Chapter 200 — The Rune Research Institute
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 3
Before Gao Yang lay the design sketches for a new type of processing equipment he had conceived.
A few months earlier, he would have dismissed the notion of designing such a machine amid such backward social conditions as pure wishful thinking—disrespectful of reality, reckless overreach. But the events of recent days had taught him one thing: he still needed to adjust his thinking further, to shake off the experience left over from his previous life, lest he make faulty judgments on the basis of that experience.
It was a processing machine tool fitted with all manner of magical apparatus—a next-generation scorching-ray substrate capable of continuously exciting thermal beams served as its cutting head; a complex repulsion assembly able to precisely excite and rapidly start and stop provided its movement mechanism; a puppet control core formed its control center. As for the operating interface, that was left blank for now—Gao Yang had yet to work out how to integrate a simple rune trigger into the complex puppet core.
This was a thoroughgoing "blueprint machine," utterly unbuildable at present. Yet Gao Yang was certain its underlying approach was sound. The reason he had committed this temporarily unrealizable system to paper was simply that, over the past days, while organizing his actions and gains of the preceding months, certain ideas had arisen in his mind beyond his control.
Footsteps sounded from the corridor outside. Gao Yang looked up, and the next second saw the door flung open as Rebecca came dashing in noisily: "Ancestor Yan, Betty told me you were looking for me?"
After Rebecca's noisy entrance, the white-haired Jenny followed cautiously into the room. The rune master wore a look of some resignation—clearly, the near-constant mishaps and accidents that accompanied any joint operation with Rebecca left her rather embarrassed. Glancing at the viscountess, whose face was full of self-importance, she bowed her head and saluted Gao Yang: "My lord, you have instructions?"
Before Gao Yang could say a word, Rebecca had already spotted the design sketch on the table. She cried out delightedly: "Hey! Jenny, look! My family's Ancestor drew new blueprints~!"
"My lord, you've designed a new machine or weapon?" This time even the respectful, well-mannered Jenny could not restrain her curiosity and leaned in. She gazed in astonishment at the concept machine on the table; the exploded component diagrams beside it were clear and unmistakable, and she could vaguely guess what the thing was for. "This is... some sort of device for cutting panels? No... not just cutting—it seems it can also shape or engrave? Using scorching rays as a carving knife?"
Jenny watched the blueprint on the table with eager curiosity. She held a peculiar reverence for Gao Yang—not merely because of his position and heroic status, but because the man always possessed a "way of thinking" beyond the ordinary. He could always propose bold yet feasible plans, and only when those plans came to fruition could ordinary people realize what deeper meaning lay behind his every step of foresight.
It was so in governing the territory, and equally so in the magical domain. Though rune logic had not been invented by Gao Song, Gao Yang had found the correct way to apply it—those universal substrates and the idea of mass production were things even Jenny, a rune master, had never conceived of.
But this time, Jenny felt that the device Gao Yang had designed was truly... far too far ahead of its time.
"My lord, forgive my bluntness, but many of the structures on this machine... I'm afraid none of them can be realized at present. Setting everything else aside, we don't have a single technician versed in puppet cores—that is the profound technology of the Violet Kingdom in the North..."