Chapter 1301: They Fell In!

Morgan seemed to have been ignited with a fierce fighting spirit. This veteran scholar, once part of the old Ansar royal court’s mage ranks, had long thought himself a man who had grown detached from worldly passions. Time had granted him steadiness and calm. Yet over the past two years, he realized that his enthusiasm for new discoveries had never truly faded—his last surge of excitement had been right when the Paramel Observatory was first completed.

Back then, for the first time, he peered through the modern enchanted lens array and the auto-calibrating system to observe a starry sky several times broader than anything he’d seen before. The new era’s recording devices creaked and whirred beside him, spitting out real-time data from other observatories. A communication terminal buzzed with greetings from the imperial capital… When an entire era dawned with a roar, he had been just as thrilled as he was today.

To be fair, Morgan’s resistance to the awkwardly worded, grammatically clumsy paper wasn’t as strong as he outwardly showed. Though the hypothesis it proposed was wildly unbelievable, defying common understanding of the world, as a scholar who had spent most of his life exploring magical mysteries, he knew many “truths” ran counter to human intuition. But still… understanding it was one thing; accepting the so-called “Unified Wave Hypothesis” was quite another. Especially its “theoretical foundation” section— for a rigorous, traditional scholar like Morgan, it was simply unacceptable.

To base such a bold assumption about the very foundation of the world solely on an extended interpretation of mana wave properties, some speculative phenomena, and a single “observation” that no one else could replicate or find any record of—though the hypothesis was internally consistent, Morgan rejected many of its premises.

Not even if the hypothesis was proposed by “Mylmina”—and certainly not just because the emperor’s name was attached to it.

“Looks like you’re not going to duel me after all,” Benjamin said with a smile, watching his old friend suddenly brimming with fighting spirit. He drained the last of his now-cold tea, glanced down at the magazine spread out on the table, and his lips twitched slightly. Clearly, this stuff was still hard for him to accept, but unlike Morgan, he didn’t feel the urge to immediately write a rebuttal. He shook his head, stood up from his chair, and said, “This is giving me a headache… You keep studying it here. I’m going to the lens array to clear my head.”

“I’ll come with you—this article’s content isn’t something you can finish studying in a day or two,” Morgan said as he rose. “The observation conditions have been excellent these past few days. We can finally re-measure the sixteen Dark-III stars around the constellation Frostsky. The data brought from Saint Suniel is ancient; correcting all the errors and gaps won’t be easy…”

The two master astrologers chatted as they headed toward the “Focal Platform” in the center of the circular hall. But just then, an assistant standing nearby suddenly ran up to them, his face tense and confused.

“Masters, come quickly—there’s something wrong with the image!”

Benjamin and Morgan exchanged a quick glance, then hurried after the assistant to the focal platform.

The so-called focal platform was actually the terminal observation device at the end of the observatory’s main lens array. It was a perfectly round platform about three meters in diameter, embedded flush with the ground. At its center lay a precisely ground and magically calibrated synthetic crystal, infused with a special alchemical solution. This crystal resonated with the lens array above and the rune matrix floating over the observatory, projecting the observed starry sky onto its surface with pinpoint accuracy. Surrounding controls allowed the image to be zoomed, recorded, or switched to mana vision.

In essence, this device functioned much like the magical instruments once used at the royal observatory in Saint Suniel, but modern craftsmanship made the mechanically driven lens array and mana-powered focal crystal far more stable and capable. To Morgan, it was far superior to the antiques he’d used back in the old capital.

He approached the platform’s edge and looked down at the focal crystal, protected by a transparent casing. His assistant stood at a nearby control terminal, adjusting the vast, intricate apparatus above. Amid the hum of machinery and the buzzing of mana flowing through conduits, the crystal’s surface rippled with a dark wave before settling into a night sky image. Stars twinkled against the black backdrop—but each star was surrounded by faint blue illusions, and the entire sky was crisscrossed with subtle, hair-thin, dim lines that were both delicate and irritating.

“It suddenly changed like this,” another assistant said nervously. “Burkner and I were adjusting the mana filter’s projection arm to overlay it onto the main lens array. We’ve done this many times without issue. This time, everything was normal—the system was fine, all mechanical arms in place, the rune matrix showed no errors—but the image suddenly turned like this. No matter how we adjusted, it wouldn’t fix.”

“You didn’t touch the main lens? No mechanical bumps or scratches at all?” Benjamin frowned, his tone serious.

“No, we’re sure,” the assistant replied quickly. “In fact, the image was fine for several seconds after the system was set, and then no one touched anything before it suddenly changed.”

“Strange…” Benjamin furrowed his brow and looked at Morgan. “I’ve never seen this kind of fault before. If the lens array was damaged, the problem wouldn’t be evenly spread across the entire crystal. If it was a non-physical filter fault, the rune matrix would have triggered an alarm… Should we check the dome?”

Morgan had been frowning silently since earlier. When Benjamin finished speaking, the old mage looked thoughtfully up at the open roof above the observatory. Then, with a light step, he rose into the air and flew toward the massive lens apparatus.

In moments, Morgan was outside the roof, hovering in the cold night air. His sharp gaze swept over the lenses, crystals, rune plates, and the translucent barrier covering the entire setup. Soon, Benjamin joined him, floating beside the old mage.

“Well? Did you find the problem?” Benjamin asked casually as he examined the equipment below.

“The lens array is fine,” Morgan said gravely, then slowly lifted his eyes to the sky. The clear, deep night was filled with twinkling stars. “The problem is with the sky.”

“The sky!?” Benjamin was stunned. He looked around the firmament but saw only the usual sparkling stars. “What’s wrong with the sky?”

“Mana vision,” Morgan reminded him softly. At that moment, a faint blue glow appeared in his eyes. The old mage scanned the cloudless night sky, and through his mana-enhanced sight, a hazy, dense “cloud net” of countless crisscrossing mists covered the land below. These faint, pale blue glimmers were invisible to ordinary eyes, and even most mages would need exceptional perception to catch even a glimpse.

Benjamin switched to mana vision as well. After a long moment of careful scrutiny, he finally spotted the floating shapes in the sky and gasped. “What is that?! Some huge structure between the stars?”

“No, it’s inside our atmosphere… Look carefully—it passes through the mountain peaks to the west,” Morgan said solemnly. “These things seem to rise from deep within the earth and float in midair. They’re interfering with our astronomical instruments…”

Benjamin blinked hard, trying to see more clearly while muttering, “This is really bizarre. I’ve never seen anything like this in my life… Should we report this to the capital?”

“Of course we must report it, and immediately—” Morgan began, but before he could finish, the hazy floating cloud net suddenly vanished, as if shattered from a dream, leaving no trace behind.

The old mage instinctively rubbed his eyes, scanning the night sky filled with stars, but the strange “anomalies” were gone, replaced by a clear, pristine firmament.

A broadcast device near the observatory roof crackled to life. An assistant’s voice came through: “Masters, the image has returned to normal! Did you fix the lens array?”

Benjamin and Morgan exchanged bewildered looks—they hadn’t done a thing.

…

“I didn’t do anything! I’m just here every day fishing things out!” The sea witch with pale purple hair floated in the seawater formed purely from water elementals, waving her lightwave blade as she shouted at the inspecting officer. “How was I supposed to know the flow would suddenly change and injure a passing elemental lord?”

“I can vouch for her,” the blue-haired sentinel Vera raised the tip of her tail. “Caroline is our top ‘cube scavenger’ here. So far, she’s pulled out six cubes!”

“That’s not what I asked you to vouch for!” Caroline glared at her comrade. “I want you to swear those flowing ‘deep blue currents’ weren’t disturbed by me!”

“Oh, then I won’t say anything,” Vera waved her hand. “That’s beyond me.”

“You…”

“Enough, enough.” The “Abyss Commander” who had come to inspect the situation interrupted the bickering sentinels with a headache. Clad in fitted alloy armor and sporting a neat short haircut, this mermaid had been personally appointed by Queen Petia. Her mission was to investigate a sudden injury incident near the Boundless Sea Outpost—

Apparently, a deep blue current near the outpost had suddenly shifted, its drastically altered energy flow severely wounding a water elemental lord passing nearby. The victim suspected the local mermaid sentinels’ frequent scavenging from the currents was to blame. To prevent tensions from flaring between the mermaids and native water elementals—whose relations had only recently begun to ease—the queen had sent this commander to investigate and mediate.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed, the Abyssal Commander glanced over toward a spot not far away. There, the unlucky Water Elemental Lord was still drifting in the seawater, his massive elemental form nearly split in two at the waist. The swirling lower half of his body writhed desperately, trying to reconnect with the upper half, but no matter how you looked at it, it was clear he wasn’t going to hold together much longer.

Noticing the commander’s gaze, the Water Elemental Lord turned his head. Though his face was blurred and indistinct, a fierce, angry expression emerged—one that said he was furious but powerless, ready to fight but unable to do so.

Around him, a cluster of elemental guards stood—many too afraid to speak up, and all too weak to fight back—along with even more lower-tier water elementals who neither dared to get angry nor speak out.

The Abyssal Commander shifted her attention to another direction, where a massive blue stream pulsed deep beneath the waves, glowing faintly like a rushing river. This was the “Deep Blue Current” near the outpost—the very source of the recent chaos. Soldiers stationed there supposedly spent their days fishing black cubes out of this current for fun. But now, for some unknown reason, the current had changed, and the nearby water elementals blamed the sea witches for the disturbance… which, all things considered, made sense.

Still, the commander doubted that the two sentinels before her were responsible.

They simply didn’t have the power to interfere with the Deep Blue Network—a planetary energy system of sorts. Even that unfortunate Water Elemental Lord nearby probably understood this.

“I heard you say the current changed direction before, and there were other changes too?” The commander pondered, then turned to the sentinel named Caroline. “It… split?”

“Yeah,” Caroline recalled, “suddenly a bunch of small tributaries branched off from the main flow, winding through the seawater. No one knows where they spread to. But it only lasted for less than half an hour. Those tributaries disappeared quickly—though the main current has stayed in its new direction ever since.”

“Suddenly splitting into many branches… then vanishing…” The Abyssal Commander frowned, muttering to herself. “I wonder if the deep-sea witches can figure anything out.”

Then, curious, she asked Caroline, “You’re usually the one who collects the most of those ‘cubes’ from the current. How do you do it?”

Though she didn’t suspect Caroline caused the current’s change, the commander needed to ask—she had to maintain an investigative stance.

“Oh, that’s easy,” Caroline said with a proud smile, brandishing her lightwave blade as she demonstrated. “I just wait nearby with this, and when I see something coming, I strike it down like this—”

She swung her blade hard, stabbing it into the Deep Blue Current and stirring it twice. “Super simple—”

Suddenly, a swift black shadow darted through the rushing blue stream. Caroline was so caught up in explaining her secret technique that she didn’t notice it at all. With a loud crash, the black object slammed solidly against her blade. The sudden impact threw off her balance in the water—she couldn’t use the momentum like she usually did.

With a startled cry, the purple-haired sea witch who had been so excited just moments before plunged headfirst into the surging blue current!

(End of chapter)