Something's off about this magical girl.

Chapter 17 The Turn of Summer and Winter

As time passed, it was noon.

More than a dozen matches have already been played in the exercise hall, with varying degrees of success and failure, and the level of excitement is uneven.

Gu Bai remained seated, while Xia Zhi disappeared after delivering the orange lunchbox during lunchtime, probably to prepare for her upcoming duel.

The pairing list on the screen kept scrolling and updating. When the list was published in the afternoon, Gu Bai's gaze finally paused noticeably on one of the lines.

The reason is also very simple.

[Section A, 15th Session]

[Number 1, Xia Zhi, vs. Number 2, Fuyu Tsubaki]

Just as Gu Bai switched the control panel in front of him to the independent spectator view of Area A, there was a gentle knock on the door of the room.

As soon as Gu Bai spoke, the door was pushed open.

A middle-aged woman, dressed in a well-tailored dark gray suit and wearing gold-rimmed glasses, walked in. Her smile was sophisticated yet humble, and she exuded a shrewdness honed through years of business experience.

"Hello, Professor Gu. Excuse me for bothering you, but could you give me a minute? My surname is Liu, and I come from Luoshui Heavy Industry." The person in charge, Mr. Liu, bowed slightly, keeping his posture extremely humble, as if he were not facing an ordinary psychology teacher at all.

Judging from his appearance, it seems he has inquired about me.

In the years I was searching for my childhood sweetheart, I did do some notorious things.

However, Gu Bai didn't actually think he had anything special about him. He mainly relied on the Ink Sword. If he had to say something, the only thing he could boast about was his combat experience.

"What's the matter?"

Gu Bai's gaze remained fixed on Xia Zhi and Dong Chun, who were preparing for the match on the big screen.

"I'm not a magical girl, so I don't need your Luoshui Heavy Industries to take my combat suit measurements, do I?"

"You're joking."

The person in charge, Liu, was clearly prepared, and his tone was even more respectful: "Although Luoshui Heavy Industry has faced some difficulties in its business transformation in recent years, it still has a degree of freedom in the allocation of certain resources that Qixin cannot match..."

"Qixin can give me more," Gu Bai coldly interrupted her.

"But what Qixin can offer is something that can only appear under the spotlight." Manager Liu adjusted his glasses, his words carrying a hidden meaning: "While Luoshui Heavy Industry can offer some extra conveniences..."

If other magical girls who were exploited by Qi Xin had heard these words, they would probably have been tempted.

Even though the Luo Group is not as glorious as it used to be, it is still one of the four major groups. Such an offer is not something that just anyone can get.

But Gu Bai was clearly no ordinary person; his gaze didn't even leave the big screen for long.

It should start soon.

"Maybe next time." Gu Bai picked up the glass of cold water on the table and took a casual sip. "Want to watch together?"

The air seemed to freeze for a moment.

"I'm sorry to bother you, Professor Gu."

The person in charge, Ms. Liu, did not press the matter further. She tactfully bent down, took out a black metal business card from her inner pocket, and placed it on the coffee table next to Gu Bai with both hands.

"Please feel free to contact us with any needs you may have. Luoshui Heavy Industry looks forward to hearing from you."

After saying that, she quietly left the room and closed the door.

Gu Bai glanced at the exquisitely crafted black card out of the corner of his eye. It was quite nice, so he decided not to throw it away and casually put it in his pocket.

------

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On the field, both players entered in the same clean and efficient manner.

Xia Zhi entered first, stood still, and casually gathered her long orange hair behind her shoulder. There was no transformation, no elaborate opening gesture; she simply let her hands hang loosely at her sides.

Fuyutsubaki entered the field, walked to the designated area, and looked up. Her ruby-like eyes and Natsuki's gaze met silently in the center of the field.

Then there was a moment of stillness.

It wasn't a confrontation, but rather a tacit confirmation of each other's agreement; they were confirming that the other was serious, because only then would the competition have any meaning.

【start】

Before the referee's voice had even finished ringing, Xia Zhi had already moved.

To be precise, it's teleportation.

The three-meter distance was erased from space, and she appeared out of thin air beside Dong Chun, suddenly closing the ball of light in her palm and pushing it out!

The attack didn't strike Dongchun, but instead struck the void beside her.

The moment the ball of light disappeared into the air, its path was forcibly bent by the folded space, like a venomous snake biting down hard from Dong Chun's blind spot.

Swah——

With a flash of red light, Dongchun's figure blurred instantly.

Accelerating to evade, in less than half a second of real time, she completed the judgment, acceleration, and extreme sidestep, causing the beam of light to graz her silver thread and miss.

The first round is over, but of course, this was just a test.

The next instant, the magical resonance on the field erupted like a tsunami.

It was Fuyutsubaki's turn to launch an attack, but Natsumi did not retreat; she simply raised her hand and pressed down.

The distance of a few meters between the two people was instantly stretched to ten meters, then tens of meters, under Dong Chun's feet!

Dongchun tried to break through the impasse by slightly accelerating, but in the stretched space, she felt like she was walking on a treadmill, unable to reach the finish line.

Anyone watching this battle would likely be awestruck by the unparalleled magical abilities of the two magical girls on the field.

The battle continues.

Realizing something, Dongchun stopped and tried to change her approach.

After thinking for a few seconds during the extended period of time, when Fuyutsubaki opened her eyes again, she no longer looked at the ever-changing space beneath her feet, but instead sensed the traces of magical energy emanating from Natsumi.

Space can be folded, but the magical girl's ability to manipulate magic cannot be concealed.

Dongchun started moving again, but this time she didn't charge in a straight line. Instead, she accelerated towards a meaningless blind spot to the side.

Xia Zhi frowned slightly and folded the space again. But this was the moment that Dong Chun had been waiting for—she was stuck in the gap where Xia Zhi's space folding had not yet closed.

She wasn't traversing space; she was walking along the edges and cuts of space's folds.

Then, two highly compressed white orbs of light instantly condensed behind Dongchun, one aimed straight at Xiazhi's face, and the other struck the void beside her.

Xia Zhi immediately folded the space to the left to dodge the first attack, but the second ball of light precisely "borrowed" the passage she had just folded, circled back along the twisted path, and shattered the magic barrier with a single blow, landing viciously on her right shoulder and leaving a scorch mark on her school uniform.

The magical roar inside the arena suddenly stopped.

Xia Zhi glanced down at the charred marks on her shoulder and remained silent for a second.

"Use the folded path to counterattack?" She looked up, a hint of unease in her voice.

"Your magical fluctuations are a bit too obvious. It's fine for monsters, but it might give freaks and other magical girls from other sects an opportunity to exploit," Fuyutsubaki offered her opinion.

"Build".

Xia Zhi slowly raised her right hand, and the model from the training room appeared in her palm. The last trace of restraint in her eyes vanished, and she spoke:

"Reshape".

boom--!!

The space in the center of the venue began to distort in a crazy way that Gu Bai had never seen before! It was no longer a single point of folding, but the entire venue seemed to be held in someone's hand and kneaded at will!

Upside down and misaligned, distance completely loses its meaning.

The significant difference between acceleration and time stop is now clearly exposed.

Dongchun's "pseudo-time stop" completely fails in this kind of rule-level garbled code.

She could think, but her body could no longer land in any precise spot, because the foothold in front of her would turn into a wall or half-empty space in the next moment.

After several attempts.

Dongchun immediately stopped the flow of magic.

She stopped abruptly, dissipating the magic that had been accelerating her body, and her red eyes dimmed.

Xia Zhi also stopped, and the churning space instantly calmed her anger: "What's wrong?"

"Xia, you are very strong."

Dongchun raised her head and calmly looked at the referee crystal above, as if stating the answer to a simple arithmetic problem: "I concede."

Then, Dongchun raised her hand to tuck her messy hair behind her ear and walked steadily toward the exit, as if nothing had happened.

Xia Zhi did not move from the field.

The moment the magic crystal recording the real-time data at the top stopped working, she could no longer support herself and collapsed to her knees on the ground.

She greedily inhaled the air, struggling to recover from the backlash caused by the overload of her magic.

She was already at her limit; if Dongchun had spoken two seconds later, she would have been the one to collapse.

But it's alright.

So many eyes are watching.

There are things I want to achieve, and things I must achieve; for these, I absolutely cannot afford to lose...