Chapter 1584 — Before the Sun Shines
Blade of Dawn · Page 2 of 5
After a few more brief instructions, Gao Yang left the building of the Magical Energy Technology Department—he would be busy next, with countless matters awaiting his arrangement and attention. With a vast shadow about to fall, he had to stand at the forefront of everyone in advance.
After Gao Yang departed, only Rebecca and Jenny remained in the vast office. Beneath the bright mana-crystal lamp, the atmosphere in the room seemed rather oppressive for a time; even the nightfall gradually growing still outside the window no longer felt reassuring, but only deepened one's anxiety and restlessness. Rebecca looked worriedly at her friend before her, hesitated a long while, and finally could not help speaking: "Jenny, are you all right? Are you thinking about that time..."
"Phew—I am fine," Jenny suddenly let out a long breath, cutting in before Rebecca could finish. She showed a faint smile; though the smile was somewhat forced, she still managed to pull herself out of that wretched mood. "Don't worry. People grow. The Empire's Chief Runesmith will not shrink back at the critical moment—and His Majesty's words woke me up..."
"The Ancestral Yan's words?" Rebecca blinked. "How did they wake you up?"
"Whatever the outcome, striving is always better than giving up," Jenny said as she turned and walked toward the desk. "I did not choose to take up that notebook because I foresaw future glory."
...
In the days that followed, both Noy and Loren waited anxiously for the next synchronous observation window to arrive—and before that window came, a series of tests and adjustments to the magic-tide observation device, along with the verification of various conjectures, never ceased.
On the Ancestral Plain of Augurey, that colossal engineering beast had been fully awakened. Every sensor, every computation center, every energy station of it roared into operation, driven by the vast energy originating from within the planet; the low hum from the depths of the excitation focus echoed across the plain. The sensor array rings swept the sky over and over in the wind; the operators constantly reset its hardware, constantly switched among redundant circuits, constantly tried adjusting the operating modes of the computation centers, and collected environmental samples day and night within the range of the observation device.
Every conceivable line of verification was put to use within a few days, and one conjecture after another was eliminated through repeated testing.
Throughout these ongoing tests, communication between Noy and Loren never ceased. The Star Pact Alliance transmitted every parameter from the operation of the magic-tide observation device without reservation to the far side of the starry sea. Scholars of both planets focused their gaze upon a single point, and under that collective scrutiny the range of possible causes for the observation device's anomalous state was gradually narrowing.
This gradually shrinking "circle of suspects" finally began to point toward the result no one wished to face—the cause of the anomalous readings from the magic-tide observation device was not hardware failure, not a "software problem," not a blueprint flaw or design defect. All internal factors were eliminated. In the end, the only explanation was that there truly existed an unprecedentedly powerful source of interference, enveloping the entire system from without.
It was precisely because of this interference source that the magic-tide observation device, no matter what mode it operated in, could observe only a "ghost image."