The glorious sun shone on Dawnbreak Island after the disaster. The collapsed and cracked city would take a long time to repair. As for the giant engine that had been completely scrapped, no one knew how long it would take to repair it. The thrilling tumble last night made the island experience an unprecedentedly short night and a hasty dawn. All the institutions in the city were forced to operate at high capacity to treat the wounded and repair the damaged key equipment. The only good news now was that the casualties were not as serious as imagined. Most of the places that collapsed and cracked were at the edge of the city or in the old urban areas. There were limited residents in those areas, and the seismic design of the city itself allowed it to hold on for a long time at the beginning of the shaking. The citizens had ample opportunities to seek refuge in the more stable central area of the floating island.
Looking down from the city, dust and smoke could be seen everywhere. The dome had entered a state of traffic control. Only engineering airships or flying vehicles carrying out the most urgent tasks were flying in the air. On the streets below, people could be seen in an orderly manner. They were spontaneously rescuing those who needed help, spontaneously queuing up to receive supplies that had just been rescued from the collapsed warehouse, and spontaneously reporting whether they were injured in the previous disaster and how much the injury would affect their ability to work. There was no chaos, no complaints, and even a rare look of sadness on the faces of the elves. They organized themselves in a surprising order. The disaster was sudden, but everyone in the city seemed to have rehearsed it many times.
Some huge shadows were cast on the dome. Those were the large transport ships sent from the other floating islands. These cumbersome spaceships had quickly completed their preparations when the Dawnbreak Island exploded. Now they had brought precious medicine and additional air filtration equipment. The latter was essential: the air circulation in the dome relied on the purification equipment buried underground and on the surrounding rings, but the explosion had caused some damage to them. Now the thick smoke and dust in the city had to be removed as soon as possible, and they could only rely on external equipment.
Hao Ren and Hilda stood on an open balcony on the spire of the Royal District. Hilda was deep in thought, while Hao Ren used his extraordinary eyesight to take in everything in the city. He expressed his admiration for the response of the elves in the disaster.
Vimm stood quietly behind the two without saying a word.
"My people are used to this kind of thing. Seventy years ago, when the Isle of Tranquility disintegrated, they managed to preserve the most important material warehouse on the island with absolute calmness. About one-tenth of the citizens in this city are survivors of the Isle of Tranquility," Hilda said softly. "More and more floating islands are approaching their limits. The technical council of elders is trying to find ways to restore some of the dead floating islands that have been extinguished, but there has been little progress."
Hilda looked exhausted. She had been under the most pressure in the past few hours. After the council of elders ended in a hurry, she began to direct the evacuation and rescue. When the floating island began to tumble and the various districts began to crumble, she was the first to arrange the evacuation of each district and the evacuation plan to the Royal District. After the propulsion unit was completely destroyed, she was also the one who coordinated and directed the work of stabilizing the floating island. The queen was not just an authority who could only give orders, she was also an expert who knew all the technical parameters of the floating island like the back of her hand. Now that everything had been settled, she did not listen to the guard's advice to go back to rest. Instead, she dragged Hao Ren to the balcony of the minaret, overlooking the entire city.
"This is our current situation."
Hao Ren was still thinking about the most suitable plan for the Aerymian elves. He already had a few ideas, but he still needed to wait for the MDT to come and confirm which one was the most feasible. Before that, he asked Hilda a question cautiously, "If I have the ability to get you out of this predicament, how much are you willing to pay?"
Hilda turned her back to the edge of the balcony and spread out her hands as if her whole body was about to melt in the sky under the dome. "You can see what we have left. You can take whatever you think you need. As long as you can let my people live a better life and have a real sky like the other races, you can take away everything in your sight. "
Hao Ren quickly waved his hand and said, "Don't do that, don't do that. It's easy to misunderstand. I'm not threatening you or asking for too much. I want to help as a friend. But to be honest, I'm not capable enough alone. My ship is only five or six hundred meters long at most. So, I may need to ask for help, and those help are not free."
Hilda thought for a moment and said, "Let's put it that way. Anyway, we have nothing else. There are no resources in this place. What we have is no different from stones in the eyes of those advanced civilizations. All we have left is our own labor, but that doesn't seem to be something precious."
"Forget it, let's not talk about this first." Hao Ren scratched his head, feeling that these problems were getting more and more complicated. "Let's first..."
Before he could finish his sentence, an elf ran out from the small door behind him and knelt on one knee in front of Hilda. "Your Majesty, the rough scan results of the World of Prayers are out. There is no information on Lord Cardillon."
As he spoke, the elf handed a rolled up document to Hilda with both hands. The latter took the document and quickly skimmed through it. Her brows furrowed tightly. "The main storage has been tampered with... They have infiltrated so thoroughly. Inform Ekalom to temporarily close the three auxiliary storage of the World of Prayers, and at the same time, strictly examine every citizen who applies to upload... Temporarily ban citizens from the Prismatic Island from entering the World of Prayers. The extra rations they consume will be paid from the Royal Storage. "
The elf herald obeyed and retreated. Hao Ren asked curiously, "What is this World of Prayers?"
Hilda sighed and said, "Actually, this is our own problem... but it doesn't matter if I tell you. The World of Prayers is a virtual world, built by my predecessor. It has been running for more than two thousand years now. Currently, it is a place where we settle the souls of the dead and also a special experimental site. "
Hao Ren suddenly thought of a lot of things, and he knew that his guess was not far from the truth.
"The first world was built for scientific research," Hilda explained slowly. "You know, we are short of materials, and we can't afford to consume a lot of things. Every time some large-scale experiments fail, it is a cold winter for the entire Aerymian society. So more than two thousand years ago, another queen, with the support of the Elders of Technology, built a virtual environment called the 'World of Prayers'. It runs on a giant server, designed and built by the best of the best magic scholars and astrologers. It is our last large-scale technological achievement. The World of Prayers simulates the Aerymian star system: a sun, a planet, 100% simulation of the home we live in, and every law of the world that we know is inputted. We even accurate the reality of this world down to every grain of sand, and in the later stage, we added a lot of restrictions on the microscopic world. This world imitates reality as much as possible, so that we can carry out a variety of large-scale experiments without consuming material resources. At that time, the Elders of Technology hoped to find a feasible way to travel to other star systems in the World of Prayers under the resource constraints of the Aerymian star system, and they did get some results in the early stage: some of the spaceships we are using now were simulated and verified. "
"But the later stage will not be so smooth." Hao Ren could easily guess that there must be a turning point in the second half of the story.
Hilda nodded. "That's right: the World of Prayers imagined everything too beautifully, but the technology needed to really cross the distance of tens of millions of light years to travel to other stars is more rigorous and precise than we thought. We must fully grasp the truth to create a virtual world that is exactly the same as reality, otherwise, no matter how close the imitation is, it is just an imitation. A shadow infinitely close to the truth is still a shadow. There are still many unknown secrets in this universe, which we cannot guess out of thin air in this small cradle. Some scholars even speculate that the mathematical structure of this universe is not necessarily continuous, and the laws that are effective in the Aerymian star system may not necessarily be applicable elsewhere — or at least there is a deviation of a few decimal points. In addition, when many technologies develop to a certain extent, they will be affected by the microscopic world, and even if we make the World of Prayers more accurate, it is impossible to depict its microscopic parts in detail. We can only keep adding patches — which is simply not enough. In any case, after hundreds of years of hard work, the superluminal engine created in the World of Prayers caused a big explosion in reality, and two floating islands were destroyed in the explosion. The enthusiasm of the World of Prayers project faded, and the talented and bold queen died of depression. "
Hao Ren knew that there was a continuation to this story.
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