Wizards: Starting with Synthetic Gems

Chapter 676 Efficiency and Regularity: Can We Have Both?
Locke ended his voice call with the Salvador Wizard, summoned the Mason Witch, and told them that he was leaving Group 2's research institute to head deeper into the Dune Plane.

Then, to the astonishment of Mason Witch and the others, he left the ecological membrane alone and entered the desert area.

Locke gazed at the distant yellow sand and pondered, "The first-class project grant from the True Knowledge Institute should be able to be completed as long as we use the special energy-locking structure of the ancient flower roots and perform the corresponding analysis. The most difficult step is discovering the ancient flower."

"So, I don't need to worry about it. But there is one thing that I am really concerned about, and that is why there are still advanced life forms surviving in the Dune Plane."

Locke looked up at the sky shrouded in heavy element particles, and at the hundreds of conversion plants embedded like steel nails in the yellow sand. "How can we balance efficiency and long-term benefits in transforming nature, avoiding short-term ecological prosperity?"

Locke stepped into the sandstorm, and immediately a swirling mass of yellow sand rushed towards him. But the next moment, the power of Mister transformed into a natural force field and descended, like a terrifying forest from beyond the realm. The entire sandstorm vanished in an instant.

Locke walked for about half an hour, looking at the endless yellow sand, and frowned slightly. "Searching with the naked eye is too slow."

"Thinking about it carefully, the area where the Dune People live, this Dune plane, probably still has some rudimentary ecosystem barely existing. If we find the plants, we should be able to find those remaining Dune People."

Locke waved his right hand, and instantly a full moon descended into the sky, appearing behind him like a star from outer space.

He himself transformed into the Dark Sun, using the special operating logic of the dual movement of the Sun and Moon to superimpose the gravitational pull of the Dark Sun and the Full Moon, thus doubling the Moon's gravitational pull out of thin air.

Meanwhile, the full moon hung in the sky above this plane. Because the world power of this plane was extremely weak and broken, Locke's nascent great magic had become a terrifying spell, hanging in the sky.

It illuminates this plane without being hindered by the power of the world, and it does not cast magic in other planes, nor is it subject to the loss caused by being suppressed by the power of the world out of thin air.

Locke even sensed the world's welcome towards him.

"Found it." Locke used the full moon's gravity to locate the magical plant communities hidden underground in the desert, and then used the Great Blue Leaf Dragon Sparrow to fly in through an underground river entrance.

The moonlight continued to stream through the river and into the cracks in the rocks, shining into the underground.

Locke emerged from the underground river and looked at the riverbed, which was filled with a large number of low-level magical plants, mainly ferns and mosses.

"There are so many magical plants here? The temperature... is very low, around 30 degrees Celsius."

Locke looked at a huge block of ice beside the underground river. "I see. There is a lot of underground ice in this area. The surface of this area was probably covered with ice in the past. Now the ice on the ground has melted and the soil has turned into yellow sand, but some of the ice underground has not completely melted."

"Therefore, there is still a water source here. As a result, there are some simple magical plant communities here. Low-level magical plants such as ferns are also the magical plants with the lowest requirements for their living environment."

Essentially, trees and grasses are not superior to ferns in terms of resilience, nor are they superior to ferns in terms of reproductive capacity.

Even in the wizarding world, in some humid regions, ferns still outperform other plants.

Fern-type magical plants are only viable when natural resources are extremely abundant. However, due to insufficient differentiation in terms of specialization and complexity, they are inferior to more advanced magical plants and trees.

Therefore, in situations where resources are scarce or in extreme environments, ferns become survivors due to their 'low consumption and high efficiency'.

Fern-like magical plants are like a natural backup system. When vegetation collapses, ferns will suddenly emerge from cracks in the rocks in an attempt to restart the world.

“This is…” Locke observed this special fern. “These ferns have undergone special evolution to cope with high temperatures. Their leaves have shrunk and have developed multi-segmented water-storing structures. These are common energy-locking structures developed to resist drought.”

"I have also read a lot of the research materials from the two groups."

“However…” Locke looked at the unfamiliar fern-like magical plant in front of him and thought it looked a lot like the lava fern from the Wizarding World. He snapped his fingers, and a flame appeared above the lava fern-like plant. Instantly, the stomata on the surface of the special stone fern began to absorb the high temperature rapidly in order to extinguish the flame.

Locke, witnessing this miracle of life firsthand, couldn't help but marvel. "This peculiar fern has undergone an evolutionary process similar to that of the lava fern. The two should be completely unrelated, but did they evolve in this direction to cope with the high temperatures?"

Locke carefully used an ordinary grafting knife to dig out one of the special stone ferns, roots and all. "It should have evolved a similar energy-locking leaf structure to the lava fern [high-temperature breath leaf]."

"Ferns are always the easiest magical plants to adapt to the environment. With this lava fern, you can utilize the high temperature and flames in the air, and make it as difficult for flames to appear as possible."

“It must be a plant that evolved spontaneously within this ecological community.” Locke recalled an article on ecology he had read before, which proposed a hypothesis—the spontaneous niche-filling evolution hypothesis.

In order to maintain the existence of an ecosystem and cope with the dangers of external destruction, specific species will emerge within the ecosystem to spontaneously fill a certain ecological gap needed to maintain the ecosystem.

Life will spontaneously evolve toward this ecological niche.

This hypothesis may not be correct; it is merely a perspective on things.

This hypothesis posits that the root of biological evolution lies in the replenishment of ecological niches and the maintenance of the ecosystem.

Locke said, "The magical tides here are still strong, probably because of the presence of the magical plant community. The magical tides are related to many elements and are very complex, so I can't fully understand them either."

"But at least the total number of living beings is directly related to the strength of the dimensional power."

"The total biomass here has been preserved to a certain extent, so magical tides still exist," Locke said. "These magical plants are trying to adapt to the changes in the environment."

Locke frowned and said, "It's just that the Dune Plane was almost pulled into the Solar Force Plane before, and the entire plane's environment changed suddenly. The speed of this change was too fast, and it didn't give the local ecosystem any time to react."

"The intervention of the wizarding civilization has stabilized the status quo in the Dune Plane, and the ecology here has changed accordingly based on the current situation."

"This may also be one of the reasons why the Dune people can still exist in this plane."

Locke saw many of the two sets of energy-locking structures being studied on these simple ferns, and even some sea buckthorn-type magical plants, which clearly had some special abilities.

For example, it can collect moisture from the air, increasing the humidity level in the environment.

Clearly, the evolution of magical plants may be enough to solve the problems in the Dune Plane.

The problem is that the evolution of the magical plants is far too slow.

Without the involvement of the wizarding civilization, they wouldn't even have the opportunity they have now.

Locke looked down into the underground river and smelled a pungent odor, which he guessed was from wastewater discharged from the conversion plants that had polluted the area.

Those heavy element particles are things that are very difficult to disappear even after tens of thousands of years.

Locke frowned. "That's not right. Didn't the wizard Zaran Bailey hire an environmental company to help him treat his waste gas and wastewater? Why is the pollution still so severe?"

"Does this mean they are directly discharging wastewater into the desert, and then the wastewater flows out from the cracks in the sand, polluting the entire desert?"

Hearing footsteps, Locke immediately stood up. ...

Inside the second research institute, wizard Zaran Bailey arrived at the public laboratory with a smile on his face. "Is wizard Locke Augustine here?"

Mason Witch quickly stood up, bowed to him, and said, "Lord Zaran Bailey, it's really unfortunate. Lord Locke, although he is in the Dune Plane, has left the research base and gone to the depths of the Dune Plane."

Zhalan Bailey frowned, slightly annoyed, and said, "Did I miss it again? What's he doing deep in the desert?"

Mason Witch explained, "Well... I'm not quite sure either. The group leader seems curious about the Dune people who still exist."

Zaran Bailey, with his hands behind his back, said, "They're just barely surviving. Their civilization has been lost, and their way of life is no different from that of cave dwellers. Group 2 has already completed its investigation. They are only surviving temporarily because of some special areas with glaciers beneath the dune plane."

Didn't he read the relevant investigation report?

Mason Witch disliked the other party's lecturing tone, but since the other party was a second-circle wizard, she could only swallow her anger. "I don't know either. Maybe the group leader has his own ideas."

Zaran Bailey the wizard turned around. “Let me know when Locke returns. I haven’t seen him in a while.”

Mason Witch watched his departing figure, her brows furrowing slightly.

"trouble."

"Because he is a second-circle wizard, it's not appropriate to refuse him outright."

Freya the witch said, "Why bother with him? When he comes over, we'll pretend we're busy working. He can't very well interfere with our work, can he? Sith Chief will scold him."

"Then he asked, and we answered, giving brief replies. Just enough to save face. But he keeps asking what the team leader is doing? He seems really enthusiastic lately."

Freya the witch said, "It seems that he considers our group to be a competitor of his group. It's strange that we've become so close."

Mason Witch shrugged. "Who knows?"

……

In the underground of the Dune Plane, Locke saw two Dune people. They were dressed in simple clothes, and their civilization seemed to have severely degenerated, having lost the ability to speak.

The two of them seemed very hungry and weak.

However, they can still communicate telepathically using their innate psychic abilities.

Locke frowned.

He attempted to use his virtual psionic organ to directly access the psionic resonance between the two. After immediately designing a simple apprentice-level spell model, Locke forcibly entered the communication between the two dune people using the virtual psionic organ behind his head.

"This race is indeed born with a very strong potential for magic from the Mind School."

"Is it possible to generate special psionic waves around oneself using only one's physical body to create telepathic communication?"

"Although it's just a very basic application of the spiritual school of thought. It's primitive, but it's a common talent of this race."

Locke, with his magical expertise and superior understanding, managed to comprehend the simple conversation between the two Dune people.

Locke discovered that these people should not have lost their ability to speak, since human thought depends on the structure of language.

The two dune men were still communicating with each other.

"Life is getting harder and harder... All the fish in the river are dying..."

"Will we be able to get through this year?"

"Cough cough cough... After I ate that fish yesterday, my stomach felt really uncomfortable... I heard that we used to live on land, and we had delicious cakes to eat."

"Cake? What's that?"

“I don’t know… I heard it from my father; he told me it through telepathy.”

Locke looked at the polluted river and immediately understood that it was the wizard Zaran Bailey's plan that had caused the underground river in the Dune Plane to be severely polluted.

The lower plant communities could not support the activities of higher organisms, so these dune people could only barely survive by relying on the cold fish that were still alive in the underground rivers.

However, the wizard Zaran Bailey's radical transformation plan disrupted this fragile and temporary ecological balance, like the last straw that broke the camel's back, causing a severe food shortage for the Dune tribe.

At this moment, a dune man suddenly clutched his stomach, foamed at the mouth, and collapsed to the ground in distress. His face was flushed, and it seemed that he had eaten fish contaminated with heavy element particles, which caused multiple organ damage.

As a potion master, Locke immediately recognized the problem with this person.

The dune man's companion was terrified and kept pushing his body, trying to confirm that his companion was still alive, but to be honest, it was no use.

Locke frowned, instinctively about to step forward, but he immediately remembered his principle of minimal intervention.

“I’m here to observe these remaining dune people, to see why they’re still able to survive, and to observe their ecology. If I were to intervene now, I could certainly solve their problems easily. But would that really be appropriate?”

“From my perspective, I wouldn’t be able to see the ecology of the Dune People. And from the Dune People’s perspective, what is my existence to them? They have survived for so long, and perhaps this very existence is extremely precious.”

"I cannot break this status quo at will."

"Let's observe him using other methods first." Locke looked at a ray of moonlight shining into the underground space, opened a bottle of Holy Spring Dew potion, put a wisp of the potion into it, and then used the moonlight to infuse the dune man's body, relieving his symptoms.

"First, I must believe in the resilience of the ecosystem that the Dune people have left behind. If I interfere with it at will, I will be just like the wizard Zaran Bailey, arbitrarily modifying this plane."

Locke said, "That would be the most efficient, but the observation itself would be meaningless."

"Is it possible to have both efficiency and the laws of nature?"

(End of this chapter)