Chapter 710

Xijing, underground resonance station.

The air was filled with the burnt smell after crystal overload, and a tense silence.

Zhao Lao Nian's eyes were bloodshot, staring at the reassembled, more than twice as complex 'Pinhole Channel' prototype before him.

It was two sizes larger than the first generation.

The core's potential energy resonance crystal was replaced with a larger, purer piece.

The surrounding auxiliary arrays increased from three sets to six.

Every connecting wire was wrapped in special insulating material, its surface shimmering with fine, flowing golden patterns—that was the concentrated national fortune's blessing.

"How are the energy reserves?" Zhao Lao Nian's voice hoarse.

"It's at seventy percent of the theoretical value." The assistant stared intently at the slightly trembling needle on the instrument panel, "but the fluctuation is large; interference from the western light curtain has increased by at least thirty percent compared to the previous calculation."

"As expected." Zhao Lao Nian wiped his face, "The Iron Crow Army aren't blind; we're exploiting loopholes, and they'll make those loopholes sharper."

"Do we still need to continue? My lord, the national fortune reserves consumed this time could fully fund a battalion of Bei Jing for half a month's 'incentive'..."

"Continue." Zhao Lao Nian interrupted him, tone leaving no room for doubt.

"The lord said, the western 'Spark' is worth this price."

"What we're sending now might just be a spark. But in the future, perhaps we could exchange it for a prairie fire."

He walked to the control console, his fingers brushing over the cold knobs and switches.

"The last transmission was a warning and inquiry: 'Are you alive?'"

"This time, we need to send something different."

"Send…… something that could let him 'live more clearly'."

He took a deep breath.

"Begin final calibration. Target area: Huai Xi riverbank, the vague coordinates from the last signal confirmation, shifted east by three li, covering the possible movement range of the camp."

"Encoding content, confirmed."

The assistant inserted a specially made jade plate into the slot.

What was engraved on the jade plate was not text.

It was two extremely abstract patterns composed of countless fine dots and lines.

The first depicts the simplified process of a material combining with some component at high temperature, then losing some component.

The second is a schematic of the spatial stacking structure of regular geometric bodies.

This is the result of dozens of master craftsmen and scholars from the Ministry of Works and the Imperial Observatory, who exhausted their efforts, breaking down, transforming, and compressing the two fundamental concepts of 'high-temperature oxidation reduction' and 'crystal structure' into two sets of highly simplified 'concept pulse encoding'.

They contain no specific technical details.

They transmit only the core 'relationship' and 'form'.

Even so, converting it into a pulse signal capable of penetrating the light curtain and resisting interference is extremely difficult.

"Calibration complete."

"Energy infusion begins."

Zhao Lao Nian personally pulled the main switch.

Hum—

A low hum resonated in the underground space.

The crystal at the prototype's center suddenly lit up, Huang Guang flowing and growing brighter.

The six auxiliary arrays lit up in sequence, emitting a resonant tremor.

The needles on the instrument panel began to jump violently.

"Interference increasing! High-density you neng disturbance detected approaching the target channel area!"

"Never mind it!" Zhao Lao Nian roared, "Keep the output steady! Smash our 'signal' over there!"

Huang Guang condensed to the extreme, forming a beam slightly more substantial than last time yet still as fine as a spider's silk, shooting out and sinking into the specially dug channel on the station's west wall aimed at the light curtain.

Almost at the same instant.

Far to the west, beyond the light curtain, somewhere underground in a wasteland north of Huai Xi.

In a concealed nest built of azure-blue crystals.

The master of the Iron Crow Army, lurking in dense you neng, whose consciousness formed from countless compound eyes, flickered slightly.

It 'saw' the golden thread attempting to penetrate the barrier.

It also sensed the 'simple concept' carried in the golden thread, which clashed with the world's underlying rules.

An instinctive rejection and anger surged.

But it could not directly cut off this line.

The light curtain's rule gaps objectively exist; the other side's Fortune Momentum paid part of the cost for penetration.

It can only interfere.

It intensifies the you neng concentration in that area.

It distorts the rule-governed path the signal travels.

It causes the already difficult-to-advance golden thread to lose more information and become more distorted.

"Futile……"

Its consciousness rippled with icy waves.

"The seed of knowledge, when sown on contaminated land, will bear only deformed fruit."

Or maybe, it simply won't sprout.

It no longer pays excessive attention.

More 'attention' was directed toward the north.

He threw himself toward the Jurchen force that was rapidly expanding and emitting an alluring dark-energy fluctuation.

That was the one it had chosen, the perfect pawn capable of crushing every variable.

Huai Xi camp.

Zhu Yue was squatting beside the newly built second iron-smelting furnace.

The furnace had already cooled.

This batch of molten iron was of better quality than the first, with fewer impurities, but the output remained pitifully low.

He was discussing with several artisans how to improve blast efficiency and how to adjust the fuel-to-ore ratio.

Just then.

Behind his left ear.

That familiar, needle-like prickling pain surged again.

It was weaker than before.

More elusive.

As if it might dissipate in the wind at any moment.

Zhu Yue's body tensed.

"What's wrong, Brother Yue?" the artisan beside him noticed his face suddenly turning pale.

"It's nothing." Zhu Yue raised a hand to stop him, closed his eyes, and focused all his attention on that fleeting prickling sensation.

Capture.

Memory.

The "syllables" of the pulse were even more fragmented.

So incomplete as to be almost unrecognizable.

Only a few extremely scattered "dots" and "short lines" remained, along with a large amount of unsettling blankness and noise.

He quickly walked to the side, grabbed a charcoal stick and a wooden board for recording.

Relying on feeling, he traced out those fragmentary pulses.

Without any pattern.

Even maintaining a basic rhythm was difficult.

"This… is even more broken than last time." Tang He approached at some point, stared at the gibberish-like marks on the wooden board, and frowned tightly.

Zhu Yue said nothing.

He stared fixedly at those marks.

He strove to compare them with the knowledge framework already in his mind.

High temperature… he saw a fragment of a pulse that seemed to indicate "violent change."

Combine… separate… it seemed to carry the sense of some kind of "alternation" or "exchange."

Structure… a few pulse points vaguely formed some kind of symmetrical, repeating pattern?

He recalled the iron-smelting he had been pondering.

Iron ore (iron oxide) at high temperature combines with carbon, loses oxygen, and becomes iron.

This is a reduction reaction.

He also recalled those crystal ores emitting a dark-blue glow.

They have a regular geometric shape.

Crystal?

High temperature… oxidation-reduction… crystal structure?

These two concept fragments, like two tiny sparks, briefly flickered in his mind, which was crowded with practical problems.

Although the signal was severely fragmented, what came through was only the vaguest outline of the concept.

But for a transmigrator possessing a complete modern scientific knowledge framework and currently exploring through practice, that vague outline was like suddenly touching the texture of a wall in a dark maze.

It cannot directly point out the exit.

But it tells you what the wall is made of.

"I think I… understand a little." Zhu Yue murmured, his eyes growing brighter.

"Understand what?"

"Understand how to smelt iron better." Zhu Yue pointed at the furnace, "and also understand that we might need to change our approach to look at those blue stones."

He looked northward, as if he could pierce the layers of mountains and rivers to see those enemies rising, wielding dark-blue power.

"Sending these over… the cost must be huge."

"They want to tell me that to counter that kind of 'pollution,' perhaps we should start by understanding its 'structure'?"

"And to understand structure, we need tools."

"High temperature, and the laws based on atoms… based on changes at the fundamental material level, are the most basic tools."

He set down the wooden board and rubbed his throbbing temples.

The signal was too weak.

So weak that merely receiving and trying to understand it left him mentally exhausted.

But it was worth it.

This fragmented echo was like a small stone tossed into a deep pool.

In the pool of his thoughts, it stirred up a new ripple.

Although tiny.

yet it might point toward deeper, darker depths.