Chapter 3: An Attempt at Ability

After some thought, Su Xin prepared to try actively triggering that magical Time Acceleration ability.

However, after looking at the surrounding environment, he decided to wait until after school to find a deserted place to try it; he did not want to cause any commotion that would affect others.

He took out his phone to check the time; there were about thirty minutes left until school ended.

Su Xin tidied up the books on his desk and casually picked up the physics workbook at his side to review.

Very quickly, he felt something different.

Previously, physics had always been his weak point; he often couldn't even make it into the top twenty in his grade, which was a far cry from his grades in other subjects.

But now, when he saw any exercise problem, several ways to solve it would automatically pop into his mind, as simple as elementary school math, not even requiring him to put effort into thinking.

"Right, it's the change from just now!"

Su Xin then remembered that when he had just entered the Time Acceleration state, his thinking seemed exceptionally active, as if his Ren and Du meridians had been opened.

In that short span of less than thirty seconds, problems he had only half-understood were suddenly clear, and all the knowledge points he had ever learned were instantly mastered, as if he had re-learned them all and they had been automatically organized in his mind.

As everyone knows, the process of learning is not simply memorizing various knowledge points; the most important things are understanding and application.

Any high school senior with average grades can remember the vast majority of knowledge points in the high school curriculum; theoretically, these knowledge points are enough for them to get into top universities.

But whether one can understand and skillfully apply them is the fundamental reason for the difference in everyone's grades.

And as a top student, Su Xin had long since memorized all the knowledge points, which is why the moment his ability was passively activated just now, he completely mastered them, not even needing to learn them a second time.

He quickly flipped through the physics workbook in his hand page by page; every time he saw a problem, the method to solve it would automatically appear in his mind, and every time he saw a knowledge point, he could think of the appropriate way to apply it.

This made him think of a phrase—

As if helped by a god.

After finishing one book, he picked up other books and flipped through a few pages at random, discovering that not a single problem could stump him for even a second.

Finally.

Su Xin simply took out an unfinished workbook and began to write furiously.

By the time the school bell rang, he had finished exactly half of the workbook.

The whole process was like flowing clouds and running water, incomparably easy.

"Too simple."

"Could it be that when that ability awakened, it incidentally developed my brain? Made me smarter?"

Su Xin smiled excitedly, looking forward even more to the ability test later.

He closed the workbook, put it back among the pile of books in front of him, too lazy to even check the answers, and stood up impatiently to walk out of the classroom.

"Su Xin, wait for me!"

His good friend Li Tongtian, who was sitting behind him to the side, stood up and shouted.

"I have something to do today, I have to go first."

Su Xin waved his hand and walked out of the classroom without looking back, taking advantage of the fact that there weren't many people in the hallway yet to walk quickly downstairs.

Baohe City No. 1 Senior High School, where he was, was a provincial key high school that implemented semi-closed management; only day students who had obtained a day-student pass could enter and exit the school gate during school hours.

Su Xin's home was in a township around Baohe City, but his mother, in order to ensure he ate nutritiously and to take better care of him, had specifically rented a small room near the school to accompany him in his studies, doing laundry and cooking for him in her spare time from work, and she had also obtained a day-student pass for him.

Taking advantage of the lack of people, Su Xin walked out of the school gate early, then turned two corners and walked into a road with relatively few people.

This was the path he had to take to return to his rented room; there weren't many shops around, it belonged to an old residential area, and there were no cameras on either side of the road, so even if there were sporadic passersby, it wouldn't affect him testing his ability.

Su Xin didn't know how to activate the ability, so he had to try giving a command in his mind first:

"Accelerate?"

In an instant, the world fell silent.

All the people and objects around him stopped completely, as if the magical scene of space-time standing still was being reenacted.

Su Xin could clearly feel that when he gave the command with his intent, a cool sensation quickly spread from his mind throughout his entire body.

In this state, his brain became incomparably active, and thinking about problems became exceptionally simple.

The only problem was that the feeling of suffocation still made him somewhat uncomfortable, so he had to hold his breath.

"This is indeed my ability, and it is indeed the ability to control my own time acceleration; it can be activated with a single thought."

Su Xin turned his head to look left and right, but he was worried about causing air turbulence and creating too much of a commotion, so he didn't make any big movements.

Immediately after, he moved his intent again, and the Time Acceleration state was released.

"It seems that the activation and stopping of the ability are completely subject to my will; in the short term, there is no extra consumption."

"It's just a pity that I can't breathe normally in the acceleration state, which limits the long-term use of the ability."

"It's very difficult to be a Flash who acts chivalrously like in the movies."

"Moreover, moving might cause too much of a commotion, and with cameras everywhere outside, I can't just run around."

Su Xin pondered for a moment, then suddenly thought:

"Wait, I can accelerate my own time, so can I control the magnitude of the time acceleration?"

"For example, if my own time is only accelerated by fifty percent or one hundred percent, this would neither affect breathing nor cause too much impact on the outside world due to breathing or movement, and it would also allow my mental activity to be greatly increased, significantly improving efficiency."

Thinking of it, he did it.

Su Xin decisively began to try.

And his Time Acceleration ability was indeed like a physical instinct, controllable at will; under his deliberate control, he easily exerted a low-multiplier time acceleration.

The pedestrians around him were like slow motion, slowly lifting their feet and slowly putting them down.

Su Xin picked up his phone, opened the timer function, counted the seconds in his heart, and compared them with the timing on the phone.

"About two times speed."

"Breathing is normal, the sounds of the outside world are normal, and there is no obvious extra physical exertion."

"Although my brain activity has increased quite a bit, compared to when I exert the ability at full power, it is still a lot worse; it should be related to the multiplier of the time acceleration."

Su Xin analyzed silently.

After putting away his phone, Su Xin deliberately matched his pace to the speed of others, maintaining a two-fold Time Acceleration, and attempted to adapt to this kind of life.

After turning another corner and seeing that there was no one around, he continued to try increasing the multiplier.

Two-fold, three-fold, five-fold, ten-fold.

When he accelerated to ten-fold, the sounds of the outside world were slowed down to the point of being indistinguishable, appearing to his ears as a buzzing, chaotic drone.

As for breathing, although it was a bit difficult, Su Xin could still barely manage to persist.

This was also just about the maximum acceleration multiplier he could maintain for a long period of time.

"So, let me test now whether contact with the outside world while in a state of Time Acceleration will result in mutual destruction due to the relative speed being too fast?"

Harboring this doubt, Su Xin slowly crouched down and lightly struck the ground with one palm.

"No pain; it feels the same as striking the ground at normal speed."

"Perhaps because my own physical laws are in a normal state, the reaction force I feel is the reaction force of a normal strike."

This made Su Xin relax a little.

When he had just attempted the maximum extent of Time Acceleration, he had always stopped his footsteps to try it, just for fear that the relative speed would be too great and his feet would be shattered by the reaction force when they hit the ground.

But now it seemed that no matter how many times he accelerated time, the reaction force he endured when touching other objects was normal.

In this way, even in a state of extreme Time Acceleration, he did not need to worry about any collisions and could move about freely.

"Then, what kind of reaction will objects in the outside world have?"

Su Xin struck the ground with his palm once more.

This time, he used his greatest strength, and his palm felt obvious pain.

And when his palm struck the ground, he could clearly see fine cracks appearing on the gray cement floor, spreading outward at a speed visible to the naked eye.