Chapter 1130 — From the Other Shore
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
Every gaze in the room fixed on those bizarre patterns as they emerged one after another, until they filled an entire line, until a series of evenly spaced dots appeared behind the symbols, until the monitoring channel dissolved into empty white noise and the "signal lost" alert sounded from a nearby magic-net terminal. Only then did many seem to remember how to breathe, drawing deep breaths as if surfacing from water.
"The signal has vanished..." one monitor said, rising from a chair with a dazed look, and immediately repeated, "The signal has vanished..."
The holographic projection at the center of the room remained active, its clear image suspended in midair. Gao Yang stared at the "symbols" that had appeared at the very end and did not look away for a long time. They seemed composed of arcs and straight lines, grouped four to six at a time, separated by dots or short strokes, inevitably stirring certain associations.
"Your Majesty, do you think these things..." Bard could not help breaking the silence, "look like..."
"Writing," Gao Yang said quietly. "They look like some kind of writing."
"We have never seen this script," a gray-haired arcanist technician muttered nearby. "I would wager no one here recognizes it... it looks far too strange."
Belantia remained quiet beside Gao Yang. She was still not entirely certain what had happened, but from Gao Yang's explanation on the road and what she had just witnessed, a vague conjecture had already taken shape in her mind. Now her gaze swept across every face in the room: tension, excitement, confusion, speculation, and in each, thought. At last she looked at Gao Yang and saw only eyes deep and calm as water, though something seemed to be brewing far beneath that stillness.
Several seconds passed before Gao Yang finally spoke again, his voice calmer than Belantia had expected: "Copy these symbols down. Summon experts in language and writing, and cryptographers as well. Do everything possible to decipher them..."
Halfway through he stopped abruptly, as if carefully weighing something, then after serious thought continued: "Also, scramble part of the symbols and publish them. Solicit clues nationwide. Anyone who has seen anything similar by any means may report it, even if they saw it in their child's doodles or in the wheat fields on their own farm."
Beyila, standing nearby, nodded at once: "Understood. I am already notifying General Margarita."
"Distribute all operating parameters of the antenna group to every monitoring station nationwide," Gao Yang added. "Also, when the signal appeared, in what direction was the main antenna pointing?"
Bard reminded him from the side: "Your Majesty, the main antenna is now a lattice array. The reception of the array crystals has no directionality..."
"But the mechanical structure of its base does. This array's mechanical structure means that even if the lattice reception is omnidirectional, its reception efficiency in a specific direction will exceed that in others," Gao Yang said, looking at Bard. Clearly, though he no longer personally involved himself in such technical fields, he was not wholly ignorant of certain fundamentals. "Where was the main antenna's mechanical dish pointing at the time?"
A young female arcanist technician immediately ran to her station. She found the azimuth data for the main antenna, made a rapid mental comparison, then raised her head: "Your Majesty, at the time the main antenna should have been pointing near the Frostsky Constellation..."
"From today on, the antenna group at Soring Listening Station will be dedicated to tracking signals from the direction of the Frostsky Constellation," Gao Yang said, looking at Beyila. "Stations in other regions will continue their existing omnidirectional monitoring."