Chapter 303 — The Cultists' Technology

Kamael deeply agreed with Gao Yang's view. "I know what the Church of the Dream God once was. From the earliest times they were the gentlest and most tolerant of all the sects. Everyone dreams—king or farmer, noble or slave—and dreams comfort all alike. That is the meaning of dreams, and the creed of every follower of the Dream God; they made it their mission to safeguard the peace of the human soul. If the facts were not before my eyes, I truly could not have imagined that such people would fall and become the 'Eternals'..."

The ancient magister shook his head. "Even now I can scarcely believe it."

Unlike the others, Kamael had taken part in the "Defiance" project and knew the truth of the Nature God's fall, so Gao Yang had once hinted to him, in veiled terms, that other gods were "in strange straits." Kamael could well surmise from this the reason for the fall of the Long Slumber sect, and to that he could only heave a sigh.

Jenny's mind was not hidebound. She accepted Gao Yang's reasoning and, seeing those runes, let go of her misgivings. "You want me to simplify and reconstruct these rune groups?"

"Simplification and reconstruction are the ultimate goal, but first we must find a way to understand how it works—to grasp what function each part of the runes performs. Otherwise reconstruction is out of the question," Gao Yang said. "You can ask Pi Yun to help you with this. The process of converting dream divine arts into dream sorcery is similar to that of converting druidic divine arts into spells; the laws governing the transformation of runes in the two cases should share common ground. And Kamael, I imagine you can help as well?"

"Of course. The old 'Defiance' project was itself a study of divine power, and the 'inversion array' now in use at the alchemy works was one of our achievements in those days," Kamael said, his voice brimming with confidence. "The priests and believers have draped divine-art runes in piles of arcane explanations and mind-beguiling halos—all, in truth, to keep their gods high above. But once you bring them into a logical system, divine-art runes are no different from elemental runes."

Gao Yang nodded in satisfaction. "Excellent. The key is to understand how their 'transmission' technology is actually achieved, and whether the 'content' of that transmission can be imported and exported through a medium other than neurons. If my estimate is right, research in this direction is very likely to advance your work on mana fields at the same time."

The words had scarcely left his mouth when Gao Yang and Jenny both felt their eyes light up—lit up very brightly indeed.

Arcane sparks glittered about Kamael. "Yes—that is the direction... the propagation of mana fields! You've reminded me: they are very likely the same field of study! And communication magic—these things must all belong to the same field!"

The ancient magister had fallen into a state of excitement—the kind of excitement no researcher can escape, the joy of a subject on the verge of breakthrough spurring him on.

He and Jennie had been studying the magic field for a long time now. Those shifting interference curves and oscillating magical forces entangled him day and night. Although Gao Yang had pointed him in a direction using the concepts of fields and waves, and new mathematical tools had come along to help him parse the vast quantities of data observed in his experiments, one problem still stood squarely in his path:

Could the "waves" of magic be precisely controlled? Could they carry information? Could they be applied to anything beyond the transmission of energy?

Was there any connection between the transmission arts, long treated as a "technical black box," and the fluctuations of magic?

The spell array of the transmission arts was no stranger to Kamael. Even without tools, he could draft one with perfect precision. Yet a single array offered nothing to compare against, and an isolated case was the hardest of all to analyze. Even he had so far failed to simplify and reconstruct the transmission array, because he simply could not work out what function each part of the runes in that complex array was performing, and so naturally could not divide it up and rebuild it. And if he tried to simplify the whole array directly with the formulas of rune logic, without first separating the runes by function, the entire array would fall to pieces, and might not even run at all.

But now, he had samples he could compare and analyze.

This thought-transmission technology of the Eternals was, in essence, simply another kind of transmission art.

Two different samples of transmission arts lay before his eyes. This might well be the key to prying open the black box...

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