Chapter 1551 — Simulation

A new control center was being built in the heart of the Talash Plain. Directly linked to the Ophelia Matrix underground, its newly designed information-transmission system worked in concert with the advanced computing arrays inherited from the Gondor era, and together they would be enough to handle enormous computational loads—including the sending and receiving of signals from the vast numbers of runestone nodes within the Deep Blue Ley-network, the real-time governance of the energy currents circulating above the planet, and the processing of the massive data exchange between the Motherworld Barrier and the neural network.

But this control center at the center of the Talash Plain was not the Motherworld Barrier's only "brain." In the Sorin Plain and at the Elven Court, two more backup control centers were about to break ground. All of them possessed complete functionality and coordinated with one another through the neural network, while the network's own distributed structure ensured that every communication channel could simultaneously maintain multiple redundant links—so that even in the worst case, even if one or two control centers were gravely damaged and went entirely offline, the Motherworld Barrier would never stop running.

Ophelia stood quietly on a platform beside the control center. Her eyes were fixed on the tense, bustling construction site before her, but the threads running in parallel within her mind were not concerned solely with this one patch of scenery.

Deep at the center of the impact crater of the Deep Blue Well, beneath that surging ancient wellspring of energy, a vertical shaft plunged straight down into the earth. Past layer upon layer of armor plating, rock, soil, and enchanted barriers, the shaft ended at a large experimental facility.

This vast laboratory was wrapped in several spherical-shell barriers; thick earth and rock kept it far from the intelligent beings on the surface. Inside, great facilities resembling obsidian obelisks stood in neat rows, all encircling a circular platform at the center of the chamber—a scene like some eerie ritual ground, like countless silent black-stone priests gathered around an unseen deity upon the platform. And yet this facility, uncanny as the site of some cult, was the crystallization of the most advanced technology in the world today—the "eye" through which the mortals of Loren peered into the truth of the Magic Tide.

The Magic Tide Simulation Device—the boldest creation of the Ophelia Matrix. More than seven hundred years ago, a faint "pre-tremor" of the Magic Tide had swept across this planet, brushing over the Gondor Empire of that age like a wisp of air at the edge of a storm. But even a faint wisp of "air" carried the power to destroy a season's civilization. Facing that crisis, the God of Holy Light had detonated the Deep Blue Well, halting that "pre-tremor" at the cost of annihilating his own humanity and wiping out more than half the population of Gondor—and leaving behind a boundless scorched wasteland centered on the Talash Plain.

And deep within that scorched earth, a set of sensors that had kept running even after the great explosion left this world a precious relic—in that wisp of air, it had recorded the "shadow" of the Magic Tide.

The Noy had inherited the legacy of the precursor races. They knew how to build a Unified Mind Field, and they knew how to observe the Magic Tide to obtain its "calibration parameters"—but they had never truly "mastered" a sample of the Magic Tide, and so they had no way to verify whether the technology in their hands would actually work. The Star Covenant had no such precursor race, nor any technology for observing the Magic Tide, but the Covenant possessed this precious sample. So what if the two were combined?

The people of Loren could confirm, in a laboratory and before the Magic Tide ever arrived, whether the Unified Mind Field truly worked—and could even recalibrate and correct the system a second time. This was something even the Noy's "precursors" had never managed to do...

A faint sound of mechanical friction came from the direction of the laboratory door. The heavy isolation gate slid slowly open to both sides, and a slender, golden-haired figure stepped into the laboratory—she had a face utterly identical to the "Ophelia" on the surface, down to every single hair and every single eyelash.

This was another body activated by the Ophelia Matrix, and there were more than a dozen similar bodies besides. These "avatars" were distributed throughout the underground fortress and the surface building complexes, handling at once the enormous workload the Ophelia Matrix had to confront. In terms of efficiency, these avatars, which required the Matrix to operate them directly, had not actually improved much on the old Iron Soldiers—but...

Ophelia had gradually begun to enjoy this feeling of "operating things in person."

"All systems normal." Ophelia, stepping into the laboratory, raised her head and glanced at those black obelisk facilities arrayed as neatly as a ritual site. A string of parameters raced through her crystal eyeballs. She spoke to the empty air beside her while beginning to issue commands to the systems in the laboratory. "Filter wall ready, observation units in good condition. Beginning the one hundred and thirty-sixth simulation test."

A low hum rose in the laboratory. Those silent black obelisks seemed suddenly awakened by some invisible force; the surging energy from the Deep Blue Well was injected into these specially manufactured field-effect generators and began to leap and resonate among them. The lights on the ceiling seemed to flicker a few times, though in fact the light they cast remained constant all along—only the convergence of such immense energy had slightly disturbed the transmission of light. Ophelia watched those obelisks with a calm gaze. To the naked eye (though her eyes were not naked eyes), an observer could not see any change in those black devices at all, nor see anything taking shape between them—but she knew the entire system had started up and was running according to its preset program.

The waveform data recorded seven hundred years ago by that sensor which had persisted in running to the very last moment had been recompiled and injected into the system. The field-effect array formed by the multiple obelisks would use this data as its template, converting the Deep Blue Well's magic into "fluctuations" akin to the Magic Tide and focusing them upon the platform at the center of the laboratory. When the energy reached a certain intensity and the oscillating waveform matched completely, the result she wanted would appear there: with mortal intelligence, a simulation of the universe's most primal cry.

A low voice sounded in the laboratory—Gao Song's voice: "How are things now?"

"The system is running smoothly. Data returned by the obelisk array shows that 'oscillation onset' has succeeded," Ophelia reported with a calm expression. "But no phenomenon can be observed with the naked eye. The 'focus platform' at the center of the laboratory appears perfectly calm."

She could see nothing—and that was exactly as it should be. The Magic Tide was by nature a thing invisible to the naked eye; only when an observer was devoured by their own observer effect could its existence be proven indirectly. Strictly speaking, to the beings of the mortal world the Magic Tide was more like "a natural phenomenon that produces results," an intangible, formless "factor." So even if the experiment here succeeded, nothing would appear on the platform.

Unless a poor test subject were placed upon the platform at that moment, to see whether he would suddenly be torn apart by something unseen or erased by a disordered natural order.