Chapter 308 – Sesame, Close the Door

Chapter 308 – Sesame, Close the Door

“Mechanisms?” None of the young witches understood.

After Mo Lan explained the door’s internal structure and principles, the young witches’ eyes had spiraled into mosquito-coil swirls. “Don’t get it, don’t get it, still don’t get it.”

Mo Lan: “…”

She’d forgotten — witches didn’t study math, and they didn’t study physics either.

But whatever physics could accomplish, magic could always accomplish too.

“Wait! What’s that?” Vasida spotted a small mountain of translucent white crystal inside the stone chamber ahead, its peak nearly touching the ceiling.

“It’s all ordinary white quartz. This gets used a lot when making lamps, so I piled it out here in the main hall for easy access. There are other storage rooms over there with different minerals — help yourselves.” Mo Lan said generously.

The young witches: “!!!”

Now that, they understood!

They all rushed into the storage rooms.

“Oh my goodness! So many crystals!”

“Ahh! Those are my favorite rubies! I’m going to make them into a necklace!”

“There’s even metal ore!”

“This is too much! Moira, did you mine out everything under Lone Peak Forest?!”

“Moira, is this what you’ve been doing all that time you disappeared? Mining underground?!”

…

Mo Lan stood off to the side watching them bustle about, unable to keep the corners of her mouth from curling up.

All that time spent mining — worth it!

When she saw each of them pick only one or two pieces before stopping, Mo Lan was displeased. “Take more, take more! I can’t possibly use all of this! Even if you can’t make long-lasting magic circles, you can make ones with a shorter shelf life. And if even that’s no good, you can at least make a magical lamp for outdoor lighting — it’ll always come in handy!”

She didn’t relent until she’d stuffed them so full they could barely carry anything more. “That’s more like it!”

Just then, one of the young witches noticed the staircase on the other side. “Where does this lead?”

“My home is up above,” Mo Lan said. “Let’s go up!”

They climbed the stairs and emerged at the far end of the living room, prompting another round of amazement.

“This room is so fully decorated!” Amelia said. “There are even paintings on the walls!”

Everyone present had built their own dwellings and decorated their own homes, so they all knew perfectly well how many corners they’d had to cut due to limited time, energy, and resources.

Everything had been pared down to pure functionality — some residences didn’t even have complete functionality yet, making them inconvenient to live in. Decorations were out of the question.

But Mo Lan’s home not only had specially painted wall art, the various pieces of furniture were inlaid with gemstones and had their own design and style. Even the tea set on the table and the flower pot in the corner had been specially crafted.

Beside the fireplace, there was even a peculiar-looking hanging chair.

Every detail revealed its owner’s ingenuity.

Mo Lan used Culinary Magic to prepare brewed tea for everyone.

“Feel free to look around. Through that door is the study, the other side is the kitchen and dining room, and the bedroom is upstairs.”

She had entered full enthusiastic-hostess mode.

Outwardly calm and composed, she was secretly delighted whenever someone praised or admired something beautiful in her home.

Noticing that no one had spotted the magic circles in the room, Mo Lan casually positioned herself near where the array stones were installed.

Soon enough, an upperclassman passed by. “Moira, that hanging chair is so comfortable! I absolutely love — hm? What’s this? It doesn’t look like mere decoration. There are energy traces!”

“Where? Where?” Several more upperclassmen gathered around.

Then one who was more knowledgeable about Alchemy Magic revealed the secret: “They’re array stones! There are magic circles in the room!”

“There’s one here too!” Soon other young witches noticed array stones in other locations.

They were all low-level magic circles with no deliberate concealment of energy traces — they’d simply been hidden within the room’s decorations. Once you actually looked for them, it didn’t take long to find them all.

“A constant-temperature magic circle is one thing, but you even have a humidity-regulating magic circle and a dust-removal magic circle?!” Vasida said.

Her own place didn’t even have a constant-temperature magic circle! Only on those few unbearably cold winter days had she gone to the riverbank to pick up some stones and carve a few temporary constant-temperature array stones.

“Looks like the final showdown is between the two of us,” Sylph sighed. “These magic circles alone, plus this living room, are enough for Moira to win hands down.”

“No, wait!” Vasida suddenly remembered something. “Moira, you don’t live in Wild Boar Valley, do you? I went to Wild Boar Valley a couple of days ago — even if you live inside the cliff wall, there’s no way I’d miss such a magnificent front door!”

Sylph nodded in agreement. “That’s right! I can vouch for it! There was nothing in the valley but a bit of farmland.”

Mo Lan thought to herself — finally, someone’s asking about this!

She fought to keep her mouth from curving upward. “Why don’t you check the Academy map?”

Vasida and Sylph pulled out the Academy map. Sure enough, their current location was marked as Wild Boar Valley.

“How is that possible?!”

“It really is Wild Boar Valley!” Just then, Iris and Alba emerged from the adjacent kitchen. “There’s a huge, beautiful window in there, and outside is the exact place from the Wilderness Survival Class video where Moira encountered the herd of black-haired wild boars.”

Vasida and Sylph rushed over to look. What they saw outside — wasn’t it the very same Wild Boar Valley they’d visited just a few days ago?

“That’s impossible!”

They were starting to doubt their own memories.

“Moira, how do we get outside?” They wanted to go out and see for themselves.

“Just press the button on the door. One press for flight mode, two presses for walking mode,” Mo Lan said.

Seeing their baffled expressions, Mo Lan explained: “They’re all mechanisms!”

Lilith curiously pressed the button twice. The door began rising upward again.

Something seemed to be extending out from the stone wall above and below as well!

“The portico and stairs are mechanisms too?”

The young witches descended the staircase and arrived on the bank beside the waterfall.

Mo Lan was the last to come out. Once she had, she called out: “Sesame, close the door.”

The door, portico, and stairs all retracted, and even the seams vanished.

The entire cliff face was once again seamless, without the slightest trace of human construction.

The young witches rubbed their eyes in disbelief. “How is this possible?”

“There should be a window right there! I opened it myself just a moment ago!” Iris and Alba ran to the cliff wall beside the waterfall. They even mounted their brooms and flew up to feel around. Their hands met resistance, but it wasn’t the rough texture of rock. “Why does it feel so strange?”

Amelia suddenly recalled the array stones she’d seen on the windowsill. “I know! It’s an invisibility magic circle! The windows and door are all hidden!”

Mo Lan nodded. “That’s right.”

Vasida and Sylph turned to Mo Lan. “Just how many magic circles have you set up? No — just how much magical ore have you mined?!”