Chapter 49 — Questions and Answers

Although he had already put that crystal away again, Gao Yang could still "see" in his mind that overhead view, like some kind of energy imaging. But he quickly found the way to shut the image off: as long as he consciously shifted his attention away from that overhead view and focused on something else, the image would vanish on its own. And the way to make it reappear was just as simple—consciously call for it.

In this process, there was no longer any need to draw on the crystal's power.

Some kind of "link" controlled by mind and will seemed to have been established, and the crystal's role in the process was probably no more than that of a key... or a catalyst of some sort.

Gao Yang sat behind the desk, looking at the few questions he had written on the paper, gathered his thoughts, and tried to answer them.

Based on the memories of Gao Yang Cecil, plus what had just happened, it could already be confirmed that the changes in the "sun" above were directly linked to the magic tides below. Whenever red spots appeared on the sun's surface, the magic power on the earth would surge upward, and the elements would grow active. The so-called dark magic tide was in fact an instantaneous eruption of vast quantities of chaotic, disordered magic power—a process in which elemental forces ran out of control like an avalanche and eroded the material world. As for the monsters that appeared in the elemental storms, their principle was still unclear; for the time being they could be regarded as a secondary phenomenon after the elements went berserk.

Regarding the sun's red spots and the surging of magic power, the intelligent beings of this world were no strangers to them. It was a natural phenomenon, irregular but not rare, so Gao Yang boldly hypothesized that the essence of the magic tide was in fact the surging of magic power after it crossed a certain "critical point." When the amplification of magic power in this world reached a certain limit, the stable order of the elements would be broken, and then the magic tide would erupt.

And what role did the sun play in this process?

Did the red spots cause the surge of magic power? Or were the two not in a causal relationship at all, but rather two phenomena of the same event?

Gao Yang thought for a moment, then added a small question to the paper: What is the essence of the sun?

It was a giant planet—that much seemed certain; at least that was how the "monitoring information" phrased it. But it clearly differed greatly in nature from the gas giants Gao Yang knew of.

The gas giants of his homeland world, as Gao Yang knew them, were not celestial bodies that emitted light and heat. Although such a giant planet was usually filled with immense quantities of nuclear fuel and released energy radiation of a certain intensity, because it had not reached the critical point for fusion, this kind of giant planet was "cooling," like an unlit furnace. Yet this world's "sun" was clearly providing light and heat to the earth.

So had it been "ignited"? Or was it that, because the laws of the two worlds were different, it displayed special properties?

Gao Yang thought about it and personally leaned toward the second explanation, for the red spots and the surging of magic power were constantly reminding him that in this world there existed physical rules utterly different from those of his homeland. If he confined himself to fixed ways of thinking, he might well do useless work when pondering these questions.

And there was another important reason he ruled out the first guess: if that giant sun in the sky really were an ignited gas giant undergoing fusion reactions, then it could already be regarded as a star, and the light and heat it released would absolutely not be as little as it was now. Given the area of the solar disc it presented and its surface color, which was nearly blue-white, the heat it released should be enough to burn the planet beneath his feet to ashes.

Gao Yang wrote his conclusion on the paper: the "sun" is a gas giant of special properties, whose activity affects the magic power on the surface; it is presumed to be a form of energy radiation with some catalytic effect. The appearance of red spots may signify an increase in energy radiation, but since no effective means of detection has been mastered, the answer remains in doubt.

Then the second question: what exactly was this "monitoring satellite"?

It might be some ancient civilization, or it might be an outpost left above this planet by visitors from beyond the heavens. And the civilization that built it must have been extremely advanced—at least they were not afraid of the so-called magic tide; the satellite could even hang leisurely in space during a magic tide eruption and watch the show, which was enough to demonstrate the technological gap. And where was the civilization that left behind this observation post (assuming for now there was only one satellite)?

Considering that the satellite he had crossed over with was already seriously malfunctioning and that no after-sales service had come calling to this day, Gao Yang boldly guessed: the civilization that left the satellite had either perished already, or had long since gone far away—and no longer paid this place any attention.

Of course, it was also possible that some big shot had money to burn and losing a satellite or two was like using up a few napkins, so no one came to check on the situation. But that possibility was very low, and Gao Yang hardly considered it at all.

Either way, the satellite was already broken, and no maintenance personnel had come knocking, so it seemed that for the time being there was no need to worry about some super-civilization daddy coming to beat up on the little children. That was good news—but then Gao Yang thought again: if that super-civilization could help solve the magic tide problem and they didn't come, then this was news as bad as it could get...

As for the satellite's functional purpose, it was probably used to monitor fluctuations in magic power.

Gao Yang recalled the second kind of overhead view he had seen before (he called the clear satellite views he had seen over many tens of thousands of years the first kind of overhead view). That view had covered the entire land with filters of various colors; perhaps the varying shades of color represented magic fluctuations, and the synchronous changes in those colors when the surging of magic power occurred also corroborated this conjecture. So the satellite was actually an early-warning device for the magic tide?

At the very least, "early warning" should be one of its functions.

It was just that the condition of this observation post now was probably worrying. No matter how Gao Yang issued commands, he could not make any adjustments to those images, and the images were also from time to time afflicted with severe interference patterns and shaking. All of this reminded him that the system's days were probably numbered.

Then one last question remained: why had Gao Yang Cecil, an ancient from seven hundred years ago, left behind such a crystal?

Even now Gao Yang still could not figure out all the properties of this crystal, but at least he had verified that it could help him reestablish contact with some monitoring station in the sky. So was this crystal useful to others?

If it was useful, what had Gao Yang Cecil used it for back then? Could it be that he, too, had used it just like Gao Yang, to obtain the satellite's viewpoint?

Er... thinking about it this way, it actually seemed quite reasonable. The reason the fiercest pioneering knight of that year could lead a band of refugees safely through a grand battle royale amid magic tides and monsters, completing a breakthrough like an extreme parkour run and establishing a new kingdom, was mainly because he had cheats that revealed the whole map...

But mere conjecture would not do; he had to actually test it.