Chapter 114: Dawnlight Academy

In the depths of the dark, shadowy sea, the two groups finally met, as though they had at last reached the perfect ending to a long-awaited reunion.

“Patriarch! Alliance Leader! Senior Yichenzi! I never imagined you would come in person to support us. I am truly overwhelmed by your kindness!” Huafeng hurried forward with the others and bowed respectfully to the elders. Since they still carried a few water-repelling talismans, moving underwater had posed them little difficulty.

“That will do. There is no need for formalities. We came at another’s request, and in any event, we could not allow China’s young geniuses to perish for no reason.” Zhang Sanfeng stepped forward and helped Huafeng and the others to their feet. He continued, “The important thing is that everyone is safe. Let us return to the base first and discuss everything at length.”

“Yes, Senior. We shall follow your instructions in all things.” Wang Yue had never met Zhang Sanfeng in person, but the bearing and expression of the man before him clearly belonged to an extraordinary master. Since even Huafeng, a Level-63 Origin Emperor, treated him with such reverence, Wang Yue naturally dared not show the slightest negligence.

Shuang Ning, Li Long, Bai Feng, and Yun Meng also came forward one after another to offer their greetings.

“You see? I told you I wasn’t lying. I have delivered them to you safe and sound. From now on, we shall each keep to our own side and leave the other in peace. Here is a small sample of the Magneto Stone. You may take it as well.” Once they had finished speaking, the Grand Elder finally found an opportunity to interject.

A fluorescent object the size of an ostrich egg, covered in intricate writing, appeared from the void before them. Zhang Sanfeng indicated that Huafeng should accept it on his behalf.

“Then we shall take our leave.”

Dan Qiusheng glanced at Zhang Sanfeng. Zhang merely gave a slight nod to him and Yichenzi before turning and heading toward the surface. With only that brief farewell, they followed him upward.

An hour later, everyone flew above the moonlit sea, heading for Lin Chong’s logistics base.

Feeling the sea breeze, the air, the moonlight, and the distant mountains that could just barely be seen, Huafeng felt as though the past few hours had lasted for several centuries.

At last, many matters had reached their conclusion. During the journey, Zhang Sanfeng had told him that the ghost ships scattered beneath the sea were very likely their underwater dwellings. Although the sea people had evolved rapidly, they still needed somewhere to live. The pressure beneath the ocean was immense, making the construction of homes extremely difficult.

The abandoned ships could be remodeled into all kinds of residences and storehouses. As for the figures they had sensed while passing through—men who seemed to be the lost crews of those vessels—there was an eighty percent chance that the sea people had used some unknown secret technique to transform them into free labor and slaves. By now, those people could no longer be called human.

Thus, there were times when matters might appear exceptionally cruel, yet they could not interfere. Since the various civilizations of the world had developed to this point through the course of history, survival in the cracks between them required one to follow that evolution rather than resist it. Besides, these people belonged to a civilization from an entirely different age.

As a vanished continent, the civilization whose seeds they had gathered and preserved no longer posed any real significance to the world’s development. So long as they did nothing to endanger China or humanity, there was no reason to meddle in their affairs. When the need arose, perhaps they might even contribute to the struggle against the apocalyptic catastrophe of 2021.

Thinking of the future, Huafeng once more found his imagination running wild. Beside him was Yun Meng’s beautiful profile. The breeze lifted her hair, while her jewel-like eyes remained fixed on the road ahead.

Half an hour later, they finally arrived at the coastal base. Dawn was close, and the eastern horizon had begun to pale.

On the opposite side of the Earth, several white-haired scientists were discussing physics in the Academy of Sciences of a world-class university—the Dawn Academy. Every one of them was a leading scientist of global renown.

Professor Robert, an admirer of Einstein for more than a century, had always tried to find a way to preserve the stability of space through Einstein’s theories. After looking around the room, he said, “Computer simulations based on general relativity have modeled the process by which a star collapses into a black hole and emits gravitational waves. General relativity predicts the existence of black holes: when a celestial body becomes sufficiently dense, its gravity distorts a region of spacetime so severely that even light cannot escape.

“According to the stellar-evolution models currently accepted by the scientific community, the final stages of the evolution of massive stars generally proceed as follows: stars with approximately 1.4 times the mass of the Sun evolve into neutron stars, while stars with several to several dozen times the Sun’s mass evolve into stellar-mass black holes.

“Supermassive black holes, possessing several million to several billion solar masses, are believed to exist at the centers of virtually all galaxies. Their existence is generally considered crucial to the formation of galaxies and even larger cosmic structures.”

“One of the most important astronomical properties of compact celestial bodies is their extraordinary efficiency in converting gravitational energy into electromagnetic radiation,” added the renowned astrophysicist Peggy Clive. “The accretion of interstellar gas and dust by stellar-mass or supermassive black holes is believed to be the mechanism behind the formation of certain exceptionally bright celestial objects. Famous and diverse examples include active galactic nuclei on the scale of galaxies and microquasars on the scale of stars.

“Under certain conditions, accretion can generate extremely powerful relativistic jets in these objects—high-energy plasma beams with highly directional emission and velocities approaching the speed of light. General relativity has played a key role in modeling these phenomena, while experimental observations have provided powerful evidence supporting both the existence of black holes and the various predictions made by general relativity.

“Black holes are also among the most important targets in the detection of gravitational waves. The merger of a black-hole binary may emit some of the strongest gravitational-wave signals detectable by instruments on Earth. Moreover, the chirp signal produced before the merger can be treated as a ‘standard candle,’ allowing scientists to estimate the distance to the merger and providing another means of detecting the expansion of the universe on a cosmic scale.

“Meanwhile, the gravitational waves emitted when low-mass compact objects such as stellar-mass black holes fall into supermassive black holes can directly and completely reconstruct the geometry of spacetime surrounding the supermassive black hole.”

As a supporter of Hawking, the physicist Kelvin Fergus reiterated Hawking’s theory of gray holes:

“Many years ago, in June 1993, K. Brecher of Boston University in the United States proposed the possibility that gray holes might exist. The collapse of a massive star might be insufficient to form a black hole, yet it could produce a celestial body with a smaller radius and greater density than a typical neutron star.

“Brecher believed that black holes had masses greater than three times that of the Sun. Under certain circumstances, therefore, there would be no need to invoke black holes. Gray holes possess properties different from those of ordinary neutron stars, arising from the different degrees of collapse involved.

“General relativity predicts that when a star collapses to a sufficient degree, a photon sphere will form around its outer regions. Within that layer, light circles the star. The photon sphere of a typical neutron star has a smaller radius, while the immense gravity caused by the degree of collapse also strips energy from the radiation that escapes.

“Brecher’s calculations showed that, under the influence of these two effects, only forty percent of the radiation emitted by a gray hole could escape into space. That is how gray holes received their name.

“Among the six known X-ray binary systems—including Cygnus X-1 and LMC X-3—one object more than three times the mass of the Sun, invisible in the visible-light spectrum, may be a very dim gray hole rather than a black hole.”

“At present, we urgently need to gather a group of world-class young people from across the globe and find a way—through black-hole theory, gray-hole theory, or whatever else—to completely restore the balance of our space! Otherwise, who knows when this damned apocalypse will ever end!”

At some unknown point, the principal had entered the room. His hairstyle bore an uncanny resemblance to Einstein’s.