I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 821: The Discussion

Hearing Jie Ming out, Savien wore a delighted expression.

But to Jie Ming that expression looked somewhat odd. It was less the delight of hearing someone admire him than… the look of a man who had spotted a useful pair of hands?

Sure enough, Savien got straight to the point. “You have some understanding of my research? Excellent! I have run into a problem recently.”

“That technique you provided really can stabilize the spatial environment within a region to very nearly absolute stillness, but what some experiments need is not absolute stability. It is a dynamic balance between stability and change.”

He raised a hand and drew his fingertip lightly through the air. There was no mental energy or elemental fluctuation about it at all, and yet faint spatial ripples spread out ring after ring in its wake.

“Many experiments require space that cannot go chaotic, but many also require space that cannot go dead. The Self-Stabilizing Field Regulation Protocol as it stands is stable enough but lacks room for regulation. Put plainly, it is too stable, and so there is no way to make high-precision fine adjustments…”

As he spoke, Savien’s brow furrowed slightly. “I have tried several modification schemes, but I was not satisfied with any of them. Since you are the founder of the Self-Stabilizing Field Regulation Protocol, I would like to hear your opinion.”

Jie Ming felt rather helpless, aware that his earlier reading had not been wrong: the man really was simply putting him to work.

But judging by Savien’s emotions, he was not trying to sponge the technique or working some other angle. He was genuinely a research maniac immersed in the technical problem.

Jie Ming did not much mind people like that.

Still…

“That problem… I truly did not consider it at the time.” Jie Ming fell to pondering.

After all, the Self-Stabilizing Field Regulation Protocol had been designed in the first place to pursue the limit of stability inside a sealed region, so as to assist low-level wizards as far as possible. He genuinely had not considered the needs of high-level wizards.

But even without having considered it, with his present understanding of the Internal Circulation system, meeting Savien’s requirement was in fact quite simple.

His technical level now had long since surpassed the self who had created the Self-Stabilizing Field Regulation Protocol.

After a few seconds of thought, Jie Ming spoke slowly. “Actually this problem is not hard to solve. You can add another layer, a dynamic frequency coordination layer, outside the stability layer.”

Savien shook his head with some frustration at that. “I have tried that scheme of yours too, and it was not very effective. The stability layer is responsible for maintaining the spatial framework and the adjustment layer for producing controllable fluctuation, but in actual use the two are required not to interfere with one another… which is very hard to achieve in the technical runes.”

Jie Ming only smiled and raised a hand to sketch out a string of rune formulas:

“That part is actually simple. Use this rune formula to rework it and it will meet the requirement. When an experiment needs adjustment, only the adjustment layer’s frequency, amplitude and duration change, and the underlying stability structure is never touched. That way the overall stability is not disrupted, and enough adjustable room is preserved…”

As he spoke, Jie Ming tapped lightly on the tabletop, and the base array structure of a Self-Stabilizing Field Regulation Protocol unfolded of its own accord.

The rune formulas he had drawn a moment ago flew automatically into that array structure and filled themselves into its interior as though alive, and very soon they had assembled into a new array without a seam anywhere.

“This way you can even modularize the window parameters and swap in different adjustment templates according to what an experiment needs. Whatever comes up later, you only have to change the template; the whole stability framework needs no additional rebuilding.”

Watching the array before him change, Savien’s gray-blue eyes lit up abruptly!

That was no exaggerated description. Blazing light genuinely came out of his eyes!

“Good!” He slapped the table hard. “I knew coming to find you was the right call!”

“This rune construction is truly ingenious. Modified this way the change is minimal, and yet it preserves the original advantages of the whole Self-Stabilizing Field Regulation Protocol… hahahahahahaha, worthy of the creator of the Self-Stabilizing Field Regulation Protocol. Your understanding of this technique is simply superb!”

The more Savien spoke, the more excited he grew, until in the end he simply dragged his chair around to the side, pulled a magical network terminal out of his spatial ring, and set it on the table with a smack.

At his operation, a huge light screen unfolded at once, countless spatial runes arranging themselves automatically, and Savien had already begun altering the framework, unable to wait a moment longer.

“Do you think the formula here needs another feedback node? If it were adjusted so the frequency shifts…”

“I think that would work.” Jie Ming nodded. “Though I believe the feedback node is best placed in the second cycle rather than the first, or resonance will arise easily between these rune formulas…”

“That makes sense!”

“And here…”

…

The two of them were soon so immersed in technical discussion that they forgot the passage of time outside.

When they came back to themselves, they found the attendant doll had brought the dishes out at some point, only the dishes had long gone cold.

Even the tea had been replaced with fresh tea giving off steam; by the look of it the attendant doll had come by and swapped it out.

Seeing the two of them come round, the attendant doll came over silently again and cleared the dishes away, and before long brought out a fresh set of piping hot ones.

The more he discussed things with Savien, the more Jie Ming gradually relaxed.

He found that Savien and Mentor Clark were in fact the same kind of person.

In ordinary times they looked cold to the point of being inhuman, but that was only because the overwhelming majority of their attention was fixed on their research.

Once their own research came up for discussion, they changed as though into different people entirely.

When they spoke with someone they cared nothing for status or background, still less would they think more of anyone for military merit or position. The only thing they cared about was research ability and the problem itself.

If you could offer them a new line of thought, could solve the problem, then you were a colleague.

If you could not, they could not be bothered to say another word to you.

It was only that for these two, people who could help them with their research and solve their problems were far too few, which was why to those around them such people came across as inhuman.

At that thought, Jie Ming smiled helplessly.

Honestly, it was thanks to the Self-Stabilizing Field Regulation Protocol having come out of self-circulation, and to combining that with knowledge from another world’s system, that he had managed to hold up his end at all.

So long as one was up to it in knowledge and technique, dealing with a person like this counted as quite easy.

There was no need to read anyone’s mind or talk in circles; what was discussed was always the purest academic question.

Taking advantage of a pause while Savien thought, Jie Ming drank some tea and instinctively glanced around him.

Since the two of them had started talking, nobody nearby had dared come over and interrupt.

Jie Ming even noticed several seventh-level wizards of clearly considerable standing holding wine glasses at the far end of the corridor.

By the look of it they had meant to walk over, but when their gaze fell on Savien they turned aside quite naturally and pretended to be merely passing by.

It seemed… Savien’s power to intimidate was even more outrageous than he had imagined.

Jie Ming considered that thoughtfully.

On the other side, the more Savien talked the more absorbed he became, and the light screens on the table had gone from one to six.

Layer upon layer of spatial models turned slowly in the air, countless rune parameters being modified and recombined continuously as the two talked.

The restaurant, where a fair amount of low conversation had been going on, gradually fell quiet.

Out of politeness nobody watched openly, but people’s attention was basically drawn despite themselves to that formerly unremarkable table in the corner.

A sixth-level wizard who had just arrived at the restaurant saw the scene and could scarcely believe it.

He sidled quietly over to an acquaintance and asked with deliberately lowered mental fluctuations, “That man… is that really Lord Savien?”

The one beside him could not help wiping the cold sweat from his forehead. “Apart from that great figure, who else would dare hold a discussion here with that much abandon?”

Another at the table glanced carefully at the spatial model shifting continuously, his expression complicated:

“I cannot keep up with the pace of their discussion either… how are you all finding it, by the way?”

“If I could keep up with the pace of their discussion, would I need to be sitting here being scenery with you?” His friend beside him rolled his eyes. “If I could get up there and put in even two sentences, my research funding for the next few centuries would probably double!”

The others at the table could not help their wry smiles either. The words were crude, but they were the truth.

Anyone genuinely able to keep up with the pace of those two would certainly have had the confidence to ask the power behind him for a good deal more research funding.

One sixth-level wizard who had watched the whole thing sighed. “This is the first time I have ever seen Lord Savien seek someone else out to discuss a topic…”

“Lord Savien is famously easy to talk to. The reason you have not seen him seek anyone out for a discussion is that you are too poor at this!” the wizard beside him could not help jeering.

Halfway through the jeer, though, he rather broke his own composure.

The wizard he had jeered at seemed unbothered. “Do you think that is the point of what I said? The point of what I said is… the two of them are discussing.”

Discussion implies both sides exchanging ideas as equals, and the overwhelming majority of wizards understood perfectly well what that meant.

A young wizard of Void Architecture Academy background could not help swallowing:

“I remember my Mentor telling me that back then, to consult Wizard Savien on one spatial node model, he waited a good several years. And when my Mentor finally saw Wizard Savien, the man just glanced at it, told him where the formula was wrong, and left. Start to finish, less than a second.”

As he spoke he looked toward Jie Ming holding forth in the corner, envy very nearly spilling out of his eyes:

“To be able to discuss with Wizard Savien this long… the gulf between one person and another really is…”

At that, everyone’s expression turned more complicated still.

After all, the scene before them was certainly not a teacher instructing a student. It was much more like two researchers standing at the same height jointly working through a hard problem.

Someone sighed under his breath. “No wonder the Self-Stabilizing Field Regulation Protocol caused such a stir. A good many people had thought it was only a flash of inspiration. Looking at this now… I am afraid we were the narrow-minded ones.”