Chapter 1130 — From the Other Shore

Every gaze in the room fixed on those bizarre patterns as they emerged one after another, until they filled an entire line, until a series of evenly spaced dots appeared behind the symbols, until the monitoring channel dissolved into empty white noise and the "signal lost" alert sounded from a nearby magic-net terminal. Only then did many seem to remember how to breathe, drawing deep breaths as if surfacing from water.

"The signal has vanished..." one monitor said, rising from a chair with a dazed look, and immediately repeated, "The signal has vanished..."

The holographic projection at the center of the room remained active, its clear image suspended in midair. Gao Yang stared at the "symbols" that had appeared at the very end and did not look away for a long time. They seemed composed of arcs and straight lines, grouped four to six at a time, separated by dots or short strokes, inevitably stirring certain associations.

"Your Majesty, do you think these things..." Bard could not help breaking the silence, "look like..."

"Writing," Gao Yang said quietly. "They look like some kind of writing."

"We have never seen this script," a gray-haired arcanist technician muttered nearby. "I would wager no one here recognizes it... it looks far too strange."

Belantia remained quiet beside Gao Yang. She was still not entirely certain what had happened, but from Gao Yang's explanation on the road and what she had just witnessed, a vague conjecture had already taken shape in her mind. Now her gaze swept across every face in the room: tension, excitement, confusion, speculation, and in each, thought. At last she looked at Gao Yang and saw only eyes deep and calm as water, though something seemed to be brewing far beneath that stillness.

Several seconds passed before Gao Yang finally spoke again, his voice calmer than Belantia had expected: "Copy these symbols down. Summon experts in language and writing, and cryptographers as well. Do everything possible to decipher them..."

Halfway through he stopped abruptly, as if carefully weighing something, then after serious thought continued: "Also, scramble part of the symbols and publish them. Solicit clues nationwide. Anyone who has seen anything similar by any means may report it, even if they saw it in their child's doodles or in the wheat fields on their own farm."

Beyila, standing nearby, nodded at once: "Understood. I am already notifying General Margarita."

"Distribute all operating parameters of the antenna group to every monitoring station nationwide," Gao Yang added. "Also, when the signal appeared, in what direction was the main antenna pointing?"

Bard reminded him from the side: "Your Majesty, the main antenna is now a lattice array. The reception of the array crystals has no directionality..."

"But the mechanical structure of its base does. This array's mechanical structure means that even if the lattice reception is omnidirectional, its reception efficiency in a specific direction will exceed that in others," Gao Yang said, looking at Bard. Clearly, though he no longer personally involved himself in such technical fields, he was not wholly ignorant of certain fundamentals. "Where was the main antenna's mechanical dish pointing at the time?"

A young female arcanist technician immediately ran to her station. She found the azimuth data for the main antenna, made a rapid mental comparison, then raised her head: "Your Majesty, at the time the main antenna should have been pointing near the Frostsky Constellation..."

"From today on, the antenna group at Soring Listening Station will be dedicated to tracking signals from the direction of the Frostsky Constellation," Gao Yang said, looking at Beyila. "Stations in other regions will continue their existing omnidirectional monitoring."

Beyila had already grasped Gao Yang's intention. She said, "Paramel Observatory is on the same latitude as Soring Listening Station, and it has a higher-grade 'window.' I think it would be best to synchronize operations there as well."

Gao Yang considered briefly, then nodded at once: "You are right. Have Paramel Observatory adjust its antenna toward the Frostsky Constellation as well and begin twenty-four-hour reception. I will send a technical team there afterward; they may be short-handed."

After a series of arrangements and a brief discussion, Gao Yang left the monitoring facility at the base of the canopy. They did not return to Beyila's "resting place," but took the lift inside the trunk straight back to the top of the canopy. By then evening was approaching. The brilliant summer sunlight gradually deepened into a gold-red afterglow, and glorious skylight poured down from the distance, skimming those thin, stretching clouds and splashing across the vast wooden platform and the layered sea of leaves atop the giant tree.

The setting sun of that season gathered light like water.

The main antenna stood atop the platform, its intricate mechanical frame supporting hundreds of crystalline hexagonal plates. Runes flickered between the crystal plates and the magic-conducting metal, answering the skylight from afar. High winds passed through the antenna array, drawing a mournful hum from the gaps between crystal and metal, as though this industrial product, forged from the wisdom of scholars across the Empire, were whispering something in a low voice.

Standing beneath the antenna, Gao Yang withdrew his gaze from the crystal array and looked at its exquisitely structured mechanical base. To achieve optimal resonance in the magic field and reduce interference, its mechanical dish automatically tracked the "high-clarity windows" in the atmosphere and adjusted itself. Perhaps it was precisely this small variable that had produced such an unexpected effect today.

But the variable might also lie in the material of the main antenna. From what he knew, the crystals here had been replaced not long ago. After the old monitoring device failed following a strong wind, mechanists and arcanist technicians had redesigned the entire system and used new high-quality crystals to replace the damaged old ones. These crystals were cast by the Pangbei Crystal Foundry, their raw material high-purity raw crystal dust from Mount Aogulei Mingcen. The old and new crystals differed markedly in performance... Could that be the cause?

Perhaps when another monitoring station next caught a signal, they would have their answer.

"It seems the mechanists will be working overtime," Beyila's voice came from beside him, interrupting Gao Yang's thoughts. The "giant tree incarnation" stood by the base of the antenna, also gazing up at the crystals, a slight smile on her wooden simulated face. "To maintain the antenna's resonance strength and interference resistance while the crystal array locks onto a specific direction, it may be necessary to tear down the entire mechanical dish structure and rebuild it... Fortunately, this is not an unsolvable technical problem. The original modification plan seems to have contained a corresponding design approach, only... the cost will likely be a little higher."

Gao Yang did not respond. He only watched the direction in which the antenna array pointed. There was now nothing but a stretch of gold-red glow and a cloud slowly moving north. No stars were visible in the sky, but he knew that the stars still shone by day, that the Frostsky Constellation was in that direction at this very moment, and that the massive monitoring device before him was slowly tracking that ancient constellation at a rate imperceptible to the eye.

"The current tracking precision is insufficient, isn't it?" he said suddenly, in a low voice.