The truth of the world?
The words Lucian spoke were soft and quiet, but every one of the dozen-odd Supreme Council members present was at minimum a Ninth-Circle Great Mage — how could they fail to hear? Moreover, to their ears, those words rang louder than thunder, louder than the roar of annihilation and collapse, like an explosion detonating directly inside their minds.
Abandon your original concepts, and only then can you see the truth of the world?
Is *this* the truth of the world?
Electrons, which had always exhibited perfect particle behavior, had shown an unmistakably classical diffraction pattern when bombarding crystals!
This was as absurd as claiming that a bright, cloudless day — with sunlight illuminating every visible landscape — was actually a pitch-black, freezing, silent night!
Or that a pure and beautiful angel was, in fact, a reeking, hideous demon!
Is *this* the truth of the world?
A truth more exaggerated than imagination, stranger than magic, more unfathomable than gods?
In this moment, including Douglas, the Council Speaker himself, every Grand Archanist who harbored the keenest interest and most relentless pursuit of the world's mysteries couldn't help but shake their heads. This completely overturned and rewrote their understanding of the world, utterly transcended their imagination of what truth could look like — everything was so grotesque and fantastical, like the most inconceivable monsters!
And the other legendary mages and Great Mages — some instinctively raised their right hands to cover their mouths, others clenched both fists as if trying to crush whatever lay in their palms, still others bit down hard on their lips, as though trying to determine through pain whether this was some kind of hallucination.
They chased the truth of the world at every waking moment, yet when that truth lifted its veil just enough to reveal a glimpse of its face, they recoiled in terror.
Is *this* the truth of the world?
It was completely different from daily experience and intuitive understanding!
It left them all with the feeling that they no longer recognized the world before their eyes!
Suddenly, all the anomalies — the torrential rain, lightning, starlight, snowflakes — subsided at once. Douglas, Brook, Hathaway, Fernando, and the others began setting up Magic Circles to verify the experiment.
Even though Lucian had constructed the Magic Circle right under their noses, even though it was Brook who had personally fired the electron beam, they would still need to rigorously verify everything themselves before they could choose to believe!
"Use a single crystal..." Lucian spoke up abruptly to remind them, then briefly described some key information about single crystals.
Hathaway gave a gentle nod and began preparations according to Lucian's description. The other Supreme Council members did the same.
It didn't take long. Over a dozen composite Magic Circles were successfully deployed. Large single crystals were placed at the center of each circle, and Brook, Fernando, Oliver, Star of Radiance, and the other mages who specialized in electromagnetism directly fired electron beams, while the rest assisted with various forms of magic and artifacts.
Without a sound, the beautiful and dreamlike pattern of alternating light and dark diffraction fringes materialized within Brook's Magic Circle. Then, one after another, each circle produced its own — the entire conference hall was bathed in an interplay of light and shadow, ethereal and mesmerizing, so silent that not a single sound stirred, frozen in place like a mysterious and eerie sketch.
Rumble!
Low thunder rolled like a suppressed roar. Anomalous phenomena resurfaced — the tides of the elements, the alchemical paradise. Elemental motes of gold, silver, white, black, green, and other colors grew terribly blurred, as though they could no longer maintain stable existence and were on the verge of collapse and annihilation.
Fortunately, a few seconds later, everything quieted down again. The Supreme Council members had brought the violent emotional turmoil within their hearts under control.
For Brook, Oliver, and other authorities on wave theory, this was not a devastating blow but rather an enormous boon — it was simply that the sheer impossibility of the situation had shaken them too deeply to remain calm.
As for Hathaway and the other proponents of particle theory, the earlier debates had already prepared them mentally that this might be a special manifestation of particles. Moreover, it could potentially resolve the problems of New Alchemy. So after their worldview trembled, they quickly stabilized, avoiding the catastrophe of mental fragmentation and frozen collapse.