Chapter 425 — The Blurred Boundary of the Material World

The enormous machine bridge spanned both banks of the Whitewater. On its far side the wheat in the fields of the North Bank development zone was rolling in wave upon wave, and farther off along the bank one could dimly see pipes running from the river up onto the land—that, Gaoyang said, was where the North Bank's water pumps stood.

As all manner of thaumaturgical machinery came to be manufactured, the advanced mechanical pumps had long since replaced the domain's earliest waterwheel devices; yet to this day a single waterwheel still turned in the western part of the south bank—preserved in memory of the hard early days of the pioneer domain.

"Instead of going home, you came out here to look at wheat?" Amber, though dutifully performing her role as guard and following Gaoyang to the riverside, could not keep her mouth still for a moment; after standing beside him only a short while, she began to mutter.

"It helps me think," Gaoyang said.

The image of Emily rose in his mind.

Whether Emily could now be counted as having "risen from the dead," even Gaoyang could not work out for the time being; nor was he interested in whether this was the guidance of holy light or sheer coincidence. It was simply that after seeing the form of Emily's spirit body he had been unable to keep from feeling some perplexity, and so he had wanted to find a quiet place to think.

Soul, substance, spirit body (or energy body)... where exactly does the boundary between them lie?

Reckoning from the satellite age, Gaoyang might have been in this world for a million years; reckoning from the day he rose from his coffin, he had been moving about in it for more than a year. Yet he still could not wholly cast off the shackles of thought from his former life—the uncanny, or rather "unreasonable," aspects of this world still troubled him constantly.

Kamael, once human, had become a mana being after receiving the infusion of energy from the Great Stag Amorn, ninety percent of his body composed of so-called "arcane energy"; Emily, once human, had under the influence of Wright's holy light seen her soul survive on its own and become a spirit being, her whole body formed of holy light—and what constituted both their bodies was "energy."

Can energy have form and substance? Can energy be seen and touched? Can the boundary between energy and matter be so blurred?

The concepts of his former life told Gaoyang that energy is invisible and intangible: it exists, but humans can confirm its existence only through the various phenomena it produces; it can be converted into matter and back, but that is an extremely difficult process. Yet in this world, everything was utterly different.

In the realm of magic, the boundaries of the material world were blurred to a degree that beggared belief... How did those bewildering transformations come about?

Gaoyang's gaze fell upon the distant waves of wheat—those waves of wheat, those running waters, that soil, all those things that veritably existed: could they too, in a heartbeat, change their form?

The foundations of this world... how on earth were they constituted?

Lost in thought, Gaoyang suddenly thought of the magic tide, of the matter that changed form within it, and of the magical environment that was utterly transformed once the tide had passed.

Was the magic tide... the very moment when the boundary between energy and matter was at its most blurred?

He did not know how to explain to the native creatures of this world the confusion and speculation taking shape in his mind; even a scholar of Kamael's caliber, he feared, could never comprehend what that other worldview inside his head was about. Yet he had, through the arduous friction between two worldviews, truly found a thread—a thread so fine it might touch upon the essence of this world. By instinct he felt that what had happened to Kamael and Emily could not simply be glossed over with the phrase 'it is all the work of magic.' Behind these changes... might lie hidden the most fundamental secret of this world.

Amber stood nearby, watching Gaoyang sunk in thought, and she keenly sensed that he was sinking into agitation over some question that was all but a dead end. She did not know what that question was, but she spoke up anyway: "Emily is alive again. All in all, that's a good thing, isn't it?"

Gaoyang started awake from those problems that at present could not possibly be answered. He was taken aback for a moment, then laughed and looked at Amber: "Rare indeed, to hear a sensible word from you. Yes—whatever else, this is always a good thing."

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