Chapter 1761: Comfort, Regular Polyhedra

Of course, for Xia Duo, such matters were entirely a matter of personal judgment; no one would be so foolish as to go around broadcasting that they had done something bad.

As for verifying it himself, Xia Duo lacked the energy for that at the moment. Furthermore, this matter involved demons and the Abyss, requiring him to proceed with caution. As the saying goes, "concern leads to chaos," and perhaps there were masterminds waiting for him to reveal a flaw!

……

After leaving Iolum's side, Xia Duo immediately contacted Zhenna, Kelifu, Bailun, and others. Beyond informing them that he had returned, he also expressed his apologies for his sudden disappearance two days ago.

Of course, there was also Huo En. When Sikumu had clearly expressed his dissatisfaction with him, Huo En had still stood by his side. Although this was mixed with quite a few factors of interest, isn't that just how human interactions go!

In reality, there are no purely rational people who only calculate gains and losses. Xia Duo was also willing to maintain a relatively good and stable personal relationship with Huo En, or at least maintain such a persona.

After handling some trivial matters in Seventon, Xia Duo did not delay and took the Arcane Union's Teleportation Array back to the Tower of Time.

……

Tower of Time, Teleportation Room.

As soon as Xia Duo's vision recovered, he saw a light blue figure rushing toward him. He did not dodge, but instead opened his arms and pulled the sprinting Niya into his embrace.

Niya leaned against Xia Duo's shoulder, forcing herself to speak calmly about her worries, "I thought you had met with some accident. If you hadn't returned, I would have gone to Seventon to find you."

"This time it was indeed an accident, but fortunately, there was no danger."

Xia Duo gently stroked Niya's back, his tone not quite as calm, "Do you remember the Daxia Homeland in the Outer Planes I told you about before? This time, it was they who sent a summons to me."

"What happened?" Seemingly successfully distracted by Xia Duo, Niya's voice became much steadier.

"Some enemies tracked them there. They couldn't handle them, so they thought of me."

Xia Duo did not mention that the enemies were demons. Mentioning demons would inevitably lead to explaining Demon Aura and even the Abyss, making Niya overly worried. If Niya asked, he would just not say.

"Then did you go over and resolve those enemies this time?" Niya continued to ask.

"Of course I resolved them. Yalun and the others are just ordinary people. Although they are somewhat special, they have never mastered powerful Magic abilities after all. Enemies that are powerful to them are as easy as moving a finger for me."

In front of his wife, Xia Duo could not avoid the common practice of exaggerating his own abilities, but Niya immediately found the flaw in Xia Duo's words:

"If the enemies weren't hard to deal with, then why did it take two days?"

"The passage of time in the Outer Planes is completely different from the Main Plane. It can be fast or slow. This time I experienced an effect similar to a Projection Plane; my own perceived time wasn't even half a day, and I only realized two days had passed after I returned."

……

As the conversation drifted, Niya gradually relaxed. The two embraced and cherished the moment in the Teleportation Room, then went to Linshui Village together for lunch.

After lunch, Niya went alone to the Blue Crystal Plane to construct the Floating City, while Xia Duo came to the top floor of the Tower of Time, to the Laboratory that originally belonged to Niya but now belonged to him for the most part.

Regarding the previous trip to Seventon, setting aside the accident of the Outer Plane summons, Xia Duo had already obtained the 【Blade of Spiritual Closure】 from Iolum that could split the Spirit Core.

And tomorrow was the Council of Great Arcanists, which had been postponed for three days. His return this time, besides comforting Niya, was of course for the brain project he had been thinking about.

In the Laboratory.

Xia Duo took out all the Spirit Cores, 24 in total. 16 of them were complete; although they varied in size, one could tell at a glance that they were not on the same scale as the remaining 8.

As for the remaining eight, they were obtained when Iolum and he attempted to cut complete Spirit Cores with the 【Blade of Spiritual Closure】.

Among them, three were larger, basically half of a complete core, while the remaining five were a level smaller.

Looking at the 24 multi-faceted Crystal balls arranged neatly on the laboratory bench, Xia Duo picked up the smallest one, which was only about the size of half a little finger.

Whether it is a Tower Spirit or other artifact spirits, they are essentially Consciousness Copies of the Spellcaster's consciousness, which can basically be regarded as the Spellcaster themselves.

A person's advantages and shortcomings are both very obvious; they are good at abstract thinking, but it is difficult to quickly execute a large number of identical or different fixed tasks.

The brain Xia Duo envisioned was a multi-core, multi-level network structure—

The higher the level, the more complete the Consciousness Copy within the artifact spirit, and the higher the intelligence; the lower the level, the more simplified it would become, until it lost intelligence and became a "Meta-program" or "Meta-algorithm" possessing only a certain mode of thinking.

Therefore, in order to obtain more carriers for "Meta-programs," Xia Duo needed to split the Spirit Core as small as possible!

……

One cut, two cuts; Xia Duo cut directly through the center, and the Spirit Core that was originally only half a little finger immediately became three smaller ones.

This time was different from before in Iolum's Study, which was more about verifying the feasibility of the 【Blade of Spiritual Closure】. He was now exploring the state of the Spirit Core before and after cutting.

After just a few cuts, Xia Duo discovered a pattern, which was—

The smaller the Spirit Core, the fewer the facets; before and after cutting, the total number of facets also decreased. It seemed there was some unknown loss, and the smaller the cut, the faster the facet loss rate.

By constantly cutting through the center, it was easy to reach the limit.

With Xia Duo's final cut, the Spirit Core on the laboratory bench, which was only slightly larger than a grain of rice, erupted with intense spiritual radiance and did not condense into two smaller Spirit Cores, but instead disappeared directly.

It was as if it had evaporated.

"A Regular Tetrahedron?"

Xia Duo was thoughtful, then continued to cut the previous higher-level (larger) Spirit Core. With one cut, it neither disappeared nor split into two.

Instead, it only left behind a Regular Dodecahedron slightly larger than the Regular Tetrahedron Spirit Core from just a moment ago!

No way, no way!

Xia Duo suddenly felt it was somewhat absurd, then cut again without hesitation. The result was "getting exactly what he asked for"—this Regular Dodecahedron Spirit Core was cut away entirely.

From this, Xia Duo reached a conclusion: the basic form of a Spirit Core is a regular polyhedron, and the types of regular polyhedra are limited, which is to say—

There are only five basic forms of a Spirit Core!

They are the Regular Tetrahedron, Regular Hexahedron, Regular Octahedron, Regular Dodecahedron, and Regular Icosahedron.

Xia Duo realized that spirituality should be a concrete and realistic existence, and within the roots of Psionic Magic, there might also exist some objective meaning.

Otherwise, it would be impossible to explain why the basic forms of the Spirit Core had such regular manifestations.

Although Xia Duo had not yet cut to basic Spirit Core forms other than the Regular Tetrahedron and Regular Dodecahedron, he had a strong premonition that the truth must be exactly as he had guessed!