The glorious sun shone on the Dawnbreak Island after the disaster. The crumbled, cracked city would probably take a long time to fix, and the giant engine that had been completely scrapped needed an even longer time to repair. The thrilling tumble from the previous night brought the island an unprecedented short night and a hasty dawn. All the institutions of the city were forced to operate at high power, treating the wounded ones and repairing key, damaged equipment. The only good news now was that the casualties were not as serious as they would have imagined. The areas where collapse and cracking occurred were mostly marginal or too old where resident numbers were limited. Also, the earthquake-resistant design of the city itself made it hold on for a long time at the beginning of the tremors. So, the citizens had ample opportunity to take refuge in the more stable central district of the floating isles.
Overlooking the place in the high altitude of the city, there were clouds of dust and smoke that had not dispersed. The dome had entered the state of traffic control, only the engineering airship or flying cars that performed the most urgent tasks were flying in the sky, while in the street below the citizens were well-ordered: they spontaneously rescued all those who needed help, and also spontaneously queued up for supplies that had just been salvaged from the collapsed warehouse. They also voluntarily declared whether they have been injured in the disaster, and how much this injury would affect their labor capacity. There was no confusion, no complaining, and not even little glimpse of the gloomy look on the face of the elves. They organized themselves in a surprising order. The disaster was sudden, but everyone in the city seemed to have rehearsed it many times.
Some big shadows were projected on the dome. Those were the large transport ships sent from other floating isles. These bulky ships were quickly completed at the time of the Dawnbreak Island explosion. Now the ships brought the elves valuable medicines and additional air filters, which were essential: the air in the dome relied on purifying equipment buried in the ground and around the hoop, but the explosion caused some damage to them. Now the smoke and smog in the city must be removed as soon as possible, which could only rely on external devices.
Hao Ren and Hilda were standing on an open balcony on top of the tower of the Royal district. Hilda was meditating while Hao Ren was viewing everything in the city using his eyesight beyond ordinary people. He expressed admiration for the elves' reaction to the disaster.
Vimm stood silently behind them.
"My people have gotten used to this kind of thing. 70 years ago, when the Isle of Serenity disintegrated, they saved the most important resource warehouse on the island with great calmness. About one-tenth of the city's citizens were survivors of that disaster," Hilda said softly, "and more and more floating isles are approaching the limits. The Assembly of Technology is trying to repair some of the dead floating isles that have been extinguished, but the progress has been modest.
Hilda looked exhausted. She had been under the greatest pressure in the last few hours. After a quick meeting with the Assembly of Elders, she began to command refuge and rescue, and when the floating isle tumbled and the city began to crack, it was her who allocated evacuation plans for each city and the asylum plan at the royal area. After the propulsion unit was completely destroyed, she also cooperated in directing the work of stabilizing floating: This queen was not just an authority to give orders. She was also an expert on all technical parameters of the floating isle. Now everything was settled, she did not listen to the bodyguard's advice to go back to rest, but brought Hao Ren to the open balcony on top of the tower overlooking the whole city.
"This is our current status."
Hao Ren was still looking for the best solution for the elves of Aerym. He already had a few ideas, but still needed to wait for the Data Terminal to confirm which one was most feasible. Before that, he asked Hilda a question carefully, "If I had the power to get you out of this mess, how much would you be willing to pay?"
Hilda turned her back to the edge of the balcony and spread her hands in despair, as if her whole body were to melt in the skylight under the dome and said, "You can see what we have left. You can take away anything you need. As long as you can let my people live a better life and have a real sky like other species, you can take away everything in you see here."
Hao Ren hurriedly explained, "Come on, don't think this way, it's easy to misunderstand—I'm not blackmailing you or anything, I'm trying to help you as a friend, but to be honest, I can't do it alone, and my ship is just five hundred or six hundred meters long--so I may need help, and those helpers are not free.
Hilda paused for a moment and said, "Still the same words, we have no other things, there were no resources in this place, what we have in our hands are just like stones in the eyes of high civilization. All we have left is our own labor, but it doesn't seem to be a valuable thing."
"Forget it. We don't talk about this first." Hao Ren was scratching his hair, feeling the problem more and more difficult, "or first…"
While he was talking, he saw an elf running out from the small door and knelt down in front of Hilda and said, "Her Majesty, the rough scanning results of The World of Prayers has come out, we can't find Sir Cardillon"
While speaking, the elf handed a rolled document to Hilda with both hands, Hilda took the document and quickly skimmed it, and then she frowned and said, "Somebody has hacked the main memory... They infiltrated so thoroughly. Notify Eccalom, temporarily closed the three auxiliary memory of The World of Prayers, at the same time strictly review every application for uploading... Temporarily banning the citizens of the Isle of Prismatic Lights from entering The World of Prayers, the extra rations they consume will be covered by the royal repository."
After the elf herald had left, Hao Ren asked curiously, "What actually is The World of Prayers?"
Hilda sighed and explained, "Actually this is our own trouble... But I can let you know. The World of Prayers is a virtual world, established by my predecessor, has been running for more than 2000 years, and now is where we place the souls. It is also a special testing ground."
Hao Ren immediately thought of a lot of things, and he knew his guess was pretty close.
"At the beginning, it was built for scientific research," Hilda slowly explaining, "You know, our supplies are very limited, we can't afford to waste it. Every time the failure of certain big trials meant a cold winter for the whole of Aerym society. So another queen, more than 2000 years ago, supported by the Assembly of Technology, created a virtual environment called The World of Prayers. It runs on a giant server and is designed by the most excellent magic scholar and astrologer, and is our last big technological achievement. The World of Prayers simulates the stellar system of Aerym: a Sun, a planet, which totally simulates the homeland we live in, and entered every rule of the world we know. It's extremely accurate, including every grain of sand, and a lot of restrictions of the microcosm were added in the later stage. The world, as far as possible, imitates the reality in order to carry out all kinds of large-scale experiments without the use of material resources. The Assembly of Technology was hoping to find a viable way to travel to other stellar systems under the resource constraints of the stellar system of Aerym in The World of Prayers. And they did get some positive results at the beginning: some of the ships we're using now are simulated, tested and verified in this way."
"But it's certainly not so smoothly in the later stage." Hao Ren was able to guess that there must be a plot twist in the latter part of the story.
Hilda nodded. "That's right. The World of Prayers has imagined everything too perfect, but the technology needed to travel tens of millions of light-years away to other stars is more rigorous than we thought. We must fully master the truth in order to create a virtual world that is exactly the same as reality, or else, it's just an imitation no matter how close it is. There are many unknown mysteries in this universe, and it is impossible for us to speculate in this little cradle. Even some scholars speculate that the mathematical structure of the universe is not necessarily contiguous and that the law of the stellar system of Aerym is not necessarily applicable elsewhere, or at least a deviation of several decimal points. Also, many other technologies will be affected by the microcosm when they develop to a certain extent. No matter how precise the World of Prayers is made, it is impossible to depict its microscopic parts, we can only keep adding patches, and this is not enough. Anyway, after hundreds of years of hard work, the FTL engine made in The World of Prayers created a huge explosion in reality, causing two floating isles vanished in the explosion, and then the enthusiasm of The World of Prayers project faded. The bold and talented queen was depressed and eventually died."
Hao Ren knew that the story was not over yet.