The Light Has Come!

Any movement? Pan Yongnian's tapping index finger froze in midair above the tabletop. He jerked his head around, looking toward the direction the sound had come from: "Chen Qing, what kind of feedback?" Its full name is the superconducting quantum interference device. It is a highly sensitive magnetic sensing device designed on the principle of the superconducting Josephson effect and magnetic flux quantization, and is mainly used to measure magnetic flux. Apart from biology and medicine, it is also widely used in encrypted communications. The one in this lab comes from Shen City Jiaotong University, with a sensitivity of up to 0.1 picotesla, making it the most precise superconducting quantum interference device currently in the country. Chen Qing, responsible for data observation, was a tall girl with delicate features; upon hearing this, she immediately pointed to the screen: "Academician Pan, the flux lock-in loop has lost lock—and three times in a row!" Pan Yongnian quickly went to Chen Qing's side and leaned in close to the screen. Upon seeing what was recorded on it, his eyebrows shot up. Lost lock. In this field, that word means the magnetic field changes detected by the device were too fast, exceeding the feedback circuit's upper limit, causing the device to lose its ability to make locked measurements. But one had to know that no magnetic field was being applied in the area in question. Long before the experiment began, all equipment capable of generating a magnetic field had been shut down or moved to the outer area by the team, while the residual magnetic field in the inner lab was shielded by the permalloy Pan Yongnian had brought, suppressed to below 5 nanotesla. In other words, whatever could cause three consecutive losses of lock here could only be something that, like a programmer's hair, theoretically ought not to exist. "Academician Pan! Academician Pan!" At the same time Pan Yongnian was checking the loss-of-lock record, on another side another researcher suddenly shouted: "Waveform! The lock-in amplifier is putting out a waveform! Microvolt level—and it's climbing!" The lock-in amplifier was reacting too? Pan Yongnian hurriedly looked at the other person and asked quickly, "What's the amplitude?" "It keeps changing! 0.56! 2.7! 3 point... no, it's past 5!" This time. Pan Yongnian said no more. He moved with an agility not befitting his age, rushing to another screen near the main control console. This screen was linked to a hertz-class ultra-high-speed multimode single-photon detector, a national treasure from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It also bore a commemorative name: Nanhu. The single-photon detector was connected to a dark room evacuated to ultra-high vacuum, inside which there was no light-emitting substance. The other end of the dark room monitored the area where Lin Yi and the others had gone missing. It was the final link in the entire experiment, and the only verification link. Whether it was the superconducting quantum interference device, the lock-in amplifier, or any of the other devices, they all served this single-photon detector. Only a change in the single-photon detector's reading could indicate that the second path was being opened up. Under normal circumstances, the dark count rate it displayed remained steady at one count per second—the limit imposed by the photomultiplier tube's own thermal noise. If this number began to rise, it would mean that something, while passing through the vacuum, had excited fluctuations of virtual particles, causing "nothingness" to emit light. And the larger the number shown, the more photons were coming through. Once the photon count reached a certain order of magnitude, it would form light visible to the naked eye. According to the calculations of Pan Yongnian's team, once lock was lost and the lock-in amplifier's waveform exceeded 477 microvolts, the dark count rate should change accordingly. The former condition was now met, and the latter was about to be as well. Pan Yongnian leaned forward slightly, both hands gripping the edge of the table tightly. The researcher in charge of the lock-in amplifier now had an obvious tremor in his voice, but was still doing his best to call out the numbers. "9.7!" "26.9!" "Academician Pan, it's past 50!" "It's past a hundred!!" "330!" "414...435...481!!!!" The instant the lock-in waveform reached 481, "Beep—" the number on the single-photon detector's screen suddenly jumped lightly from [1], becoming ... [2]. Before Pan Yongnian could react, that number jumped again, from [2] to [3]. Then, under Pan Yongnian's gaze, the numbers jumped faster and faster, wilder and wilder: 7, 15, 37, 82, 126, 357, 4396, 27364— The dark count rate shown on the screen, like a flood bursting through a gate, soared at an exponential rate. This represented photons breaking through obstacles, crossing over, and condensing into light on Earth. ......... Meanwhile, in the forbidden ground behind Guihua Sect's mountain, Lin Yi was also staring anxiously at his phone, feeling as though each day was a year—or rather, each second a year. Although he could hear what was happening in the lab in real time and vaguely guess that the home world had made some progress, after all he was not a professional physicist, and at this critical moment he dared not rashly speak up and interrupt Pan Yongnian's train of thought. So all he could do was wait on the spot. Actually, simply waiting was fine; it was just the time... Thinking of this, Lin Yi turned his head with a worried look, gazing toward the southeast of the forbidden ground. That was where Guihua Sect's mountain gate was located—namely, the array node where the two Golden-Eyed Crimson-Scale Beasts were attacking. About a quarter of an hour ago, the fluctuations coming from the mountain gate's grand array suddenly disappeared, and the entire area grew quiet. But through the array jade on his person used to control the grand array, Lin Yi could still sense that the two Golden-Eyed Crimson-Scale Beasts remained where they were and had not left. If his supposition was correct, those two demon beasts were most likely resting to recover their strength, so that after breaking through the grand array they would still have the energy to slaughter the disciples within the sect. After all, the qi and blood of humans—especially cultivators—were nothing less than a powerful tonic for demon beasts. As late second-rank demon beasts, possessing this level of simple sentience was hardly surprising. Lin Yi had made preparations for this in advance. But... the two Golden-Eyed Crimson-Scale Beasts had begun their breath-regulation a full half shichen earlier than he had originally anticipated. If they recovered any faster... then the time left for Lin Yi and the home world would probably be quite limited. Lin Yi then sighed, preparing to shift his attention back to his phone. But just as he was withdrawing his gaze from the mountain gate, midway through shifting it, Lin Yi's movement suddenly paused; he stared in one direction and couldn't help but utter a soft exclamation: "Hmm?" It was a patch of ground fifteen or sixteen meters away from him, located slightly to the right of the entrance to the mountain hollow; usually, apart from a layer of short grass, there was nothing else there. But at this moment, from a crack in that patch of ground, a strand of light visible to the naked eye suddenly seeped out: purple light. It was neither dazzling nor blinding, but quite conspicuous. At first as fine as a strand of hair, but before Lin Yi could react, it instantly spread into a patch. "Swoosh—" A diameter of one chi... half a meter... one meter... two meters... In less than a moment, the glow settled before Lin Yi into a ring of light about ten meters in diameter, set into the ground... a purple light ring. ......