Silent Crown

by Feng Yue

  “I was just worried about your confidence. I guess I don’t need to say anything now,” Charles muttered. He picked up a screw from the ground and flicked it at the white wall behind Ye Qingxuan. The screw smashed onto the wall and bounced straight at Ye Qingxuan’s head!

  In the air, a thread of water vapor had been grazed by the screw. Ye Qingxuan instantly reached behind as if he had eyes on the back of his head, and caught the screw easily.

  “Oh?” Charles laughed. “Not bad.”

  Ye Qingxuan shrugged and tossed the screw back into the box on the ground. The barely visible threads of vapor danced stiffly around his body. He was still trying to get used to this feeling. Now, the threads were like an extension of his body. He could detect even the slightest touch.

  Gradually, the water vapor lines became more agile, which made Ye Qingxuan nod in satisfaction. “So far, the first measure of Bolero is not complicated. I’ll be able to master it this afternoon.”

  “There is one thing you must be aware of, Yezi.” Charles shook his head, patting the youth on the shoulder. “The most difficult part of Bolero is not about playing it, but applying it!”

  In the next moment, Ye Qingxuan’s vision swam, and he fell down.

  “Sorry, I did a sneak attack.” Charles stretched his wrists out and showed Ye the slowly dissipating rune Air. He shook his head provocatively. “How about we practice together? The loser has to dress up like a girl and buy dinner!”

  Ye Qingxuan stared at him blankly. After realizing that Charles was serious, there was a glimmer of vicious intent in his eyes. “That means I can do whatever I want to you?”

  “Yes, come on, big man!” Charles beckoned with his pinky finger. “Let me see what the so called Vengeful Spirit from downtown can do.”

  “I know you’re just provoking me, but you have to know that I’m still going to get angry, senior.” Ye Qingxuan stood up, cracked his knuckles, loosened his neck, then grinned. “I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time.”

  “Hehe.” Charles laughed shyly, but a ball of blinding light shot out from his hands without warning. Blinded, Ye Qingxuan sensed that someone was in his arms, with their palms on his chest.

  “Bingo!” Charles grinned, his fingers tightened

  Boom! Rune Air exploded. Severe wind pressure lifted the youth up. Ye crashed against the wall, and finally landed on a pile of dust covers, causing a cloud of dust to rise.

  “Forgot to tell you the rules.” Charles had cheated skillfully. “You’re in as long as you’re standing. In other words, if you want to surrender, just lie down.”

  “You’re so considerate.” Ye Qingxuan coughed violently and climbed out of the dust pile. “But I will not give you the opportunity to lie down.” In the next moment, he snapped his fingers, and the crisp sound was like frost cracking. Rays of frost shot out.

  As if Charles had foreseen this, he stepped to the side and jumped back, escaping the youth’s attack. Before he got his footing back, Ye Qingxuan began to fight fire with fire, using the rune Air.

  Boom! Ye Qingxuan flew through the air, his eyes wide open in shock.

  “That’s why people need to be careful of their steps.” Charles shook his head and looked down at the runes dissipating on the ground. They were the notes he had left before leaping by using the technique of delayed release. It was easy to lure someone into the trap

  “Seems like you have no experience with musician duels other than the concertmaster challenge.” Charles shook his head and waved at the youth with great enthusiasm. “Hurry up, let me help you make up this lesson.”

  Ye Qingxuan spat the dust out of his mouth and charged again.

  After three seconds, Charles withdrew his palm from Ye Qingxuan. The youth had lost his strength and knelt down on the ground, heaving violently. Sweat flowed freely from him, leaving wet stains on the ground. That was the note he excelled at—Flow!

  “Are you done resting?” Charles leisurely paced around him. “It’s alright. Take a rest and drag it out until dinner time so you don’t have to fight anymore.”

  Ye Qingxuan knew clearly that this b*stard was still provoking him. He simply sat on the ground, refusing to get up. His frustrated eyes gradually calmed.

  No, there was something wrong. He was getting completely crushed! It was like challenging a formless monster. Every defeat was weird and mysterious. It was not about how excellent the other side’s strategy was, nor how powerful the enemy was. It was not because of his own weakness either. What was wrong? This guy acted as if he could predict his next step!

  Predict…Ye Qingxuan’s eyes flashed. He raised his head, eyes narrowing.

  Under the faint light, the dust disrupted by the two men scattered under the light. But when the youth looked closely, he realized that there was something different about Charles’ surroundings.

  Around him were dozens of slender and hidden threads of water vapor. They floated from his body, stretched through the air, and finally…

  Ye Qingxuan looked along the thin lines, and it finally dawned on him. The threads were wrapped around his own body! “This is the application of Bolero?”

  “Great job. It only took you five minutes to realize. I wanted to play with you for half an hour before telling you. What a pity.” Charles shrugged. “Shall we continue?”

  Ye Qingxuan pulled himself up. This time, he stood and stared at Charles. “How do you do it?”

  “What? You mean prediction? It’s just an illusion.” Charles put up a finger. “Everything I know is from you. Think about it, and think about it more closely. How do I know?”

  “Because of the ‘perception threads’ created by Bolero’s first measure?”

  “You’re getting closer to the answer, but it’s not enough.” Charles wagged his finger. “If I only relied on the threads, at most, I could determine your location. If I wanted to beat you up completely, I would need some other things—things that you haven’t noticed yet. Think, Yezi, think! Don’t stop…keep thinking! Never stop thinking when you’re in a duel. If you stop, you lose. If you lose, you die!”

  The next moment, Charles charged. Ye Qingxuan subconsciously stepped back and created a shield effect for himself. But then the image coming at him…dissipated?

  Rune: Mirror! Charles’s hand sliced down on the back of Ye Qingxuan’s neck like a knife, pushing him down easily. Under the boy’s puzzled eyes, Charles whistled and wiggled his fingers. At his fingertips, a few threads connected to Ye Qingxuan glittered and flashed. “Passive defense is useless,” he said. “I know all of your thoughts.”

  A flame ignited on Ye Qingxuan’s fingertip in reply. He was expressionless as he burned the connected perception thread and pulled himself up. “Again.”

  “Alright.”

  The next moment, the two pressed on their own instrument in unison, the same melody sounded at the same time. It was the first measure of Bolero! In that gentle and quiet melody, a number of perception threads rose out of Ye Qingxuan’s body, and wrapped around Charles.

  Perception threads came from Charles’ hands as well. The threads ran into each other, becoming a tangled mess.

  The moment the perception threads wrapped around Charles, Ye Qingxuan’s expression became shocked and surprised. He could…sense the aether controlled by Charles?

  “What’s the matter? Is it really that surprising to be able to sense someone else’s aether?” Charles did not care that Ye Qingxuan could perceive the changes in his aether and said lightly, “Now can you understand? The threads aren’t a replacement of touch. They’re the extension of perception! That’s what they do. They’re a musician’s eyes.

  “A pair of eyes that knows the enemy’s every intention, every movement, and fluctuations of each note. Nothing can hide from these eyes.” Then he said, “Congratulations, you are finally getting started.”

  There was a crisp snap. Charles raised his hand and released a frost ray without warning. It was loved by students for being easy to cast, and
requiring low exertion.

  Ye Qingxuan could not process it in time! He could clearly feel the changes in the other’s aether, but in the midst of everything, Ye Qingxuan did not realize that he was playing a note. His face was covered by weakened white frost. He could not even breathe.

  “What’s wrong? I’ve put everything out in the open for you.” Charles cocked his head. “You couldn’t even tell that I was going to cast a rune?”

  “Instantaneous notes are so fast. You have to at least give me time to react.” Ye Qingxuan reached out and wiped the white frost off his face. “The changes are so confusing that I can’t find the patterns.”

  “Come on, use your brain.” Charles sighed. “Translation and interpretation method. What have you been learning?”

  “Interpretation?” Ye Qingxuan froze, as if he had suddenly found clue. He involuntarily followed Charles’s guide and continued thinking. “Interpretation method…”

  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 s
omething 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!”