Chapter 589: Aether Drift

“Begin, Witte.”

Ace said in a steady voice.

Medea watched curiously. What kind of experiment was this group of wizards going to conduct?

Having restored his human body, Witte seemed to be adapting to his state as a living person. After adjusting for a few seconds, the runes shrouding his entire body rapidly collapsed, transforming into a highly condensed magic sphere that exuded an eerie and ominous aura.

He let out a loud shout and pressed that magic sphere downward. The magic sphere fell slowly, suddenly accelerated, and then abruptly expanded.

Only then did the elves discover it, but it was already too late. The magic sphere had already expanded to the extent of enveloping the entire emerald secret realm in just three short seconds. Like a steaming oven, the entire emerald secret realm ignited in an instant.

The elves struggled and cried out, finding it difficult to even mount a resistance, and all withered away just like that.

The jungle turned into a thicket of dead wood. The flesh and blood of the elves were boiled dry, gradually turning into mummies. The enveloped secret realm had lost all its vitality.

Witte’s face was flushed red, as if he had eaten some massive tonic pill. Ace’s eyes narrowed slightly, white light flashing: Comprehend.

With the assistance of the ahoge, in the vision of Comprehension, Witte seemed to have absorbed a massive amount of vital energy in a short time. That vital energy circulated within His body, actually slowly converting into the power of death.

Witte’s body also gradually withered. As the wind blew past, his flesh actually disappeared like sand and gravel, leaving only an empty skeletal frame and an eternally burning soul fire.

“Using oneself as a hub to convert the power of life into the power of death—truly a brilliant idea.”

Ace couldn’t help but praise.

Betty bowed slightly to Ace and said: “Exactly so. Therefore, this spell is only suitable for a Lich to cast. If the rest of us cast it, we would probably turn ourselves into Liches on the spot.”

As they spoke, the Lich Witte had already exhaled the power of death accumulated in his body. Like a biting cold wind, all the corpses in the entire emerald secret realm were turned into undead. Watching the corpses stand up one by one, their soul fires igniting bit by bit, the Lich Witte nodded his skull in satisfaction.

Medea began to applaud clap, clap, clap, Her voice melodious: “This magic is truly too practical. It is simply the most effective means to combat the elven invasion in the Reflection World. I think it won’t be long before deities everywhere try to recruit our Necromancers.”

Ace laughed heartily, beckoned to Witte, and patted Witte’s skeletal frame.

“Did you hear what Your Holiness Medea said? You must work hard in the future to cultivate more Liches and contribute to the Kaya Gods’ fight against the Outer Gods’ invasion.”

Witte bowed slightly. A hollow voice transmitted through the runes: “I will strictly follow Your Lordship’s will. However, many wizards resist converting into Liches. Perhaps we can consider developing a portion of intelligent undead and converting them into Liches.”

Ace smiled and said: “The Reflection World corresponding to Salia will be left to you. You can act boldly according to your own will. If you feel it’s feasible, you can completely establish a large-scale permanent magical ritual array for converting undead into Liches, set up a specialized school, and transfer a portion of wizards to serve as teachers to teach these halfway Liches some magical knowledge.”

Witte continued in his hollow voice: “Lord Ace’s proposal is too constructive. I will definitely keep it in mind and thoroughly implement this instruction.”

This Witte looks like a skeleton and usually acts quite arrogant. I didn’t expect him to be such a flatterer when facing Lord Ace. Really broadened my horizons; he’s no different from the old man Bayen.

Betty raised an eyebrow, thinking to herself.

Ace offered Witte a few words of encouragement, said no more, and tore open the spatial barrier with Betty and Bayen to return to the floating city.

Medea exchanged a few pleasantries with Witte, then returned to Her temporary palace, while Witte formally took over this City of the Dead.

Inside the floating city, the environment of the entire alternate dimension was far more refined than the sanctuary Ace had initially established. It was a pity about that sanctuary; so much effort had been spent building it, and Ace had even deployed many spatial obscuring barriers, but unfortunately, it was directly annihilated under the shockwave of the Great Impact.

Fortunately, there weren’t many people inside. Only some things were lost, so it wasn’t a severe loss.

Ace suddenly recalled an acquaintance. The incomplete Law of Fate and the Law of Comprehension activated simultaneously, finding that person amidst the vast crowd.

She no longer possessed her former savage beauty. Wearing an oversized magic robe and a Warlock hat, with two badges pinned to her chest—the Fourth Ring Gold Warlock badge and the Level 2 Scholar badge respectively—and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses resting on the bridge of her nose, she was completely unlike that bow-drawing Valkyrie from back then.

Ace smiled slightly and left like a wisp of wind. Having seen the changes, there was no need to disturb her. Each walking their own respective paths was enough.

A light breeze blew past, making the tips of Alessa’s hair flutter in the wind. She looked up, seemingly having discovered something, and looked around.

Ace returned to the sub-plane. He had opened up a high tower on “Earth” and resided there on ordinary days.

At His level, He could reside anywhere, but Ace liked the presence of people. Earth was the only residence of intelligent life in this galactic universe.

Ace’s three thousand Laws of the Dream Realm had derived three thousand Dream Gods, which included the species law for Humans. The humans in the Dream Realm multiplied here. Ace deliberately controlled their development; the humans here had developed to the medieval era, but no one could reach the highest peak of the world.

Ace’s Wizard Tower was built atop this highest peak. Facing the sunlight, draped in pristine white snow, in this place where oxygen was thin, atop the summit of “Earth,” if the humans of the Dream Realm truly discovered it, they would also regard Ace as a deity.

Our Lord Deity was currently slowly unrolling a magic parchment scroll here, slowly writing down His unfinished thoughts.

…

Meanwhile, inside the floating city, within the Wizard Tower of the Legendary Wizard couple, Thales and Blania.

“Without a doubt, since light is confirmed to be an electromagnetic wave, I believe there must exist a medium serving as the medium for the propagation of electromagnetic waves. I call this medium ‘Aether’. Aether should have an extremely small density and extremely high stiffness.”

Thales said to Blania with almost absolute certainty.

Blania’s beautiful eyes looked toward Thales, and she said softly: “The density must be small, otherwise the Astral Plane would be like a mass of paste. The same goes for stiffness. For example, with water waves, although the wave source only moves vertically up and down, the particles on the water surface will also move forward along with the vibration of the wave source.

“Water is a liquid and lacks sufficient stiffness, so water waves become a composite motion of transverse waves and longitudinal waves.”

Thales agreed: “Exactly so. We must calculate the minimum stiffness value of Aether. We have to boil the water before we can catch the rabbit to put in the pot!”

Blania nodded in agreement and began calculating the required values. Lines of mathematical formulas burst forth and flowed freely like water from a shattered silver vase.

Thales looked at Blania, who was calculating, with appreciation and adoration. This was when she possessed the most feminine charm.

Thales wasn’t idle either. He also unrolled a magic parchment scroll and wrote down his own thoughts on it.

“Regarding the explanation of the phenomenon of stellar aberration: if we consider light to be particles, we can see relatively independent motion—stationary relative to the sun, moving relative to the habitable planet. But when light is considered a wave, a medium must be used, which is Aether.

“Where is Aether? It should be omnipresent: permeating through the various worlds, between the various worlds, within the Astral Plane—omnipresent.

“And how does Aether move? If it is stationary relative to the sun, then when observing starlight from the perspective of the sun, no stellar aberration would be produced.

“If the habitable planet shuttles through Aether, according to the calculation of the angle of stellar aberration, the habitable planet moving relative to Aether has no effect on Aether at all. This is clearly also inappropriate.

“Just like a person swimming in the sea will inevitably have an effect on the seawater.

“But if we consider Aether to be stationary relative to the habitable planet, stellar aberration will similarly not be produced.”

At this point, Thales stopped his pen. He had too many doubts. Blania, meanwhile, had already calculated the minimum stiffness value of Aether.

“What’s wrong, Thales?”

Seeing Thales frowning, Blania couldn’t help asking.

Thales smiled slightly at Blania, hugged her, and replied: “I’ve encountered a bottleneck in my thinking. Oh right, I suddenly thought that since the propagation speed of light in transparent media is different, it should also produce different stellar aberrations. Let’s do an experiment.”

After speaking, Thales let go of Blania, casually picked up a telescope, and covered half of it with a prism. Soon, his face turned ugly, and his pupils contracted slightly.

“The angle of stellar aberration on both sides is exactly the same.”

Blania began to think. Her delicate eyebrows furrowed slightly as she paced back and forth, her brain working rapidly. Finally, she said slowly:

“Perhaps we can make the following hypotheses: First, the Aether in a vacuum is absolutely stationary. Second, the Aether in a transparent medium is much more abundant than in a vacuum; let’s set the excess portion as X . Third, the density of Aether in a transparent medium is directly proportional to the square of the refractive index. Fourth, X will move together with the medium, which means the movement of an object causes a ‘partial drag’ of Aether.

“This can explain the experimental results just now. Different transparent media drag different densities of Aether.”

Thales couldn’t help but clap his hands in admiration, saying loudly: “Blania, your hypothesis is excellent. Just as we hypothesized lines of force and fields to study electromagnetic waves, we need experiments to verify this.”

The two fell into thought. A few days later, Thales, who was good at designing experiments, designed a new experiment.

In the clean and tidy laboratory, a U-shaped trough was placed on the table. A concave lens was placed on the left side. To the left of the concave lens was a reflector, and to the right was a diagonally placed semi-transparent mirror. Thales and Blania exchanged a glance and nodded.

Blania used magic to create a murmuring flow of water, moving in one direction along the U-shaped trough. Thales snapped his fingers. One beam of light shone in the direction of the water flow, and another beam of light shone against the direction of the water flow. They produced interference fringes.

Thales observed these fringes carefully and recorded the changes. Finally, the two confirmed that light is dragged by the water flow.

The two smiled at each other, both seeing the joy in each other’s eyes.

Blania said: “Since light is dragged by water flow, then we can hypothesize that Aether is dragged by the movement of celestial bodies. In other words, the rotation of the earth core will cause an Aether wind!”

Thales recorded this series of hypotheses, experiments, and deductions on a magic parchment scroll, and wrote the title: Aether Wind – Thoughts on the Wave Propagation Medium.

The paper by the two Legendary Wizards of electromagnetism quickly caused a massive uproar. For a time, discussions about Aether drag became heated.

“Bruce, tell me, if there really is Aether, and it can be dragged, why haven’t we discovered the Aether wind?”

In Bruce’s Wizard Tower, his good friends Allen, Eva, and Luther were each lying comfortably on the sofas in his home. Allen, enjoying fine wine, asked loudly.

Bruce got up from Elena’s lap pillow of beautiful legs and also took a sip of fine wine.

“The wine from Romon’s shop is truly excellent. I heard it’s a recipe specially given by old Logan. The aftertaste is simply endless.”

He put down his wine glass, looked at everyone with sharp eyes, and said slowly: “I think that’s because the speed of the earth core’s movement is too small. Aether wind is only meaningful for speeds like that of light waves. Talking more is useless; let’s do experiments. Magical matters are solved with experiments.”

…

In the distant starry sky, Ace peeped at everything that had recently happened through a mirror, a trace of a smile appearing at the corners of His mouth.

“I didn’t expect you to be so close to finding the first dark cloud. I’m really looking forward to it.”

On the other side, in just a day’s time, Bruce and the others designed an experiment. They split the light into upper and lower parts through a semi-transparent mirror. The lower ray of light entered a water tank and, after passing through three reflectors, produced interference fringes with the upper ray of light.

Subsequently, they turned the direction of the experimental instrument 180 degrees, but the interference fringes measured both times were exactly the same.

“What’s going on? The movement of the earth core has no effect on Aether?”

Eva said, somewhat puzzled.

“Since there’s no effect, it means we didn’t find the Aether wind. But how could there be no Aether wind? It doesn’t make any sense at all!”

Luther simply crouched down holding his head.

“Stop holding your head, it gives me the creeps looking at you.”

Seemingly because of various head-exploding tragedies, Allen had a deep trauma regarding this act of holding one’s head.

Hearing this, Luther hugged his chest, his brow still furrowed.

Bruce’s expression went from a furrowed brow to suddenly relaxing, and then to hearty laughter, drawing everyone’s attention.

“Have you lost your mind? Your Excellency Legendary Wizard Bruce!”

His good friend Eva said somewhat bluntly.

“What’s wrong, Bruce? We think our research might have some fallacies. Let’s think hard some more.”

Allen said with concern.

The flesh on chubby Bruce’s face jiggled. He laughed loudly and said: “No need, no need to think anymore. I’ve figured it out. It’s fundamentally impossible for this experiment to find the Aether wind. The earth core is so massive, so the experiment we did can be considered relatively stationary, while Aether moves in uniform linear motion.

“This is like sitting on a flying carpet moving in uniform linear motion. When you close your eyes, you can’t possibly feel the motion, nor do you know which way the flying carpet is flying. Only when the flying carpet turns can you feel a sensation of being thrown outward.”

Hearing this, Luther stood up, deep in thought: “You mean, if we want to find the Aether wind, we must realize this sensation of being thrown outward, which is on the secondary effect of the earth core’s movement?”

Bruce stopped laughing. His gaze was sharp, and he slowly spat out two words: “Aether Drift!”

(Chapter finished)

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