Hogwarts: From Selling White Peppers to Becoming a God

Chapter 411 Explosion

Central Siberian Plateau, uninhabited area.

In a blizzard with temperatures below -20 degrees Celsius, a convoy of giant tracked vehicles moved slowly forward like a long snake in the darkness.

Soon after, they joined transport vehicles that had come from other places, lined up in two rows, and arrived at the foot of a mountain.

The massive steel gate, four or five meters thick, opened automatically, and two convoys of transport vehicles drove into the mountainside.

There were no lights inside the mountain, but in the distance a huge blast furnace was continuously pouring molten iron downwards.

In the scorching, radiant light, one could see a huge space inside the mountain, filled with all sorts of machinery, all operating non-stop.

This place looks like a factory.

However, unlike ordinary factories, this factory inside the mountain is completely devoid of any human presence. In fact, all the machinery operates automatically, leaving no space or buttons for human operation.

On the east side of this massive, unmanned factory in the mountains, in an area designated as a raw material warehouse, the transport vehicles finally arrived at their destination.

They all stopped at fixed positions, and then several robotic arms extended from the walls on both sides, skillfully removing the modular container compartments from the transport vehicle, and then refueling and repairing them.

At the same time, two heavy robotic arms extend from above, lift the container, and place it on a super-large track that is more than 20 meters wide. The container is immediately disassembled by the robotic arms around the track, and then the various processed ore ingots are sorted and sent to different processing workshops.

Such tracked transport facilities are scattered throughout the factory. Raw materials pass through them into various standard parts workshops, where they are transformed into various parts. Then, in the assembly workshop, they are assembled into complete units by robotic arms.

At the end of the tracks is a gigantic automated warehouse, where countless traceless stretching spells have been released. Inside, there are rows of endless supports, piled high with all kinds of drones, mechanical dogs, small tracked vehicles, and even various types of heavy artillery and missiles.

The dark, heavy steel stands silently in the Siberian cold wind, and apart from Murphy, no one in the world knows of its existence.

……

In the ultra-clean underground space beneath the mountain, an experiment on a magical material is underway.

This floor is divided into three hundred cleanroom laboratories. Each laboratory has ten rows of test benches, with ten test benches per row. Each test bench has dozens of robotic arms that are taking turns applying different frequencies, intensities and properties of magic to various materials that have already undergone preliminary treatment.

An experiment is conducted every two minutes, and each experiment can analyze the magical properties of tens of thousands of materials. This kind of experiment has been going on for several months without sleep and will continue in the future.

The massive amount of experimental data is collected and preliminarily analyzed by the brain-like supercomputer "Binary Tree" located below the laboratory, and then uploaded to the cloud database "Alaya" via the Mind Network for research use by all members of the Crow Pavilion who have accessed the Murphy Mind Network.

Even with such a rapid rate of experimental data generation, it sometimes still cannot keep up with the needs of various laboratories. With the successful experience of the Future Institute, more and more laboratories have begun to use time acceleration to speed up the production of results.

"Time," Murphy said in an underground laboratory, "is perhaps the greatest force in the world."

"Any small change, given the time it takes, will become an exponential change."

"The intelligence bestowed upon us by millions of years of human evolution, the wisdom bestowed upon us by tens of thousands of years of civilization development, and the knowledge gained from hundreds of years of research have all reached a critical point at this moment, with the help of magic."

"An unparalleled explosion is happening in the world right now."

"Its brilliance and splendor are in no way inferior to the explosion of life five hundred million years ago."

"The reason this explosion was able to happen is because we have been actively accumulating knowledge and actively seeking change. The more we know, the stronger we become."

"But you can't do it." Murphy looked at a crab that was bound in a huge glass box but was still slowly regenerating.

The main body of this thing was destroyed by the space-based cannon, but it still has many clones. This is just one of them, which was captured by Lucas for research.

"Your power comes from faith, and the process of drawing power from you is to some extent passive," Murphy said. "Of course, you will gradually regain your power as magic recovers, but as long as the speed of technological explosion is faster than the speed of magic recovery, we don't need to worry about your existence."

"Time is on our side."

"Human." The crab's mouthparts writhed, making a clanging sound like stones colliding with metal. "You know nothing of the power of the gods."

"Oh?" Murphy smiled.

"You're trapped here, yet you're still so arrogant." Murphy shook his head. "We've captured several individuals who claim to be gods. Of course, none of you have fully recovered your power yet, but we've also obtained enough information to know more about you than we know nothing about you."

"Gods are the pinnacle of magic."

"Your power comes from faith, which is a concept in the spiritual realm. You have borrowed certain concepts, imaginations, and emotions from human thought to construct a set of arguments for why people should believe in you, thereby defining your authority."

"This rhetoric is actually a covenant with believers, a vow that binds you to them. You provide believers with certain conveniences, thereby allowing you to borrow their spiritual power."

"These spiritual forces converge with you as the nodes, and you possess magic far exceeding that of hundreds or thousands of wizards. The concept that forms the core of your faith becomes your divine office."

"For example, you are a god in charge of water and the sea, so your magic related to water and the ocean will be extremely powerful."

"This logic belongs to what we call the 'spiritual approach'."

"The reason your magic is so powerful is simply because you have purified a vast amount of spiritual power through 'divine authority,' thereby raising your level of magic power. We have long understood the principle behind this."

"No, you don't understand." The crab's mouthparts tapped together. "You may understand knowledge and technology, you may be good at using the power of reason, but you don't understand human nature."

"Humanity?" Murphy laughed. "You're actually talking about humanity with a human?"

The crab, however, did not find it funny. Its voice remained as calm and cold as ever, "Perhaps your superior intelligence makes you arrogant, to the point that you disdain to understand, but human stupidity far exceeds your imagination."

"Knowledge and reason are virtues that only a few are entitled to."

"Ignorance and delusion are the true nature of this world."

"Humans are weak and selfish, short-sighted and prone to self-deception. They prefer to believe in an authority rather than rack their brains to understand a truth, and they prefer to immerse themselves in false fantasies rather than struggle to the utmost in reality."

"This is the essence of your race; this is humanity."

"Man is trapped by his own nature, but God can use it as a rein to drive and control him. You may be human, but God is the master of manipulating human nature."

"You ignited a technological explosion."

"But we are also waiting for an explosion. An explosion ultimately caused by human folly."

……

Meanwhile, thousands of kilometers away in Rome, at the Capitol Building.

Several young wizards cast illusion spells on themselves and then swaggered inside.

(End of this chapter)