Chapter 352: The Other Awakened One

Anvil Star.

As its name suggested, this was a planet renowned throughout all human territory for heavy industry, colossal machinery manufacturing, and cutting-edge materials research.

Enormous orbital shipyards formed a forest of steel that outlined the planet’s silhouette against the void.

The surface was covered with automated factories and smelting facilities that stretched for thousands of kilometers. Even the air seemed permeated with the unique scent of metal mixed with energy fluids.

Jie Ming had come here to study its core industrial technologies up close.

Using his status as an outstanding graduate, he secured a spot at an open technical symposium hosted at the headquarters of the “Titan Forge” conglomerate, focused on efficiency optimization for the next generation of high-energy plasma transmission conduits.

The venue was a massive, steeply tiered conference hall steeped in hardcore industrial aesthetics. Engineers and researchers from every star sector were engaged in heated debate.

Amid the clash of technical jargon, a familiar voice—slightly hurried yet extraordinarily clear and logical—caught Jie Ming’s attention.

He followed the sound and saw a figure that was utterly different from his memory, yet somehow overlapped at the deepest core.

That person… was it Rex?!

Jie Ming could scarcely believe his eyes.

The man before him was no longer the tenth-rank super-genius from the Noren Academy graduation trial, his body covered in ferocious mechanical constructs, radiating the aura of alchemy and metal.

There were no glowing rune-eyes, no humming power joints.

Instead, there stood a thin young engineer in slightly oversized standard work overalls, a pair of plain, unremarkable glasses perched on his nose.

He was at the podium, locked in a red-faced argument with a white-haired senior engineer over energy vortex losses at a transmission node.

“Your model completely ignores the second-order topological effects of superfluid media in non-uniform magnetic fields!” Rex spoke at a blazing pace, fingers tracing complex equations and data streams across the virtual light screen.

“Look here—if we introduce this correction parameter and combine it with the chaotic oscillation model of the boundary layer, the additional 3.7% energy dissipation is perfectly explained!”

His words were ordinary, but chained together with the precision of interlocking gears, revealing remarkable technical mastery.

To Jie Ming, this man was still the same obstinate tech otaku who lived inside his own world and treated everyone else as background noise.

As he listened, Jie Ming’s keen perception detected something off.

It wasn’t Rex’s appearance or personality; it was the occasional unconventional technical approaches and simplified models he used during his argument.

On the surface, those methods belonged to this plane’s standard engineering. Yet the underlying logic of simplification and a certain “intuitive” handling of energy essence gave Jie Ming a faint sense of familiarity.

After a moment’s thought, Jie Ming was certain: those thought patterns were far closer to how a wizard handled elemental energy than to pure physics-based derivation.

“Could it be…” A glint flashed through Jie Ming’s eyes as a possibility occurred to him.

But he did not approach rashly. Intelligence reports had mentioned three unfortunate wizards who had already died in this plane; clearly, it was not entirely safe.

He waited until the symposium moved into the free-discussion phase.

Then, nonchalantly, he approached Rex, who was alone organizing his notes.

“Excuse me,” Jie Ming said with a friendly, knowledge-thirsty smile. “Your earlier exposition on applying chaotic oscillation models to the energy boundary layer was brilliant. I do have one question, though. That ‘resonant frequency compensation’ algorithm you mentioned doesn’t seem to come from the standard library. Did you derive it yourself? The assumption it makes about the underlying energy field’s ‘affinity’ is… extremely unique.”

He placed an almost imperceptible emphasis on the word “affinity.”

In wizard terminology, “affinity” described the compatibility between energy and a specific rune or mental imprint.

In this plane, that word was almost never used in this context.

Rex looked up, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and for a split second irritation at being interrupted flickered in his eyes.

But after hearing Jie Ming’s question clearly, that irritation was instantly replaced by extreme bewilderment and wariness.

His fingers curled involuntarily.

“The standard algorithms are too rigid,” Rex answered, his voice lower and slower than before. “In real high-energy environments, one must account for the field’s own… ‘bias.’”

He avoided the term “affinity” and substituted “bias.”

Yet for someone who had displayed such strict technical rigor earlier, silently changing the term instead of correcting the mistake was already a subtle response.

“Indeed, rigid standards can’t handle every variable,” Jie Ming continued smoothly, his gaze locked unblinkingly on the eyes behind those lenses. “Sometimes I almost wish we could just manipulate energy with will alone, don’t you?”

That sentence was practically an open declaration.

Rex’s body stiffened for an instant, almost imperceptibly.

He didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he pushed his glasses up again; this motion had apparently become his habitual way of masking inner turmoil.

After several seconds of silence, he suddenly spoke, tossing out what seemed like an ordinary technical question:

“Suppose… there is a closed system whose internal energy obeys conservation laws, yet external observation reveals its total entropy fluctuating periodically… In your opinion, what is the most likely cause? Measurement error, or does the system itself possess some unknown… ‘breathing’?”

On the surface, it was a thermodynamics discussion.

But the combination of “closed system,” “periodic entropy fluctuation,” and especially “breathing”—in a wizard’s worldview, those terms were frequently used to describe the evolution of demiplanes, the operation of grand-scale barriers, or even the energy tides of certain mighty beings during meditation!

The air between them seemed to freeze solid in an instant.

The chatter of the surrounding engineers and the flowing data on the light screens all blurred into indistinct background noise.

They stood in the middle of a bustling crowd, yet it felt as though they were alone on an invisible arena.

Jie Ming’s heart tightened; he knew Rex was testing him in return.

He did not dare show the slightest carelessness. His mind raced, crafting an answer that would fit within this world’s physics framework while embedding signals only another of their kind could read.

“The possibility of measurement error must be ruled out first,” Jie Ming replied carefully, meeting Rex’s gaze without flinching. “If it is the system’s own ‘breathing,’ then it may not be truly closed. Instead, on some ‘law’ we have yet to cognize, it might be engaged in faint… energy exchange with a greater ‘void.’”

He used “law” in place of “rule” and “void” in place of “universe.”

An ordinary person from this plane would only think Jie Ming’s phrasing a little clumsy yet still understandable.

But in truth, both terms were core concepts of wizard civilization.

Rex’s pupils contracted slightly. Involuntarily, he lifted his head and truly met Jie Ming’s eyes.

In that moment, each saw in the other’s gaze the deeply buried yet inextinguishable shadow of a completely different civilization.