FALLEN ORACLE

**Chapter 2: The Fourth Kind of Contact (4)**

He had no idea why he was having such a strange dream. Maybe it was because Dreamweed was such a rare thing with unusual properties.Adopting a "since I'm here, I might as well stay" attitude, he circled the cross, continuing to study the woman before him. Her gaze seemed to slowly follow his movement.Chen Yi noticed that the tracking had a noticeable delay and poor accuracy.It felt as if the woman couldn't truly *see* him—only vaguely sense his presence and position.It was then that he noticed the cruel spell on her exposed limbs.Chen Yi felt a pang of sympathy. Without thinking, he reached out to touch the spell, to see if there was a way to undo it. But not surprisingly, his fingers passed right through the seemingly solid thorns—and through the woman's wrist.*It's just a dream,* he told himself. *Anything's possible.*Just then, the dark cyan stone on the cell wall flashed an eerie light at the woman on the cross. She writhed in pain.Chen Yi felt deeply sorry for his own helplessness. But then, to his surprise, the woman gradually suppressed the agony. Seeing him directly in front of her, she suddenly widened her eyes.A surge of mana—unlike anything he'd ever felt—shot from her eyes and struck him square in the forehead.Though sudden, Chen Yi didn't mind the sensation. It was as if the woman had gently removed the top of his skull and was massaging the soft brain beneath with exquisite tenderness.Objectively, the process lasted about ten minutes. Subjectively, from Chen Yi's perspective, it flew by in an instant. He'd never experienced anything so comfortable and strange.As the mana faded, the glow of the stone on the wall dimmed.The white-robed men outside opened the cell door and—with no sense of tact or courtesy—walked right through Chen Yi's body to release the woman's limbs from the cross.She seemed on the verge of passing out from exhaustion. She quickly slumped to the ground.The white-robed men showed no pity. One of them simply asked, "What? Too much this time?""Heh heh, it's her after all. A lot is normal," another replied with a dull, double-edged dirty joke.Soon, the white-robed men put chains on the woman now sitting collapsed on the floor and dragged her toward the inner side of the cell.Chen Yi watched angrily as they hauled her away, powerless to do anything.*But it's just a dream,* he comforted himself. *No one actually got hurt.*Then a second thought struck him: why would he suddenly have *this* kind of dream? At that moment, he couldn't help but seriously question his own character.Just as he was wallowing in self-doubt, the woman suddenly turned her head back—without any of the white-robed men noticing—and smiled at him. She raised a finger vertically to those lips—one a man couldn't help but want to kiss.None of the white-robed men noticed the tiny gesture.Then, without any warning, everything went black. The next moment, Chen Yi jolted awake in his dormitory bed.---At that moment, Chen Yi had no idea that on the gambling table called "fate," Tiya had already pushed all her chips onto him."What was that dream supposed to mean?" Chen Yi sat up. Outside, the sky was pitch black. The other three in the dorm were still passed out from the Dreamweed Cider.As his consciousness gradually cleared, a flood of massive, chaotic information surfaced in his mind.Chen Yi knew this feeling all too well. Every time he independently researched and discovered a spell on his own, information would appear in his mind like this.Not wanting to let the fleeting inspiration slip away, he immediately lit a Glow spell—a simple enough spell that he could cast even without a ring.Then he pulled out his spellbook and a quill pen from his storage ring. The moment the pen touched the page, the inspiration came alive, pouring through his fingers onto the page in symbol after symbol.Chen Yi wrote furiously for quite a while before finally coming to his senses.He was astonished to find that he had filled several entire pages. All of it about one single spell.This discovery made him gasp.His most complex self-discovered spell to date had taken up barely half a page in his spellbook. But this spell, which had flashed into his mind in a dream, spanned several pages.Generally speaking, the more complex the mana guidance, the more powerful the spell.Chen Yi's spells were low-level, but his understanding of magic ran deep. Even though he hadn't cast it yet, as he'd written it out, he vaguely sensed that this was an Elemental spell—a momentary, massive discharge of mana over a certain area.Even though it was still the middle of the night, Chen Yi couldn't suppress his curiosity. He threw on his robe, put on the Elemental ring from his bedside, and quietly stepped out onto the dormitory balcony.The symbols in his spellbook glowed with golden light, making them perfectly legible in the darkness. His blank spellbook had finally received its first mission.Chen Yi followed the guidance of the first symbol, attempting to channel the surrounding mana through his ring. Right from the start, he sensed something extraordinary about this spell.When casting other spells, Chen Yi could usually only perceive mana within a very small area.But when casting this spell, he felt his consciousness instantly envelop the entire dormitory building. The flow of mana across such a vast area was completely under his control!The more powerful the spell, the more mana it required to mobilize!Chen Yi wasn't yet comfortable flipping through his spellbook while manipulating mana, but he had natural talent. After some fumbling, he quickly absorbed the surrounding mana into his magic ring.The Elemental ring began to glow with a faint white light. Not dazzling, but inspiring great confidence.Page by page, Chen Yi worked through the spellbook. His gaze eventually locked onto a barren mountain about five kilometers outside the academy, visible from the balcony.He continued to channel mana according to the symbols. As he finished reading the final symbol, a massive torrent of mana burst from his ring like surging tides, aimed straight at that mountain.*c***k!*In the dark night, a bright, sharply defined bolt of lightning struck the mountain peak with perfect precision."Huh? Thunder?" Carl rubbed his sleepy eyes. Seeing Chen Yi standing on the balcony, he asked, "Why aren't you asleep yet?""Yeah... sounds like thunder," Chen Yi said, nodding mechanically. The shock inside him was beyond words.He had never seen it in person, but he knew very well: that was not thunder. That was the most powerful elemental magic on the continent—Thunderstrike.