Chapter 1129: Chapter 1128: Mathematics

Beltira’s words caused Gawain and Queen Belsetia to fall into contemplation simultaneously. It was like a flash of light, guiding Gawain to notice details he hadn’t paid attention to before amidst the chaotic and confusing clues—

If those evil cult followers deep within the wasteland are no longer "human" and are no longer concerned about the "great plan" executed by their comrades outside the wasteland, no longer interested in the outside world, then why would they still cooperate with the actions of the "External Church"? Since they’ve been cooperating with the External Church for seven hundred years, it indicates...

"They have always been providing us with data, even helping us infiltrate the sentinel towers, acting as loyal colleagues for centuries, making us overlook lurking anomalies and never considering whether this group of physically and mentally mutated ’comrades’ still shares values similar to ours," Beltira’s voice came from the side, "until the body of the fake god lost control, and everything turned into nothing. The church outside the walls collapsed, and I finally had the opportunity to stand here, calmly and undisturbed, to think about some things. Only then did I have the chance to see the problem clearly..."

"They are not helping you; they’re only helping themselves," Gawain said in a deep voice. "The only explanation for them cooperating with you all these years is that this ’cooperation’ benefits them, or that you have something worth exploiting... Reflect carefully, is there anything in your series of plans that those evil cult followers deep within the wasteland could take advantage of? This might help us understand their purpose."

"Too many things—bioengineering, environmental modification, divine factors, divine evils... We are conducting too many plans, and each one might be useful to them," Beltira said thoughtfully. "There are vastly different environments inside and outside the wasteland, meaning many experiments can only be conducted on one side. Each of our studies is an extremely valuable source of information for the other..."

"Then let’s assume all of this is their objective," Belsetia broke the silence. "Madam Beltira, the plans you’ve just mentioned should all be operated by you ’External Cultists’, with the data then shared with the ’Internal Cultists’ inside the great barrier, right? The common point in all these projects is that they are related to the survival and modification of organisms in the environment..."

"What have you thought of?" Gawain immediately looked at the Silver Empress, his expression becoming serious.

"Let’s put aside the technical aspects for now—consider the evil cult followers living inside the great walls as a ’new species.’ What do you think this new species desires the most now?"

"New species? What do they desire the most?" Gawain furrowed his brows subconsciously. Belsetia’s words led him to new thoughts, freeing his mind from inertial thinking of "apocalyptic conspiracy" and "cult worship." When the question returned to the simplest premise, he suddenly thought of something. "Wait, are you saying what they really want is a living environment..."

"A simple yet dangerous answer," Belsetia nodded slowly. "For them, the Gondor wasteland is a piece of livable land, but this habitat may no longer be comfortable—the Wasteland Central Zone is controlled by the Iron Soldier Corps at the Deep Blue Well Ruins, while the periphery is under the surveillance of the sentinel towers’ alert zone. They can only carry out limited activities in certain areas between these two, so... they might not be satisfied with this situation."

Gawain’s eyes deepened seriously. He pondered over many things at that moment, and not far from him, Beltira silently turned her head to look at the Magic Web Terminal. The projection of the mutated Treant floated slowly in the air, with twisted limbs and seemingly human faces hiding an inhuman mind. After watching for a long time, the once Female Dark Matriarch sighed lightly, as if talking to herself, "We have diverged too far..."

Gawain was awakened from his deep thought by this statement. He was about to say something when he saw Beltira suddenly adopting a listening posture. Two seconds later, she finished listening and spoke with an exceptionally serious tone: "The listening team just sent an urgent communication. They captured some... very special information. We’d better go to the listening center ourselves."

"The listening team?" Gawain quickly realized that she was referring to the long-term listening project capturing "mysterious signals" at various Magic Web Nexus points. His expression immediately became serious—knowing Beltira’s character, she wouldn’t be so urgent if the situation weren’t really special. "Alright, let’s go now."

Beside him, Belsetia was stunned by the sudden change in the situation and cast a curious look at Gawain: "What are you talking about?"

"Remember what we were discussing at the square earlier?" Gawain looked at the Silver Empress, "That antenna device—perfect, now I can take you directly to see what this ’listening’ project is really doing."

As they spoke, a cracking sound of wooden structure moving and transforming filled the living room grown naturally by the Sorin Giant Tree. A wall at the other end of the room slowly opened, revealing the pipe-like structure inside and a transport device with seats coming to a stop in the pipe. Beltira was heading in that direction as she said, "We can take the vascular channel to reach the listening center. It’s quicker than the external passage."

Gawain led Belsetia toward the transportation pipe while looking up at Beltira with a hint of surprise: "You’ve built an entire pipeline transportation system within yourself?"

"It was General Margarita’s suggestion. The scale of the Sorin Giant Tree is enormous, and inside, many facilities are arranged in a complex three-dimensional layout. Conventional elevators or external corridors can’t meet the commuting pressure among all the facilities, so General Margarita suggested I design a ’slideway’ system to quickly transfer personnel and materials between facilities—her inspiration seems to come from southern farm barns, where farmers use similar slides to send grain dried on high platforms directly into warehouses..."

Gawain listened with amazement, surprised by the creativity happening in fields he didn’t know about. Despite his surprise, he felt deeply gratified, pondering the application prospects of such things in other factories and comparing them to similar things on planet Earth. Then he saw Beltira stop by the entrance of the pipeline, apparently not intending to enter.

Gawain was somewhat confused: "You’re not coming with us?"

"I will create a new ’avatar’ at the exit to wait for you," Beltira said, while the flower vines behind her moved slightly, showcasing their presence like a cloak. "You see, my avatars have limited mobility and cannot ride ’vehicles’—these vines do not permit avatars to perform long-distance rapid transfers."

So Beltira is tethered? Gawain couldn’t help but think of this peculiar comment, then couldn’t resist his curiosity and asked, "I suddenly became curious, what would happen if these vines really got severed while you’re maintaining this avatar?"

"It would leave behind a very lifelike Beltira puppet, made of wood," Beltira replied expressionlessly. "She essentially serves as a medium for speaking with people. Once the neural connections are severed, what remains is just an empty shell."

"... That seems reasonable." Gawain’s lips twitched, and that was all he could say.

Beltira looked seriously at Gawain: "Are you interested in this kind of puppet? If you want, I can make one for you—unlike other wooden products, she’s easy to maintain. You just need to soak her in frostweed potion for two hours, then dry her out, and she can last for at least half a century."

"No, thank you." Realizing the topic might head in an unexpected direction, Gawain hurriedly waved his hands, pulling Belsetia into the transportation device in the pipeline. Beltira said nothing more, just stood there woodenly. Then the protective shell of the pipeline closed smoothly, and gentle lights illuminated the cabin.

Queen Belsetia watched everything calmly throughout the process. As the Silver Empress, she had witnessed many things throughout her long life, and in most cases, she could maintain this calm and serene demeanor. Although the personal character of the "Wanderers from Outer Realm" and Madam Beltira’s current appearance were somewhat beyond her expectations, these matters were not necessarily bad things.

However, as the traffic cabin in the pipeline began to move, she couldn’t help but ask, "Is it really okay to take me directly to the ’listening center’? It sounds like you’ve just made some great achievement—is this matter not confidential?"

"It does have a certain level of confidentiality, but as I mentioned earlier in the square, the project itself is open-source to neighboring countries and will also be open-source to the Silver Empire," Gawain explained. "In fact, we have even dispatched technical teams to proactively engage with the Sacred Dragon Kingdom and the Typhon Empire, hoping to establish a larger-scale, data-sharing listening network..."

The Silver Empress couldn’t help but widen her eyes in surprise. She had indeed heard Gawain say that this "listening" project was open to neighboring countries, but she hadn’t expected it could be open to such an extent. This even surpassed the technological exchange between the Cecil Empire and the Silver Empire, representing a level of technical collaboration that had never been seen before among the Mortal Nations, prompting her to ask, "Why go to such lengths? What are you listening to, that requires...crossing an entire continent to do this?"

Gawain looked into Belsetia’s eyes, and under the rapidly flashing lights, the Silver Empress’s eyes were full of an inquisitive curiosity.

"We are tracking a signal, its origin unknown, its meaning unclear, and its decrypted content also vague, but we can confirm it is an artificial signal, and I believe it...may bring us something that could overturn everyone’s worldview," Gawain slowly said. "We have been tracking it for over two years, and recently, more and more data have made the experts realize one thing: relying solely on the Magic Web Nexus within Cecil territory is insufficient to complete the tracking and locking of this signal."

Belsetia widened her eyes, but before she could say anything else, a slight tremor suddenly came, followed closely by the sound of the pipeline shell opening.

As Madam Beltira said—the pipeline transportation system is indeed very convenient.

In the brightly lit listening center, the mysterious signal’s fluctuations are still echoing in the equipment. Paper tapes and boards used to record the signal waveforms and images have already piled up on the recording desk, with the printer continuously outputting more continuous paper to record every subtle change in the signal. In the holographic projection at the center of the room, a large-scale geometric pattern and matrix are continuously expanding in scale.

Bard kept his eyes tightly on the image until he was startled out of his contemplation by a voice suddenly sounding beside him: "His Majesty has arrived!" "Madam Beltira is also here!" "It’s the Empress...the Silver Empress..."

Bard quickly raised his head, just in time to see three figures coming from the direction of the commuter pipeline’s exit, but before anyone could bow in greeting, Gawain at the forefront had already waved to stop.

"Return to your work," Gawain’s voice echoed in the room. "The person in charge of the listening channel should come over—who captured this signal?"

Bard promptly got up and left his station to come before Gawain. After bowing in greeting, Gawain looked somewhat surprised at the familiar man in front of him: "You?"

"Yes, Your Majesty," Bard said with his head bowed. "I am responsible for this listening group."

"Good, well done," Gawain showed a slight smile and nodded, his gaze then fell on the holographic projection in the center of the room, "What is the situation now?"

"The signal’s transmission continues, and its stability far exceeds previous instances with no interruption or unprocessable noise occurring," Bard promptly said. "Using the decoding method Madam Beltira devised, we’ve successfully output these graphics—the graphics are clear and regular, indicating the decoding approach is correct, but regarding content..."

Gawain focused on the content presented in the projection, his gaze holding an unparalleled seriousness.

He saw basic geometric shapes neatly arranged in the first line, including highly uniform squares, triangles, circles, and polygons.

He saw subsequent patterns starting to feature smooth curves, spiraling lines, intersecting closed geometric shapes.

Grouped dot matrices according to an incremental pattern, a coordinate system with horizontal and vertical axes and scattered fluctuating dots.

The discussions in the room were in low voices, with the most prominent sounds coming from the magic machineries operating in various places, the printing paper equipment making a clattering noise. The paper supply in the storage ran out, and nearby staff hurried forward to replace it with new paper.

"Your Majesty, look at these contents..." Bard quietly said beside him, "These things seem to be..."

"Mathematics." Gawain finally breathed gently, his heartbeat gradually calming down with the deep breaths.

Bard remained silent for a moment before quietly saying: "...You thought so too."

Gawain focused on the holographic projection in the center of the room, and at that moment, those continuously output geometric patterns and dot matrices, curves seemed to finally come to an end, as some things began to emerge from above. But those were no longer the "mathematical" content familiar to everyone present.

They were a collection of bizarre symbols, like those of unknown meaning.

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