Chapter 211: The Cursed Crystal

While de Broglie was being completely abandoned by the academic world for his “crazy” ideas, on the other side of the Royal Capital, an experimental group funded by Master Horace was quietly conducting their research.

The head of this experimental group was a Fifth-Circle Mage named Davisson.

He was a pragmatic man, almost to the point of being rigid, with no interest in ethereal theories.

Master Horace’s purpose in funding him was very clear: to improve the strike accuracy of the new magitech cannons.

According to classical theory, the high-energy particle stream fired from a magitech cannon should behave no differently from an ordinary cannonball.

Davisson’s task was to establish a reliable mathematical model by precisely measuring the scattering angles and energy distribution of these particles after they bombarded targets of different materials.

This model would be used to optimize the energy core and focusing array of the magitech cannons, allowing those expensive energy beams to hit their targets with greater precision.

It was a tedious and cumbersome job.

Inside the laboratory, a massive machine made of brass and crystal occupied most of the space.

This was their self-designed “electron gun,” which could accelerate electrons to nearly one-tenth the speed of light using a high-voltage magic field.

The electron beam passed through a vacuum tube and finally bombarded a crystal target placed on a rotating stand.

Behind the target was a curved screen coated with a fluorescent substance, used to display the landing points of the electrons.

For months, Davisson and his team had been repeating the same process day after day.

Change the target, activate the electron gun, record the scattering pattern on the fluorescent screen, and then perform a lengthy data analysis.

They had tested gold, silver, mithril, adamantine—almost all known metallic materials.

The scattering patterns they obtained were also basically in line with their expectations.

Most of the electrons would pass directly through the target or be deflected at small angles, forming a bright spot in the center of the fluorescent screen.

A few electrons would collide with the atomic nuclei in the crystal, producing large-angle scattering and forming a diffuse halo on the screen.

It all seemed so normal, so normal as to be boring.

This afternoon, the experiment was proceeding as usual.

The target was a newly synthesized “mithril-nickel” alloy, used to test new materials.

Davisson was carelessly watching the scattered bright spots on the screen, waiting for the data analysis results.

He was chatting with his assistant while drinking coffee.

Suddenly, an accident occurred.

The rune array at the corner of the laboratory, which provided cooling for the vacuum tube, let out a slight pop.

A wisp of black smoke emerged.

“Damn it! The cooling system overloaded!” the assistant cursed.

The magic circulation in the laboratory immediately fell into disarray, and the energy supply to the electron gun was also interrupted.

Davisson frowned.

“Shut down all equipment and check the cooling circuit,” he ordered calmly.

The team members immediately got busy, checking the damaged runes and replacing the burned-out magic crystals.

It was a small accident, the kind that happened from time to time in any high-intensity magic laboratory.

No one noticed that inside the vacuum tube, the mithril-nickel crystal target, which was rapidly cooling down due to the interruption of the electron beam, was undergoing a peculiar change.

The sudden failure of the cooling system caused the temperature of the target surface to drop sharply in an instant.

This extremely rapid, abnormal cooling process was like a perfect annealing treatment.

The atoms on the surface of the crystal, at the moment their thermal motion suddenly ceased, spontaneously arranged themselves into the most regular and smooth perfect crystal lattice structure to date.

Its surface had achieved a mirror-like smoothness at the atomic level.

Two hours later, the cooling system was repaired.

“Restart the experiment,” Davisson gave the command.

The assistant activated the electron gun again, and the high-energy electron beam passed through the vacuum and once again shot towards the mithril-nickel crystal.

Davisson and his team members, as usual, turned their gazes to the fluorescent screen behind the target.

They were waiting to see the familiar pattern of a bright spot and a halo.

However, in the next second, everyone in the laboratory was stunned.

On the fluorescent screen, the image they expected did not appear.

Instead, there was a strange and beautiful image they had never seen before.

In the center of the screen, surrounding a core bright spot, there appeared concentric rings of light and dark.

These rings were incredibly clear, with sharp edges, as if someone had carefully drawn them on the screen with a compass.

“What is this?” a young assistant murmured, breaking the silence in the laboratory.

No one could speak.

Davisson stared at the image, his mind a complete blank.

Diffraction rings.

He recognized the pattern immediately.

Any mage who had studied basic optics would recognize this pattern.

This was a typical phenomenon that only occurred when waves passed through an obstacle.

But they were firing electrons! Particles! The solid particles that constitute matter!

How could particles produce diffraction?

“The instrument is malfunctioning!” was Davisson’s first reaction. He shouted, “Check the electron gun and the deflection field immediately! Did some stray electromagnetic waves get mixed in?”

The team members immediately sprang into action. They dismantled the entire device, checking every part, every rune, one by one.

The electron gun was working normally.

The accelerating field was stable.

The vacuum tube was well-sealed.

There was no sign of any external electromagnetic wave interference.

“The target! It’s the target’s problem!” Davisson thought of another possibility.

He carefully removed the mithril-nickel crystal and replaced it with a standard pure gold target.

The experiment was restarted.

On the fluorescent screen, the strange diffraction rings disappeared.

In their place was the familiar diffuse bright spot they had seen countless times.

A dead silence fell over the laboratory.

Everyone realized that the problem lay with that piece of mithril-nickel crystal.

They replaced the target with the crystal again.

The clear diffraction rings reappeared on the fluorescent screen, as if mocking their ignorance.

“Impossible… this is absolutely impossible…” Davisson murmured to himself, feeling the physics knowledge he had built up over decades collapsing.

He tried to explain this phenomenon with every theory he could think of.

Electrostatic repulsion between particles? It couldn’t form such a regular ring structure.

Collision of particles with the crystal lattice? The classical collision model would only produce random-angle scattering, not this precise diffraction pattern.

Could it be that the electrons, upon hitting the crystal, excited some unknown energy?

That also couldn’t explain why only this mithril-nickel crystal could produce this effect.

For the next few days, Davisson’s team was in a frenzy.

They repeated the experiment over and over, rotating the angle of the target, changing the energy of the electron beam.

They discovered that the radius of the diffraction rings changed regularly with the change in the energy of the electron beam.

The higher the energy, that is, the faster the electrons, the more the diffraction rings contracted towards the center.

This was another typical wave characteristic: the shorter the wavelength, the less obvious the diffraction effect.

They recorded all the data and plotted dozens of graphs, but that diffraction image was like an insurmountable chasm before them.

Finally, Davisson gave up.

He compiled all the experimental records and diffraction photos into a report.

At the end of the report, he wrote with a tired hand:

“…We have observed an abnormal scattering phenomenon that cannot be explained by any existing particle theory.

A high-energy electron beam, after passing through a specially treated mithril-nickel crystal, exhibits wave-like diffraction behavior.

We implore our colleagues at the Royal Academy of Sciences to pay attention to this phenomenon and hope to receive a reasonable explanation.”

He submitted this report, along with the “cursed” mithril-nickel crystal sample, to the Royal Academy of Sciences.

This report, like a small stone thrown into a calm lake, caused a small ripple of confusion in the top academic circles of the Royal Capital.

But it was soon submerged in the more numerous and practical technological breakthroughs brought about by the wave of electrification.

After all, for most people, an unexplainable experimental phenomenon was far less important than an electric motor that could make a horseless carriage run faster.

This report was archived, forgotten, and lay quietly in the archives of the Royal Academy of Sciences, waiting for the only person who could understand it.

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