Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
It was rather cold in the mountains at night. The summer heat had gradually faded away. When the light breeze found its way into the cave, both Lucien and Natasha felt very refreshed.
Natasha watched Lucien spread the parchment roll in great curiosity. Lucien activated the magic circle, turned on the crystal light, and picked up the quill-pen.
It wasn’t her first time seeing an arcanist writing a paper, but she never knew that an arcanist could focus on developing his paper in such an environment and such a dangerous situation. Lucien always surprised her.
Holding her breath, Natasha watched Lucien finish writing down the title of the paper and start working on the introduction.
“The paper is developed on the basis of the relativity principle and the principle of the constancy of light velocity. Therefore, the preconditions are as follows:”
Howling of beasts came from distance.
And louder howling followed. Together, they sounded intimidating.
Natasha was a bit startled, then she murmured to herself, joking. “When night arrives, it is the beasts’ and animals’ turn to start their day.”
She was a big fan of Arcana Voice, which was recorded and sent to her by Lucien, and learned quite some new collocations and expressions with the radio programme.
Natasha then tried to follow Lucien’s deduction. She wanted to see how much she could understand.
After the first part in which Lucien had some difficulties in progressing, he started to write faster and faster. Lines, formulas, and equations flowed out of his quill-pen like a river. Natasha felt a bit dizzy chasing the lines, so she immediately shook her head and looked up. Her eyes caught the profile of Lucien’s face under the light. The serious and devoted look on his face made him rather attractive.
Her left hand holding her right elbow and her right hand rubbing her chin, Natasha looked at Lucien carefully. From time to time, she said to herself in a low voice.
“What a pity…”
……
In an oasis in the eastern desert, a building complex floated in the air like a palace.
Among the buildings, the one that took up that most space was a Church with a tall cross in the front. In the back of it was a study decorated very simply, and in the study was the Pope, Benedict II who looked like an ordinary old man wearing a soft hat. He was reading the information sent back from all patrolled areas while taking a sip of his black tea from time to time.
Suddenly, Benedict II’s right hand trembled. The white teacup fell from his hand. But when it almost hit the ground, it seemed to be caught by the wind and flew back to Benedict II’s hand.
Slightly frowning, Benedict II put down the teacup and walked to the window. Staring at the starry sky, he felt his breath a bit heavy.
He did not know what had just happened. But he knew it was something big.
He took a deep breath and then took out his staff. He prayed in a low voice, seeking for an indication from his God.
But he received no answers. Benedict II wondered if a fight just took place between Alterna and the existence in the World of Souls.
……
To the east of the stormy ocean, along the coast were a number of magic towers.
In one of the magic towers, Douglas, the Lord of Storm, and Hathaway were discussing their next step. The Lord of Storm just came back from his search which had proved in vain. Meanwhile, Oliver and Thanatos were searching in the marsh in the east, chasing after a legendary-level false god. The false god itself was a black dragon, somehow worshipped by some human beings and other dragons, and thus reached the legendary level because of the power of faith. Acclaiming itself to be the Dark Dragon Lord.
Hellen the Witch of Iceland and Hathaway just had their duty shift. The former had returned to Allyn to safeguard the headquarter.
“Don’t worry too much, Fernando. No news is good news.” Douglas comforted the Lord of Storm.
The Lord of Storm disputed, hiding his true feeling. “Why would I worry? Lucien’s always hiding so many secrets and research outcomes. He’s the biggest trouble himself!”
“If there’s no bigger story behind, Lucien should be safe,” Hathaway commented briefly.
In Hathaway’s eyes, Lucien’s intelligence and resourcefulness should be able to keep himself intact.
“But if there is one…” said Fernando gloomily. His red eyes opened big. Outside of the magic tower, dark clouds started gathering because of Fernando’s anger.
They were grand arcanists. Grand arcanists did not believe in coincidence. Facing all the things that had happened, they already had some rough ideas about what was going on.
As they were talking, Douglas seemed to sense something and looked out of the window. He saw that on the other side of the magic tower, the sun was slowly rising. The morning glow dyed the ocean red.
The view was supposed to be breathtakingly beautiful. However, in Douglas’s eyes, the ocean now looked like a horrible blood pool.
“What happened?”
“It’s good, but also not good…”
As an expert in Astrology and Force Field, Douglas could even rival the Prophet in making a prophecy.
Both Fernando and Hathaway looked out of the window. They had no idea what just happened, but they somehow felt contradictory feelings of oppression and freedom in their hearts.
……
Natasha did not get bored at all watching Lucien working on his paper, instead, she actually found this to be entertaining. After a while, she looked around, feeling a bit confused. Somehow, she felt that space and time were changing.
The paper became longer and longer. Lucien’s good effort in the past three years was now driving his cognitive world one step further, a vital step!
Lucien’s cognitive world started emerging around him. In his cognitive world, there were stars orbiting fast, rays shooting out, elements radiating and releasing particle flows, and all of them were experiencing a series of wonderful changes. It seemed that the forever= isolated river of time in his cognitive world suddenly started interacting with space, energy, and all kinds of matters. They were integrating into each other!
A silent storm was forming in Lucien’s cognitive world, and the power of the storm was formidable. The structure of time and space in Lucien’s cognitive world had completely deviated from the frame and description set up by Douglas and Brook. His cognitive world was getting closer and closer to the truth of the world and was now more complete.
When the deduction almost came to the end, Lucien’s cognitive world had finally been fully substantialized!
Lucien did not stop here. He then turned to work on producing the mass-energy formula.
It did not take long. Lucien took a deep breath and wrote it down.
“E=mc^2”
Bang! As soon as the simple but profound formula settled down on the parchment, the element light spots in Lucien’s cognitive world split over and rejoined each other. The procedure released formidable power and pushed the other reflections in this cognitive world to the margin.
Bang! At her first glance, Natasha could feel the great power of destruction and booming vitality the formula had. But when she tried to take a closer look at it, the feeling was gone.
Bang! A mushroom cloud rose up from the union of elements, within which there was an extremely complex but still incomplete structure.
Bang! Somehow Natasha turned to look at the entrance of the cave. Against the small piece of sky she could see, an illusionary blazing sun suddenly appeared. Meanwhile, all the beasts’ howling had returned to silence.
Bang! The Pope also saw the white sun in the sky. Its intimidating power and light overwhelmed the light of all the stars in the sky.
Bang! The grand arcanists’ sights slightly froze as they looked towards the seaside, where the new sun rose up to the left of the orange morning sun!
Bang! Ell could not help raising his right hand to block his eyes. Somehow, he was a bit afraid of the new sun.
But after Natasha’s one single blink, the sun had disappeared. It was still very dark outside, the burning sun was nowhere to be seen.
The howling resumed, but now the beasts were crying in fear.
Benedict II blinked. When his eyes opened again, the stars were still bright and clear in the night sky, as if what had just happened was only an illusion.
Benedict II’s eyes stared at the far side of the sky. He remained silent for a long time. Even he did not understand what just happened. He felt that his heart was thudding heavily.
In the magic tower beside the ocean, Douglas asked, half out of curiosity and half out of worry. “Did anyone just crack the secret of the sun? But why did we also see it? The half-substantialization of one’s cognitive world can indeed affect the real world, but that was too much…”
The half-substantialization of one’s cognitive world which affected the real world was a sign of reaching legendary.
Hathaway shook her head. “Might now be legendary. Remember this world is different, the strange things constraining spiritual power.”
Douglas nodded in agreement. Then he looked at Fernando who did not say a further word. “What is it, Fernando?”
The Lord of Storm rubbed his brows. “I think it might be Lucien. I gotta find him as soon as possible. Now he might be on his way to destroy the world.”
As a loyal listener of Arcana Voice, Fernando had learned quite a few of trending phrases.
“It is possible.” Hathaway nodded. “But we don’t know where he is.”
“At least we know he’s still alive.” Douglas comforted them.
……
Natasha saw Lucien put down his quill-pen. She asked gently. “Has your cognition word substantialized?”
“Yup, should be able to put on the ring now,” answered Lucien, who was still feeling the changes in his cognitive world.
Natasha released a sigh of relief and asked curiously, “what are those formulas about?”
“Basically, they are proving that time slows down when you move approaching the speed of light. Meanwhile, space contracts, and mass increases. So when something’s moving very, very fast, clocks run more slowly, and an object’s length is measured to be shorter…” Lucien tried to explain them as simple as possible. “And energy can be converted to mass and mass to energy.”
Natasha knew some basics about it, but she was now still more than confused and shocked, “They are related? But… but shouldn’t time and space be independent from each other? Technically speaking, space and time should just be… you know, measurements…”
Before Lucien tried to explain further, she hurriedly said, “put it more simple, please.”
Lucien thought to himself for a while and then said very seriously, “to put it simple, mass is energy, energy is mass; time is space, and space is time!”
The howling of beasts from afar became more and more bitter.
