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I had originally thought Mo Jiaxing would lose his job after the elopement incident, but Mu He intervened and re assigned him.
Instead of driving directly for Mu Zhuoyun, he was given another tedious job that kept him constantly on the road with almost no rest.
Even though life was getting difficult for them, they were still a happy family who took care of each other.
As for myself, my body had hit the absolute ceiling of mortal development.
I am not talking about height, since I was still 13 and had some breathing room to grow, but my System skills simply couldn’t increase much further without the introduction of magic.
If I lifted heavier weights or ran longer distances, I risked tearing ligaments that hadn’t finished maturing.
Since my physical body needed to maintain its current equilibrium, I turned my attention back to the internet.
I spent hours scouring video sharing platforms, looking for mundane, non-magical skills that ordinary humans in this world had developed to peak efficiency.
I chose three mundane skills to master: LockPicking, Parkour, and Parallel Processing.
The first was Lockpicking.
In a world governed by magic, security was often a strange hybrid of the mundane and the arcane.
Prestigious families like the Mu Clan used elemental wards and magical barriers to protect their vaults.
But for the remaining ninety percent of Bo City the civilian sector, the warehouses, the abandoned factories, and the lower level Association offices security was still entirely mechanical.
A standard mage, if confronted with a locked steel door, would simply blow it off its hinges with a Fire Burst or shatter the mechanism with a Lightning Strike.
But magic is loud.
Magic leaves an elemental residue that the Enforcement Union can track like a fingerprint.
I started by watching online tutorials, studying the internal schematics of lock cylinders.
Then, I bought a few mechanical locks with different designs to practice on.
For the first few weeks, I sat in the dim light of my bedroom, a transparent practice lock in my left hand and a tension wrench in my right.
“Click out of one…
nothing on two…
three is binding,” I muttered to myself, mimicking the monotonous voices of the security enthusiasts I had watched online.
It required incredible micro motor control, which my [Ambidexterity: Lv.
16] perfectly supported.
I learned to feel the microscopic vibrations of the brass pins setting into place through the thin metal of the pick.
> [Skill Unlocked: Lockpicking Lv.
1]
Once the System recognized the concept, my progression skyrocketed.
I stopped using the transparent locks and moved on to the real things.
I started picking them blindfolded.
I started picking them behind my back.
I started picking them while hanging upside down from my pull up bar to simulate high stress physical environments.
By the end of the fourth month, standard locks ceased to be obstacles.
They were just temporary inconveniences.
I could bypass a heavy duty warehouse deadbolt in under four seconds using nothing but a bent paperclip and a hairpin I had “borrowed” from Xinxia.
> [Lockpicking: Lv.
18]
Once I mastered Lockpicking, I jumped into Parkour.
I spent hours watching videos of urban free runners and traceurs leaping across massive gaps between concrete buildings.
I combined this visual knowledge with my [Running] and [Physical Fitness Theory] skills, turning the Southern District into my personal playground.
Every night, after my parents went to sleep, I slipped out of my window.
I didn’t run on the streets.
I scrambled up the side of our house, my fingers finding the tiny, imperceptible grooves in the brickwork.
At first, my movements were clunky.
I bruised my knees misjudging a wall run, and I nearly sprained my ankle failing to properly execute a safety roll on a hard concrete roof.
But once the skill unlocked, its progression skyrocketed.
> [Skill Unlocked: Parkour Lv.
1]
As the weeks turned into months, my body adapted to the geometry of the city.
I learned the precise physics of a “cat leap” jumping across a ten foot alleyway, catching the opposite ledge with my fingertips, and absorbing the kinetic impact with my toes against the brick.
I learned how to seamlessly vault over chain link fences without breaking my stride.
I learned how to use the momentum of a two story drop by instantly translating the downward force into a forward shoulder roll.
I could cross the entire Southern District without my feet ever touching a sidewalk.
I mapped out the structure of every roof, the distance between every balcony, and the exact placement of every rusted pipe.
> [Parkour: Lv.
22]
If a Colossal eyed Ape Rat chased me now, I wouldn’t just outrun it.
I would run up a wall, backflip off a streetlamp, and vanish over a rooftop before its primitive brain could process where I went.
Even without using magic, I could outpace it.
Then came the real deal.
Parallel Processing.
This is a skill not even 1% of magicians can execute.
In history, there are fewer than 30 people officially registered as being able to do this.
With this skill, mages can unleash two spells at once.
A lot of people have tried to do it, but there is almost always mental interference with the different elements.
So, the Mage Association classified it as a natural talent, much like a Double Awakening.
Yes, Double Awakening is rare, but there were still people who had awakened it in history when checking the government databases.
During my deep dives, I also found hidden records of a person whose name had been wiped from all digital data.
This person had a horrifying natural talent: he could extract anyone’s cultivation and bestow it upon others, or transplant it into himself.
But he was eventually killed by the Mu family’s main branch.
Before he died, he had worked for the Mu family, transplanting other mages cultivation into Mu family branch members, which had increased their power significantly at one point.
Even though he could transplant the cultivation, the recipients still couldn’t control the stars in their Stardusts without immense practice.
After the Mu family created a ritual based on his power, they tried to strip this ability from him.
The ritual failed, and he died.
But the ritual that the Mu family’s Forbidden Mage created was further modified and eventually made to work.
They are still using this dark ritual today, stripping the natural talents of mages and bestowing them upon members of their own family.
The government knows all this, but they can’t do anything because of the Forbidden Mage present within the Mu Clan.
Returning to the skill of Parallel Processing:
Magical casting required intense focus.
A mage had to connect the stars within their Stardust to form a Star Trace.
If their concentration broke for even a microsecond, the spell failed, and they suffered a magical backlash.
This was why most novice mages stood entirely still when they cast spells.
But I knew staying still was a disaster in front of monsters.
So, I started practicing this new skill.
The human brain naturally bottlenecks information.
It focuses on one primary task and relegates everything else to subconscious automation.
I needed to force my brain to actively process two high level cognitive tasks simultaneously.
I started simple.
I bought a Rubik’s Cube.
Sitting at my desk, I would solve the Rubik’s Cube with my left hand, relying on my [Ambidexterity].
At the exact same time, I forced my right hand to type complex Python code on my laptop.
The initial results were catastrophic.
If I focused on the code, my left hand would freeze on the cube.
If I focused on the cube, my right hand would type absolute gibberish.
This frustrating process continued for several weeks until…
> [Skill Unlocked: Parallel Processing Lv.
1]
Once the System unlocked the ability, I entered full on multitasking mode.
I continued to improve my ability everywhere I went.
In the classroom, I even started trying to write with my foot, which completely baffled Mo Fan, who always sat beside me.
By the start of the new school year my new skill was leveled up to 19.
> [Parallel Processing: Lv.
19]
With this skill, I could now do four things at once.
I could use my two hands to do one thing and my two legs to do another.
I could also finely control my body with the System skills working in harmony.
When I finally awakened my magic, the mental strain of connecting a Star Trace would be child’s play.
I wouldn’t just be a mage; I would be a multi tasking magical artillery battery.
But for that, I needed to have multiple elements.
I still didn’t know whether I would awaken double elements like Mo Fan, but even if I didn’t, I would still strive to improve my abilities to their absolute limit.
Time slowly passed.
I was 14 and in the final year of Junior High.
There were still five months until the magical awakening.
I guessed the time was nearing for Mo Fan to be transmigrated from the science based world.
I didn’t know whether he would recognize me as ‘Zhang Xiaohou’.
I mean, compared to the novel, I had changed so much.
I would find out in a few weeks, I guessed.
POV: Mo Fan
Three months.
It had been exactly three months since I fell asleep as a normal, science abiding middle school student on Earth and woke up in a parallel universe that had seemingly lost its damn mind.
I still vividly remembered that first morning.
I had cracked open my textbook, expecting to see the comforting, logical laws of Newton’s physics and the periodic table of elements.
Instead, I found diagrams of Star Traces, essays on the historical impact of the Fire Element, and strict guidelines on what to do if a One Eyed Magic Wolf wandered into your neighborhood.
I thought I was having a stroke.
I thought someone had slipped drugs into my breakfast steamed buns.
But no.
The world had actually changed.
Science was dead, and magic reigned supreme.
And to make matters infinitely worse, I was thrown into the body of a student who was notoriously at the bottom of the academic barrel, right before the high school entrance exams.
If I didn’t pass, I wouldn’t get into Tianlan Magic High School, and my dreams of becoming a powerful mage would end before they even began.
I don’t know how to feel when i found my parallel self also bottom of academy.
For the past ninety days, my life had been a living hell of cramming.
I spent every waking moment trying to force nine years of magical theory into my brain.
But honestly?
The magical beasts, the elemental Stardusts, and the tyrannical Mu Family weren’t the things that threw me off the most about this parallel universe.
The most jarring, terrifying, and utterly inexplicable anomaly in this world was sitting cross legged on the floor of my cramped bedroom, quietly reading a book.
My best friend, Zhang Xiaohou.
“Hey, Monkey,” I groaned, rubbing my bloodshot eyes and tossing my Introduction to Primary Magical Resonance textbook onto my desk.
“I think my brain is leaking out of my ears.
Can we take a break?”
Xiaohou didn’t immediately look up.
He was currently reading two different books at the exact same time.
They were laid flat on the floor in front of him.
His left index finger was tracing the lines of a thick bestiary detailing commander level monsters, while his right hand was twirling a pen over a notebook filled with complex algebraic equations.
“Just finish the chapter on Elemental Conductivity, Fan-ge,” Xiaohou replied, his voice calm, smooth, and entirely unbothered.
“If you don’t understand how lightning particles interact with ambient moisture, you’re going to fail the written portion of the exam on Tuesday.”
He didn’t even blink.
He just turned the page of the bestiary with his left hand and seamlessly jotted down an answer in the notebook with his right.
I stared at him, a deep, unsettling chill running down my spine.
In my original world, before this whole transmigration mess, Zhang Xiaohou was a scrawny, hyperactive kid.
He was a good guy, fiercely loyal, but he was undeniably a follower.
He was the kind of kid who would accidentally trip over his own shoelaces while running away from a stray dog.
This Zhang Xiaohou was fundamentally, terrifyingly different.
I didn’t notice it during my first few weeks here because I was having daily panic attacks about the existence of magic.
But as the months dragged on, the sheer absurdity of my best friend’s existence became impossible to ignore.
First, there was the silence.
Xiaohou didn’t make a sound.
Ever.
When he walked into a room, there were no footsteps.
When he breathed, his chest barely moved.
There had been at least a dozen times in the last three months where I had been studying in my room, only to turn around and find Xiaohou standing right behind me, completely silent, offering me a glass of water.
I nearly had a heart attack every single time.
He moved like a ghost that had mastered the art of stealth.
Then, there were his reflexes.
I thought of pranking him by throwing wet paper balls in his direction, but he moved like he had eyes on the back of his head.
And finally…
there was the locker room incident.
Two weeks ago, after our mandatory physical education class, I had accidentally walked into the changing stalls while Xiaohou had his shirt off.
I was a healthy, relatively athletic teenager.
But when I saw Xiaohou’s physique, my jaw literally unhinged.
Underneath his baggy, oversized school uniform, my seemingly harmless, polite, mild mannered best friend was built like a Greek god forged in a gladiator arena.
His muscles were lean, densely packed, and wrapped across his torso in a flawless, terrifying eight pack.
When he noticed me staring at his body, he just smiled politely, threw his shirt on, and said, “I don’t swing that way, Fan-ge.”
My face turned bright red at those words, and before I could even clarify, he slipped out.
“Fan-ge?” Xiaohou’s voice snapped me out of my internal spiral.
I blinked, refocusing on him.
He had closed both books and was looking at me with that perfectly placid, gentle smile that he always wore.
It was the smile of an angel, but sometimes, when the lighting was just right, it looked like the smile of a predator observing a particularly amusing squirrel.
“Right.
Right, elemental conductivity,” I stammered, pulling the textbook back toward me.
“Got it.”
Monkey was a huge help during this period.
Knowing my difficulties, he helped me in every subject from the primary school syllabus, but covering 9 years’ worth of syllabus in 3 months was difficult even for a genius.
My fate depended on this final exam.
POV: Zhang Xiaohou
Well, our plot armored Mo Fan had finally transmigrated.
I knew it the very first day, watching him act completely stupid when he saw magic being used at the street stalls.
Watching him stare in awe at my changes sometimes was the funniest thing in the world.
I guessed the original Zhang Xiaohou hadn’t been replaced by me in his scientific world, which was a relief.
I didn’t want to think that my soul was split or copied into other worlds like in some novels.
Mo Fan always had problems with his studies.
Even though I helped him, he was almost always last.
So no one really cared when he suddenly started spending all his time reading in the library.
Except for the constant ridicule from Zhao Kunsan, everything was completely normal.
Our exams were finally completed.
Without any real surprise, I took 1st place, Mu Bai took 2nd, and Mo Fan placed dead last in the school year.
He didn’t have the necessary credits to enroll in the magic high school.
He was mentally down the whole day, but I knew his father would ask Mu He for help to get him into the magic school, even if he had to sell the house to do it.
But I didn’t intervene in this.
Because this struggle was one of the driving forces that would turn Mo Fan into a powerful magician.
Just as in the novel, Mo Fan joined the magic school through the backdoor.
The next day, most of our classmates found out about it, but I just encouraged him, telling him he could be rich once he mastered magic.
Now, there was only one day left before I awakened my magic.
I didn’t know which element I would awaken, but even if it was Light, I would continue to strive to improve it to its absolute limits.
There are no useless elements, only useless mages.
To be continued…