Capacity

Leaving the bank, Jiang Han followed Jiang Zhenling toward the east side of Trade Street. The vendor witch who had been selling witch eggs earlier was currently holding a wand to create a small patch of clouds in the air to cool off. On the flying carpet floating beside her, only a few empty wooden frames remained, making it look like those witch eggs were quite popular and already sold out.

Along the way, Jiang Han stealthily extracted information from little comrade Jiang Zhenling using the adult-testing-a-child method. Jiang Zhenling rolled her eyes from time to time along the way, occasionally dropping a sarcastic remark like, "Sis, not only are you sick, but you've also hit menopause eighty years early?", but she still answered all those questions properly.

With her undergraduate-level comprehension from her previous life, Jiang Han had no problems understanding and quickly memorized the common sense of magic, while also correcting some parts that she had guessed incorrectly.

For instance, witches didn't actually need wands to cast spells; wands were merely convenient tools. Moreover, the function of a wand was to allow a witch to more easily control the range and precision of magic. If one wanted to inflict harm, they could simply conjure up a lethal magic model in their mind and blast the motherfucker regardless of the consequences. Casting spells was akin to cracking a safe; a witch holding a wand was a lockpicker, precisely opening the lock. A witch without a wand, on the other hand, was a combat engineer, blowing the safe open with half a pound of dynamite.

As for a witch's total magic power and overall output limits, the domestic front really hadn't popularized knowledge in this area...

The country was crossing the river by feeling the stones, and the citizens were even more of the mindset that "being able to cast magic is enough." Everyone measured things using empiricism. For instance, among the local populace around Liangshan, the general consensus was that a witch's total magic power was arranged by the state—the Witch Bureau would issue you a quota, and that was how much magic power you had... Meanwhile, in the southern metropolis of Nanxiang, urban residents had dozens of theories, with the most widely believed one being that total magic power increased by eating lychees and drinking spiritual fluid, meaning your magic power would grow as you ate lychees and drank wine.

As someone who had once lived into an era where the omnipotent scientific worldview of the twenty-first century was deeply ingrained in people's hearts, Jiang Han knew it was fake the moment she heard it.

Damn it, even if magic had already appeared in this world in a thoroughly unscientific manner, this kind of rumor was one hundred percent fake.

It was about as reliable as a kid eating Life Number One to ace the top scholar exam.

Jiang Han pondered that if this were her original world, she certainly wouldn't waste time pondering all this nonsense. She would find a few stocks destined to surge tenfold or so (stocks in '94 were just that awesome) to accumulate starting capital, then buy into a few companies destined to skyrocket dozens of times over (what a crazy era), and finally purchase a few plots of land destined to multiply in value by hundreds (real estate even crazier than the crazy). That way, she would have secured a life of luxury and wealth for her family and the next five or six generations.

Yet the thought was lovely, but this world was an unscientific world!

First of all, would those pieces of land whose value multiplied by hundreds really surge just like in her past life? Not necessarily. A witch's power was sufficient to build residences all along the coastline and territorial waters of the new China, altering the living environment. Would those destined-to-succeed companies continue to succeed? Also not necessarily. For example, could textile factory tycoons truly hold their ground in a world where witches could casually increase textile production?

Uncertain, not necessarily, and even less guaranteed.

And to take a step back, what if she really did amass a vast fortune? This world possessed extraordinary martial might, and the sense of security money brought was virtually nonexistent from the very start. The destructive power a witch could unleash was startling; Jiang Han could guess with her heels what would happen if a not-so-powerful witch became too wealthy. Even in another legal world without extraordinary martial power, there were robberies, kidnappings, and the like. Could it be that by swapping the species to a "witch," "humans" suddenly stopped being "humans"?

For the sake of safety, she still had to find a way to improve her own abilities, and in the current world, the most direct way to elevate her capabilities was to increase her total magic power.

Jiang Han scanned the street, her gaze resting on a shop that sold cauldrons and measuring tools. Researching magic through scientific methods couldn't be rushed; she first needed to understand just how far the witches of this world had progressed in their study of magic. She needed to read more books and buy some tools to aid her research.

She covertly glanced at her younger sister, refining her plan once again and adding the most crucial first step:

Applying to her sister for funds to buy tools.

Sigh, a penny can stump a hero... a witch. With the family's financial authority not in her hands, saying anything else was just empty talk.

Jiang Han pondered how to plausibly swindle some funding, racking her brains just like she had when she tried to con her first pot of gold from a shrewd businessman back when she was twenty-eight. The sunlight was quite intense at the moment, yet the street where the witches resided was cool and breezy, with a witch occasionally firing two ice bullets into the sky for artificial cooling. Even right next to the roadside meat skewers, the air remained cool and fresh.

"Sis, you want a snack?" Jiang Zhenling looked over at a mobile cotton candy vendor, asking for her opinion without even turning her head. It was only at moments like this that she retained a fraction of her underage immaturity.

"Yeah." Jiang Han replied in a split second. She loved sweets, which was one trait she generally shared with women.

Jiang Zhenling walked up to the vendor, asked for the price, paid the money, and then pulled Jiang Han along to watch the cotton candy take shape.

The vendor witch chuckled, pulling her flying carpet a bit closer, and eagerly asked Jiang Han, "Comrade, you wanna eat somethin' sweet or somethin' light?"

"Sweet." Jiang Han glanced at her younger sister, recalling that everyone in this family was on the sweet-toothed faction. "The sweeter, the better."

"Alrighty." The cotton candy vendor nodded, deftly dumping half a small bag of sugar into the iron pot on the flying carpet, followed by a flurry of baffling yet swift magic—sparks and electrical currents flashed, and with a crackle and a pop, the sugar was transformed into a cotton-like substance made of sugar threads. It seemed she might have put in a bit too much sugar, as the entire pot was stuffed full of cotton candy.

The vendor clapped her hands, chanted a Latin phrase with a Cantonese accent, produced two ice lollies, and thrust them into the cotton candy. With a couple of stirs, they turned into two large clusters of cotton candy.

"Done and done."

Jiang Han took her portion of cotton candy and took a bite. Not only was it fluffy and sweet, but it also carried a wonderfully crisp and refreshing sensation. Generally speaking, cotton candy tended to be quite warm, so it seemed things made with magic were indeed different. She still remembered that back when she used to eat cotton candy, it often took a good two or three minutes just for one to be made, whereas here, using magic took a mere five or six seconds. The efficiency was beyond comparison.

"So sweet." Her younger sister also accepted a portion. After licking it, she first frowned slightly, then smiled with satisfaction. "When I usually buy cotton candy, the vendors never ask me if I want it sweet."

Her words sounded as though she were implying something.

Jiang Han chose not to pick up the thread. This line of questioning, much like "Sis" and "having visitors," had been categorized among the most hated topics. In the context of Chinese, the most annoying phrases allowed for multiple interpretations simultaneously.

Eating the cotton candy and enjoying the pleasantly cool breeze, Jiang Han couldn't help but develop a sliver of affection for this kind of world. The sense of unfamiliarity gradually faded, while a sense of novelty rushed in.

They arrived at what was roughly the pet-selling street—a long, trapezoidal avenue lined with pet shops on both left and right. The temperament of the witches in this area was a bit more arrogant than those on the previous street, presumably because buying and selling pets already qualified one as a high-income demographic. Moreover, judging from the various fantastical creatures at the pet shop entrances, it felt even more characteristic of the Witch World.

Jiang Zhenling stopped near the entrance of the street and reminded her, "Your state is extremely abnormal today. Even though you've been pretty normal just now, I still have to bring it up."

"Pets must draw magic power from our bodies in order to gradually be demonized and acquire abilities and attributes that surpass ordinary animals. The stronger they are, the more powerful magic they require to sustain them. Our family belongs to a breed with low magic power but sufficient control, so when choosing pets, we generally pick small ones like otters and octopuses, and the largest shouldn't exceed the size of a normal deer. These consume little and are simple to raise."

"If you raise those powerful pets, it's easy to end up deficient in magic power, and the magic you can cast each day won't even be enough to support a skirmish... Of course, catching petty thieves is still fine, provided the thief is an ordinary person or a witch with extremely low magic power known as a weak witch."

After receiving this solemn warning, Jiang Han obediently nodded:

"I understand."