Chapter 936 - 935: The Clue Discovered by Beltira

The Sorin Main Hub was probably the most unusual of all the Magic Web main hubs in the Empire—not only because its Crystal Array was built atop a tree, but more importantly because Beltira, this "living hub carrier," had boldly refitted the entire hub by exploiting the unique biological traits of the Sorin Giant Tree. She had ingeniously fused originally cold steel and crystals into the structure of the giant tree, and all across the crown of this tree, one could see traces of her "design."

Guided by Beltira, Margarita arrived at the area where the Crystal Array was located. The metal devices supporting the Crystal Array were deeply implanted into the giant tree, and a large number of wooden structures and "pipes" like vines extended out from the overlapping branches, merging with the base of the Crystal Array. Accompanied by a rattling sound, Margarita saw a section of "ground" near the base open up. The leaves that had originally looked neat and densely packed trembled and parted to both sides, revealing a staircase slanting downward, seemingly leading to some deep place.

Though wrapped layer upon layer in leaves and branches, the passage itself was not dim. Numerous luminous flowers, leaves, and thin vines hung down from the "walls" on either side of the passage, lighting up this "little world" inside the tree crown like rows of lamps.

"This is my ’laboratory.’ I built it within my own body, which makes it a bit more convenient to use," Beltira said to Margarita as she took the lead, striding forward. "Please follow me—and watch your step, this stairway is a bit steep. I’ve been pondering lately how I should make this part grow anew."

"This is... ingenious," Margarita followed the other’s "steps," entering this space belonging solely to Beltira along with several technical personnel and the accompanying Soldiers. She gazed in amazement at the luminous plants on the leafy walls to either side, and at the stairways and corridors formed through clever growth, and could not help sighing. "I didn’t expect you to have this kind of creativity, Madam Beltira."

"...In fact, I almost forgot I still had this kind of creativity," Beltira’s steps seemed to pause faintly for a moment, then she continued forward. "Curiosity, creativity, learning new things, observing this world... I once cast away many things, but lately I’ve been trying to find them back."

As they spoke, they had already descended the somewhat steep stairway and entered a fairly spacious chamber.

It was an approximately ellipsoidal "world within the tree," and Margarita swore that even in her most imaginative dreams, she had never seen such a bizarre yet marvelous sight—

Sturdy wooden shells and support pillars held this place up. Countless green leaves and vine-walls formed the walls, floor, and roof of the ellipsoidal space, while innumerable luminous plants—flowers as well as hanging mycelial filaments—provided illumination, making it seem like a brightly lit cavern of plants. And within this "cavern," Margarita saw many things that were difficult for a human being to comprehend: there were glowing vines distributed along the floor that brightened and dimmed irregularly; there were pouch-like objects hanging on the nearby leaf-walls, resembling some sort of cultivation sacs; there were layered stacks of wooden platforms. Yet the most eye-catching of all was the structure at the very center of the space... some kind of construct.

It was a massive sac-like body hanging down from the ceiling. Roughly dozens of vines and tubular tissues of varying thickness extended from the top of the sac. The entire sac was like a brownish-red pouch, apparently filled with some faintly glowing liquid. As time passed, some of the thinner "membranes" on the sac faintly pulsed, with vein-like things within waxing and waning in brightness.

It was somewhat unsettling, yet carried a certain mysterious allure. Its overall style clearly shared some connection with the biotechnology of the Oblivion Association, but without that blood-soaked madness.

"I haven’t brought anyone else here," Beltira said to Margarita. "As you can see, this place is built according to my own ’mode of existence,’ and the things here can only be used by me. Oh, right—this doesn’t count as ’violating regulations,’ does it? I haven’t taken up any public resources; I’m just doing some research work here—after all, I am still a Druid."

"Uh... I don’t think it counts as violating regulations," Margarita thought carefully for quite a while before finding the right words. "Strictly speaking... this falls under your own ’physiological structural adjustment.’ I don’t think the Empire’s laws can stipulate how you are supposed to grow..."

As she spoke, this female general of the Empire seemed to feel that the topic had become a bit too brain-twisting, so before it could grow any more bizarre she hastily waved her hand. "Let’s not discuss that—Madam Beltira, you mentioned earlier that you’d extracted clues from the signal. Does that have something to do with this ’secret base’?"

"Oh, of course, because the clues are what I developed through my research here." Beltira nodded, leading everyone to a bud-like structure at one side of the ellipsoidal chamber. As Margarita and the others drew near, the flower bud, as tall as a person, suddenly opened on its own. The green leaves that had been curled up unfurled, revealing a pure white inner surface.

"What is this?" Margarita frowned slightly and asked in curiosity.

"Just a little trick that can be used to present images—for me, directly manipulating plants is a bit more convenient than manipulating Magic Web crystals," Beltira said casually. "It’s just an unimportant detail. What I really want to show you is... this."

As she spoke, she began interfacing with the plant structure in front of her. Margarita watched in curiosity, then in amazement saw dark green traces suddenly emerge on the pure white inner surface of the leaves.

"Ever since we last received that strange signal, I’ve been pondering what meaning those signals might hold. The scholars have tried many ways to decipher them, including ciphers, secret codes, converting them into sound, converting them into an ’alphabet’... I tried many approaches as well, and all of them failed. There seems to be no logic in those short tremors. They don’t correspond to any codebook, have no numerical regularity, and once converted to sound they’re nothing but noise... So in the end, a thought suddenly occurred to me: what if these tremors are not about ciphers at all? What if they are... something much simpler?"

As Beltira recounted the various attempts she had made, she simultaneously adjusted the lines appearing on the leaf surface, sketching more details before Margarita’s eyes.

"...I used a very simple method that no one had tried before: directly drawing the tremors. Look here—when a strong tremor appears, I mark a dot, like a tiny ink spot, very, very small. Then, for the subsequent weaker tremors or stretches of blank noise, I leave blank spaces. If we treat the duration of a single tremor as one ’cell,’ then however long a weak tremor or white noise lasts, we leave that many ’cells’ of blank space...

"Then we come to this part, which is very important. It took me a long time to figure out how to handle the changes here—in the signals we received, after every certain interval there appears a very short, very sharp waveform. At first I thought it represented some kind of ’stroke,’ but in the end I realized that what it meant was... line break.

"Similarly, we received a few other types of very short, sharp waveforms, each with its own meaning, used to anchor the subsequent ’dots’ to particular relative positions in the previous segment of content..."

On the leaf surface, marks imprinted by Magic Power grew denser and denser. Following the line of thought Beltira described, the mysterious signal "monitored" by the Sorin Hub was rapidly transforming into a pattern composed of dots and blanks—and by now Margarita was almost certain: Beltira’s approach was correct!

Because the dots were not scattered at random; their distribution was taking on neat and regular shapes!

"What is this?" Finally, one of the technical personnel standing behind Margarita couldn’t help speaking up. The middle‑aged man in a Mage Technician’s short robe stared wide‑eyed at the "dot matrix" displayed on the leaf and cried out in shock, "This is..."

"A square. A very... regular square formed when the dots connect into lines. The number of dots on each side is exactly the same." Beltira said, and as she spoke, the dark‑green pattern branded onto the leaf was still extending.

The conspicuous dots had already connected into the shape of a square, but it was obviously not the whole of it—new dots were still emerging in the blank area beside the square, and they were very clearly lining up into strokes, combining into a pattern!

Margarita and several of her entourage all stared wide‑eyed at this, trying to guess what it would look like in the end, yet a few seconds later, everything suddenly stopped.

Those subsequent dots only formed a short line segment before coming to an abrupt halt.

"And after that?" Margarita couldn’t help but look up and ask, "Why did it stop?"

"The signal was cut off after that," Beltira spread her hands, "this is all I managed to record. You have to understand, using these vibrations to record a graphic is a very, very inefficient method. We might need to continuously record a very long, uninterrupted signal to fully trace this thing—but the signal I received only lasted for a bit over ten minutes.

"...Damn..." Margarita couldn’t help muttering something not very ladylike, then she showed a pensive expression. "So the essence of these signals is..."

"It should be an image. What we’re seeing now is probably only a part of it—how large it actually is, we have no way of knowing, and its meaning or who sent it is also a complete mystery." Beltira made a very humanlike gesture of spreading her hands and shook her head. "I even suspect it’s some kind of blueprint, though that’s just a guess—after all, we can see far too little of it."

"In any case, we can basically be sure by now that this thing cannot possibly be some sort of ’natural phenomenon,’" Margarita took a deep breath, "whoever is doing this, there is some existence that has been continuously sending us an image—or perhaps it’s not specifically meant for us, but a kind of indiscriminate broadcast that just happened to be captured by our Crystal Array. One way or another, this matter must be reported to the imperial capital at once."

"Of course," Beltira nodded. "This matter is very unusual, and thinking of that network howling incident not long ago... unsettling things in this world are getting more and more numerous."

"Mm... that reminds me, when did you discover this pattern?" Margarita suddenly glanced at Beltira, curiosity appearing on her face.

"Only a few hours ago," Beltira tugged at the corner of her mouth, seemingly revealing a faint smile. "Luck did most of the work—I didn’t follow any code‑breaking rules that would be considered normal. You could say I just happened to stumble on it by sheer luck."

"Even so, it’s still a remarkable achievement," Margarita offered sincere praise, then couldn’t help turning her head, her gaze falling on the sac‑like object in the center of this ellipsoidal space. "Actually, I’ve been wanting to ask since just now—what exactly is that thing... for?"

This ellipsoidal space contained many strange‑looking objects, but most of them at least more or less fit the characteristics of common things like vines, flowers, and leaves. Only that sac hanging in the middle of the space was so bizarre and mysterious that it was impossible to ignore. From the moment Margarita entered, her attention had been drawn to it, but constrained by her official duties she hadn’t felt it appropriate to ask. Now that the serious business was done, she finally couldn’t hold back.

This former Archdruid of Oblivion standing before her... just what is she studying in her "private laboratory"?

Hearing Margarita’s question, there was no obvious change in Beltira’s expression (mainly because it was really difficult for a plant‑like face to show much expression), but a hint of pride did slip into her tone: "That’s an optimization and supplement I made for myself. I was only able to successfully crack the clues in the signal this time thanks to its assistance. If you want to see it, I can open the outer sac, but what’s inside might be a bit of a visual shock for ordinary people... you’ll need to be mentally prepared."

Margarita immediately smiled and said with considerable confidence, "Of course—we’ve all received specialized training. Whatever we encounter, we won’t be thrown into a panic. You can open it; satisfy our curiosity."

Beltira nodded slightly and gave a light wave of her hand. The sac in the center of the "room" suddenly began to squirm with a rustling sound. Immediately afterward, many neatly arranged fissures appeared on the surface of the reddish‑brown sac membrane, and the entire enveloping structure unfolded like petals spreading outward, revealing the transparent, egg‑shaped inner shell, the semi‑transparent nutrient solution within, and the vast and astonishing biological tissue soaking in that solution.

It was actually a brain! A "Synthetic Brain" nearly as tall as a person, soaking in nutrient fluid!

Margarita, an Empire officer who had undergone specialized training, stared wide‑eyed the instant she saw that thing, and then felt the fine hairs on her body stand slightly on end. "This... what is this?!"

"I made myself a brain—manufactured to mimic a human being’s brain as much as possible. Of course there’s a bit of an issue with the size... I didn’t intend for it to be this big when I started." Beltira said, her expression completely unchanged, as if this was a trivial matter.

Margarita felt her train of thought could no longer keep up with this plant‑person in front of her. When she managed to ask another question, her head was already swimming: "How did you even come up with the idea of making yourself a brain?"

This time, Beltira actually thought about it seriously and began to patiently explain: "After becoming a plant, I found my way of thinking was shifting, day by day, toward that of a plant. Recently I even stood here like a real tree, and in my consciousness I didn’t want to do anything except bask in the sun, bear fruit, and shake my leaves in the wind... I was worried about this state, so I made myself a brain to help stabilize my own cognition as a ’person.’ As for the enhancement in logical reasoning and associative thinking that this brain brings... that was actually an unexpected bonus."

Margarita’s wide eyes finally slowly returned to normal. She cast a strange look at the former Archbishop of Oblivion before her and suddenly felt that talking to a plant really was exhausting...