Chapter 87: The First Landmark

Lia blinked, then set down her teacup.

A warmth lingered on her fingertips, yet it failed to quell the tumultuous waves of astonishment surging within her.

The Sun’s Fury… communication crystals failing… electricity and magnetism… In a flash, names from her past life—Faraday, Ampere, Maxwell—reverberated like thunderclaps, exploding through her mind.

Before her mind’s eye stood a magnificent temple of electromagnetism, and she, Lia, held the sole key to its grand entrance.

This world, propelled by a fierce solar storm, had been irrevocably thrust by fate to the very threshold of a new era.

This was no mere matter of deriving a few equations; it demanded the construction of an entirely novel theoretical framework from the depths of chaos.

Taking a deep breath, she forcefully suppressed her churning emotions, then lifted her head, striving to make her expression appear like that of a somewhat bewildered apprentice struggling to recall ancient texts.

“This… this is an exceedingly complex problem, Master Horace.

“I require time. The records in that ancient tome are incredibly fragmented, more akin to scattered thoughts from disparate eras. I must integrate and extrapolate them with our existing magical theories, to see if a completely new model can be constructed to explain this phenomenon.”

“Enough.”

Klein’s voice was not loud, yet it instantly lowered the temperature in the study by several degrees, cutting short Horace’s urgency and Lia’s words.

He raised his gaze, his eyes settling on Horace, calm yet piercing.

“Master Horace, Lia’s research follows its own pace. The kingdom’s crisis should not fall upon my apprentice to bear.”

Though his words sounded business-like, the phrase “my apprentice” was enunciated with distinct emphasis.

“You are disrupting her plans.”

Horace froze at the words, momentarily choked by Klein’s undisguised attitude, then waved his hand with a wry smile.

“I’m just flustered, that’s all!”

“Alright, alright, I won’t pressure you, little Lia. Take your time to think; there’s no rush.”

He spoke these words, but the cloud of worry on his face remained undiminished.

He picked up his teacup and drained the now-lukewarm tea in one gulp, as if trying to extinguish the fire in his heart, before resuming his complaints.

“It’s infuriating to even talk about! That old Laplace, he’s been showing off his torsion experiment every time he sees me lately!

He keeps repeating the same old lines—’a stroke of genius,’ ‘a cosmic poem’—I’m practically growing calluses on my ears listening to him!

Horace’s face was a mask of exasperation, unable to even force a laugh.

If it weren’t for the fact that he actually measured that constant, I would have dismantled his precious telescope by now!

Lia listened quietly from the side, a faint smile playing on her lips.

Just then, a badge pinned to Horace’s chest suddenly shimmered with a soft white light.

He glanced at it, and the helplessness on his face instantly shifted to solemnity.

‘Ah, the Royal Palace is rushing me again.’

He stood up, haphazardly straightening his crumpled mage’s robe.

“Klein, Lia, I must depart.

“Little Lia, if anything comes to mind, no matter how late, you can always find me at the Council!”

Before his words had fully faded, his figure vanished without a trace amidst a ripple of distorted space.

The study returned to its quietude.

The following day, Lia plunged headfirst into the vast, sea-like library of the Mage Tower.

She needed to ascertain precisely what primitive stage this world’s understanding of electricity and magnetism had stagnated at.

She quickly discovered that relevant books were pitifully scarce.

From a high, dust-laden shelf, she retrieved a weighty tome titled *Soul of Thunder*, opening it with eager anticipation, only to find absurd treatises on appeasing storm-borne thunder spirits through prayers and offerings.

She then opened another book, *Mysteries of the Lodestone*, which was filled with anthropomorphic fantasies, such as lodestones being drawn to steel out of affection.

The remaining texts were purely practical guides.

Beginner’s Guide to Lightning Spellcasting

How to Enchant Your Compass

Ten Techniques of Magnetic Transference

As Lia perused these parchment scrolls, her brow furrowed ever more deeply.

These books meticulously detailed how to channel spiritual energy, construct spell models, to generate an electric arc, or to imbue a lodestone with stronger attractive power.

Mages had indeed mastered the use of electric and magnetic forces; they could precisely build spell models, create electric arcs, and enhance magnetic power.

Yet, regarding the true nature of these two forces, they remained almost entirely ignorant.

They knew *what* to do, but utterly lacked understanding of *why* it worked.

Days turned into weeks, and the pile of discarded papers around Lia grew steadily higher.

It was filled with the bizarre conjectures of predecessors and their disproven theories.

She realized that electromagnetism in this world was an untamed, primeval forest of chaos.

Countless precious fruits hung from its branches, yet no one understood why they grew, much less bothered to investigate the soil beneath their roots.

That afternoon, as Lia sat lost in thought, pondering where to even begin amidst a heap of scratch paper, Adèle burst in like a gust of wind.

“Lia! Something momentous has happened!”

Her hands trembled slightly as she emphatically slapped a newly delivered special issue of *Thaumaturgical Review* onto Lia’s desk.

“A… a new paper about, about electricity! It… it’s simply…”

Adèle’s face was etched with profound shock, seemingly unable to find adequate words to describe it.

Lia picked up the journal, a puzzled frown on her face.

A striking title immediately caught her eye.

*On the Fundamental Laws of Electrostatic Interaction*.

The author’s name, both foreign and intensely familiar, was Charles Coulomb, of the Electro-Lightning School.

Lia turned to the main text and began reading swiftly.

The paper opened with the author’s undisguised homage to Master Laplace’s treatise, On the Measurement of the Gravitational Constant.

“Master Laplace’s torsion balance experiment unveiled a novel experimental method for measuring minuscule forces.

If this method can measure the gravitational force between objects, then can it not also be employed to measure the equally faint electric force?”

Upon reading this, Lia’s eyes suddenly brightened, and her body involuntarily straightened.

The next section of the paper meticulously described a modified torsion balance apparatus.

The author had replaced the components originally designed to hold large iron spheres with two lightweight spheres that could be easily charged.

The experimental process was delineated with clarity and rigor.

When two small spheres were charged with the same type of electricity, they repelled each other.

This repulsive force caused the quartz fiber supporting the horizontal rod to twist.

By measuring the angle of torsion, the magnitude of the repulsive force could be deduced.

Varying the distance between the two spheres, a series of corresponding torsion angles were recorded.

Changing the amount of charge carried by the spheres, the torsion angles were measured once more.

The familiar calculation processes from her memory were now quietly printed on parchment.

Lia’s heart began to beat a little faster.

She knew what she was about to witness.

In the paper’s conclusion, the author, using irrefutable data and logic, arrived at a seemingly simple yet profoundly era-defining conclusion.

“The force of interaction between two stationary point charges in a vacuum is directly proportional to the product of their charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. The direction of the force lies along the line connecting them.”

Immediately following this was a formula that Lia recognized intimately.

What delighted Lia even more was that the overall structure of this paper—from abstract, introduction, experimental design, and data analysis to the final conclusion—almost perfectly replicated the paradigm of all her previous papers.

It was logically clear, incrementally progressive, and imbued with an undeniable scientific beauty.

Lia slowly set down the journal, expelling a long breath that cleared the stagnant air in her chest.

A brilliant smile slowly bloomed on her face.

‘Charles Coulomb.’

“Could it be… that it was also discovered by someone named Coulomb?”

“The world… truly is wondrous.”

An inexpressible tremor of awe and pride, like a warm tide, surged from the depths of her soul, instantly engulfing her heart.

The seeds she had sown had finally, in a different soil she had never trod, blossomed into magnificent flowers through their own inherent power!

“Lia, this…”

Adèle looked at the brilliant smile on Lia’s face, a smile she had never seen before, with a hint of bewilderment.

“Senior Adèle, do you know what this means?”

Lia picked up her pen and, on the parchment before her, rewrote that monumental formula.

“It means we finally have a ruler capable of precisely measuring the beast that is electricity.”

“Though this alone cannot directly resolve the troubles brought by the Sun’s Fury.”

Her gaze drifted through the window, rising to the profound and distant sky, her eyes shimmering with light.

“But the path to the answer—we have found its very first landmark.”