Seeing this, Dr. Xu still wanted to urge something.
"Dr. Xu, I know what you're worried about. But I know the Owl Dragon Empire's situation now better still. We have no choice." Zhao Chen looked at Dr. Xu gravely.
Dr. Xu sighed, and in the end withdrew silently to one side.
He had told His Majesty the Emperor of the danger of this thing; what happened next was not his to decide.
Zhao Chen looked at Dr. Camille. "Carry on with Machine No. 2's experiment."
"Yes. Machine No. 2 experiment, begin." Dr. Camille at once announced the start of this second experiment.
First came charging the machine.
Because of this plan's secrecy, Zhao Chen had given it no name from first to last.
It was simply called the Machine No. 1 experiment and the Machine No. 2 experiment.
Starting this device took an enormous amount of energy, more even than the energy reserves a T6-grade warship needed.
Very soon the energy start-up was complete.
"Machine No. 2 fully charged, follow-on energy ready. Beginning formal start-up. Countdown ten seconds. Ten, nine, eight, seven……"
With Dr. Camille's countdown,
Machine No. 2, much like Machine No. 1 in shape but a size larger, showed paths of light one after another along the patterns of its casing.
As all these paths of light lit up,
this Machine No. 2 could be said to have formally started.
This time it was wholly unlike the sound of the water drop before:
it was an ethereal sound.
Zhao Chen frowned slightly.
For he felt this sound seemed not to come from the image-recording equipment, but to pass straight into his own soul,
as though the sound were inside his own heart.
But no one else seemed to notice anything different about it; everyone was still watching Machine No. 2's running closely.
"Machine No. 2 formally started. Running time, one second, two seconds, three seconds……" The researcher charged with monitoring beside them kept recording, muttering the time aloud as well.
Machine No. 1 before had run only ten seconds and got a result very important to them.
Now, with this Machine No. 2, they naturally needed it to run longer.
The ten seconds passed quickly.
As last time, a 3D virtual star chart appeared before everyone's eyes.
On it, exactly as last time, the positions of every star, black hole and certain high-energy stellar matter were marked,
and in more detail!
And by this time the range of the scanning search had reached the border region of the Owl Dragon Empire's universe.
After it came a stretch of pitch-black.
In the speed of its scanning search it fell short of Machine No. 1 before,
slower by about two or three seconds.
But everyone was now waiting quietly for the final result.
The researcher charged with monitoring was still calling out the time without pause. "Thirteen seconds… fourteen seconds… fifteen seconds……"
Another researcher beside them, monitoring every instrument's data, kept scanning every data panel.
Suddenly she gave a cry. "The temperature of some of Machine No. 2's modules is starting to rise! 5% of the energy transmission channels are going unstable."
Dr. Camille pressed her palms together before her mouth, as though praying silently for something.
From the moment it started, this Machine No. 2 was doing its first and last work.
So even if it exploded afterward, this experiment would not be stopped halfway.
And at this moment everyone was staring at one position,
for that was the direction in which the signal of the suspected other universe had appeared before.
At last!
A point of light surfaced.
"Same as before! It's this very position!" Dr. Camille looked at Zhao Chen in excitement.
But she found there was no great joy on His Majesty the Emperor's face.
It made Dr. Camille rein in her feelings.
Yes: this was only the second experiment, and it had only found this universe's existence; there was still a very long way and a very long time to go before exploring it.
In truth Zhao Chen was not unexcited; it was that he first had to make sure this was the universe he was looking for.
He knew there were certainly other universes around; that was a fact that needed no thought.
But the question was that what Zhao Chen was looking for now was a small universe just conceived and born; only in a universe like that was there the new resource material Zhao Chen sought!
"Twenty seconds!" the researcher monitoring the time shouted in excitement.
Twice the time of before: it already showed how much more perfect this time's improvement was.
"Temperature still overloading. Several circuits running over load. Energy system fluctuation over 30. The overall situation has reached the yellow alert zone!" Another researcher was very tense, her forehead all beads of sweat.
But at this moment everyone's attention was on that universe being scanned out,
as though they had found a new continent.
That universe's outline began to appear bit by bit before their eyes.
After the first energy point scanned, more energy points appeared behind it.
That showed it was a universe!
These energy points were the high-energy stellar bodies within this universe, most of them stars!
"I never thought I… I would truly find the existence of another universe in my lifetime." An old scholar was already in tears.
Dr. Xu, beside them, watched the scene with complicated feelings.
He too researched this field; he too wanted to find new universes and verify some scientific ideas of his own.
But he was afraid too; he feared the dark forest law was real.
So his feelings now were truly very complicated.
"Thirty seconds! Over thirty seconds!" The researcher was so excited she stood up.
"Every module of Machine No. 2 is on overheat alarm, and several modules have begun overloading and melting! The energy system supply has gone extremely unstable. The whole of Machine No. 2 now could do anything at any moment!" The other researcher was truly in quite another frame of mind.
"Report: a second area suspected of being a universe has been found!"
At this point another observer cried out.
Because everyone had been watching the first universe area found, no one had paid attention to other areas at all.
Only at this observer's cry did they turn their eyes to it.
And this newly found universe Zhao Chen had in truth seen long since.
This universe lay beyond the border of the Demon Race; set against the first universe found, the two made a triangle with theirs.
Only this second universe found was somewhat farther away.
"Boom!"
Suddenly there was a huge roar.
Everyone felt the tremor underfoot.
Every video window closed, leaving only black.
The roar stopped short as well.
"Machine No. 2 has exploded; the experiment is ended." Dr. Camille at once checked how things stood, and reported to Zhao Chen.
Zhao Chen nodded. "Clean up the laboratory; I want to see inside in the shortest time."
"Yes." Dr. Camille went at once to see to it!
On Zhao Chen's side, he had already begun looking over the data just recorded.
In the second experiment, the range the instrument scanned had grown outright to nearly three times what it was before!
But even so, it had found only two universe areas.
One could imagine how enormous the space between one universe and another must be.
Zhao Chen looked first at the universe found first.
He opened the editor and typed a string on it:
'Code name: Universe No. 1'
The one found after was naturally named 'Code name: Universe No. 2.'
And 'Universe No. 1,' even with this scan and probe by Machine No. 2, had still not been scanned in its entirety.
And the size of the universe area scanned so far was already about two-thirds of the Owl Dragon Empire's universe.
The other, Universe No. 2, was smaller still; to probe it clearly would likely need more advanced instruments to be developed.
And these two universes, in all likelihood, were neither of them the target Zhao Chen was looking for.
For by theoretical inference, those newly born small universes were commonly extremely small in extent,
likely only a tenth the extent of the Owl Dragon Empire's universe.
And the larger a universe, the older it was, and so naturally not a newborn universe.
So this second experiment in truth had not given Zhao Chen the result he wanted either.
He needed to probe farther still.
"Your Majesty, we… we really haven't done wrong?" Dr. Xu, beside him, looked at Zhao Chen with a complicated expression.
Zhao Chen looked at the old doctor, and said quietly, "Dr. Xu. I know what you're thinking. If our universe were a safe and peaceful place, with no danger in it at all, then naturally I wouldn't risk doing this. I have no great ambition, and no wish to invade anyone else's universe. But now someone covets our universe. They've invaded our universe again and again. If we keep shutting ourselves in, sooner or later our universe will fall to the enemy. Our situation now is a boat rowing upstream: not to advance is to fall back. So even with the risk, I will do this. I would rather my Owl Dragon Empire… I would rather die with a long blade in my hand in a stormy night far away than stand by and watch the flood destroy my home!"
"You… you mean those Pitch-Black Legions……" Dr. Xu thought of something; though he gave himself wholly to research and took little interest in other things,
he still knew something of the Pitch-Black Legion fleets from the last campaign.
For those ink blots happened to overlap somewhat with his research.
He had even gone to investigate and study them on the spot, only there had never been any result.
Zhao Chen said no more on the matter, but only went to Dr. Xu's side and clapped him on the shoulder.
"The storm is coming. Do not go gentle into that rainy night."
With that, Zhao Chen turned and left the room.
Before long
Zhao Chen had come to the outside of Machine No. 2's laboratory.
Zhao Chen looked at the hatch before him, bulging slightly outward.
"It looks like the blast was no small one this time," Zhao Chen said teasingly.
Dr. Camille, beside him, nodded and said, "No small one indeed. It did a little damage to our Hatch No. 1. Hatch No. 1's energy defense barrier was torn to pieces. But around this laboratory there are three hatches in all, and three energy defense barriers. They make sure outside is safe."
Zhao Chen nodded.
An instrument he had built himself he naturally understood.
It was no super-bomb; the blast it made was at most the release of that enormous energy, nothing more.
"Report: no toxic substances or gases have been found in the laboratory, and it's harmless to skin contact. Only the smoke is rather thick, and there's some pungent smell, and the temperature is rather high. I suggest waiting a while." A researcher in an isolation suit came out and reported how things stood inside.
"Just give us a mask," Zhao Chen said coolly; then he thought of Camille beside him. "And get an isolation suit ready for Dr. Camille."
"No need; I have this." Camille pressed something on her wrist.
A film of light covered Camille.
Zhao Chen glanced at it.
He knew at once it was a 'star-shield protective suit' around the body, developed from the star-shield system,
able not only to fend off outside attack but to shut out some extreme conditions as well.
Very soon Zhao Chen, wearing a mask, went in.
The moment he entered the room, Zhao Chen could feel a blast of heat,
above seventy degrees or so.
"Your Majesty, do you really not need a protective suit?" Dr. Camille beside him asked worriedly.
"Don't need one; it's a waste of time." Zhao Chen walked on ahead.
The nearer to the center of the blast, the higher this temperature.
When Zhao Chen stopped before a blackened pit, the heat here was already over a hundred degrees, likely about a hundred and fifty.
Even with a super soldier's constitution like Zhao Chen's, he could feel some discomfort from the scorching heat.
An ordinary person here could not have lasted more than a few seconds before losing his life.
Zhao Chen stared at that pit.
The former Machine No. 2 was already past recognizing.
And the pit was in truth the energy supply channel.
The energy Machine No. 2 needed once started was enormous, enough even to supply the needs of a T6 warship.
One could imagine how great an amount that was.
And such enormous energy could naturally not all be held within Machine No. 2; outside it was a huge 'battery,' the energy supply system, which fed energy to Machine No. 2 without pause in the course of the experiment.
And this blast had likely come from a problem in the energy transmission.
Zhao Chen looked around; the walls were in the main scorched black, some even melted to a paste.
And of Machine No. 2 there was in the main not much wreckage left.
That did add no little trouble to the work to follow.
"Let's begin our work," Zhao Chen said with a shrug.
……
But this Machine No. 2 experiment
was far from being as simple as it looked on the surface.
Universe No. 2
"Master, just now several of our T6-grade observation points have all found a high-intensity energy signal. It comes from another universe!"
In the darkness, eight pairs of crimson eyes opened.
"Another universe? It seems we have some more hunting grounds. I hope they won't be too dull!"