Qing had met with Dr. Chen Ang outside the lab building and even chatted with him briefly.

At that time, the young scholarship student was deeply impressed by Dr. Chen’s body surrounded by strings of glowing points in a light purple illusion form, and those exceptionally clear and bright eyes.

Of course, what left an even deeper impression on Zheng Qing was Dr. Chen’s experiment in which he split his soul into 129,600 pieces, and his request to cut off a small piece of Zheng Qing’s shadow for further experiments—although Dr. Chen firmly insisted he wasn’t crazy, just that ’residual isotopic alien forms in the two-dimensional world were a bit too many, causing matching abnormalities when the timeline and world line converged,’ in Zheng Qing’s mind, he was simply an utterly mad scientist. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

At this moment, hearing the Shadow Cat mention the doctor again, the Black Cat couldn’t help but become vague for a moment. Coming back to his senses, he remembered a sentence Su Shijun had once said.

"Dissection is the only standard for testing truth." The Black Cat instinctively lifted his paw, opened it, closed it, then opened it again, thinking that this phrase was perfectly suited to a mad scientist.

"What?" The Shadow Cat’s ears twitched slightly, looking at the Black Cat with vigilance.

"’Dissection is the only standard for testing truth,’ this is a phrase highly esteemed by Dr. Chen, the previous owner of the Two-Dimensional Evolution Lab." The Black Cat explained enthusiastically.

"That’s why I say he’s a lunatic!" The Shadow Cat gave the Black Cat a menacing look, reminding him, "By the way, I’m an officially employed staff member with insurance... chatting with you is an order from higher-ups, it’s cooperation! Cooperation, you understand? You can’t just dissect your cooperative partners in the name of truth!"

Realizing the misunderstanding, the Black Cat hurriedly smiled bitterly and waved his paw, "Don’t worry, don’t worry, I just suddenly remembered that phrase... wouldn’t do anything to you."

"Better not."

The Shadow Cat snorted, lifting his chin while grumbling, "Where were we just talking about? Ah, I remember now... When the isotopic alien forms from different two-dimensional worlds merge into a super-dimensional individual, how can you ensure ’I am me’ and not lose ’self’? This is the hardest part of the entire experiment, and the reason that lunatic Chen ultimately didn’t fully succeed... But to you, this is the simplest part."

"Simple?" The Black Cat looked doubtful.

Right now it couldn’t even deal with a Shadow Cat, and the thought of needing to integrate different selves spread across billions of parallel worlds into a unified will made it instinctively shake its head, thinking it was completely impossible.

"Very simple."

The Shadow Cat nodded affirmatively, "Because you have ’height.’ Do you know what the most significant difference between low-dimensional life and high-dimensional life is? For instance, you can only exist at this time, in this place, but if you were a Legendary Wizard, you could exist in many places simultaneously, at many different time points simultaneously. To describe it differently, low-dimensional life is like a human image on a piece of paper, high-dimensional life is like a figure piercing through the paper... Low-dimensional can only observe the plane where high-dimensional life interacts with the low-dimensional world, while high-dimensional can observe the ’entire structure’ within low-dimensional life. Low-dimensional life exhausts all efforts but can’t break through the ’skin’ of high-dimensional life, because that skin is made of the ’thickness’ of the low-dimensional world; while high-dimensional life can easily crush low-dimensional life, this is also the fundamental reason a High Tier Wizard can crush a Low Tier Wizard..."

Perhaps realizing his analysis was slightly off-topic, the Shadow Cat paused here, brushed his whiskers, and discreetly shifted the topic, "... Wizards commonly recognize the way of ’transcendence,’ to put it in plain terms, is ’stacking.’ For example, if you’re a little person on a paper and wish to exceed it, you first need to find ’you’ on another paper, then stack the two together—of course, this is an extremely simplified description, just like in actual practice, this ’stacking’ might simply be that you establish a connection with your isotopic alien form, and then naturally you ’stack’ together—in this way, having the thickness of two sheets, you gain the initial height, then the third, fourth, you become thicker and taller, but during this process, you are creating connections with all two-dimensional worlds... The thicker you are, the more closely you connect with the two-dimensional world, and the ’heavier’ your body becomes. Therefore, another element of transcendence is ’detachment,’ you need to let the little person detach from the paper, and then attach to another little person on another paper, thus you continue to grow tall while remaining connected to only one two-dimensional world..."

"All this ’paper’ and ’stack’ and ’heavy’ and ’thick,’ can it be written into a thesis?" The Black Cat finally couldn’t help but interrupt the Shadow Cat’s endless metaphors, with apprehension.

In his understanding, a thesis should be a very rigorous, very objective thing, described with elegant formulas and complex logic rather than filled with speculative, imaginative, and allegorical narratives like a story.

The Shadow Cat spread its paws, looking innocent, "I speak my piece, you write your thesis; it doesn’t conflict... Must having randomly driven a car successfully mean I must master all theories related to mechanics, engineering, dynamics, and physics? Or if you’ve exploded once, does that mean you have a deep understanding of Forbidden Curse?"

The Black Cat was speechless.

The Shadow Cat nodded slightly, seemingly very satisfied with having verbally outmatched the original body, "In sum, the laboratory views continually collecting isotopic alien forms to increase one’s thickness as the most reliable and safest transcendence method..."

"But I remember Su Shijun said that in the beginning you ’proved the Dao by force,’ using Forbidden Curse to blow up over a thousand two-dimensional worlds, forcefully ’transcending.’" The Black Cat tactfully complimented just in time.

The Shadow Cat was clearly very satisfied with the ’proving the Dao by force.’

"What Junjun said wasn’t wrong either." It modestly waved its paw, ready to boast a couple more words, but saw the Black Cat point to the top question on the parchment.

"... but you haven’t explained how to maintain ’self’ during transcendence." The Black Cat looked serious, counting its paws one question after another, "And you haven’t clarified why with ’height,’ I won’t lose myself? Also, what is the difference between your ’proving the Dao by force’ and the laboratory’s planned transcendence method? How is your previous description of yourself wandering through a dozen worlds collecting origin related to transcendence? How can the ’little person’ you mentioned detach from the paper and continue to exist in the void?"