Chapter 101 — The Silly Roe Deer Scores Again!

"Ancestor (the Zu Yanren), you wanted to see us?" the two asked almost in unison.

"Yes," Gao Yang said without beating around the bush, pushing the blueprint forward. "Grab a chair and sit here. Take a look at these."

Rebecca scurried off to fetch a large chair, while Heddy gave a casual wave, and a mage hand seized a chair from the corner of the tent and flew it over—leaving Rebecca blinking in astonishment.

But soon, Miss Ironhead's small disappointment was swept away by the blueprints Gao Yang had spread out.

"What's this?" Rebecca's eyes sparkled. "So many wheels and connecting rods... is it another waterwheel?"

"No, it's a kind of... machine that can generate power," Gao Yang explained. "My thinking is limited, and I'd like to hear your ideas. Picture this: a machine, driven by the most basic magical units, that can produce stable and reliable power—say, keeping wheels spinning continuously, or driving a hammer up and down. Look at these connecting rods and wheels, and this structure here, called a crankshaft. These things can convert linear reciprocating motion and the rotational motion of wheels into each other..."

Gao Yang patiently explained his ideas. As Heddy listened, she fell into thoughtful silence, while Rebecca's eyes sparkled: she had developed a keen interest in these wildly imaginative designs!

The concept of a mechanical device driven by magical power was in fact nothing new. This world, which possessed supernatural forces, enjoyed natural advantages in many respects, and naturally there were many things that struck Gao Yang as "ahead of their time"—such as the magical puppets mages crafted, the automatic doors in mountain treasuries activated by keys, and the magic locks he had seen in the royal capital that could identify users' identities. All of these counted as applications of magical mechanisms, and many of them could even be described as "black technology."

But Rebecca instinctively felt that the "magical power mechanism" Gao Yang proposed was something entirely different from those things.

The vast majority of its structure consisted of intuitive, straightforward mechanical components, requiring no magical involvement.

Its function and purpose were exceptionally simple: to provide power—and that power was meant for the next level of machinery.

It was standardized, uniform, and utterly transparent, discarding everything that let craftsmen "freely improvise" and replacing it with numerical specifications as precise as the rules of magic, striving to achieve its purpose in the most rational and concise way—unlike those traditional rune artisans or mages, who would cover the magical items they crafted with piles of patterns and go to great lengths to hide the truly useful runes amid intricate encrypted lines, terrified that someone might see and understand them.

Rebecca thought hard for a long while, and at last a word Gao Yang often said to her surfaced in her mind: universality.

Just like Magic Web No. 1, this device too was "universal."

It was never designed as a treasure or a work of art; like the Rebecca crystals fired in the kiln district, what mattered was abundant quantity and honest reliability.

After explaining his idea, Gaoyang finally pointed at the cylinder structure he had already crossed out. "Only one step remains: it needs an initial power source to set this 'piston' in motion. I once thought of letting expanding gas do the work, which is why I designed this sealed 'cylinder.' But you needn't be bound by my thinking. From a magical perspective, what spell do you think could generate a continuous, cyclical driving force, so long as energy is supplied?"

Rebecca gripped her chair and rocked back and forth. "Carve a tiny hurricane array inside? Blow really hard?"

Hedy frowned as well, thinking seriously. "Not very practical. The hurricane array is far too complex, and in a sealed environment the airflow it could draw on would be limited..."

As she spoke, she casually conjured a translucent hand of evocation at her side, then immediately dispelled it. "Using a hand of evocation to push from inside would be simple enough, but it is a very peculiar spell with no corresponding magic array, and besides... having a hand of evocation shoving back and forth inside a machine feels rather strange."

"A hand of evocation, huh..." Rebecca rolled her eyes in thought, and suddenly seemed to glimpse an opening. "Right! It doesn't have to be airflow... we might not even need this thing called a 'cylinder'?"

Watching Rebecca's eyes grow brighter and brighter, Gaoyang felt a surge of delight. The little fool was about to score another merit!?

Hedy grew curious as well. "What have you thought of?"

Rebecca gestured happily. "Auntie, do you remember that one spell I could never learn..."

Hedy: "Apart from fireball, was there ever a spell you did learn?"

"No, that cantrip-level one, the one you thought even a blockhead like me was bound to manage," Rebecca waved her hand vigorously. "Later I secretly drew the rune inside my glove and pretended I could cast it, and you and Dad strung me up and beat me..."

Gaoyang: "..."

Was it really necessary to look that pleased while saying all this?!

Hedy had clearly already recalled which "cantrip" Rebecca meant. "The repulsion cantrip?"