"Space-Time Manipulation" Sora Yuanhai had risen to the number one Level 5 position, which genuinely shocked everyone in Academy City. Some people questioned it, but not many. After all, most still believed in Academy City's fairness, and "space-time" sounded incredibly grand no matter how one looked at it. To ordinary people, it did not seem much inferior to vector manipulation.
In truth, Fang Zheng had played a word game. "Space-time" here referred to "time" and "space," but with Sora Yuanhai's power, she could only barely use them. She was completely incapable of wielding them as freely as Fang Zheng could, which was why it was space-time "manipulation" rather than space-time "mastery."
In terms of control over their abilities, Sora Yuanhai was still somewhat inferior to Shokuhou Misaki. At present, she could only manipulate space-time by going with the flow, not command it however she pleased. Comparatively speaking, Sora Yuanhai's ability was not yet especially formidable.
But for a Level 5, being able to manipulate time and space was already terrifying enough. Never mind anything else—whatever your ability was, I could just stop time, drop a steamroller on you, ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA... and then there would be no "then."
And unlike the other Level 5s, Fang Zheng put considerable effort into publicizing Sora Yuanhai's promotion to Level 5. Not only did he advertise it throughout Academy City, he also released special publications and PVs detailing Sora Yuanhai's background and achievements. At the same time, Fang Zheng pointed out the latest rules for Academy City's rankings—apart from the development and application of an ability's strength, an Esper's theoretical research would also be considered one of the evaluation criteria.
The reason the original Level 5 rankings had changed was also because those previous Level 5s were not good at theoretical research