Chapter 19: The Unification of Heaven and Earth

The reception room was quiet.

Sunlight streamed in diagonally, carving a path through the air where dust motes drifted silently.

“What about the stars in the sky, then?”

Edgar’s voice broke the silence.

He gazed out at the azure sky, as if challenging a grander, unseen entity.

“I’ve spent a decade studying the laws of stellar motion. They follow fixed trajectories, accelerating when closer to the sun and decelerating when further away. That system of laws is complex, yet precise. How do your three laws explain this?”

Could heaven and earth truly be unified?

Klein’s gaze also fell upon Lia.

Lia met their eyes.

It was simple.

Planetary motion, she knew, was a result of the sun’s gravity providing the centripetal force. The change in velocity occurred because the magnitude of gravity varied with distance.

She merely needed to combine her Second Law, the Law of Force, with a formula describing centripetal acceleration, then substitute in the third law of stellar motion—the Law of Periods.

Through a series of derivations, she could arrive at a formula describing the gravitational force between two objects.

That formula would not only explain why planets orbited as they did, but also why objects fell to the ground.

It could completely unify the heavens and the earth.

Lia was about to speak.

She intended to explain that planetary motion could be viewed as a collection of countless infinitesimal linear movements.

In every infinitesimally brief moment, a planet moved in a straight line, yet gravity perpetually pulled it towards the center, altering its direction.

This process of alteration constituted a continuous acceleration directed towards the center.

To calculate this acceleration, a specific concept would need to be introduced.

‘Limits.’

It required allowing time to approach zero, to observe the infinitesimal change in velocity at that precise instant.

Lia’s thoughts, however, snagged here.

She suddenly recalled that, having scoured all mathematics-related tomes in the Mage Tower library, she had never encountered any concept of limits.

Algebra existed, as did geometry, and even trigonometry.

But calculus was absent.

The mathematical tool capable of describing rates of change and infinite summation was nowhere to be found.

Without calculus, she couldn’t rigorously derive universal gravitation from those three fundamental laws. She could state the result, but not provide the process.

That would not be a demonstration; it would be a divine revelation.

“I…”

Lia opened her mouth, then swallowed back the words ‘centripetal force’ that had been on the tip of her tongue.

‘She couldn’t say it.’

‘If she did, it would be tantamount to admitting these insights were conjured from thin air, rather than originating from some “ancient text.” Her disguise would be instantly shattered.’

Klein and Edgar watched her.

A flicker of exasperation crossed the little girl’s face, an expression that suggested not being stumped by a question, but rather recalling some troublesome matter.

Lia took a deep breath and hopped down from her chair.

“Mentor, Master Edgar.”

She bowed to both of them.

“The ancient texts are somewhat vague on this particular section, and I need to return… to ponder it more thoroughly.”

Having said that, she turned and darted downstairs, her small figure swiftly vanishing around the bend of the staircase.

Only the two men remained in the reception room.

Edgar watched the direction where Lia had vanished, his brow furrowed slightly.

“Ancient texts?”

He turned to Klein, his tone laced with inquiry.

“What level of ancient texts could an apprentice possibly access that would contain such world-shattering theories?”

Klein picked up the now-cooled water on the table, took a sip, but offered no reply.

“Klein.”

Edgar’s voice grew serious.

“This is no trivial matter. If these three laws are proven, they will reshape the foundations of the entire Force Field school, and indeed, all magical disciplines. Their origin must be clarified.”

Klein set down his water cup, its base meeting the tabletop with a soft click.

“Don’t concern yourself with it.”

His voice was utterly devoid of emotion.

“Whatever she says, so it is.”

Edgar froze.

He stared at Klein’s impassive face, attempting to discern something from it.

‘Don’t concern myself with it?’

‘Whatever she says, so it is?’

The implication embedded within those words made Edgar’s heart skip a beat.

This meant that Klein, a magical scholar renowned for his rigor and rationality, either fully believed the narrative of the ancient texts, or… he knew there were no such texts, yet chose to uphold that assertion.

Given Klein’s character, the former was almost inconceivable.

Which left only the latter possibility.

‘But why?’

A terrifying yet undeniably plausible conjecture surfaced in Edgar’s mind.

Those theories, those formulas, the structure of that thesis, those three earth-shattering laws…

Perhaps they didn’t originate from any ancient texts at all.

But rather from that little girl’s… own mind.

A cold sweat broke out on Edgar’s back.

He glanced towards the staircase once more, the small figure seemingly still before his eyes.

‘This is impossible.’

Yet if Klein was concealing for her, then it meant Klein believed it to be true.

“I understand.”

Edgar retracted his gaze, no longer pressing the matter of the ancient texts.

Since Klein had chosen to maintain secrecy, it was best for him to feign ignorance.

Silence once again descended upon the reception room.

Edgar’s entire focus became immersed in the three laws he had just heard.

The First Law: Inertia.

An object would maintain its original state of motion.

That which was at rest would remain at rest.

That which was in motion would continue in uniform straight-line motion.

Edgar began to construct the simplest ‘Force Field-Push’ model in his mind.

In the past, he had believed the purpose of this spell was to impart the attribute of motion to an object.

But now, he understood.

The spell’s true function was not to bestow motion, but to alter its state.

It transformed a state of rest into a state of motion.

This alteration was acceleration itself.

The Second Law: Force.

Altering a state required a force, and the greater the force, the faster the state would change.

The Third Law: Interaction.

Forces were reciprocal.

The earth pulled at the stone.

And the stone, in turn, pulled at the earth with an equally immense force.

Edgar’s thoughts paused.

He felt his cognitive boundaries had, once again, been expanded.

He had never conceived that the immense earth beneath his feet could be pulled by a mere pebble.

These three laws, like three unshakeable cornerstones, constructed a towering new edifice of force and motion within his mind.

It was elegant, universal, and harmonious.

Falling stones, swimming fish, soaring birds, and even every Force Field spell he himself cast—all could be perfectly explained by these three laws.

This was the true underlying principle.

In comparison, his previously painstakingly pondered Aetheric Pressure theory now seemed like a child’s crude, flawed scribblings.

Edgar exhaled a long breath.

He gazed at the treatise *On Magic* on the table, at the paper that had initiated everything.

He knew a completely new era had dawned.

And he, himself, stood at the threshold of that era.

He looked at Klein.

“How long will she need to finish reading her ancient texts?”

Klein’s gaze withdrew from the window.

“I don’t know.”