Chain, Chain

Regulus returned to the stone Cabin, sat down on the bed, and leaned against the wall.

The scene was still replaying in my mind: a yellowish-brown beam of light piercing the sea, pulses of vibration pushing through the air, the island splitting in two, and seawater rushing in. Then I started thinking about serious matters.

He attacked the island as a whole, maximizing his Magic Power output and maintaining full power continuously. The result was that the entire island was shattered and sunk into the sea.

Could this be considered a miracle achieved through sheer force? Is it a case of making up for a lack of understanding with Magic Power?

He certainly possesses both sufficient knowledge and Magic Power; both are almost at their peak.

The Wizarding World has quite a few methods to destroy something this large; you could count them on one hand.

Fiendfyre can burn everything, but Fiendfyre is a cursed creation; it burns everything it touches on a fundamental level, leaving not even ashes. The Disintegration Charm is a shock; the island still exists, but it shattered into countless pieces and sank to the bottom of the sea.

Its destructive method is unlike any other spell; it doesn't apply force from the outside, it penetrates inside and lets the target shatter on its own. But he only fired one shot, a single point.

It outputs full power continuously, but ultimately it only penetrates from one point.

The interior of a granite island cannot be completely continuous. Over hundreds of millions of years of geological changes, the rock layers have been compressed, stretched, cooled, and reheated. There must be cavities, fissures, and interfaces between rock layers of different densities inside.

The grooves carved out by the sea were filled with seawater, forming partitions between the granite rocks.

Logically, the oscillation should break when it reaches the void.

The air is too loose, resulting in extremely poor efficiency in Conduction vibrations; the air in the cracks will create faults in the Conduction path.

But the cracks ran from one end to the other across the entire island, and they didn't stop no matter what gaps they encountered.

Regulus stood up and walked to the window.

The sky outside was still overcast, and the sea breeze squeezed in through the cracks in the glass, making a whistling sound.

He stood there thinking for a long time, then pushed open the door and walked back to the beach, the pebbles crunching under his feet.

He walked to the very edge of the mudflats, squatted down, and put his hand into the seawater.

Seawater slipped through my fingers; it was cold and salty.

He looked down at the granite that had been washed by the sea for hundreds of years. Water was flowing in the cracks, and every fissure was filled with seawater; there was not a single empty spot.

He stood up and looked at the rocky beach covered by seawater at his feet.

That island had been submerged in the sea for countless millennia, with seawater seeping into every crack, every joint, and every tiny gap between mineral crystals.

The granite is not dry inside; it has been permeated by salt water, and the cavities are not empty; they are all filled with seawater.

Seawater is present in the fissures, and there are thin films formed by seawater being squeezed into the rock layer interfaces. Even in the micro-fissures of granite, saltwater seeps in and vibrates, Conduction within the granite and encountering fissures filled with seawater.

Water is the medium, much denser than air. Vibrations are attenuated as they pass through the water layer, but they don't break. They continue to penetrate when they hit the granite on the other side. A single fissure may seem insignificant, but the entire island contains countless fissures filled with seawater, each one a bridge.

The oscillation didn't bypass it; it was Conduction through itself.

Different media have different Conduction efficiencies, but oscillations can overcome them.

Regulus squatted on the edge of the mudflat, the seawater washing over his feet and then receding.

This phenomenon wasn't part of his development plan; he simply wanted to destroy an island.

But the phenomenon itself is far more interesting than simply destroying an island.

He stood up and started walking back, but after taking two steps, he suddenly remembered something and stopped.

The seawater filling the fissures provided a Conduction bridge, which is a physical explanation and makes sense.

But that's only enough to explain the island in the sea.

What if that island isn't in the sea?

If it is a dry mountain, the cracks and cavities inside are filled with air, without seawater or any other medium.

The vibration travels through the granite, encounters a dry cavity, bounces a few times on the wall, and some of the energy re-enters the rock mass from the opposite wall. If the cavity is small, this makes sense; after several bounces, some of the energy will eventually pass through.

What if the cavity is large?

The energy dissipated after a few shots, and the opponent couldn't collect anything.

His mind took a turn in a different direction from the physical explanation.

When he Spellcasting, he locked the entire island into a single entity; this perception encompassed the entire island, including its hollow parts.

In his understanding, the voids were no longer discontinuities, but rather part of the island.

If the Spellcasting's perception can influence the behavior of Magic Power within the target, the vibrations will not stop when they encounter a void.

The Spellcasting said it was a whole, so the Magic Power was treated as a whole; the void was a physical discontinuity, but not a cognitive one.

He couldn't tell which of the two explanations was in play.

Perhaps both are true: the fissures filled by seawater provide the bridge for physical Conduction, while the cognitive coverage provides the logic for Magic Conduction. The two overlap, so the oscillation runs from beginning to end.

Regardless of which one it is, the conclusion is the same: the Conduction of the Disintegration Charm has passed through the interruption.

Regulus put his hands in his pockets, enjoying the sea breeze, and paced back and forth.

If Conduction can pass through the break, what happens next?

He shattered an island, breaking it into large chunks of granite that crashed into the sea.

Those fragments have physically separated from the original island, separated by seawater, air, and distance.

But what if the Spellcasting still perceives them as a whole?

If in his mind, those fragments are still part of that island, will the oscillation jump from one piece to another and continue running? A breaks into B and C, and B and C are still part of A in his cognition. The oscillation travels from B to C, C breaks into D and E, and D and E are still part of A, continuing to run.

Two words popped into Regulus's mind.

Chain Reaction, Chain Conduction.

He stood by the sea, the sea breeze blowing his robes, and only these two words were in his mind.

He took a deep breath, the sea breeze filling his lungs—cold and salty.

Then he Apparition back into the house, sat down cross-legged in front of the fireplace, and ignored Baruk jumping onto his shoulder.

The firelight warmed his face, but he couldn't feel it; his mind was racing with thoughts.

If it truly is Chain Conduction, what's the next step?

An island shattered, and the fragments continue to shatter, and the fragments of those fragments continue to shatter.

Can this process continue indefinitely?

cannot.

With each layer of transmission, the oscillation decreases.

When he attacked that island, the cracks spread from the center to the farthest point, with the cracks at the far end being significantly weaker than those at the center. After passing through four or five layers, the cracks weakened to almost nothing. The chain was running, but it gradually lost its strength.

What if the chain doesn't decay?

What if, with each layer of transmission, the energy not only doesn't decrease but actually increases?

nuclear Nuclear Fission.

These two words also came to mind on their own.

A neutron strikes the nucleus of uranium-235, causing the nucleus to split open, releasing two or three new neutrons and a large amount of energy. The new neutrons strike a new Uranium Nucleus, which splits again, releasing more neutrons and energy once more.

Chain reaction.

The key lies in the critical condition: each fission releases a sufficient number of neutrons to penetrate the next Uranium Nucleus for the chain to sustain itself.

If the uranium is not pure enough or its mass is insufficient, the neutron will not be able to find another Uranium Nucleus after it flies out, the chain will break, and the reaction will stop.

Once the purity and quality are sufficient, and the critical point is crossed, the chain becomes self-sustaining and can no longer be stopped.

The Hiroshima bomb, from detonation to the mushroom cloud rising into the sky, took less than a second.

He applied this model to the Disintegration Charm.

He succeeded in taking the first step; he fired a single shot, and the target was destroyed.

The second step was also accomplished; the oscillations penetrated the discontinuity and traveled to even more distant places.

If the third step is not done, the chain will not be self-sustaining.

After he finished, the shockwave rippled through the island for another ten seconds, dismantling the entire island before stopping. The fragments fell into the sea and did not continue to disintegrate.

One critical condition is missing.

The critical condition for the Disintegration Charm is that the energy released from each fragmentation must be greater than the energy lost during the oscillation Conduction to the next layer. Fragmentation itself releases energy.

During the formation of granite, the bonding forces between mineral grains lock stress within the crystal lattice. When the granite breaks apart, this stress is released and transformed into heat, sound waves, and the kinetic energy of the fragments.

If the oscillation can trigger the release of these stresses together, then the energy carried by the fragments will not only be the energy injected by the Disintegration Charm, but also the energy stored in the target structure itself.

The amount released is greater than the amount lost, and the chain is self-sustaining.

The amount released is less than the amount lost, causing the chain to weaken and stop after running through a few layers.

He attacked that island; it belonged to the latter.

The initial oscillations were strong enough to sustain the journey across the entire island, but the strength diminished with each subsequent layer.

What if the initial oscillation were several times stronger? Tens of times stronger? Dozens of times stronger?

The stress energy released with each fracture, plus the residual oscillations, is greater than the Conduction loss.

Once that critical point is passed, the chain will run on its own, without requiring continuous power from the Spellcasting.

Once it went in, it shattered, the fragments continued to shatter, and the fragments of those fragments continued to shatter.

A Disintegration Charm struck a mountain, shattering it upon impact. The energy released from the shattering caused a shockwave to spread outwards, shattering wherever it reached, and releasing new energy wherever it shattered.

The chain moved forward on its own, from the mountaintop to the foot of the mountain, from one side to the other.

The entire mountain disintegrated from the inside; there was no need for him to stand there and continuously output power, nor was there a need for his Magic Power to fill the mountain's volume.

He only provides the first shot; the rest, the target must complete on his own.

This is the same thing as Nuclear Fission.

Uranium Bomb only requires one detonation device to push two pieces of subcritical uranium together to achieve supercritical mass. Neutrons then propagate on their own, the chain reaction begins automatically, and the explosion is completed spontaneously.

The detonation device does not need to provide all the energy for the explosion; the binding energy of the Uranium Nucleus itself is the real energy source.

The Disintegration Charm doesn't require providing all the Magic Power to disintegrate an entire mountain; the stress stored within the target structure itself is the true source of energy. The Spellcasting only needs to provide that first burst.

Regulus's lips twitched slightly.

To reach that critical condition, the initial oscillation must be strong enough to trigger stress release within the target structure, allowing the released energy to outweigh the Conduction losses. He just attacked a small island at full power, consuming two-thirds of his Magic Power reserves.

To conquer a mountain and reach a critical condition, the initial Magic Power required might be dozens or even hundreds of times greater than before.

He can't do it now.

Regulus's total Magic Power, after a year and a half of Star Orbit Meditation, far surpasses that of his peers, and most adult wizards cannot compare to him. However, adult wizards are not the standard.

To reach the critical condition of chain self-sustainability, the required level of Magic Power power may exceed the upper limit of any single wizard.

Dumbledore couldn't do it, Grindelwald couldn't do it, Voldemort couldn't do it.

That has nothing to do with technology; it's purely a matter of physiological limits.