The Martial Unity

Chapter 3560: A Universal Phenomenon

”I hope that is the case,” Emperor Rael replied to Rui with a concerned expression. ”I know you are strong. But don’t get overconfident. There are still things that can kill you if you’re not careful. And people are strong enough to kill you even if you are. NOVA, in particular, is a grave threat. One that is quite different from any of the other top ten most powerful pathwalkers in the world.”

Rui nodded. ”Unlike the other top ten pathwalkers in the world, her specialty is applicable beyond just conflict. She will be a menacingly dangerous foe even in the political landscape. It doesn’t matter what her competence in politics is when she has a quantum supercomputer for a brain.”

Emperor Rael heaved a tired sigh. ”An era where your competence in a field will boil down to your ability to deal with these computer systems is not too far away... I suspect that I, too, am getting too old for this new era.”

Rui raised an eyebrow. ”Why not just set up your own computation systems? We have the flora network technology, you can have your own mini-superintelligence that could help you process large amounts of political information.”

The Emperor of Harmony shook his head. ”I’m not young anymore. This era is too different from anything I’ve ever grown accustomed to and have come to master. I had this exact epiphany regarding the blood children, but with an opponent like NOVA, I fear that my outdated approach to politics will eventually grow obsolete and bring us all to great doom.”

”You have the manifold.” Rui pointed out. ”You have endless time. You can use that time to gain proficiency in computing systems and how to utilize them most effectively.”

”Why do you think I’ve been able to keep up with all the radical changes that the world has been going through?” His father smiled wryly, with a hint of melancholy in his tone. ”But it’s more than just the blood children. It’s more than just information technology. It’s... everything. Everything has changed. Before, I could limit my concerns to this continent, then to the true world after the Unfolding, and now with this negatron mining rush, the entire galaxy may very well be within our reach.”

”True,” Rui remarked. ”However, I think you have been handling the matters of the true world and the crisis we face quite well thus far.”

”Well, I do have a good system and foundation,” Emperor Rael replied in thought. ”However, I suspect that, in the long run, I will find myself increasingly out of sync with the rest of the world. There are some things that just cannot change, and the more the world changes, the less equipped I will be to deal with these issues.”

Rui fell into thought at those words. ”...I think everybody is going through this exact situation, including those of the true world. Think about the leaders of the true world and how much the world has changed because of them. The Return of the Lost Continent must have completely destroyed their understanding of the world and the many exotic miracles has probably thrown all of them into a loop. Then this recent negatron rush is probably more shocking than anything any of them could have ever expected.”

”Speaking of which, the Esoterist and the Astromind recently had a conference in the true world where the Esoterist proposed that the core of the planet is made up of negatron matter,” Emperor Rael remarked. ”He speculates that this is the reason for the discrepancy between expected gravitational pull and actual gravitational pull that Gaia exerts on all of us. He also that the repelling negatron matter is the reason that the planet expanded.”

”That makes sense, I always wondered why we’re crushed by gravity, and I always chalked it up to esoteric matter magic. However, after the Unfolding, that explanation wouldn’t make sense since most of the world does not have esoteric matter. The Esoterist’s explanation would explain why negatron matter is seeping in from within the depths of the planet. But...”

His eyes sharpened. ”That means we are risking the destruction of this planet the more we mine the negatron matter.”

The Emperor of Harmony nodded. ”Correct. The more we extract it, the greater the lava flow. We are not allowing the fissures created by the Dragon Emperor to be healed and sealed by cooling lava turning to magma. The more we keep it open, the more we risk enlargening lava channels that will not only boil the oceans and spread toxins, but also unleash all the negatron matter within the planet. It would undoubtedly mean the destruction of the planet. I think eventually, once the most immediate craze for negatron matter calms down a bit and the supply increases, I will try and leverage a bilateral agreement to seal the planet fissures forever and try passing international legislation that makes negatron mining illegal.”

Rui nodded. ”That’s a good initiative. But it will be extremely difficult. On top of that, as long as you have the Evolutionary Army, NOVA, and the giants, this will be extremely difficult to achieve. Nobody will agree to stop mining negatron matter if there are others who are still doing it. For everybody to agree, everybody has to be on-board, including our enemies.”

”It is one of my highest priorities, alongside the race to space, to Transcendence, and the war for allies,” Emperor Rael remarked. ”There are countless threats and the number seems to keep increasing with each passing day. The Astromind’s talk wasn’t indicative of an immediate threat the way that the Esoterist’s was, but he presented evidence that there might be millions of not billions of planets out there with gravitational anomalies that may have negatron matter within their cores.”

Rui’s eyes widened with shock. ”...What? But how?”

”The technical stuff is beyond my understanding, but essentially he conducted a highly thorough analysis on countless celestial objects from data procured from countless telescopes and satellites and compared found tiny deviations in expected gravitational pull versus observed, and speculated that they might all be a situation that is quite similar to what Gaia is going through,” the Emperor of Harmony remarked. ”He says that the phenomenon that we are going through might be a universal one across the entire universe.”