After Nesica and Samantha left, the "Prophet" Begna, after a long period of preparation, began to divine on this matter.
The crystal ball slipped from his hands and struck the ground with a crisp, pleasant sound. Fortunately, it was an item tempered by Arcane Magic, so it was not damaged.
His brows furrowed deeply, he stared at the crystal ball on the floor in disbelief, murmuring to himself: "Why is this happening… why is this happening…"
This was the first time in a divination that he had been unable to see any result at all — only a vast shroud of fog, as if the future itself had become indeterminate.
"What is interfering with my divination?" After calming himself, he turned his thoughts in that direction.
According to the theoretical foundation of the Astrology Division, the fate of the future was strictly determined by all current states. Inaccurate prophecy arose because diviners had their limits and found it difficult to reach the "omniscient supreme level" of a "Thanos's Demon," which naturally produced vagueness in predictions. But regardless, as long as it was not a subject of which one had absolutely no knowledge, a diviner would invariably catch at least a glimpse of the future — unlike now, when there was nothing but fog, impenetrable fog.
On the debate surrounding the microscopic domain, Begna believed he had sufficient understanding to glean at least some vague hints. Who could have predicted that things would unfold contrary to his expectations, forcing him to consider other explanations?
…………
The Golden Moon arrived along with the gradually receding heat, and the mages of Holt Magic Academy once again began awaiting the latest issues of *Arcane*, *Arcane Magic*, *Nature*, and other journals — after several months had passed, the vast majority of the Magic Apprentices who had passed the "Unified High Magic Academy Entrance Examination" had successfully advanced to the rank of mage here, with an advancement rate as high as two out of three. This, in turn, made Holt Magic Academy enormously attractive to Magic Apprentices and shrouded the "Unified Entrance Examination" in a layer of mystique, as though it were the standard by which a Magic Apprentice could be judged capable of becoming a mage.
And so, at Douglas Magic School, at the various branch magic schools, and among the Magic Apprentice community at large, books such as *Unified High Magic Academy Entrance Examination Practice Tests* and *Evans's Secret Scrolls* began to circulate, and Heidi, Leiliya, Ophelia, and the other young ladies earned a tidy sum.
Before the "Special Relativity" lecture, Ernesto walked into the classroom once more and distributed the journals to the mages. This time, his expression was perfectly normal, faintly tinged with joy — no more of that tedious matrix mechanics to study!
His relaxed demeanor put the students at ease; they gathered that the journals contained no paradigm-shattering content, so they opened them casually and began to browse. But as they read on, Honore, Clark, and the others could no longer contain expressions of delighted surprise, and they devoured the content within greedily.
In this issue of *Arcane*, two of the first three papers were by Brooke, and one was by Oliver and his collaborators. Starting from the wave equation, they had solved the problem of the hydrogen atom model, achieving excellent agreement with a wealth of experimental data, and had initially constructed a new alchemy system that appeared strikingly different from matrix mechanics — yet was simpler and more intuitive, more vivid and concrete, more capable of conveying the charm of Arcane!
"This… this is true Arcane," Honore murmured in a low voice of admiration. "Even across the entire electromagnetic and elemental domains, the Oliver–Brooke wave equation would absolutely rank among the top three classical formulas. This is a truly great achievement!"
Clark echoed him: "Seeing this wave equation, I'm moved to the point of tears. *This* is Arcane — not some monstrous tangle of mathematics. Over these past few months, I could only apply matrix mechanics in the most rudimentary way and never truly understood it. But in just one month of studying the wave equation and reading these papers, I feel as though I've gained an initial understanding of the internal structure of atoms, of the microscopic domain. Everything is so utterly fascinating!"
"And the wave mechanics that Their Lordships have initially developed grew organically from classical Arcane theory — it didn't abandon everything and resort to purely mathematical 'thinking.' Lord Evans's achievements were certainly genius, but *too* genius, so much so that the rest of us 'ordinary people' can hardly imagine or comprehend them," another classmate chimed in.
Honore continued flipping through the paper as he spoke with genuine feeling: "For the next year, I'm going to focus all my efforts on this. I wish I could spend every day studying it, unraveling its mysteries. Oh — Lord Oliver has proposed a theory for why electrons can exhibit particle-like properties? A 'wave packet'?"
The theory was not complicated: many lines (waves) were woven together in a specific manner into a sphere, and because these lines decayed rapidly in the surrounding directions, the whole thing looked like a series of balls — bulging packages that roughly manifested particle-like behavior.
With this explanation in hand, Clark, a staunch supporter of the wave theory, was even more elated, believing it to be the true axiom of the microscopic domain, revealing the most profound law of the quantum realm.
He was about to say that particle-like behavior had always been contained within the wave nature, when the papers by Douglas, Fernando, Hathaway, Helen, and the others at the back caught his eye. They had each provided rough proofs that wave mechanics and matrix mechanics were mathematically equivalent, and had demonstrated the behavior of certain Arcane quantities that did not obey the commutative law of multiplication.
"The two new alchemy systems are… actually equivalent…" Clark blurted out, unable to contain himself.
Honore had noticed this section too: "Lord Douglas's proof is the clearest, but mathematically it still seems somewhat lacking in rigor… They're actually equivalent. Does that mean wave-like and particle-like properties are also equivalent? Could microscopic particles really be, as Lord Evans asserted, something fundamentally new that we have not yet truly come to understand — something to which we cannot apply our original concepts, and can only describe starting from actual results?"