Chapter 1502: Chapter 1500: Bright Castle
Outside Atlantis, at the horizon, stands a mountain.
From a distance, the mountain isn’t very tall, short and stout, resembling a tree stump that has been chopped off.
On the relatively flat mountaintop, there’s a large area of buildings, all made of special materials, entirely silver-white, where the Bright Castle is located.
At this moment, there is some unusual chaos inside Bright Castle.
Bright Castle Main Building No.1, underground level thirteen, control room.
The massive room keeps shaking, several elderly stewards shout loudly.
"Emergency, emergency!"
"Disconnect Energy Line No.1 immediately..."
"Disconnect Energy Line No.2 as well..."
"Activate the cooling system at full power..."
"Activate the backup cooling system too..."
"Print all the accident information we’ve collected just now..."
"Don’t just stand there, rearrange the pre-experiment data..."
As the steward spoke, many young assistants in the room became busy, treading the shaking ground, trying hard to maintain balance while running around.
Among them, two assistants were clearly a little panicked, each holding a pile of documents, not looking ahead, "bang," they collided hard.
"Crash!"
The documents instantly flew into the air, then fell down, scattering around.
A gray-haired steward nearby looked over, his expression somewhat angry, but it was not suitable to reprimand at this special moment, he took a deep breath and approached, ready to help the two assistants clean up the mess.
Before he could lift his foot, the air in front of him twisted for a moment, followed by Richard stepping out.
After stepping out, Richard first glanced at the assistants struggling on the ground to pick up the documents, waved his hand lightly, the documents on the ground quickly flew up, divided into two piles by different cover colors.
After finishing this, Richard looked at the gray-haired steward.
The gray-haired steward visibly breathed a little easier, said: "Lord Richard, you’re here."
"Yes." Richard nodded, gave a simple greeting to the gray-haired steward without fussing and quickly asked, "Mr. Lorentz, what exactly happened here?"
"It’s like this, Lord Richard." The gray-haired steward named Lorentz explained, "We were following the original plan, conducting the ’Bottled Sun’ test experiment for Energy Level 300-400. Initially, the experiment was normal, but halfway through, for some unknown reason, both the Alpha Energy Indicator and Beta Energy Indicator exhibited rather large fluctuations, entering an unstable state, with some energy even overflowing to the outside. If you were near Atlantis just now, you should have felt it."
Richard nodded lightly.
"To prevent danger, we urgently halted the experiment," Lorentz continued, "We contacted you, and tried to gradually cool down the entire set of ’Bottled Sun’ equipment to prevent a larger accident. Currently, although there are still some minor issues, the major aspects are mostly dealt with, we can semi-shutdown within twenty-four hours, and fully shutdown within seventy-two hours, by then an initial investigation can be conducted."
After listening, Richard thought and asked, "Have you contacted Black Sun Castle, and what did they say?"
"We have contacted them," Lorentz said, "Actually, during the experiment, we didn’t cut the connection with them, after all, Lord Richard, you’ve said before, our Bright Castle and Black Sun Castle are almost two sides of the same coin, many technologies are interconnected. Just... for this unexpected accident, most people in Black Sun Castle couldn’t say what caused it, just suggested we safely shutdown as soon as possible and follow the process for investigation."
"Wait a minute, don’t rush to shutdown yet." Richard raised his hand to stop them.
For Bright Castle, shutdown is no small matter, even if the process goes smoothly, it takes two days and nights. Restarting after shutdown requires double or even triple the time. Any accidents during this time can indefinitely extend the process. Therefore, without extremely special circumstances, the equipment of the ’Bottled Sun’ project in Bright Castle continues to run, even during maintenance, it remains in a temporary dormant state rather than completely shutting down.
Grasping Richard’s words, Lorentz showed a bit of hesitation, said: "Lord Richard, if we don’t shutdown, how do we investigate the cause?"
"Don’t rush, let me first see the data on the Alpha Energy Indicator and Beta Energy Indicator from the accident just now." Richard thought and said, "Shutting down causes too many chain reactions, if possible, it’s better to repeat the experiment just now, to determine if the issue is within the instrument itself, then decide afterwards — after all, the instrument’s safety can sustain at least three ’medium’ accidents."
"Well... you should look at the data first." Lorentz exhaled and said, waving to an assistant not far away, calling them over, instructing them to quickly get the data Richard needed.
The assistant ran off, returning shortly with a paper roll over half a meter long, spreading it out on a table nearby.
Richard looked over and saw a coordinate system on it, with one red and one green curve, each starting from the positive and negative halves of the y-axis, moving along the positive x-axis to the left.
During the movement, they fluctuated continuously but maintained relative stability overall, until not long after, the lower green segment showed a noticeable upward trend, while the upper red curve showed a noticeable downward trend.
"Alpha Energy Indicator dropped 20% in one unit time, Beta Energy Indicator increased by 30% in one unit time... this..." Richard squinted slightly after looking, muttering in mild confusion.
Lorentz was clearly equally puzzled, whispering beside him: "Lord Richard, you see the data is really strange. You know, we are proceeding with the plan according to the third scenario, the progress is nearly reaching 90%.
And this data completely doesn’t align with the core formula in the third scenario, we must find out what is causing this. Otherwise, the entire third scenario will face immense challenges, forcibly continuing may result in blowing the whole Bright Castle to the sky."
Richard remained silent.
Lorentz continued to persuade, whispering: "Lord Richard, although the shutdown inspection does bring losses and significantly delays the success of the plan, for safety, we should shutdown. I, Delage, Blak, Xue Dinglei, all share this thought."
Richard listened and glanced beside him, and indeed, the other stewards of Bright Castle nodded in agreement with Lorentz’s opinion.
