This place is fun

Chapter 187 The Gyroscope

Xiao Hei is extremely fast.

In less than fifteen minutes, Su Daoshan had crossed several mountain peaks and left the area of ​​Xianlai Town.

Su Daoshan continued forward towards Tiandao Mountain. Until one moment, when the giant crocodile took a step, he suddenly realized that the whole world had completely changed.

Endless white mist surged into the sky, and the Heavenly Dao Mountain that had been floating in front of them vanished without a trace. The once relatively flat ground beneath their feet suddenly became rugged and steep. The surrounding trees also blocked out the sun, leaning in different directions, making anyone who was in the midst of it feel dizzy.

Su Daoshan jumped down, put away Xiao Hei, and a hint of excitement appeared on his face. He looked around, then took a step back, and the next second, the whole world had returned to normal.

Su Daoshan looked down at his feet, then turned to look behind him—in the direction he had come from, the ground faintly glowed with spiritual light if one looked closely.

Su Daoshan knew that these were places with spiritual veins.

These spiritual veins, like the veins of a leaf, are distributed across the spiritual realm. As long as one stays within the range of a spiritual vein and follows the spiritual light on the ground, everything is normal. However, once one leaves a spiritual vein, one enters a chaotic area. Not only can one not distinguish east from west, north from south, but even up and down are reversed.

When Su Daoshan first came to Lingjing, he even witnessed the strange sight of streams and waterfalls flowing uphill.

It is precisely because of this extreme sense of disorientation that extraordinary martial artists only operate within the spiritual vein area, avoiding the chaotic zone like the plague. They only briefly venture to the edge of the chaotic zone under extremely special circumstances, and even then, they proceed with extreme caution, never daring to venture deeper.

It is said that many people have gotten lost in the chaotic area and have not been able to find their way out to this day.

However, Su Daoshan came here specifically this time.

Su Daoshan took out the map and examined it carefully.

The entire terrain of the Spirit Realm resembles a target, with Xianlai Town located on the lower left edge of the map, situated on a spiritual vein outside the realm.

The distribution of spiritual veins has a unique characteristic: they are only distributed within circular regions. For example, the spiritual veins of the outer realms are only located in the center of the outer realms and never touch the fifth spiritual realm. Similarly, the spiritual veins of the fifth spiritual realm are only distributed within the fifth spiritual realm and never touch the outer realms or the fourth spiritual realm.

In Su Daoshan's view, this was like the green belt in the middle of a city's ring road, always parallel to the lanes on either side. This resulted in the chaotic belts separating all the major spiritual realms. People couldn't reach the edge of a spiritual realm through the spiritual veins, let alone enter other spiritual realms.

Su Daoshan checked his surroundings. He was currently located in the upper right corner of Xianlai Town, heading towards the Fifth Spirit Realm. However, he had already reached the edge of the Spirit Vein Land.

Further up the mountain, there is a town called Ishii.

Although Xianlai Town and Shijing Town are adjacent in terms of distance, separated only by a mountainous area and a straight-line distance of only a few dozen miles, the two towns actually have almost no interaction.

the reason is simple.

The mountainous region separating the two towns is a chaotic and impassable area. The only passable spiritual vein route, however, involves a detour of several hundred miles, passing through seven or eight regions and requiring the crossing of two branch spiritual veins. Therefore, in the eyes of the people of both towns, the other is as distant as the ends of the earth.

Shijing Town was Su Daoshan's first destination on this trip.

Su Daoshan and Song Xier had previously agreed to meet via the message tree. However, with so many people and eyes in Xianlai Town now, the message tree outside the Xianlai Teahouse on the main street was clearly no longer an option. Therefore, he needed a place with a message tree where no one would recognize him. Shijing Town was the best choice.

At the same time, Su Daoshan also wanted to try out an idea that had been hidden in his heart—that is, whether he could find a way to determine direction in a chaotic area.

The benefits of being able to move freely through the chaotic lands would be numerous.

Su Daoshan put away the map, observed his surroundings, took a dozen steps to the left, and then stepped out of the spiritual vein area.

The world changed once again.

Su Daoshan observed his surroundings and found that the chaotic area he had entered was the same as before, the only difference being that his location was slightly off.

Su Daoshan withdrew, walked a distance to the left, and tried again.

He repeated this process seven or eight times until he realized that the scenery in the space he entered was completely different from before, as if he had entered another world, and then he stopped.

"This is it!" Su Daoshan nodded, thinking to himself.

From his very first arrival in the Spirit Realm, he discovered that the reason the Chaotic Lands of the Spirit Realm were so terrifying was that the space here was fragmented. Overall, it was like a giant jigsaw puzzle; although it appeared to be a complete picture on the surface, in reality, each piece was out of order.

Worse still, the puzzle is only a two-dimensional plane, while these chaotic spaces in the Spirit Realm are all three-dimensional spaces. The directions within them are completely different.

You might be normal in this puzzle space, but once you enter the next space, you might be hanging upside down on the ceiling, or standing horizontally on the wall.

It's just that you can't perceive it.

What's worse, these spaces are constantly rotating and changing.

Therefore, it's easy to imagine what the final result will be when you walk along what you think is the right path.

At this moment, Su Daoshan was located at the intersection of three spaces. Behind him was the normal spiritual vein area, while the two in front were adjacent, chaotic spaces.

This is the key to cracking the disordered space.

Su Daoshan looked up at the direction of Tiandao Mountain in the sky, sat down cross-legged, and entered the Dao Seed Space with his divine sense. Soon, as a small silver-white dot expanded into a huge spherical space, the Heart Furnace was activated.

Su Daoshan directly extracted 200 coins' worth of spiritual essence from the Dao Seed and put it into the Heart Furnace, beginning his meditation. The first item he wanted to refine was very simple: a compass.

The structure and principle of the compass are the same as those of the compass. In his previous life, Su Daoshan followed the old Taoist priest in pretending to be a god and was very familiar with this thing. He just concentrated his mind and visualized without any distractions. Soon, the spiritual energy transformed from the spiritual essence put into the heart furnace was as if it were being attracted by an invisible will, and it began to entwine itself in strands.

A few minutes later, a compass appeared in the Heart Furnace space.

Because all the components of the compass are readily available in the real world, there is no need to go through a series of chemical reactions to synthesize substances that have not yet appeared in this world, as was done with smokeless gunpowder. Therefore, not only is the refining speed fast, but even the spiritual essence invested is only a quarter of that used.

Su Daoshan took the manifested compass out of the new path space and then merged it into the Dao Seed.

With the integration of the compass, the Dao seed, now twenty meters tall, first transformed into the form of a large black tree. Then, dozens of vines from the tree meticulously wove together to form a circular platform, in the center of which a green sprout emerged.

The green bud has only two leaves, one large and one small. The base of the leaves is connected, while the tips of the leaves point to the left and right respectively.

In the Spirit Realm, the items refined in the Heart Furnace Space will not actually appear, but their principles, characteristics, and functions can be realized by imbuing them with battle spirits.

Su Daoshan knew that these two leaves were the pointer.

With the compass in hand, Su Daoshan quickly withdrew his divine sense from the Dao Seed Space, then summoned Xiao Hei, which appeared before him.

The small black tree, shaped like a banyan tree, resembles a giant. Its thick trunk and aerial roots are firmly planted in the ground, creating a magnificent sight of a single tree forming a forest. Its enormous canopy blocks out the sun. In particular, the two branches that branch off from the trunk form a Gatling gun-like shape, which is ferocious and terrifying, inspiring awe in all who behold it.

At that moment, a compass woven from dozens of vines hung down from the tree canopy, stretching out in front of Su Daoshan like a serpent.

Su Daoshan reached out and flicked the green bud, causing it to spin. Soon, when it stopped, the large and small leaves were pointing in the same direction as before.

Immediately, Su Daoshan had Xiao Hei try several different locations, but the result was the same. "Sure enough, as a lower level of the real world, the Spirit Realm also has a magnetic field," Su Daoshan thought to himself.

In fact, long before he made this compass, he had heard Ao Jiu, Niu Er and others mention in their conversations that many people had made a compass using their heart furnace.

However, to everyone's disappointment, while the compass and the south-pointing chariot worked in the spiritual vein area, they became ineffective once they entered the chaotic space. They would either run around randomly pointing or shake violently. Therefore, apart from a few newcomers, no one was willing to try them anymore.

However, for Su Daoshan, the answer to this question was actually just a matter of understanding the underlying principle – it was simply that the pointer of traditional compasses only had one axis, which limited their degree of freedom.

Just like in a previous life on the ground, a compass rotating horizontally naturally indicates direction. But if a person is on a fighter jet, and the jet is flying sideways, then the person on board will also be sideways. In this situation, a compass that is horizontal to the line of sight is actually perpendicular to the ground.

With only one degree of freedom, the pointer obviously cannot point south.

However, Su Daoshan also knew that what was a simple answer to him would be incomprehensible to the people of this world. Their concept of space was still based on a flat plane with a round heaven and a square earth. Moreover, even if they understood the inverted nature of chaotic space, they couldn't solve the problem of the compass's degrees of freedom.

There is only one way to solve this problem—make a spinning top compass.

The materials for making this thing are actually quite simple, but the steps are extremely complicated. Especially since keeping the gyroscope running for a long time requires electricity. Generating electricity, storing it... If Su Daoshan hadn't had other ideas and knew that this thing could be used in missiles, he would have found it too troublesome.

At this moment, Su Daoshan calmed his mind, re-entered the Dao Seed Space, activated the Heart Furnace, and began refining. Magnets, copper wire, copper sheets, copper plates, zinc plates, lead plates, steel, dilute sulfuric acid, aluminum, ceramics…

As Su Daoshan visualized, in an instant, all that could be seen was the spiritual energy entering the heart furnace flowing like water.

While, in its fundamental logic, the Heart Furnace Refining process only realizes the function of an object—whether using the most primitive or the most advanced techniques, the result is the same—the problem lies in the fact that the Heart Furnace Refining process also allows the battle spirit to acquire the object's unique characteristics.

Take a piece of metal as an example: the strength of pig iron is obviously different from that of refined steel. And armor made of ordinary steel is different from composite armor.

Therefore, whether Su Daoshan likes it or not, the preparation and purification of many materials is something that must be done.

These are all major consumers of spiritual energy. Especially for some time-consuming steps, spiritual energy can only be used to save time.

Fortunately, the Heart Furnace Refining technique has one advantage: it allows for free shaping. As long as one concentrates their mind and imagines the desired shape, whether it's steel, copper, or aluminum, it can be formed instantly. It doesn't require various machine tools, and its precision is even higher than the best machine tools from my previous life.

At the same time, the Heart Furnace Refining has another advantage: apart from nitric acid, which requires a synthesis reaction to prepare, other material elements, as long as they exist in the real world, can be directly visualized and transformed using spiritual energy, without the need for any special refining process.

For example, some rare metals.

Of course, alloys composed of these rare metals require corresponding refining steps.

Su Daoshan devoted himself wholeheartedly to visualization.

Unbeknownst to him, as one thing after another, never before seen in this world, was born, lotus flowers bloomed again and again in a ball of white light above his head, accompanied by celestial music. One after another, the sages of craftsmanship, and pairs of eyes hidden in the sky, were watching him intently.

It took two full hours and more than 20,000 spiritual essences for Su Daoshan to finally complete the visualization of the generator, lead-acid battery, and gyroscope compass.

"The Heart Furnace for forging weapons is indeed a bottomless pit."

After finishing the Heart Furnace Refining, Su Daoshan looked at his remaining less than eight thousand spiritual essences and felt no joy of success, only a sharp pain in his heart.

Previously, the most consumed material in refining Gatling guns was smokeless gunpowder. On the contrary, Gatling guns, being simply a rotary firing device with a very basic mechanical structure, did not have high material requirements, so the total consumption was only eight thousand spirit essences.

This time, these items are all major consumers of materials. Not counting the others, the high-carbon chromium bearing steel for the motor bearings alone consumed a full five thousand spirit essences.

However, the investment was large, but the returns were also considerable.

Looking at the finished product in the Heart Furnace Space, Su Daoshan felt somewhat comforted.

This time, the Heart Furnace forging process, besides producing the gyroscope compass he wanted, also yielded a motor and a gyroscope as byproducts. These two items can be directly used in a Gatling gun.

The rate of fire of an electric-powered Gatling gun is significantly different from that of an older mechanical rotary Gatling gun.

The thought of the Gatling gun's rate of fire, which could jump from 200 to 600 rounds per minute to 2000 to 6000 rounds per minute, made Su Daoshan feel his blood boil and his heart race.

Although Su Daoshan knew that Xiao Hei's current battle spirit level didn't require such a high rate of fire, having such a function was better than not having it.

You never know when you might need it.

With this in mind, Su Daoshan no longer hesitated and integrated all the artifacts he had refined in his Heart Furnace space into the Dao Seed. When the tree-shaped Xiao Hei finished its fusion and reappeared, the location of the compass had clearly changed.

Dozens of vines intertwine and hang down from the tree crown, resembling an elephant's trunk. The tip of the trunk curves in a "U" shape. The upward-floating end has expanded considerably, looking like an African hand drum, with two lush green leaves, one large and one small, on its surface.

Besides this, a branch extended horizontally from Xiao Hei's trunk, its leaves and vines intertwined to form a waterwheel shape. At the same time, many enormous red fruits grew on Xiao Hei's trunk.

Su Daoshan knew that Little Black had now acquired the characteristics of both a generator and a battery in its unique way. The impeller was the generator, and the red fruits were its batteries.

Because Xiao Hei is a living organism, it can normally place its impeller in river water to generate and store electricity using water or wind power. When needed, it can even generate electricity by rotating its impeller itself.

Seeing the technology from his previous life being realized in such a bizarre way in this world, Su Daoshan didn't know whether to be happy or depressed.

However, now that we have the gyro compass, it's time to test whether our ideas hold true.

Su Daoshan took a deep breath and led Xiao Hei into the chaotic space on the right.

Upon entering this space, Su Daoshan discovered that although he and Xiao Hei were still standing on the ground, the gyroscope on Xiao Hei's vine tentacles was tilted to the left by a full sixty degrees.

Su Daoshan immediately understood upon seeing this.

Because of the gyroscope, the circular interface of the gyrocompass is always level with the ground in the spiritual world. This means that what is truly tilted is not the gyrocompass, but oneself, Xiao Hei, and this chaotic space.

Having grasped this point, Su Daoshan knew he was 99% successful.

Next, as long as you can successfully navigate from the chaotic space on the right to the chaotic space on the left, and then return to the starting point of the spiritual vein, guided by the gyro compass, you will have succeeded.

This is why he sought out a triangular area shaped like the Chinese character "品" (pin).

With the gyro compass that could both keep the plane level and provide directional guidance across the entire area, Su Daoshan found that he had a smooth journey from then on.

In the chaotic space, the sense of disorientation caused by the different angles of spatial rotation completely disappeared in the face of the gyro compass. And those illusions that seemed to be upward but were actually downward, that seemed to be empty space but were actually solid when stepped on, also became completely useless.

In a short while, Su Daoshan took three steps at a time and quickly traversed the chaotic space. A few minutes later, he had already crossed from the chaotic space on the right to the chaotic space on the left, and returned to the spiritual vein land where he had set off, following a triangular route.

Pulling out a map, looking at the not-so-distant Shijing Town, and sensing the fragrance of spiritual fruit deep within the chaotic land through his spiritual perception, Su Daoshan's eyes lit up.

"Sent!"

(End of this chapter)