377 The Blot Thickens
The materials available to them included a stand, a set of copper and zinc plates, some fibrous disk cutouts about the same size as the plates, and a bottle filled with sulphuric acid.
"This seems easier than the experiment!" Yohn exclaimed.
"It may be simplified for our benefit," Markus reasoned. "Or maybe the experiment is more explicit to make us understand the wider context?"
"Regardless, would this work?" Yohn voiced his anxiousness.
"Let's not cast doubt before even trying it out," Markus warned. "Why don't we begin?"
The instructions were clear and surprisingly simple. All they had to do was to stack the zinc and copper plates alternatively, with the fibrous disk cutouts soaked in sulphuric acid separating the plates - kind of like a multilayered sandwich. The instructions stated that the more stacks you place, the higher the output voltage. And since each copper-zinc pair generates roughly 0.7 to 1.1 volts, they would need to stack around 9 pairs give or take. The duo finished the task within minutes, and the result was a tower of zinc and copper, with a wire coming out the bottom and another from the top of the stack.
"So this SHOULD generate electricity," Yohn said while gazing at the creation.
"Technically," Markus affirmed doubtfully. At that instant, something triggered in his mind. Every once in a while, people have intrusive thoughts. Nine out of ten times, people don't act on it because the consequence of doing so tends to be more trouble than it is worth. There was an intrusive thought currently occupying real estate in Markus' mind. And unfortunately, this also happened to be the dreaded one out of ten.
Markus held each of the cables from the cell's terminal in one hand and brought it up to his extended tongue.
"W-What are you doing?" Yohn exclaimed as his mana senses caught the movement.
"Ow!" Markus yelped. "That was stronger than I anticipated," he commented while rubbing his tongue against his lips.
"What are you doing?" A confused voice asked from behind them, causing the duo to jolt and turn around together.
"I leave you kids alone for a few minutes, and this is what I return to?" The Sect Leader said with a disappointed sigh.
"M-Master! I was just checking to see if it was working-"
"There are many safer ways to do that," the Sect Leader responded while tilting his head back in defeat.
There was silence as the Sect Leader let out a long, defeated breath. "Whatever, it's not like that the cell is going to cause great damage to a Foundation Establishment realm mage. But I can't believe I have to say this: please don't shove live wires into your mouths. It isn't just a matter of safety."
"Y-Yes, Master!"
"Yes, Sect Leader!"
"Anyways, there's no need to test it any further. It will work," Sect Leader Larks declared. "I've brought the equipment for the radio wave generation experiment as well," he said while gesturing at the wheelbarrow behind him with the aforementioned materials.
"We have enough time to finish things up today itself," the Sect Leader surmised. "Let's go!"
Markus quickly moved towards the wheelbarrow and carried the items back to the table. Yohn picked up the thin copper wire spool and started to wrap it around the iron rod to form the electromagnet while Markus connected the other components of the circuit. Once the unit came together, the group took a few steps back to behold the device (except for Yohn since he could not see beyond a certain limit).
"What are we waiting for?" The Sect Leader asked. "Press the button!"
Markus nodded and moved to activate the device by pressing down the push button. As he did so, the moving iron plate connected to the spring started to move up to and then away from the electromagnet continuously, causing a muffled ringing sound to resonate from the device.
"So a radio wave should be emitted from the coil, right?" Markus said loudly, over the ringing bell.
"It should," Sect Leader Larks responded. He then turned towards Yohn and encouraged with a gentle nudge, "Go ahead, do your thing!"
Yohn affirmed with a light nod and focused his mana senses on the ringing device. But just as his mana senses enveloped the device, his mind experienced a painful explosion that caused his head to ring with the intensity of a thousand bells.
"AAAAH!" He yelled as he curled his head into his hands.
"What's the matter?" The Sect Leader asked worriedly as Markus immediately turned off the device.
"Information overload..." Yohn mumbled while massaging his head. "It's okay, I'll work through it."
"Why would you do that? It's so unsafe!" The Sect Leader admonished.
"But, Senior Brother Markus did the same-"
"Ask him how I reacted when he told me what he did?" He interjected. Yohn sensed a wry and embarrassed smile affecting Markus' face, which sent the message loud and clear.
"But there's no other way," Yohn reasoned.
"Says who?" Sect Leader Larks said with a mysterious chuckle.
At that moment, Yohn suddenly started to feel his senses growing muffled. It was as though a heavy fog was descending, covering every possible sense of his. It was like going blind all over again. Just as panic bloomed on his face, a reassuring hand held his shoulder.
"Relax, it's me," the Sect Leader explained. "I know it's a jarring surprise. But bear with it for a second."
Yohn bit through for a second, as suddenly something weird began to happen in his head. He slowly started to forget what it was to see, hear, smell, taste or touch. He could hear, but not listen. He could breathe, but not smell. He could bite, chew and swallow, but not taste. He could feel, but not touch or determine the texture of what he was feeling. His mind just archived this knowledge.
"W-What's happening?" Yohn exclaimed.
"Do you remember what Kevan, Revian, Casey and Lacey did in order to thoroughly sense mana and quantify it?" The Sect Leader redirected. "You need to first get rid of all distractions and noise around you. And by that, I don't just mean the noise you hear, but the physical noise that overloads every sensor you have available to you. But humans can't just get rid of noise. Markus here had to magically truncate his senses to achieve what he did. It was crude, which is why his cultivation is still undergoing development. What I did, is make you completely forget how your senses work. It is a lie I've convinced your mind to believe to be the truth. It is only temporary so don't fret too much over it."
"It's extremely jarring," Yohn commented. "I just hear you in my head, I don't know where your voice is even coming from."
Yohn suddenly stumbled but was caught by Sect Leader Larks and placed on a chair. "Don't move. Your sense of balance will be out of whack while you're under the effect of my ability. In a moment, I will completely remove all of your senses, even the sense of hearing. When that happens, Markus will turn on the device. Focus your mana senses on the same frequency as when you detected visible light. However, try to focus on what is different between red and blue light. Once you can pinpoint that, try to modulate your sensing capacity using that variable as a reference, but go beyond red. Keep going until you can eventually sense radio waves."
"You want me to change the frequency of my sensing?" Yohn surmised.
"Or wavelength," Sect Leader Larks corrected. "We still don't know whether what you are sensing is frequency or wavelength. But that will come later."
Yohn hummed affirmatively, and at that moment, the Sect Leader nudged him and said, "Counting down from three, two, one-"
And then total silence. Every sense of his had just shut off. But surprisingly, he didn't feel suffocated or panicky, because Yohn also forgot what it was like to sense. When you don't know what it feels like to smell, you don't panic when your sense of smell gets removed.
Yohn followed the Sect Leader's instructions and started to tune into the newly developed sensing "frequency" in his mana senses.
He could suddenly grasp different blots in mana sense, it was the same back when he was observing the filtered light box. He then spent a few minutes understanding what the similarities and differences were between the blots he knew belonged to blue and the blots that belonged to red. After an unknown amount of time, he picked up that the two blots vibrated differently. The red had a much slower vibration compared to the blue.
It took another unknown period of time for Yohn to figure out how to filter this new sense by virtue of blot vibration. He could now remove bands of blots that were within a certain vibration frequency from his senses. With this ability locked in, Yohn started to filter his sense further to capture vibration frequencies even lower than red.
His senses started to open up to different types of blots, with different shapes. Another uncountable period of time later, Yohn's senses were suddenly swarmed with a massive blot hitting him from all sides. This had to be the radio waves!
Yohn quickly yelled for Markus to turn off the emitter, and the blot suddenly disappeared. He called for it to be turned on again, and the blot resumed.
"I think I got it!" Yohn declared. And just as he did that, he suddenly remembered how to use his natural senses.
"Congratulations on being able to detect radio waves," the Sect Leader said.
"Next comes the matter of analysis and understanding," he then added. "To see something and be able to understand what you are seeing are not the same. The eyes can see by default, but it is the optic nerves and the optical centres of the brain that turn what the eyes see into meaningful data. Once you bag that skill, we can properly celebrate your accomplishment."
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