Chapter 97: Something From Nothing
The initial result was underwhelming. It took him a few tries of bashing the particles of qi together to achieve anything.
Paike had started out just knocking them together hard, but that didn't seem to do much. But it didn't do anything either. At first, he wasn't sure if he was hallucinating it, but after a few more tries, he was certain that the particle started to quiver.
So he just hit them harder. By the time he finally got a real reaction, he was accelerating them to as high a speed as he could in opposite orbits. Each loop, they were moving faster until they were whipping around in a blur. Then he nudged their orbits ever so slightly, and they would crash into each other with as much qi force as it was theoretically possible to have from his understanding of Elder Song's theories and the force he could make.
This was when it finally happened. The particles didn't just shiver, but they exploded. Each was made of several small pieces of Ruby qi, but not the same amount.
These small bits of Ruby qi felt odd in his dantian, like a rock in a shoe, but they didn't seem to be doing any damage. What got him more interested was that they seemed to be moving faster than they should have.
The Ruby particles were moving faster than the Topaz particles around him. He touched one, trying to feel it, but it slowed down substantially until it was moving at about the speed of all the other bits of his qi.
He let them meld back into his qi, and he found that the qi absorbed them and remained unchanged. It was just a mass of Topaz qi, as before. He could detect no noticeable difference in either the quality or the sheer amount of power.
So naturally he did it again. This time, he paid closer attention, counted the number of particles, and tried to measure their speed.
Over and over, he collided these bits of qi, and by the time the next morning finally came, he was in a familiar situation. Surrounded by scribbled notes. This time there was something a bit new. Instead of just squiggles representing the meridians or qi flow, there were several equations that he had tried to replicate from memories of his conversation with Elder Song.