Chapter 531 — The Accident

After receiving Pi Yun's treatment, Rebecca was completely fine. She stood before Gao Yang with her head hanging, looking as though she expected a beating at any moment—seeing that practiced, well-versed posture of hers, even Hedy probably would not have had the heart to strike first if she had come.

Gao Yang of course had no intention of beating her—at least not before he had gotten to the bottom of things. He cleared his throat and made Rebecca lift her head. "What exactly happened?"

"We were testing the engine," Rebecca said, shrinking her neck. "The arcane train's engine... and then it blew up."

"The arcane train's engine?" Gao Yang was astonished. "You've already built the arcane train's engine?!"

"No, I haven't," Rebecca said, shaking her head vigorously. "If it were built, it wouldn't have exploded—we just put together a big amplifier and a high-power arcane network, wanting to see how much power it would take to drive an engine that big, and then it blew up."

As she spoke, Rebecca could not help shrinking her neck again. "I know you said the train project could wait, but I just wanted to do some preliminary testing first... and I didn't delay any other projects, I promise! But the lab did blow up..."

Looking at Rebecca, who resembled nothing so much as a startled rabbit, Gao Yang was caught between laughter and tears—he certainly would not punish her for running those tests, but at the same time it was necessary to investigate the full ins and outs of this accident and immediately begin a whole series of aftermath procedures.

An explosion at the Institute of Arcane Technology was no small matter, not something to be laughed off. People often said, "There's no mage's laboratory that doesn't explode," but the Institute of Arcane Technology had long outgrown this era's notion of a "mage's laboratory." Too many ordinary people were involved, and the institute's operations were themselves closely bound up with the lives of the citizens; an explosion here could produce a great many knock-on effects.

Beyond that, the test project Rebecca had described also made Gao Yang vaguely realize one thing: the manufacture of the arcane train would probably not go so smoothly.

Just testing the amplification and power-supply modules of a high-output magic-energy engine, and an accident like this had already occurred...

Over the next few dozen minutes, he questioned Rebecca about many details from before the explosion—the state of the laboratory at the time, the test data, the various technical measures that had been employed. The more he learned, the more firmly his own conjecture took shape.

Compared with every other arcane technology Cecil had developed to date, the magic-energy train truly possessed a great many peculiarities.

Gao Yang remarked that early trains on Earth had been a form of transport simple in structure and modest in technical demands, yet in this world the low-tech steam engine could not be built at all. The magic-energy train had been forced from the very outset to begin with the rotor engine, which meant that the technical starting point of this world's "trains" was in fact higher than that of its "automobiles."

The immature large-scale magic-energy engines, the intricately structured amplification devices, and the ley-network architecture that—its output efficiency dictated by the scale of its runes—could only be rigidly connected: all these factors dramatically raised the difficulty of developing the magic-energy train. And there was a still greater problem beneath it all—the magic-energy train was a product of thoroughgoing "arcane industry," built on an entirely new foundation, so that many of the old magical techniques were useless in this domain.

Cecil had by now developed many "advanced marvels" that outsiders found inconceivable—the ley-network terminal that combined instant communication, holographic imaging, and file transfer into one device; the rainbow-light cannon that used energy beams as its means of destruction; the thermal ray gun; the White Knights' inverted holy-light apparatus. All of these appeared to be epoch-spanning, even beyond their era. But Gao Yang knew the truth: behind them all was nothing more than the extension and recombination of technologies this world already possessed. The ignorant would marvel at how swiftly they had advanced, while those who knew the truth would recognize the sheer height of this world's own technical foundation—and it was precisely because those existing magical techniques had laid so solid a groundwork that Cecil's arcane industry had been able to develop so smoothly all along.

But the magic-energy train... it had already gone too far, far too far, down the road of arcane industry—so far that the old magical techniques could hardly give it any further push.

No existing magic could further optimize the ley network and the magic-energy engines; progress in that quarter had to depend on breakthroughs from Jenny's Rune Research Institute and the other materials-science and engineering departments. And from the look of things, Rebecca had most likely run into trouble in exactly that quarter.

Fortunately, from the very moment he had first proposed the concept of the magic-energy train, Gao Yang had sensed that the project might prove extremely difficult, and he was fully mentally prepared for it.

"The Ancestral Inkstone People..." Seeing Gao Yang sink into thought, Rebecca could not help rubbing her scalp. Guessing that she might not be beaten today after all, she ventured cautiously, "Then... should we put this project on hold for now?"

Gao Yang roused himself from his brooding. Looking at the hope written across Rebecca's soot-blackened face, he had already made up his mind.

"You may continue. I will find a way to deal with the aftermath of this affair. But in light of this lesson, all testing phases of the magic-energy train project must be conducted far from the city. In addition, the experimental procedures are to be replanned and the safety measures redesigned, to guarantee the safety of the research staff and to isolate the personnel from the experimental apparatus..."

Rebecca listened earnestly, point by point, as Gao Yang spoke earnestly, point by point.

In the course of technological development, accidents are forever unavoidable. Back at the very beginning of the territory's construction, Heidi's laboratory had once been blown up by Rebecca Crystal—yet in the end the crystal had not been sealed away, but now shone brilliantly in the military and engineering fields.

As arcane technology continued to advance, the scale of energy that people could command would inevitably grow ever greater. Today's explosion would not be the last, nor would it be the most powerful. But even Rebecca was already prepared to keep going—and Gao Yang, naturally, was the same.

To keep going, all they could do was be careful again and more careful, cautious again and more cautious, doing everything possible to ensure safety—and then, try again.