Upon returning from the territory of Ancattero, Hao Ren found that he could no longer stay at home like he used to. After every mission, no matter how heroic and thrilling it was, as soon as he got home, he would turn back into a dawdler, doodling with the cat, fishing, walking the dog, and developing nutrition plans for the demons in the house according to the Animal World documentary. That was how Hao Ren trifled away his free time. But this time, he was unsettled. The Sin of the Divine Blood and the memory of the deicide were lingering in his mind. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the scene where the Goddess of Creation dropped to the ground. It made him devote himself entirely to his work as if he had become diligent suddenly.
Though Hao Ren was very skeptical about whether he could get anything out of the Gilded Disc, as long as he kept himself busy, he could find serenity in his work.
Crapple Research Station, CARS.
Hao Ren frequently came to the space station to check on the state of the Gilded Disc in the past few days. He had sent both discs to the general laboratory in the space station, where they were subjected to a series of tests and structural analysis.
He was mostly alone or with Vivian checking on the situation here for the past few days. Today, however, no one in the house had anything to do. Even the Nangong’s restaurant closed for a day. So all the demons and creatures were tagging along to the CARS. They wanted to see what Hao Ren was busy about lately.
Yeah, even Rollie had come. She was not interested in Hao Ren’s work. She just thought that after everyone was gone, no one would feed her at home.
The Gilded Disc was in one of the relatively large laboratories, which was a large oval room located below the second crystal tower of the CARS. This room, like the rest of the space station, was also built using clear crystals, filled with streamer and wonderful sounds as if a mysterious crystal cave. A newly constructed suspension platform was in the center of the laboratory. Two translucent and round crystal test benches with a diameter of more than ten meters were here, where the Gilded Disc was floating above and undergoing a series of external stimulation to verify its mechanism of operation.
Around the Gilded Disc were a large number of crystal prisms floating and slowly circling the platform. These crystal prisms were connected by light, seemingly scattered, but they were an array of precision sensors.
“Time: XXXXXX, the seventeenth resonant phenomenon test, all recording devices are turned on, and the main capacitors will be charged in one minute.”
As the lab host reported the status of the test with a synthesized sound, the platform below the two Gilded Discs also lit up. Some tiny electric sparks began to jump along the prisms around the disc, and a fantastic but strange sound like that of the wind echoed in the room. Hao Ren and Vivian stood as close as possible to the discs and curiously observed what would happen next. Behind them, Lily and Rollie, bored, squatting and playing a tail spinning game to see who could break the speed record. They were very enthusiastic when they came, but when serious works began, they entered into a doodling mode.
“Do you both come here to play your tails?” Wuyue’s arms akimbo and looked at Lily and Rollie. “It’s fine since the cat has just transcended. But how old are you, Lily?”
“What could we do other than fiddling with our tails?” Lily said matter-of-coursely. “I have not a clue what Mr. Landlord is doing. What is so special about the two plates that we have to come to look at them? I thought there was something fun, but it is charging these two things.”
Hearing that, Hao Ren explained casually, “I have recently discovered that these two Gilded Discs have some strange phenomena.”
“Phenomena?” Nangong Wuyue asked with a curious face.
“They will resonate and produce different resonant modes under different conditions, just like tuning forks transmit sound waves to each other,” Hao Ren said, pointing to the discs. “When striking one of them with energy, sometimes the other will release the same energy, and sometimes the energy of the opposite disk is absorbed out of thin air, but in any case, the energy flow channel between them is completely invisible.”
“That’s strange,” Wuyue scratched her hair. She had no idea about what Hao Ren was talking. “What does this mean?”
“The Gilded Discs are not running independently. According to Lemendusa, there are other Gilded Discs in the core of the Creation Engine, and he also said that there were many unassembled Gilded Discs stored in the warehouses all over the kingdom. When the kingdom exploded, these unassembled Gilded Discs must have been sent flying into the deep space. These Gilded Discs should be able to resonate with each other,” Vivian replied on behalf of Hao Ren. “We can’t see anything between the two Gilded Discs, but what if more discs are placed together to make them resonate with each other?”
Lily looked up and thought for a moment. “I will be like quarreling,” she said.
“You’d better continue to play with your tail.” Hao Ren sighed. He then spoke his mind. “If we can collect more of this disc, we will probably be able to guess the how much energy the explosion has produced, the scope and model of the explosion. I’ve produced an antenna based on the principle of the resonance between the discs. The antenna will be used to search for the resonant signal in the universe. It is currently under testing to figure out the pattern of resonance and the method to amplify and transmit the signal.”
Lily listened with her ears stood erect. She had understood some of them. “Using them as a signal source to find the other Gilded Discs? Any progress so far?” she asked.
“Unfortunately, not much progress,” the MDT said. It was Hao Ren’s de-facto technical director. “This thing is entirely supernatural, and even a little inconsistent with the physical laws of this universe. The operation is somewhat cumbersome. At present, I can only transmit these signals within the boundary of CARS. So there’s still some distance before we could achieve the desired result.
“That means it essentially useless,” Lily said while rolling her eyes. “I can howl, and the whole station will hear my voice.”
Hao Ren ignored her skewed logic. He was busy in thought: when he realized that the operation of the Gilded Disc was more complicated than imagined, he became more and more suspicious the Creation Engine artifact. As its core was running based on a set of principles different from the laws of physics of this universe, most likely its designed purpose was not to interfere with this world, or at least it was for other purposes, which were not related to the Plane of Dreams universe.
It is like someone has placed a telescope at home, but the telescope does not point to the sky nor girl dormitory, but to an empty place, then you have to question the use of the telescope. The core components of the Creation Engine were operating in ways that did not conform to the current cosmic laws, so Hao Ren was also skeptical about this engine whether it was designed to deal with the problem of the Plane of Dreams.
Seeing Hao Ren fell into deep thoughts, Lily mumbled, “Mr. Landlord has become strange recently.”
Suddenly, Rollie meowed and pointed at Lily’s tail. “Your tail isn’t moving now! I won. Now, you owe me two packs of dried fish.”
Looking at the carefree duo, Hao Ren could not help but sigh; it was much happier being a cat or a dog, he lamented.
The testing of the Gilded Discs was not as exciting as they had imagined. It was only the mechanical process of energy release, collecting data, summarizing and then it started all over again. The group of weirdoes was curious as to why a couch potato like Hao Ren had suddenly become a workaholic these few days, thinking that there might be something interesting here. After watching the light shows, they were bored. Rollie was the first to get upset. When Lily stopped playing with her, she could not help but start scratching Hao Ren’s clothes. “Big Boss Cat, meal. Where is my meal?”
“I told you so. Nothing is interesting here, but you guys still insisted on coming over,” Hao Ren said, bending over and held Rollie up so that she would stand up right before considering whether to feed her. He forced a smile. “I’m hungry too. What say of we head down to the cafeteria and grab something to eat? The remaining test procedures are fully automatic. There is no need to monitor it.”
Lily instantly livened up and hurried everyone, including Hao Ren, down the cafeteria. Hao Ren turned his head around and said to Vivian who was standing next to the Gilded Disc, “Vivian, what are you doing? Let’s go to have something to eat.”
Vivian suddenly woke up from her thought. She had been unwittingly attracted to the Gilded Disc just now. “Yeah, coming.”
