The Atomic Universe.
After Natasha drifted into deep sleep, Lucian rose and walked to his desk. He pulled a thick stack of papers from his storage pouch, flipped to one page, and as he thought, took up his feather pen and drew seven lines beneath the word "consciousness," each pointing to the emotional concepts represented by the seven ancient demons: "Greed," "Pride," "Pain," and so on.
Then he placed a large question mark after each of those seven words and wrote: "Does the quantum-state transformation of the soul require the superposition of more possibilities? The superposition of power drawn from numerous emotions?"
"Whereas a pure aggregation of belief-consciousness would cancel out one's own consciousness, thereby preventing collapse and maintaining a quantum superposition state? But this would also affect one's own consciousness, creating enormous hidden dangers?"
"How to resolve this?"
Writing to this point, a faint smile appeared at the corner of Lucian's lips. His fingers tapped lightly on the paper, as if mulling over and guessing at something.
Shaking his head with a half-smile, Lucian put that paper away and took out a fresh sheet. He wrote:
"'The Relativistic Wave Equation for a Single Electron.'"
Exhausted Natasha, recovering in deep slumber, suddenly sensed a terrifying force of annihilation and destruction. Her eyes snapped open in alarm. She saw Lucian, clad in his sleeping robe, surrounded by a warped magnetic field, a dreamlike spectrum unfolding like a painting, and vast, overwhelming power descending from an immeasurable height!
The nearby colors—half black, half white—collided and annihilated each other in an inconceivable state, then were reborn once more from the void.
"Real-world feedback…" Natasha gazed at the scene of constantly shifting black and white and understood what was happening. And from it, she seemed to gain some insight: this was the cycle of creation and destruction of matter?
Over the past two years, the experience she had accumulated in her push toward the Epic Knight rank, the myriad problems arising from the pure-destruction nature of the Sword of Truth bloodline—all of it seemed to find answers in this moment.
She tugged up her slipping nightgown and quietly walked to Lucian's side, watching what he was writing:
"…I had once wanted to avoid the negative-energy result derived by Dieppe, Larry, and Juliusan, but after constructing this equation and theoretically explaining all current experimental results, I found that the derivation of negative energy is unavoidable. If so, then no matter how counterintuitive it may be, we can only incorporate it into our arcane theory and construct a new system capable of encompassing it. I predict the existence of a positively charged anti-electron. When it meets an electron, the two will immediately annihilate each other, releasing tremendous energy…"
"Extrapolating further, there may exist other antiparticles, and matter composed of these antiparticles could be called antimatter…"
As he wrote this, concepts from quantum field theory that Lucian had previously verified also surfaced in his mind. The vacuum fluctuated, and electron–positron pairs were born from it, then mutually annihilated, releasing energy.
Within his Cognitive World, the cosmic background grew hazy, as though matter were ceaselessly spawning and annihilating. The vast starfield once again descended from some unknowable distance, bringing immense real-world feedback that caused changes to the electrons and the vacuum, constructing an incomplete new Legendary spell!
Moreover, the "Eternal Solar Flare" within Lucian's Cognitive World was inscribed naturally into his very soul, vaulting him directly into the third tier of Legendary—even if he possessed only ten Legendary spells.
"An antimatter cannon?" Lucian placed a period at the end of the paper, closed his eyes, and felt that incomplete new Legendary spell. He understood that to complete it, he would need to actually find the "anti-electron."
"Without understanding the mysteries of the world, relying solely on tempering one's bloodline and comprehending its power, it really is difficult to advance…" Natasha sighed softly beside him. This was why Epic Knights, the further they progressed, were fewer in number than mages. But she had an upbeat personality and quickly rallied, her eyes blazing with fighting spirit. "Fortunately, even though I don't understand the specific arcane theories, with you explaining and demonstrating for me, I think I can make my breakthrough to Epic soon…"
Lucian smiled at her: "Any path, at its highest level, converges in the same direction—an understanding of the mysteries of the world. It's just that the arcanist's method of investigating those mysteries happens to be the best and most effective."
All roads lead to the same destination.
…………
After Lucian's public lecture, the Magic Parliament as a whole sank into a strange state of "silence." Everyone was discussing the double-slit interference experiment with electrons, Oliver's cat, Douglas's entangled particles, Lucian's delayed-choice experiment, and so on—but no one in the Parliament would mention how consciousness, thought, and intelligent observers affected the microscopic world, subconsciously fleeing from that most terrifying of explanations.
But just because they refused to think about it did not mean the Grand Arcanists and the outstanding arcanists in the field of the microscopic would stop thinking about it. Papers on the subject had already been submitted to the Arcane Review Committee.
Larry sat in his dark study, as though he had been sitting there for thousands of years without stirring. Oliver's cat filled him with dread, and Lucian's observer theory made him terrified. He could not calm himself enough to carry on with his own research and experiments. His mind was entirely consumed by these questions.