Chapter 636: Wave-Particle Duality
“Interrupting with an emergency broadcast: All supernaturals, whether you are a Wizard, Mage, Warlock, Warrior, Knight, or Vampire, please meditate on the spot immediately. Open your minds and receive the mental command of all the Immortal Legends.
“We are currently fighting a crisis that threatens to destroy the world. Please meditate on the spot immediately and open your minds. This is not a drill. Repeat: this is not a drill!”
The information stream spread rapidly through various channels. Although the supernaturals didn’t know exactly what had happened, they all sat down where they were, trying hard to calm their minds and meditate, opening their consciousness.
Alexander, Donna, and Lucilu immediately sat down. Alexander felt a gentle yet massive will connect with him through the Magic Net, like returning to a mother’s embrace—warm and eager.
In the Subconscious Sea within the Magic Sanctuary, specks of light symbolizing the wills of supernaturals emerged from the void, gathering in increasing numbers. The 1,400+ Legendary Immortal Wizards also began their mental link, merging with the wills of these 30 billion supernaturals into a powerful torrent of consciousness that surged directly into the world’s rule layer.
Ace, who was currently battling the Mansus, suddenly received the blessing of the wills of all supernaturals in the entire world. He was shrouded in rings of willpower radiance. The power of the Dream Great Source instantly surged and burned fiercely, instantly staining the Mansus.
After a long while, the dream had completely saturated the Mansus, leaving only the Mansus Will cowering in a corner.
The True Names on the Bloody Stele of Fate also stopped struggling. Ace opened his eyes and said calmly and with gratification, “I didn’t expect to receive the blessing of the supernaturals of the entire world. Now, 90% of the Mansus has been resolved. It’s just this remnant clump of will that will take a very long time to completely digest.”
A trace of worry flashed through his eyes. The will of that great existence lingering in the Mansus had severely impacted the world. Currently, the macroscopic world had tended toward peace, but many observations in the microscopic realm could no longer be realized.
Ace’s true body remained deep within the Great Source to continue presiding over the long conquest and refinement of the Mansus. A projection appeared in the Wizards’ Subconscious Sea within the Magic Sanctuary, where the Legendary Immortal Wizards were still maintaining their mental links, supporting Ace with their collective will.
“Thank you to the 1,431 Immortal Legends and all supernaturals for your support. Your willpower support allowed me to completely take control of the situation. It is now basically stabilized—at least on the macroscopic level. Everyone may sever the link.”
Hearing Ace’s words, the Legendary Immortal Wizards severed their linked state one after another. Maintaining such a state was still very draining on their energy.
Seeing everyone disconnect, Ace’s projection spoke with a solemn voice:
“Although the Dream Great Source has enveloped and eroded the Mansus Great Source, it cannot be completely digested yet. The remnant will in the Mansus—akin to the lingering obsession of a certain existence—will repeatedly cause disturbances. While this disturbance and confrontation are not obvious in the macroscopic world, they will cause very severe interference in the microscopic realm, resulting in the distortion of various data and inaccuracies on the microscopic scale.
“This will cause great trouble. First, everyone’s spellcasting within the world might experience intermittent failures or even accidents. Second, across the entire Wizard Multiverse and its radiation zone, it will temporarily be impossible to effectively observe the microscopic scale.
“For example, recently, a genius wizard named Alexander wrote a paper called ‘Cathode Rays,’ describing how he proved the electron.
“But if you were to repeat his experiment now, you might temporarily be unable to discover the secrets of the electron.”
A commotion arose among the wizards present. Ace’s words surprised everyone greatly. Although many of them didn’t quite like the formula Alexander invented or the concept of the energy quantum he proposed, if they couldn’t observe the microscopic world, it meant the development of foundational theories would hit a bottleneck.
Ace’s voice also carried a hint of sorrow. His deep voice spread throughout the Subconscious Sea, even making it known to all supernaturals through this invisible link.
“It pains me deeply to tell you all that our research into foundational theories, especially on the microscopic scale, may be locked down for a considerably long time.”
This change was somewhat unexpected even for Ace. The dawn of magical quantum mechanics had just appeared, and even light quanta had been proven. It was precisely the moment needed for grand discussions and an explosion of ideas, yet such an accident suddenly occurred.
However, it was understandable. The Great Source is the root of the world; naturally, changes to the Great Source would cause tremors and unrest throughout the entire world.
Following this, preparations began for a Special Enlarged Meeting of the Supreme Council.
“Alexander, as a Betty Gold Medal winner and an Ace Gold Medal nominee, you have received an invitation to the Special Enlarged Meeting of the Supreme Council.
“Lucilu and I are Mythical Wizards, so we also received invitations this time.”
Three months later, on a deep blue lake beside a lush primeval jungle, Donna and Alexander were strolling on the water’s surface.
Donna wore a pair of beautiful crystal high heels. As she stepped on the water, ripples spread outwards.
Alexander’s leather shoes were shiny, and ripples also spread as he stepped on the water. He took the invitation letter Donna handed him and let out a long sigh.
“What’s the point of this? The foundation has already been locked. I repeated the cathode ray experiment over 300 times, and every single time the result was different. The microscopic realm has been completely scrambled; no patterns can be found.
“The door to truth has been closed to me. It’s incredibly frustrating.”
His voice was low, and his eyes lacked their usual highlight.
Donna slowly approached, gently hugged him, and said warmly:
“You’re still very young. As long as you advance to a Mythical Wizard, your time is almost infinite. Don’t be too anxious. Haven’t you read the invitation? Lord Ace speculates this lockdown will last roughly 400 to 1,000 years. Once the Great Source completely digests the power of the Mansus, everything will return to normal.
“Let’s go to the Celestial Realm for the enlarged meeting first and listen to the brilliant ideas of others.”
Alexander also hugged Donna, gently pushed her away, and said, slightly cheered up: “I suppose that’s the only way. I hope it can be as fast as possible.”
Three months later, Celestial Realm, Academic City.
Outside the Central High Tower was a sea of people. 1,400 Legendary Immortal Wizards, over 100,000 Mythical Wizards, and over 30,000 top figures from all walks of life gathered here together.
The doors to the Central High Tower finally opened, and people filed in. Alexander also followed the crowd. Suddenly, he heard someone calling his name. Looking around, he found it was actually his old classmate, Mr. Goldolo.
He, Donna, and Lucilu waited for a moment before Goldolo finally squeezed through the crowd and said excitedly: “Alexander! I never expected to meet you here. No, I should have known long ago. If a businessman like me could be invited, a red-hot frontier theoretical genius like you would definitely come.
“I read your ‘Cathode Rays’ and your discourse on quanta. It’s truly amazing. I didn’t expect my old friend to actually realize his ideal and become a great scholar researching frontier academia.
“It’s a good thing you didn’t continue working on the dream immersion device with me, otherwise it would have been a regret for the entire academic world.”
Following the three of them, Goldolo excitedly talked like a machine gun.
After listening to his old friend, Alexander also smiled and said: “Haha, if I had followed you, I definitely would have raked in the magic tokens. Regardless, it was my good fortune that you sought me out back then. Let’s go, let’s head in together.”
The crowd quickly flooded into the Starlight Hall of the Central High Tower. Even with over a hundred thousand people, it still felt somewhat spacious in this hall. Surrounded by stars, one couldn’t help but feel their mind open up.
Even Alexander, who had been depressed for a long time, felt relaxed at this moment.
Equally as depressed as Alexander was the Mythical Wizard Daru. Having discovered that light is also a quantum—namely, the photon—the highly renowned Daru also had many plans for further research, but now these researches could only remain a pipe dream.
Not only that, the wizards of the Electromagnetism School clung desperately to the double-slit interference experiment like a lifeline, constantly questioning him, which made Daru very frustrated.
Daru also had internal struggles. Two different experiments actually proved that light has two different characteristics: that is, light is sometimes a wave and sometimes a particle.
But how could it possibly be a light wave sometimes and a photon sometimes? It’s simply like a capricious, unruly child; completely unreasonable.
Just as he was thinking this, Bayen’s loud, rational voice suddenly rang in everyone’s ears.
“Distinguished delegates, please take your seats as soon as possible. The meeting will officially begin in fifteen minutes.”
With a rustle of movement, everyone hurried to sit down, various construct magical creatures busy directing them. Soon, everyone was seated.
Ace stood on the high platform. Through a projection, his image transformed into a holographic giant.
“Welcome, everyone. This Special Enlarged Meeting is very urgent, and many delegates are on planets with inconvenient transportation. Thank you all for arriving so promptly.
“Here, I want to thank everyone for your trust in me and the Legendary Immortal Wizards. By uniting our efforts at the critical moment, we have already brought the Mansus Will of the Realm of True Names under control. My true body is slowly grinding away and converting the Mansus Will, like peeling silk from a cocoon.
“This process will produce severe negative impacts. Simply put, our microscopic realm will become even more unpredictable, and observations like cathode rays can no longer be conducted.
“But the good news is that this chaotic state of entropy increase is not permanent. If we are optimistic, in about 400 to 500 years, the world will return to a normal state.
“This is a process we must go through. Once we completely merge the Mansus core, our world will possess the possibility of ascending to a higher Astral Plane layer.”
With a wave of Ace’s hand, holographic images appeared in front of everyone. Massive amounts of data detailed the various possibilities and displayed a panoramic view of the Level 3 Astral Plane layer.
“We are currently located at the observable edge of this layer. Within our observable range, there are over a thousand worlds. Do you know what this means?”
Ace’s voice grew somewhat pitched, his emotions gradually rising.
“If we compare the Level 3 Astral Plane layer to a fishpond, then this fishpond is currently full of opportunities. Even if we temporarily cannot research foundational theories, we can continue the Slavery Act, conquer alien worlds, and acquire more sources of super-dimensional mana and Spirit Computers.
“Everyone knows that entropy increase means disorder and heat death, becoming increasingly chaotic and cold. Acquiring super-dimensional mana and immense computing power means we continue to maintain an upward trend against the current on an energy level, ensuring the orderliness of information on an informational level. In other words, a decrease in entropy for the entire world.
“The lowering of the entropy value can accelerate our fusion of the Mansus and reduce the surge in the world’s overall entropy caused by fusing it.
“Therefore, I announce here that we must enter the Era of Great Conquest! With Legendary Immortal Wizards as units, every sub-plane is a natural battleship for Astral Plane conquest.
“Go discover alien worlds, go conquer alien worlds. Our goal is very simple. We do not destroy alien worlds, nor do we harm mortals. We only capture gods, we only conquer gods. Plunder all immortal creatures and their Fruits of Immortality. Make the immortal creatures our ‘generators’ and ‘computers,’ lowering our entropy value and forging the prosperity of our Wizard Multiverse!”
The wizards at the scene buzzed with discussion. After enslaving the gods of the Realm of True Names and experiencing the convenience of “Divine Flesh Generators” and “Spirit Computers,” most wizards had grown accustomed to this.
Although humans felt a sliver of reluctance toward oppressing and enslaving other species, compared to the benefits gained, the vast majority ignored this reluctance.
There were also wizards like Thales who were unwilling to do this. They cried out loudly that this behavior was inhumane; although it didn’t violate the fundamental spirit of wizards, it was too cruel.
“We could choose a gentler method, giving them a certain amount of freedom and allowing them to join our camp. Such direct extortion and utilization is truly too cruel. I do not oppose liberating and developing all usable productive forces, but there is no need to use immortal creatures purely as tools.
“Admittedly, the entire Astral Plane has a law of the jungle similar to a primeval forest, but the reason we are different from them, the reason our degree of civilization is higher, is because we have our own bottom line!”
Alexander looked at the person crying out loudly and knew it was Thales, who had nearly died because of his “discontinuous energy.”
“By opposing Lord Ace so clearly, isn’t His Excellency Thales worried about anything at all?” he couldn’t help but murmur softly.
Donna smiled and whispered, “Lord Ace has a tolerant mind. It’s just that the two look from different angles and directions. It’s not a conflict of personal interests, just a conflict of ideologies. But this is all permitted by the magical parliamentary system. You can discuss freely before a decision is made, but once the decision is made, it must be resolutely executed.”
Alexander nodded. This was his first time coming into contact with the decision-making process of the highest echelon of wizards; it was very novel and interesting.
Thales and a few other wizards—known as the Awakened Faction—were still trying hard to lobby, but there were very few respondents. Most wizards watched coldly; they were unwilling to give up everything they had now and everything in the future.
Even Alexander was the same. He yearned to research the microscopic world. The prerequisite for researching the microscopic was world stability; for world stability, they had to fuse the Mansus; to accelerate the fusion of the Mansus, they had to find a way to decrease entropy; and conquering alien worlds and plundering gods was precisely a good method for entropy decrease.
“Morality is sometimes the most fragile thing, and justice is the most pale and powerless. In the silent Astral Plane, survival has always been the first priority. Beyond survival, development is the first priority. As for morality, it is merely a civilization’s endogenous self-discipline system—a product meant to lower the entropy value within a civilization.
“Attempting to use the moral constraint system endogenous to our civilization to constrain our actions in the Astral Plane… I feel such behavior is akin to suicide,” Goldolo rested his chin on his hands and said seriously.
“Morality is also an endogenous culture of our civilization. Thales’s strong sense of morality isn’t necessarily wrong; it’s just too early. If we wizards can truly rule the entire Astral Plane, we can spread our moral system throughout the entire Astral Plane.
“If we can assimilate all alien races, then perhaps the entire Astral Plane could truly achieve great harmony.”
A trace of longing flashed in Donna’s eyes as she spoke somewhat naively.
Alexander looked at Donna. Being able to retain such purity was indeed not easy. He let out a long sigh and said nothing.
After discussions and lobbying, the attendees finally began collective voting. They tightly gripped the specially made voting devices just issued to them and cast their crucial votes.
Ultimately, nearly 140,000 attendees, representing the entire Wizard Multiverse Civilization, heralded the arrival of the Era of Great Conquest.
A panoramic map of the Level 3 Astral Plane layer was distributed to everyone, and every Legendary Immortal Wizard received a four-dimensional space-time curvature map. They would be the main force of this Era of Great Invasion and Conquest.
This was because only a sub-plane could form a four-dimensional particle in four-dimensional space-time, and a four-dimensional particle was the optimal unit for conducting curvature jumps.
The meeting did not end there. A massive rift had appeared in magical theory. The quantum theory proposed by Alexander made people feel at a loss, and the wizards strongly requested Ace to share his views.
Alexander also looked at Ace curiously, anticipating his answer.
Ace looked around at the over 100,000 people present, a faint smile on his lips. The current academic atmosphere was exactly what Ace longed to see. What he hadn’t expected, however, was that annexing the Mansus would severely affect observations of the microscopic world.
“Sometimes light is a wave, and sometimes it is a quantum. It seems that sometimes we must use one set of theories, and sometimes we must use another set to describe the behavior of these particles, and sometimes we must use both. We have encountered a new kind of difficulty. This difficulty forces us to use two contradictory viewpoints to describe reality. Neither viewpoint alone can completely explain the phenomena of light, but together they can.
“I believe that when researching the microscopic level, we need to discard the intuitive feelings and ideas of the macroscopic level. Macroscopic feelings might be harmful in the microscopic realm.
“Discarding macroscopic influences, we should focus more on the reality of the microscopic. For example, light: why can’t it be both a particle and a wave?
“Or sometimes a particle and sometimes a wave?
“For example, regarding this intuitive feeling, why don’t we call it Wave-Particle Duality?”
This unprecedented perspective sparked widespread discussion among the wizards. Bruce even murmured, “It is both a wave and a particle… Wave-Particle Duality… I see, I see.”
Some wizards had epiphanies, while others could not accept it. But this was only a hypothesis; more had not yet been proven by experiments, and experiments were precisely unable to be conducted due to the annexation of the Mansus.
(Chapter finished)
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