Forty Millenniums of Cultivation, page 1545
Looking at the performance demand on the shield tunneling machines in the order, Long Yangjun said, "When I see the consumable parts of the ultra-huge shield tunneling machines and think of Blackstar the Great's scheme, something else has occurred to me. It's a legend.
"It's the fierce battle between the Supreme Emperor and the Mad Armageddon, his evil incarnation, on the capital planet in the Empyreal Terminus Sector during the fall of the Star Ocean Imperium ten thousand years ago.
"It is said to be an unprecedented, most intense battle that nearly tore apart the entire planet. The Supreme Emperor and the Mad Armageddon both suffered heavy wounds and were never seen again."
Li Yao did not know why Long Yangjun suddenly brought up the ancient legend. Thinking for a moment, he still observed, "The incident ten thousand years ago, after being twisted for such a long time in the wars, can be counted as a 'myth' right now. Humans only have limited strength. It was impossible for the Supreme Emperor or the Mad Armageddon to have blown up a medium-sized planet however strong they might've been.
"That's why many historians and geologists today believe that the fierce battle between the Supreme Emperor and the Mad Armageddon only activated the hibernating energy in the most vulnerable parts of a tectonic belt, which raised a massive, unprecedented earthquake."
"Yes, I've heard about such a theory before too. That sounds much more reasonable than two persons ripping apart a planet barehandedly."
Long Yangjun smiled and said, "However, if you think about it carefully, the two theories are both absurd, although one might be more absurd than the other.
"The Supreme Emperor was the sovereign of the universe who led thousands of generals and millions of troops.
"The Mad Armageddon was also the leader of the rebels, who used to be the strongest expedition army of the Star Ocean Imperium. Should he have been best at legion battles and fleet commanding?
"An emperor and a leader of rebels, instead of commanding their fleets, ran to the capital planet of the Empyreal Terminus Sector for a 'duel' and nearly blew up the whole planet. Was it an epic battle of the civilization of mankind or a street fight of two drunkards?"
Li Yao was stunned for a long time before he managed to reply, "… Now that you put it that way, it does seem rather unreasonable, but it is a legend from ten thousand years ago after all. Isn't it perfectly normal that something was exaggerated for storytelling?
"At the very least, the Supreme Emperor and the Mad Armageddon did have a destructive battle on the capital planet, which left countless gorges on the surface of the planet that can be thousands of meters deep. We have both seen it with our own eyes!"
"That is a fact, but the truth hiding behind the fact has to be found out through careful analysis."
Long Yangjun said, "Since I came to the capital planet and saw so many huge and deep gorges and the people who tried their best to develop deeper, I have been puzzled by one thing. Over the years, the puzzle has grown bigger and bigger, but I can never find the answer. What exactly was the truth in the battle between the Supreme Emperor and the Mad Armageddon on the capital planet ten thousand years ago?
"At this moment, after a quick glance at Blackstar the Great's scheme, I feel that a needle has pierced through and detonated the balloon of my confusion!
"Come on, think about it more carefully if this is a more plausible deduction than the legend where the Supreme Emperor and the Mad Armageddon fought each other so hard on the capital planet that it was almost blown apart.
"Assume that a relic of paramount importance was buried deep inside the capital planet, which was at least as valuable as the 'Book of Revelation'.
"For the Supreme Emperor or the Mad Armageddon, whoever got access to the relic would secure a decisive victory and then control the entire sea of stars.
"Therefore, the Supreme Emperor and the Mad Armageddon each commanded an elite troop that was exceptionally good at underground battles and relic explorations, when they ran into each other at the core of the capital planet.
"It was not the battle between the two of them, but one between the two 'relic exploration troops' that caused the drastic changes in the rock stratum, transforming the capital planet into what we are seeing right now.
"I estimate that neither party won the battle in the end, and they probably died with each other. That was why the sea of stars had been in turmoil in the next ten thousand years, and a slightly unified and steady regime never showed up until the Star Ocean Republic.
"Since Blackstar the Great spent at least hundreds of years in the Supreme Emperor's mausoleum, it was possible that he learned the secret through a certain source.
"In that case, what he is doing today will make perfect sense! He is trying to find the item that the Supreme Emperor and the Mad Armageddon failed to find after digging so deep and dying with each other!"
Long Yangjun's words cast Li Yao, Li Jialing, and the kids into a long silence.
"It is too hilarious. How could we have believed the bulls*it that the Supreme Emperor and the Mad Armageddon had a duel on the capital planet and nearly blew up the planet?"
Mumbling to himself, Li Yao glowed with interest. "Even if what you said is not the truth, it must be closer to the truth than the bulls*it is! No, we have to locate the ultra-huge shield tunneling machines and check what Blackstar the Great is up to exactly!"
Chapter 2428: Feature of the Waves |
Everybody agreed to go to the spot where the ultra-huge shield tunneling machines were working and check what was going on, but the mysterious orders that were all there was in the mainframe crystal processor of the Great Iron Plants. The vibration sawtooth and the blast drills had just started to be manufactured. There was no information about where they were going to be sent after production.
Li Yao estimated that Wuying Qi and Li Linghai had no reason to share such confidential information with Li Minghui, who had the habit of betraying. Li Minghui's Great Iron Plants only needed to produce the consumable parts, and the transportation work later would be the elite Imperial Guards' duty.
Or rather, even the elite Imperial Guards might not know where the consumable parts to be produced were going to be sent, and only a few leaders, such as "Moon Devil" Yue Wushuang, knew a thing or two about it.
Although he did not know the accurate coordinates, Li Yao could speculate where they were.
"The Great Iron Plants is just a very common industrial complex of mining, purifying, powering, and refining. Although it is rather large, it is not very technologically advanced."
Pondering for a moment, Li Yao said, "Look at the technology transfer agreements and specialists' guidebooks. Those things are enough to prove that a great deal of time and resources have to be invested in order to produce qualified consumable parts. It can be quite troublesome to upgrade the few main assembly lines in the Great Iron Plants.
"There are a lot of similar heavy industry towns like the Great Iron Plants in the underground world that are more advanced with better facilities. Even though the mother lodes here contain abundant rare metals, the gap between them and the demand for the vibration sawtooth and the blast drills are still obvious. Many raw materials have to be shipped over from the outside world.
"Then, why had Wuying Qi and Li Linghai chosen such a 'plain' heavy industrial town to produce and fashion the consumable parts that they needed?
"I think that the only answer is distance and transportation. The spot of their secret work can't be far away from the Great Iron Plants, and there are bound to be tunnels or caves that directly connect the two places, allowing them to ship the consumable parts over without any hindrance."
"Even so, the search range is still too wide."
Long Yangjun remarked, "The underground world is not like the surface of the planet, where you can see everything with your eyes. Telepathic thoughts are often blocked by rocks and spiritual energy too. It will take tremendous time and energy to search each and every cave, tunnel, and gap within several hundred kilometers.
"Don't forget that Wuying Qi and Li Linghai might conquer the four Kurfürst families' last strongholds on the capital planet at any moment. Should they control the entire capital, it would be at least a hundred times more difficult for us to escape!"
"That is indeed a major problem, let me see… Right, quakes!"
Li Yao's eyes glowed. "I don't know how many ultra-huge shield tunneling machines Wuying Qi and Li Linghai have grasped for their excavation and exploration, but I imagine that there must be a couple of them, right?
"When the shield tunneling machines shatter the rocks with brute force, deafening noises will burst out, which will transmit all kinds of soundwaves. They will only be more conspicuous when a couple of ultra-huge shield tunneling machines are working at the same time!"
Long Yangjun thought for a long time and said, "That's an idea, but there are countless soundwaves in the underground world in the first place. The quakes of the air circulation and cooling systems of the underground towns, the deafening noises of the shield tunneling machines of other towns and factories, the natural seismic waves caused by feeble tectonic changes… When thousands of complicated waves are entangled, they will be beyond recognition after they are transmitted to this place. How are you going to locate the soundwaves of the ultra-huge shield tunneling machines from them? It's as difficult as finding a drop of water from a flood!"
"That's not necessarily the case."
Li Yao smiled and said mysteriously, "I've got a plan!"
Long Yangjun looked at him without saying anything.
Li Jialing stared at him, frowning.
Li Yao played mysterious for a long time, only to find that nobody echoed with him. He couldn't help but feel disappointed. "Hey, shouldn't you be asking 'what's your plan'?"
Xiaoming and Wenwen sighed. "Dad, we are in the middle of an emergency. Just speak it out if you have a solution. Stop playing!"
"It goes like this—"
Li Yao scratched his chin for a long time and coughed in embarrassment before he said, "The frequencies of different soundwaves are not exactly the same. It's like the sound of an earthquake is different from that of a volcano eruption, and it's even more different from the normally functioning magical equipment in a town.
"The same goes for the shield tunneling machines. The sounds of the small shield tunneling machines less than ten meters in diameter are certainly different from the huge shield tunneling machines more than thirty meters in diameter!
"In the meantime, the 'super gigantic behemoths', with a working surface of a hundred meters, must have unique and highly recognizable noises. Even though the soundwaves have been debilitated to almost nothing after being delivered in the rocks for hundreds of kilometers, some of the basic features will not change.
"Look, the technology transfer agreements and the specialists' guidebooks have recorded the performance parameters and the production methods of the vibration sawtooth and the blast drill in great detail. Then, according to the features of the consumable parts, plus the designs of the regular shield tunneling machines of the Imperium, we will be able to model in the crystal processors, infer the general picture of this ultra-huge shield tunneling machine, and calculate what features the soundwaves it releases during the work entail!
"As long as we can grasp the features of the soundwaves, we will compare them to the soundwaves that we receive. Wouldn't we find where the hotspot is easily?"
"Wait—"
Long Yangjun asked, "There are plenty of types of shield tunneling machines in the Imperium, which have different mechanisms. Which one of them are you going to infer with?"
"It doesn't matter. When the sizes and the working surfaces of the shield tunneling machines expand to a certain level, the optional structures will be few. I can model and calculate all of them in several different ways."
Li Yao grinned. "By then, we will have a library of dozens of different soundwave features. After that, we will compare them with all the soundwaves that we can collect. There is bound to be something similar that we can find, right?"
"That's a rather huge calculation load, isn't it?"
Long Yangjun asked suspiciously, "Are you sure you are capable of it?"
Li Yao looked at the kids and said confidently, "In the past, maybe not, but right now, it… shouldn't be a problem!"
Seeing that Li Yao was confident, everybody immediately began to work.
Although producing a "soundwave detector and collector" and tracking the ultra-huge shield tunneling machine with it would certainly waste a lot of their time, everybody agreed that it was worthwhile.
Wuying Qi and Li Linghai were too strong to be defeated by them in a head-on clash. Also, the identity of "Blackstar the Great" was not really something that had to be kept a secret. Even if they could escape from the capital and "reveal Wuying Qi's real appearance", there would be barely anything that they could reveal.
Or rather, such revelation might achieve the opposite results. For example, if they were to "reveal Wuying Qi's real appearance" in front of a soldier like "God of War" Lei Chenghu, chances were that Lei Chenghu would be so overjoyed that he would go to Wuying Qi and pledge allegiance immediately.
Therefore, they had to grasp Blackstar the Great's trump card, or at least see clearly what the trump card looked like, in order to have enough leverage for the game after they escaped from the capital.
After reaching a consensus, Li Yao and the two kids focused all their computational abilities on the modeling and computation of the ultra-huge shield tunneling machines.
The shield tunneling machines were civil magical equipment after all. However large they were, their structures were fundamentally the same and not very complicated compared with military magical equipment. For Li Yao who had dismantled and modified almost thirty Colossi, it was naturally a piece of cake, particularly when he had two kids who boasted enormous databases!
The production of the "soundwave detector and collector", on the other hand, took them quite a while, mainly because the precision demand was too high, and Li Yao had to craft many components manually.
From modeling and calculating to the production of the magical equipment, it took more than twenty hours before a piece of weirdly-shaped magical equipment was finally made.
It was not exactly "produced" but assembled with the searching devices on the Colossi. Due to the limited time, layout and appearance were not Li Yao's concern at all. At first look, it was just a messy metallic crap. Four gigantic metal bowls extended out and were folded on the relatively even rocks by Li Yao, who pumped the air inside first and then injected the highly sensitive gas that he had specifically refined as a conductive medium.
Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!
As he held his breath, poured his spiritual energy into the magical equipment, and levered the sensitivity to the highest, thousands of waves that were raging unstoppably inside the rocks were immediately released, interweaving into noises absolutely unrecognizable for human ears.
Li Yao was patient enough to input the "noises" into the library of soundwave features that he and the two kids deduced together. As he expected, it did not take long before he found an extremely feeble wave from twenty degrees down the southwest, which was 95% match with a certain sound wave in the feature library!
"Look, the overlapping graph of this soundwave implies that it has multiple sources. Quite a few ultra-huge shield tunneling machines have made it together during the work."
Li Yao pointed at the crests and troughs of the waves and explained it to Long Yangjun and Li Jialing, "More importantly, the sound wave hits the bottom every three minutes and a half, and it will not rise again until about two minutes later, before it reaches the crest in another two minutes. This is obviously the cooldown time of the ultra-huge shield tunneling machines.
"According to my calculation, the ultra-huge shield tunneling machines of such a high power must have an extremely high temperature during the work, which prevents it from digging and shattering incessantly. Three and a half minutes to four minutes is already the limit. They have to be cooled down for two to three minutes before the next round of work.
"All the features match perfectly. So, this place is exactly our target!"
Chapter 2429: A Tunnel Ten Thousand Years Ago |
After the general direction was located, what they were going to do next was easier.
Li Yao, Long Yangjun, Li Jialing, and the two "information lives" that had just been born, as well as the two kids' toys, namely the super-tiny spiritual puppets that were like ants and those that could fly freely like wild bees, set off immediately and explored toward where the special waves came from along the current cracks and caves.
After every three hours, they would stop and reactivate the "soundwave detector and collector" to locate the source of the quakes.
As they expected, the waves were getting more and more intense and clear, suggesting that their direction was not wrong. In the meantime, according to the increased waves, it was possible to further adjust the direction and the depth.
Gradually, they left the towns where ordinary people below the ground gathered. The areas that contained abundant spiritual energy and lives were already far away. They had truly entered the absolute silence and darkness.
This was a forbidden area of lives where even the underground wildlings could not be seen. The tunnels and the caves were gradually narrowed and blocked. The only passages were the bizarre-shaped natural cracks that people would manage to crawl through.
In many places, they even needed to create a path for the Colossi in order to find a new crack.
Had Li Yao and Long Yangjun, the two super experts, not been leading the team and consuming their spiritual energy without caring about the cost, such a reckless adventure couldn't have located the right way at all, and they would've been stranded inside the rocks.
Just like that, they held their breath and snuck for more than twenty-four hours in the darkness, before they finally saw the light.
