Chapter 118 — Divine Arts and Magic
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 3
Pi Yun invited Gao Yang into his wooden hut. The little old man, who looked ancient enough to be someone's great-grandfather, had a pair of eyes shrewder and nimbler than any young profiteer's. Bustling about to pour tea and fetch water, he kept stealing glances at Gao Yang all the while: "The Duke himself has come to visit my humble, shabby little hut. Has some knotty problem arisen that requires my druidic arts? Or have you finally taken an interest in my fortune-turning rituals and divinations?"
Gao Yang glanced around the room's furnishings and found it remarkably tidy. The workbench for alchemical experiments and the various vessels for compounding potions were all arranged neatly in the northwest corner's work area, and the living quarters were plain and simple—utterly unlike the filthy, cluttered impression Pi Yun had given off when he first arrived in these parts.
Hearing the old man speak, he simply ignored the second half of the sentence, that fresh sales pitch, and said directly: "I'm very interested in the process by which you compound alchemical potions and bless them."
Pi Yun was astonished: "Brewing potions and blessing arts? For a trifle like that, Your Grace came in person?"
"I just happened to be passing by, so I thought I'd satisfy my curiosity along the way," Gao Yang waved a hand. "And I recall telling you before to increase the output of the agricultural catalyst potions. I'd like to know how that's coming along."
Pi Yun's face fell: "How could it be that easy? Your Grace's timing is simply too..."
Gao Yang waved again: "It doesn't matter if there are no results yet. Just let me see your progress."
Only then did Pi Yun breathe a sigh of relief, his face creasing into smiles: "Well, that's no problem at all. I was just about to start work."
As he spoke, he walked over to the work area used for compounding potions and began making preparations: brewing these potions was his daily work anyway, so he might as well humor this eccentric Duke's personal hobby.
Gao Yang followed behind the little old man, watching him bustle among the potions and alchemical tools, while his mind turned over far more complex thoughts.
The magic engine had succeeded.
This was genuinely a matter for rejoicing. Even the mature and steady Hetty had been immersed in the joy of success, and Gao Yang was certainly no exception.
Yet what filled Gao Yang's heart was not joy alone. Rising alongside it was a doubt that had surfaced before and been temporarily suppressed: what exactly is magic? What exactly is the nature of this world's laws?
The operation of the magic engine undoubtedly proved the existence of logic and law; it proved that the phenomena of this world are not independent of one another but interrelated, capable of being combined into systems. The repulsion array drives the piston; the piston drives the crankshaft and connecting rod; the spinning flywheel generates inertia; inertia links every stage of the engine's working cycle together. And extending further outward: the engine's energy comes from the magic net, and the magic net's energy comes from the environment...
Everything seemed orderly and complete, a closed loop.
But where did the original magic come from? The magic net draws from the natural environment—then what of the magic in the natural environment? Is it truly inexhaustible and omnipresent? Can it truly be replenished into the magic net without end, never running dry through all the ages?
Does this world not even obey conservation of energy?
Or is it that magic has its own source, its own finite reserves, hidden throughout all things in a manner humans cannot observe or calculate? Humans make use of it in their ignorance, believing it infinite—but perhaps one day it will simply run out?
Faced with this most worrisome of questions, Gao Yang could not even spare a thought for what the "repulsion" produced by magic arrays actually was.