Chapter 214: Harmony and Its Echo

In the dead of night at Eisenberg Manor, Horace finally put down his quill.

On the desk before him, two documents were neatly arranged.

One was Davisson’s detailed experimental report, complete with the clear diffraction ring pattern on the photographic plate.

The other was the calculation manuscript he had just recompiled based on de Broglie’s theory and Davisson’s data.

The two documents, one from experiment and one from theory, now fit together as perfectly as a key and a lock.

Horace leaned back in his chair and let out a long breath.

He did not immediately announce this discovery, which was enough to overturn the entire world of physics.

A sense of caution reminded him of that young girl who always brought surprises—

Lia Farrien.

Every time the cornerstone of the edifice of physics was shaken, it seemed to be inextricably linked to her.

From Maxwell’s equations to the theory of photons, and now to this matter wave.

Horace had always had an indescribable intuition that perhaps that girl was already standing on a higher ground than him, seeing a more distant landscape.

He wanted to hear her opinion.

Horace picked up a blank sheet of parchment, wrapped the copy of Davisson’s experimental report and the transcript of de Broglie’s paper in it, and then branded the cover with his unique Eisenberg family crest.

A simple teleportation array lit up on the envelope. With a flash of light, the envelope disappeared from the study.

It would cross the night sky of the Royal Capital and appear directly in Klein’s mage tower.

At this moment, in the study of the mage tower, Lia was lying on the soft carpet, studying the latest design blueprint for the cooling system of a high-energy particle accelerator.

Klein was sitting on the sofa next to her, quietly reading an ancient tome on spatial magic.

The air was filled with the faint scent of ink and the warmth from the fireplace.

A faint spatial fluctuation broke the tranquility.

An envelope, branded with the Eisenberg family crest, appeared out of thin air on the carpet in front of Lia.

“A letter from Master Horace?” she muttered, breaking the seal.

Klein’s gaze also shifted from his book to the documents in Lia’s hand.

Lia first quickly scanned Davisson’s experimental report. When she saw the photo of the diffraction rings, a flash of understanding crossed her eyes.

Then, she looked at de Broglie’s paper, titled On Matter Waves.

The corners of her lips couldn’t help but curve slightly upward.

“An interesting discovery?” Klein’s voice sounded from the side.

“More than just interesting,” Lia handed the documents to Klein.

“This is practically the prelude to a new storm.”

Klein took the documents and read them carefully.

His expression gradually changed from calm to serious, and finally to deep contemplation.

As an Eighth-Circle Archmage, he understood the weight of this report better than anyone.

Electrons are particles; that was beyond doubt.

Yet, they had produced wave diffraction.

This was more direct, and more absurd, than the wave-particle duality of light.

When he saw de Broglie’s simple to the point of perfection formula, he fell silent.

This formula was like a revelation from another dimension, connecting two completely unrelated physical quantities, momentum and wavelength, in an incredible way.

And Horace’s calculations had mercilessly confirmed the correctness of this connection.

“What do you think?” Klein looked up at Lia.

Lia did not answer directly.

She took a blank sheet of parchment from Klein’s hand, picked up a quill, and wrote a line on it.

After she finished, she handed the parchment back to Klein.

Klein looked down and saw that it read:

“I believe Mr. de Broglie has seen the harmony of the universe, and Mr. Davisson has had the good fortune to hear its echo.”

Klein looked at these words and was silent for a moment.

“It seems the Magic Association is about to get lively again,” Klein carefully put away the piece of parchment.

“I’ll reply to Master Horace right away,” Lia said with a smile.

She copied the sentence she had written onto another sheet of parchment and then activated the teleportation array.

Eisenberg Manor.

When Horace received Lia’s reply and saw the poetic sentence, he was first stunned, then burst into hearty laughter.

“Harmony… echo…” he repeated the two words.

“Well said! So well said!”

Lia’s affirmation dispelled the last trace of doubt in his heart.

He no longer hesitated.

The Ninth-Circle Archmage stood up, his eyes shining.

He was going to proclaim this harmony and its echo to the entire world.

Horace spread out a new sheet of parchment, dipped his quill full of ink, and at the very top of the paper, wrote a title.

On the Diffraction of Electrons and the Proof of their Wave Nature.

A brand new era was dawning with the fall of his pen.

…

When the new issue of Magitech Theory was delivered by owl post to every subscriber in the Royal Capital, no one expected that this thin booklet would set off a monstrous wave.

The cover article of the journal had a striking and direct title.

On the Diffraction of Electrons and the Proof of their Wave Nature.

The author’s signature made everyone dare not have the slightest contempt.

Horace von Eisenberg.

The vice-president of the Council of Truth, a Ninth-Circle Archmage, and one of the most respected scholars in the entire kingdom.

His name was synonymous with authority.

The content of the article made every mage who read it feel a dizzying blow to the head.

Horace began by detailing the entire experimental process of the Fifth-Circle Mage, Davisson.

From that accidental quenching of the target to the diffraction rings on the fluorescent screen, which couldn’t have been clearer.

Every step was recorded in meticulous detail.

The most fatal part was the magic photograph attached to the back of the paper.

The concentric rings of light and dark lay there quietly, as if in merciless mockery of the entire particle world.

If the photograph only brought a visual shock.

Then Horace’s subsequent arguments completely destroyed the mages’ inherent cognitive logic.

He cited a paper published in a third-rate journal that many people had never heard of.

On Matter Waves, author, de Broglie.

Horace substituted the accelerating voltage data of the electron gun from Davisson’s experiment into de Broglie’s absurd formula.

He calculated the theoretical wavelength.

Then, based on the diameter of the diffraction rings and the crystal lattice spacing, he reverse-calculated the experimental wavelength.

The two numbers were listed side by side at the end of the paper.

Their values only began to differ after the fourth decimal place.

The degree of agreement was appallingly high.

A coincidence?

No mage would be foolish enough to explain it all away as a coincidence.

The only explanation was that de Broglie, whom everyone had regarded as a young man’s fantasy, was right.

The electron, the most purely fundamental particle in existing magic theory, might actually be a kind of wave.

This conclusion was even harder to accept than the wave-particle duality of light.

Light has no rest mass, so people could still comfort themselves by saying it was special.

But electrons make up everything in the world, make up the mages’ own bodies.

If even electrons are waves, then what is the foundation of the material world?

A void of fluctuations?

After a brief, dead silence, the entire academic world of the Royal Capital completely erupted.

Countless mages, especially those professors who had never even heard of de Broglie’s paper, began to frantically inquire about the third-rate journal called Magitech Tidbits, as if they had gone mad.

They wanted to see with their own eyes what was written in the article they had once treated as toilet paper.

“Magitech Tidbits? Is that the journal that specializes in publishing articles on ‘how to roast meat most deliciously with a fireball’?”

“I remember using it to prop up a table leg last month!”

“Quick! To the black market! I heard someone is selling old issues from that period!”

The black market of the Royal Capital became livelier than a vegetable market overnight.

The price of that copy of Magitech Tidbits with a comical illustration on its cover soared.

From a few copper coins at the beginning, to a silver coin, then to a gold coin.

Finally, its peak price reached an astonishing one hundred gold coins a copy.

This price even surpassed that of the calculation scraps Lia had circulated on the black market back then.

The publisher of Magitech Tidbits, a balding, short, and stout middle-aged man, finally realized he had missed something after being cornered in his office by a dozen high-level mages.

He scrambled to the warehouse and found the printing plate for that issue from a corner.

The printing department worked nonstop for three or four days, and the newly printed journals were snatched up.

The publisher, looking at the mountain of gold coins, couldn’t stop smiling.

At the same time, he decisively decided that the cover article for the next issue of Magitech Tidbits would be On the Revolutionary Guiding Significance of Master de Broglie’s Great Thoughts on the Art of Roasting Meat.

And at the center of this storm, the young man named de Broglie was sitting blankly in his dormitory.

On the table in front of him was a pile of various ornate letters.

There were offers of employment from various major magic academies.

There were dinner invitations from nobles.

There were even a few boldly worded love letters from young female mages.

The most conspicuous one was from his former mentor.

The old mage, who had once angrily disowned him as a student in front of everyone, now addressed him in the most humble tone in his letter as “the esteemed Master de Broglie,” and begged for an opportunity to have a “father-son-like in-depth exchange” with him “on the profound philosophical connotations of matter waves.”

De Broglie looked at all this, feeling as if he were in a dream.

A few days ago, he was the laughingstock of the entire kingdom’s academic world.

And now, he was the genius sought after by everyone, a future academic superstar.

This huge contrast made him feel a sense of unreality.

He picked up the paper published by Master Horace and read it again.

When he saw his own name and that simple formula printed in Magitech Theory, his eyes couldn’t help but become a little moist.

He was not a madman.

He had just seen that harmonious and unified universe earlier than others.

And on the other end of this national carnival, some people were in a completely different mood.

In a hidden basement somewhere in the Royal Capital, a figure suddenly stood up from meditation.

Victor, the leader of the Wave Faction, the man who had announced his seclusion after the “Day of Collapse,” was now holding that copy of Magitech Theory, laughing up at the sky.

His laughter was filled with long-suppressed ecstasy and the pleasure of revenge.

“Waves! Everything is waves!”

“Henry! Do you see! Even electrons are waves! Your particles are just the occasional splashes on the surface of the sea!”

He knew that the era of wave theory had finally arrived.

This time, he was going to completely, and eternally, trample the Particle Faction under his feet.

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