Everybody agreed to go to the site of the super-enormous shield tunneling machine to investigate, but there was only such a mysterious order in the mainframe crystal processor of the Great Iron Plants. The vibration sawtooth and the impact drill had just been produced, and there were no coordinates on where exactly they would be sent after they were finished.
Li Yao estimated that Wuying Qi or Li Linghai had no reason to share such a confidential thing with Li Minghui. Li Minghui's Great Iron Plants only needed to produce the consumable parts, and the transportation work later would be the responsibility of the elite Imperial Guards.
Even the elite Imperial Guards might not know where the consumable parts were to be sent. Only the few leadership and trusted subordinates such as "Moon Devil" Yue Wushuang knew.
Although he did not know the precise coordinates, Li Yao could basically infer it.
"The Great Iron Plants is just a very common complex of mining, refining, energy, and refining. Although it is large in scale, it is not very technologically advanced."
Li Yao pondered for a moment and said, "Look at the technology transfer agreements and the expert instruction manuals. They are enough to suggest that a lot of manpower, resources, and time will be devoted to producing qualified consumable parts. It will be very time-consuming to upgrade the few main assembly lines of components in the Great Iron Plants.
"In the underground world, there are a lot of heavy industrial towns like the Great Iron Plants that are more technologically advanced and have more facilities than this one. Even though the mother lodes here contain a lot of rare metals, there is still a huge gap between them and the demand of the vibration sawtooth and the impact drill. A lot of raw materials have to be shipped from the outside world.
"Then, why did Wuying Qi and Li Linghai choose such a 'plain' underground town of heavy industry to produce and process the consumable components that they had to produce?
"I believe that the only answer is distance and transportation. The place where they are conducting their secret operations can't be far away from the Great Iron Plants. Also, there must be a tunnel or a cave that can directly reach the place and deliver the consumable parts to it without any hindrance."
"Even so, the range of the search is still too large."
"The underground rocks are different from the world on the surface of the planet. Nothing can be seen clearly. Telepathic thoughts are often blocked by rocks and the mother lodes, too. It is very time-consuming and exhausting to search every cave, tunnel, and gap in the hundreds of square kilometers nearby.
"Don't forget that Wuying Qi and Li Linghai will conquer the last stronghold of the four Kurfürst families on the capital planet at any moment. Once they really control the entire capital, it will be a hundred times more difficult for us to escape!"
"This is a big problem. Let me think … I got it! Vibration!"
Li Yao's eyes glittered as he said, "I wonder, how many super enormous shield tunneling machines have Wuying Qi and Li Linghai controlled to excavate and explore the underground. There should be at least a couple of them, right?
"The shield tunneling machines will let out deafening noises when they shatter and obliterate the rocks. Naturally, all kinds of vibrations will be transmitted, too, not to mention that a couple of super enormous shield tunneling machines are working at the same time!
"Now that we are certain that they are not far away, as long as we lock onto their vibrations, we will be able to trace them back to them!"
Thinking for a long time, Long Yangjun said, "That's a good idea, but there are countless vibrations in the underground world in the first place. The quakes of the air circulation system and the cooling system in the underground towns, the deafening noises from the shield tunneling machines in other towns and factories, and the natural seismic waves caused by the feeble geological changes … Thousands of complicated ripples are entangled, and they are almost insignificant by the time they reach this place. How are you going to lock onto the vibrations from the super enormous shield tunneling machines? It's almost as difficult as finding a drop of water in a flood! "
"Not necessarily."
Li Yao smiled and said mysteriously, "I have my own plans!"
Long Yangjun looked at him without saying anything.
Li Jialing looked at him, frowning too.
Li Yao thought for a long time. Seeing that nobody replied to him, he couldn't help but say in disappointment, "Shouldn't you be saying 'Oh, we have a plan' at this moment?"
Xiaoming and Wenwen sighed. "Dad, time is short. Just say it if you have a solution. Stop playing!"
"Here's the thing —"
Scratching his chin for a long time, Li Yao coughed rather awkwardly and said, "The vibration frequencies of the waves are different from each other. It's like the sound of an earthquake is different from the sound of a volcano eruption, and it's even more different from the sound of the normal functioning magical equipment in a town.
"It's the same for the shield tunneling machines. The sound of a small shield tunneling machine whose working surface is less than ten meters in diameter and a large shield tunneling machine whose working surface is more than thirty meters in diameter will certainly be different!
"The noise of a 'super enormous monster' whose working surface is more than a hundred meters in diameter, on the other hand, will certainly be very special and recognizable. Even if the vibrations are barely attenuated after hundreds of kilometers in the rock stratum, certain basic features and parameters will never change.
"Look, in the technology transfer agreements and the instruction manuals, the performance parameters and production methods of the vibration sawtooth and the blast drill are recorded in detail. Then, according to the features of the consumable parts and the design methods of the regular shield tunneling machines of the Imperium, we will be able to build a model in the crystal processor and 'reverse inference' the whole picture of the super enormous shield tunneling machine. Then, we will be able to calculate the features of the noises that it makes during its operation!
"As long as we grasp the features of its waves and compare them with the vibration waves that we have collected, won't it be a piece of cake?"
"Wait a moment," Long Yangjun asked.
"There can't be only one way to produce the shield tunneling machines in the Imperium, including the mechanism of the shield tunneling machines. How are you going to reverse the inference?"
"It doesn't matter. When the size and working surface of the shield tunneling machine expand to a certain extent, there will only be a few constructions available. I can build a model and calculate them all in a few different ways."
Li Yao grinned and said, "By then, I will establish a feature library with the features of dozens of different waves. Then, I can capture all the waves that we have collected and compare them. I'm sure that we will be able to find a similar one, right?"
"That's going to be a lot of calculations, isn't it?"
Long Yangjun asked suspiciously, "Are you sure it's possible?"
Li Yao looked at the two little fellows and said confidently, "It might not have been possible in the past, but it shouldn't be a problem right now!"
Since Li Yao was so confident, everybody stopped hesitating.
Although it would certainly waste a lot of their time to build the "soundwave search and grab" and locate the super enormous shield tunneling machine, everybody agreed that it would be worthwhile.
Wuying Qi and Li Linghai were too strong for them to defeat in a head-on confrontation. Also, the identity of "Blackstar the Great" was not really a clandestine one. Even if they could escape from the capital and "reveal Wuying Qi's real face", there did not seem to be anything that they could do.
Or rather, it might even be counterproductive. For example, if they ran to the iron-blooded soldiers such as "God of War" Lei Chenghu and "reveal Wuying Qi's real face", chances were that Lei Chenghu would be so overjoyed that he would rush to Wuying Qi and kneel before him.
Therefore, they had to grasp Blackstar the Great's trump card. At the very least, they had to figure out what the trump card looked like. Only after they escaped from the capital would they have the leverage to play the game.
After reaching a consensus, Li Yao and the two little fellows focused all their computational ability on the modeling and calculation of the super enormous shield tunneling machine.
The shield tunneling machine was a piece of civil magical equipment after all. However large it was, its structure did not have any fundamental changes. It was not very complicated compared to the military magical equipment. For Li Yao, who had dismantled and modified more than twenty Colossi, it was certainly a piece of cake. Besides, he had the help of the two little fellows whose databases were extremely enormous!
On the other hand, it took them quite a lot of effort to craft the "vibration scanning and grabbing magical equipment", mainly because the demands on precision were too high. Many of the components had to be polished by Li Yao in person.
From modeling to calculation to refining the magical equipment, it took him more than twenty hours in total. Only then was a weird-looking magical equipment refined.
In fact, it was not exactly "crafted" but simply jumbled with the search magical equipment on the Colossi. Due to the lack of time, they did not care about the layout and appearance. At first glance, it looked like a mess of metal cow dung, but four enormous metal bowls extended out and were fastened to the relatively smooth rock wall by Li Yao. They drained the air inside first before they were filled with the highly-sensitive gas that he specially refined as a conduction medium.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
Beep! Beep! Beep!
Beep! Beep! Beep!
When he held his breath and gradually injected his spiritual energy into the magical equipment, pushing the sensitivity to the maximum, the hundreds of unstoppable waves inside the rock stratum were immediately released and interweaved into absolute noises that could not be distinguished by human ears.
Very patiently, Li Yao inputted the 'noises' into the feature library of ripples that he and the two little fellows had deduced together. As they expected, it did not take long before they found a feeble ripple twenty degrees to the southwest, which coincided with a certain ripple in the feature library that they had deduced by more than ninety-five percent!
"Look. The overlapping sawtooth structure of the wave suggests that it was made by more than one source. It was caused by multiple super enormous shield tunneling machines working together."
Pointing at the peaks and troughs of the waves on the 3D model of the waves, Li Yao explained to Long Yangjun and Li Jialing, "More importantly, every three and a half minutes, the vibration waves will fall to the bottom of the valley. It will not rise until two minutes later, and it will reach the peak in another two minutes. That is obviously the cooling time of the super enormous shield tunneling machines.
"According to my calculation, the super enormous shield tunneling machines of such high power must've been extremely hot when they were working, and it is impossible for them to drill and shatter continuously. Three and a half to four minutes is the limit. Then, they have to cool down for two or three minutes before they start the second round of work.
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