187 Chapter: 187
After Mark's brain processing power was liberated, his research speed once again experienced a tremendous boost.
Soon, he discovered why the Dark Elves could disregard spatial and distance barriers and accurately sense the location of the Aether particles.
Originally, he had thought that the Dark Elves had set up a signal transmission program on the Aether particles, allowing Malekith to accurately perceive their whereabouts.
However, if that were true, it couldn't explain the Dark Elves' rapid reaction speed.
The distance between the Aether's sealing location and the Dark Elves' hiding place in the Dark World was quite far. Even without considering signal attenuation, it would take a considerable amount of time for the signal to be emitted, transmitted, and received by the Dark Elves.
This time frame would be insufficient for the Dark Elves to lead a large army and complete the attack on Asgard within a day of the Aether's emergence.
Thus, another possibility must be considered. The ever-changing and scattered nature of the Aether particles resembled Mark's micro magnetic axis robots. This awakened a memory in his mind belonging to Hiro.
After Hiro's older brother died, he went through a period of depression. It was ultimately because Baymax accidentally discovered a stray micro magnetic axis robot on him. It seemed to be attracted by some signal, constantly wanting to move in a certain direction, much like a compass.
Curious, they conducted an investigation and discovered the enormous conspiracy hidden behind his brother's death. The signal that attracted the stray micro robots was the superimposed signal formed by tens of thousands of micro robots gathering together.
As a weapon that existed in liquid form, the Aether particles had been divided into countless small fragments by the Dark Elves throughout the long time after their birth. These fragments were then used to create the Curse Stones.
These Aether fragments, after entering the bodies of the Dark Elves and transforming them into Curse Warriors, did not disappear. Instead, they resided within their bodies, constantly absorbing the life energy of the host to maintain their functionality.
And when these Curse Warriors died, the Aether fragments would once again be attracted by the main body of the Aether particles and return to merge with it.
This process was very similar to the attraction of the aggregate body to micro magnetic axis robots. That's why, when the Aether was accidentally unsealed by Jane Foster, the Dark Elves could quickly learn the news, gather their army, and launch a surprise attack on Asgard.
Only the core of the Aether particles—the Reality Stone—possessed such an ability, disregarding spatial and temporal barriers and summoning its separated entities.
After conducting experiments using the quantum field generator, the results also confirmed the correctness of this idea. The Aether particles, or rather the Reality Stone itself, could summon its separated entities without any time delay, regardless of the distance between them.
"But according to the description of Queen Frigga, even after she used the containment vessel to conceal the Aether particles, the Dark Elves could still sense that she had hidden the Aether within her."
This could be because the distance between the two was too close, greatly enhancing the Aether fragments' perception of the main body, or because the containment was too thin to completely shield the connection between the two.
Before the Aether emerged due to the recent Nine Stars Convergence phenomenon, Odin's father, King Bor, used a large sealing device and buried it deep within the core of a planet to seal it.
Looking at it this way, King Bor, after sealing it, buried it underground again, not only to better hide this terrifying weapon but also perhaps to utilize the planet's magnetic field to shield external perception.
After learning about this characteristic of the Aether, Mark's research made some progress. However, for the current situation, this achievement did not have any positive impact.
If it were before the Cosmic Cube was stolen by the Dark Elves, they could certainly find another place to reseal the Aether particles. Even if the next Nine Stars Convergence occurred, the Aether would have the luck to be unsealed again, and the Dark Elves wouldn't have such a long lifespan to wait for that time.
But now, it's a situation where it's either you die or I die, with no possibility of turning back. Moreover, compared to the stakes the Dark Elves have pressed down, which is the fate of their own race, Asgard shoulders the heavy responsibility of protecting the lives of all the nine realms. It's a case of only victory and no room for failure, making the pressure naturally much heavier.
And compared to the characteristic of the Aether particles, Mark was more hopeful to research the principle of spatial distance and instantaneous sensing. Once he made a breakthrough in this aspect, Mark wouldn't lose communication with his own server as soon as he left Earth.
By then, Mark could spread his personal network throughout the entire universe and even expand his server cluster without limitations, creating a second brain with unlimited computing power.
Unfortunately, Mark didn't have the time, resources, or energy to invest in this right now. He had to solve the crisis he was currently facing. So, no matter how much he itched for this idea, Mark could only suppress it for now and continue researching how to control and utilize the abilities of the Aether particles.
"How do the Aether particles utilize the power of the Reality Stone? It's really strange. In theory, as the only Infinity Stone that exists in liquid form, the simplest way to utilize its power should be to create a casing for it and contain it within.
Because there is no way for any kind of markings, like runic symbols, to be left on the liquid surface of the Reality Stone. So, to control it... Wait a minute! The surface...
Since there is nothing on the surface, could it be that it's implanted as a core within?"
The more Mark thought about it, the more he felt that this speculation had a high possibility. So, he quickly controlled the quantum field generator and performed an ultra-fine quantum scan on the Aether particles, achieving a scanning precision at the highest quark level.
Quarks are the basic units that make up matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, and the most stable hadrons are protons and neutrons, which are the building blocks of atomic nuclei.
At this level of precision scanning, ordinary molecules and atoms could be magnified to the size of a basketball for observation while ensuring the clear reproduction of every detail.
With such unparalleled precision, Mark finally discovered the countless micro-particle cores contained within the liquid exterior of the Aether particles.
He had always thought that the reason the Aether particles appeared in a liquid state was due to the influence of the Reality Stone. But now Mark knew that the truth was completely different.
The liquid structure of the Aether particles was the Reality Stone itself. The Dark Elves controlled and utilized the Reality Stone by injecting these ultra-miniature particle cores into it.
These particle cores were only about one-fifth the size of a quark. If Mark had relied solely on his own holographic scanning device, even if he had guessed this possibility, he wouldn't have the technology to truly confirm it.
It was thanks to the quantum field generator provided by Asgard that Mark was able to conduct such high-precision scanning and modeling.
It's important to note that even with the cheat of Pym Particles, Mark couldn't shrink objects down to the size of quarks. The principle behind Pym Particles was to change the atomic spacing of an object to alter its size, so its limit was at the atomic level and couldn't reach the level of fundamental units like quarks.
That the Dark Elves possessed such a high-precision manufacturing technique, and they had achieved it thousands of years ago, truly impressed Mark with the wisdom of this race's past.
Regardless of the races and positions of both sides, it was purely an admiration from one pioneer in the scientific field to another.
Although he had finally found the control principle of the Aether particles, in order to truly stimulate and control it, he still needed to decipher the special runes within the particle cores, which were completely different from Agard's runic spells.
These runes should be the result of the Dark Elves' technological system and the long-term development and accumulation of their unique ways of utilizing dark energy. Within the crystallization of this Dark Elves' civilization, Mark saw another exciting possibility.
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