Chapter 71 — The Anomaly of the Sphere

Those experiment logs were the bloody proof of Gao Song's clashes with the rules of "this world" as he tried to reconcile them with his "Earth experience." He had bound them into volumes, encrypted them in Chinese, and treated them as a secret he would never reveal to another soul.

Of all the experimental records, nearly eight in ten were failures.

This meant that although this world looked habitable, its natural environment even superficially resembling Earth's in some respects, at a deeper level its rules were utterly different from Earth's. What sustained its operation was an order entirely alien to Gao Yang—an order in which supernatural forces, magic included, occupied a considerable and vital share.

No—perhaps they should no longer be called supernatural forces at all. In this world, conjuring great fireballs by hand and calling on gods with incantations was what counted as natural.

But Gao Yang did not actually choose to wash up and go to sleep. On the contrary, this inconceivable world only filled him with fighting spirit.

He believed that every law had a way of being deciphered, that all things ought to have deep underlying principles. Man should revere nature, but he must not halt at nature out of that reverence. Since these extraordinary powers truly existed in this world, then he would study them as things that truly existed—just as the wind and rain, the thunder and lightning, and universal gravitation belonged to his homeland. The so-called magic here was merely another part of nature's cycle. His "Earth experience" might be useless now, but could the way of thinking he had forged in an age of information explosion really be inferior to that of those conservative nobles and pedantic scholars shackled by medieval life?

And besides, not all experience was useless.

Gao Yang picked up two transparent lenses resting in the corner of the desk. They were cheap artificial crystal—cheap only relative to natural magic crystals. The most skilled craftsman in Tanzan Town had spent two days grinding them until, per Gao Song's specifications, one was a convex lens and the other concave. Gao Yang held the two lenses one before the other in front of his eyes, adjusting their positions until a clear image appeared before him.

Though the speed of light could not yet be measured, at the very least light still followed the laws he was familiar with as it propagated.

That meant, at minimum, a telescope could be built—a cheap "Hawkeye" spell that could be spread among the common folk.

All it would take was further lowering the cost of artificial crystal and solving the inefficiency of manual grinding.

And beyond optical phenomena, the fact that waterwheels could operate proved something else as well: in this world, though the fundamental laws of the microscopic realm might differ greatly from Earth's, some intuitive, macroscopic physical laws should be little different from Earth's.

So many things were still worth pursuing.

After writing an entry about the telescope in his memorandum, Gao Yang gave a long yawn, and only then noticed that everything outside had gone completely quiet: night had long since fallen, and it was time to sleep.

Gao Yang had sharp ears. He could hear faint snoring and sleep-talk drifting from nearby—Betty and Amber, sleeping in the next tent. Listening to Amber muttering about getting rich even in her dreams, he could not help shaking his head with a smile.

Now it really was time to wash up and sleep.

As the night deepened, the last light in the tent was extinguished, and a quiet darkness settled over everything, like the veil of the Lady of the Night in legend, sheltering those who drifted into dreams. Gao Yang strove to empty his mind and slowly sank into sleep.

And only when everything had fallen into darkness did certain faint gleams—ordinarily overlooked by all—have their chance to reveal themselves: beside Gao Song's desk, an exceedingly subtle light slowly emerged. It came from the large basket by the desk, from the pile of waste slag Amber had produced while firing her "cement."

……

In the camp after nightfall, some people remained awake—not the "workers" of the "Cecil Ironworks." Although Gao Yang had renamed the smithy and given the old blacksmith some materials on the new production system, at this stage, with all infrastructure incomplete and not even electric lighting available, no workshop in the camp needed three shifts. The ones awake were the loyal soldiers on night watch.

The militiamen taking the latter half of the night watch, armored and helmeted, walked along the paths lit by burning braziers, relieving sentries at posts throughout the camp. A small squad of militiamen passed through the storage area on the camp's south side and came to a tent standing apart from all other facilities, on the camp's outer edge. Their squad leader was a middle-aged soldier with a full beard. After confirming the password and recognition token with the comrades he was relieving, he turned a teasing gaze toward the tent: "That thing asleep?"

"What else would a rock do but sleep?" The squad leader about to go rest shrugged. "I really don't know what we're guarding here for. Just a stone ball. Not a peep out of it all these days, and Lady Hedy keeps hitting it with all sorts of spells every day to stimulate it, and still nothing to show for it..."

"Say less," the relieving squad leader warned. "This is His Grace the Duke's decision. He ordered us to guard this thing—you have a problem with that?"

"Of course not, of course not," the other man answered hastily, then glanced down at the exquisite gear on his own body, brimming with magical radiance. "I should be thanking His Grace, really. I never thought I'd get to use something this fine in my life. Almost feels like I've turned into a knight, my lord..."

"Don't go hoping this thing ever has a use," the relieving squad leader said, clapping him on the shoulder. "Go get some rest."

The yawning comrades departed, and the bearded squad leader took over the watch here with his four soldiers. He left two soldiers standing at the entrance, while he himself lifted the tent flap and stepped inside.

The "stone ball," roughly a meter and a half across, sat quietly in the center of the tent: the ground beneath it had been dug into a hollow to keep it sitting steady, and around it stood several thick wooden stakes. The coarse hemp ropes strung between the stakes had now been replaced with ropes woven with magic thread; the magic thread in those ropes gave off a faint fluorescence in the night, though its main function was psychological comfort.

Besides that, the tent held several wooden racks and a desk. On the racks were displayed some magic crystals and alchemical potions, while on the desk, paperweights held down some hastily scrawled manuscripts. Ordinary soldiers would not dare touch these things: they were the research notes Hedy had left behind.

Unfortunately, those research notes had yielded no progress whatsoever.

"This thing really hasn't changed one bit," a soldier muttered as he circled the stone ball, restraining the suicidal urge to rap it twice with the spear in his hand. "I heard it's a relic of the ancient Gondor Empire. Thought it'd be something impressive."

The squad leader cuffed the soldier on the head. "Cut the chatter. Just check carefully for cracks on the surface and whether it's shifted position. Once you're done, get out. Come back in half an hour to relieve me."

The soldier began his inspection, grumbling under his breath, while the squad leader idly surveyed the tent's furnishings. But at the very instant his gaze shifted away from the stone ball, a vague sensation—like touching static electricity—crept across his skin, raising some of the hairs on his body on end.