Chapter 832 — The Confusion of the Unknown

Maggie opened her mouth, somewhat at a loss in the face of this barrage of questions from Gao Yang, but she quickly recalled that the emperor of Cecil had a powerful curiosity about technology—in a sense, this legendary pioneer was himself among the earliest technicians on this land, one of the founders of arcane technology. The "style" of Rebecca and the technicians under her, constantly bubbling up with "whys," was probably something they had learned straight from this legendary pioneer.

She felt a secret admiration, and a little at a loss. After forcing out a smile that was not too stiff, she said with some embarrassment, "That involves a very complex process of material transformation. In fact, even the dragon-blooded don't fully understand it... It's an innate gift of the dragons, but the dragon-blooded can't be considered fully 'dragons'..."

"Some scholars have put forward a hypothesis that the dragons' transformation spell is actually a kind of spatial displacement—that we temporarily store our other body in a space that no third party can open, which would explain the enormous changes in volume and mass during our transformations. But we ourselves do not accept this conjecture...

"There's another explanation, 'elemental criticality.' This theory holds that the dragons' transformation spell performs an 'elemental reshaping' of the matter that composes their bodies—like molding a pile of sand into different shapes. We have recorded the 'code' for each combination of sand grains, and we can also draw extra grains from the 'beach' of the elemental plane to shape a body... In fact, this explanation is even harder to apply than the 'spatial displacement' theory. There are too many links that need explaining, and most of them cannot be verified by technical means...

"But as far as I'm concerned, I'd rather believe the second explanation."

At this point, Maggie could not help shaking her head with a bitter smile. "Perhaps the dragons of Tarronde know more—they have higher technology, more knowledge... but they never share that knowledge with outsiders, whether it's the mortal races of the Loren Continent or us exiled 'dragon-blooded.'"

The mysterious, inextricably tangled connection between the dragons and the dragon-blooded had always been something Gao Yang cared about deeply, but at this moment his attention was fixed more on the unknown knowledge itself—the myriad transformation spells of this world had always been what confused and fascinated him most, the domain that runic logic had to this day been unable to fully explain. And as the source of transformation magic, the dragons' shapeshifting seemed to harbor the greatest contradiction and secret of this world's "material boundaries"—

What exactly was the "matter" of this world? Why did the flow of magic cause matter to undergo such bizarre changes? A colossal creature weighing several tons could transform into a slender human, its vast mass seeming to "vanish into thin air"... How exactly did this process happen?

Reduced to the elements? Reduced to a displacement of space and time?

Whichever the cause, it seemed inseparable from the operation of magic, and that led back to the most fundamental question of all: what exactly is magic?

How does this thing—most likely a kind of "wave"—affect the essential nature of all things in the world...

Gao Qi's brows rose. Today's conversation with Maggie seemed to have stirred some intuition in him, drawing his attention once more to the strange connection and the "boundary" between matter and magic in this world.

For a long time he had been occupied with the machinery of the Empire, with the tangled situation across the continent, and now this talk of "transmutation" had pulled his attention back to the frontier of the "unknown." Amid the welter of thoughts, he could not help but think again of the magic tide.

Under the influence of powerful chaotic magic, a terrifying disaster that sweeps the whole world, overturning every kind of matter.

Gao Song's thoughts spilled out unchecked for a time, ideas driven by inspiration constantly recombining and linking together, and in his wild musings he even conceived a rather absurd and uncanny notion:

All the matter in the world turned upside down... could the magic tide be a "transmutation" that affects an entire planet...

"Your Majesty?"

Maggie watched Gao Dai trail off into sudden silence, his expression growing more and more grave; her initial bewilderment quickly turned to tension. She called out very softly, which jolted Gao Cen out of his wild imaginings.

Gao Yang quickly gathered up the thoughts and conjectures of a moment ago, intending to sort through them slowly later, and looked at Maggie with a hint of apology. "Forgive me, my mind wandered off on something just now. Where were we?"

"We were on the subject of the principles behind transmutation," Maggie answered, head lowered. She was puzzled but did not press further. "I mentioned that Talonrend may hold more knowledge on the matter, but the dragon race never shares its knowledge and techniques with outsiders."

"Talonrend..." Gao Yang could not help muttering softly. "The homeland of My Little Pony... truly a curious place."