Wizard: I Have a Cultivation System-Chapter 98 - 92: Verifying Maxwell’s Equations

When individuals gain power, they tend to follow different paths.

Some immerse themselves in the refinement of martial arts, dedicating all their energy to the study of swordsmanship and spearmanship, eager to display their personal valor.

Others choose to indulge in hedonism, leveraging their superhuman physiques to gain status and wallowing in wine, women, and wealth.

But Murphy chose a third path.

He dedicated his superhuman abilities to production and innovation.

This didn’t mean he completely neglected his combat skills. In fact, thanks to his exceptional physique and analytical approach to learning, his Swordsmanship was well above average.

But Murphy was well aware that progress in Swordsmanship followed the law of diminishing returns.

If one were to quantify Swordsmanship proficiency on a scale of one to one hundred, an ordinary person might only reach a score of sixty in their entire lifetime.

Those with exceptional talent might reach eighty through arduous training.

But to break past ninety, one needed not only peerless talent but also an immeasurable investment of time and energy.

As for a perfect score of one hundred, that was the stuff of legends.

Murphy’s Swordsmanship was stable at around seventy.

This level was enough to handle most dangerous situations without requiring an excessive investment of his time.

The time it would take to get from seventy to eighty could be better spent accomplishing many other things.

People are inherently lazy. In a relatively safe environment, he simply couldn’t force himself to pour immense energy into a field he wasn’t passionate about.

What Murphy was truly passionate about was exploring the laws of Nature.

This passion stemmed from his past life as a researcher, as well as a fear of forgetting those memories.

But most importantly, it stemmed from curiosity!

That’s right. Curiosity.

Curiosity about this Otherworld.

Nearly every great leap in human civilization can be traced back to that single, simple word.

It was curiosity about the earth beneath their feet that led the ancients to draw the first maps, sailing fragile boats toward unknown seas.

It was curiosity about the starry sky above that led the sages of old to build celestial models, using crude instruments to calculate the trajectories of the sun, moon, and stars.

It was curiosity about the composition of all things that led early chemists to conduct one dangerous experiment after another in their smoke-filled workshops.

And Murphy, too, possessed this same curiosity.

So, after arriving in this world and finding himself in a relatively stable environment, he threw himself into exploring the laws of Nature.

But as his exploration progressed, Murphy faced a problem.

He needed a tool that could handle complex calculations to accelerate his understanding of this world.

And so, the difference engine and the analytical engine were born.

After building those two machines, an idea sparked in Murphy’s mind.

’Could he build a computer?’

Of course, it wasn’t that simple.

The difference and analytical engines were purely mechanical. The core of an electronic computer, however, was the vacuum tube, which operated on the principles of electromagnetism.

’Are the physical laws of this world, especially those of electromagnetism, consistent with what I knew in my past life?’

’Do electrons exist?’

’Do Maxwell’s equations still hold true?’

These were the questions he faced.

The solution to these questions was to experiment and verify.

The simplest experiment was the classic one of rubbing a glass rod with silk—something anyone with a basic science education would have done.

Though simple, it was a fundamental experiment for observing the existence and transfer of electric charge, as well as the effects of Coulomb’s law: like charges repel, and opposite charges attract.

Next came the experiment of generating electricity with a coil and a magnet, which could be used to verify Faraday’s law of induction.

Then, by applying Ampere’s law, Murphy built a galvanometer to verify that a changing magnetic field could indeed produce an electric field.

He had already verified Ampere’s law back when he first discovered that magnets existed in this world.

Finally, he constructed a Leyden jar to test the principles of energy transfer across space via electromagnetic waves.

In short, through a series of experiments, Murphy proved that Maxwell’s equations were still valid in this world.

’The next part should be much simpler, then.’

The construction of an early computer didn’t require the kind of high-precision tools many people might imagine.

Vacuum tubes could be hand-blown by anyone who had mastered glassworking.

The metal parts didn’t require nanometer-level precision; a millimeter-level tolerance was sufficient to ensure the machine ran properly.

As it happened, Murphy met all these conditions—in fact, he far exceeded them.

The enhancement of his physique from Cultivation was a complete metamorphosis.

He could lift over a hundred kilograms with a single arm, and his perception allowed him to detect a person’s movements from dozens of meters away.

These abilities allowed his machining precision to surpass even the Level 8 Machinists of his past life.

Furthermore, as his Cultivation and physique improved, so too did his precision.

With his precision stabilized, a stronger physique simply meant faster fabrication speed.

After Murphy broke through to the Qi Refining Realm, his increased precision and speed were not the only benefits.

More importantly, he could now project the Qi from his body.

This was a qualitative leap of an entirely different order.

Whether for polishing, cutting, or grinding, as an extension of Murphy’s own body, his Qi was always more powerful and convenient than any physical tool.

And so, an electronic computer was born.

But there was still one problem: a power source!

That’s right. The computer before him was just an empty shell, completely unable to start.

The indicator lights might be on and the vacuum tubes might be glowing, but these were not signs of the computer actually booting up.

To run properly, an electronic computer requires a stable, high-voltage, high-current DC power supply.

And Murphy could provide none of that.

First, he couldn’t find a natural lodestone large enough to generate alternating current.

Second, he was currently unable to build a rectifier to convert AC to DC.

Finally, the computer required an enormous amount of power: 150 kilowatts.

That might not sound like a huge number, but it was the equivalent power output of several hundred people working in unison.

As a Lord, Murphy could certainly gather several hundred people, but that just brought him back to the original problem: where could he find a natural lodestone large enough?

Industrial-era power generation relied on large, man-made permanent magnets.

This presented yet another technological hurdle.

It was one he hadn’t solved.

The glowing lights and tubes were just from him running diagnostics with a small power source, testing to see if his idle computer had any faulty parts.

Murphy had no regrets about building something he couldn’t use. He considered it an investment in future technology.

After all, his current lifespan wasn’t as fleeting as it had been on Earth.

He refused to believe that in the future, as his Cultivation advanced and his access to the world’s resources grew, he wouldn’t find a way to power up this machine.

Murphy even had greater ambitions. ’Building vacuum tubes is nothing!’

’I’ll build transistors, integrated circuits, chips!’

But those were plans for the future.

After checking all the computer’s components and confirming that everything was in order, Murphy cut the power. The secret chamber was instantly plunged into darkness.

Now, it was time to join Aurora for dinner.

...

In the stables of the Black Wood Forest Outpost, Leon was curled up in a pile of hay.

Suddenly, his eyelids twitched, and a faint glint, imperceptible to ordinary people, flashed in his eyes.

He lifted a hand, leaving a lifelike illusion in his place. Then, with a flicker of movement, he silently melted into the snowy night.

In a dense forest outside the outpost, where snowflakes fell silently on the branches, a figure shrouded in mist had been waiting. The snow strangely vanished as it neared him. "What did you find?"

Leon replied, "The defenses of the Duval Territory are just as the intelligence suggested—incredibly lax. Aside from ten Knight’s Attendants, there’s practically no real armed force to speak of."

The misty figure nodded slightly. "Excellent. Thirty-one years have passed, and the Great Shepherd Leader of the Shepherd Headquarter District can finally no longer restrain himself. He’s about to launch an attack on the Heresy of the Church Court. We can use the chaos to collect Wandering Souls from the battlefields. This will be a great help when we travel to the New Realm two years from now. We will guide the Rosenia Kingdom to attack the Duval Territory first."

But Leon shook his head. "Wait. I’m afraid that won’t work. From what I’ve observed, Baron Duval is an utter coward. If he’s attacked, he’ll likely just invite the Truth Church Court to garrison the territory and turn it into a parish. That would completely disrupt our plans."

"What?" The misty figure sounded astonished. "A proper nobleman, so utterly spineless?"

"That Sylvan is just that pathetic," Leon said, his tone laced with disdain. "He’s supposedly obsessed with all sorts of bizarre research day in and day out, and couldn’t care less about his territory’s defenses."

"In that case..." The misty figure mused for a moment. "Then we’ll change the target. The Hans Viscount Domain has busy trade routes and a dense population. Besides, Viscount Hans is already at his wit’s end dealing with other Lords. Attacking there first should make collecting Wandering Souls much easier."

Then, he asked Leon, "Are you heading back?"

"No," Leon’s eyes glinted with a strange light. "I’ve found new prey. She just gave birth. The most delicious time to hunt."

The misty figure warned, "Be careful. Don’t get discovered."

Leon scoffed. "Just a mere mortal. There’s no way I’ll be discovered."

"Then proceed with caution." With that, the misty figure gradually faded into the night.

’Don’t worry,’ Leon thought, watching the spot where the figure had vanished. Then, just as silently, he returned to the stables, as if he had never left at all.