Research Was All About Thinking Outside the Box

Half a month later.

Dian dug open the sand pit and took out a pure yellow crystal wrapped in a special membrane. It was the yellow crystalline substance that had grown on the Smooth Rock.

After half a month of research and experiments, he had finally confirmed his theory.

First, he had put a large amount of ordinary sand in a transparent box and buried a Smooth Rock in it. When he opened the box again that night, the Smooth Rock was intact.

That meant the formation and disappearance of Smooth Rock probably had little to do with temperature. The sand itself stayed at roughly the same temperature whether it was outside or in the transparent box.

Next, he set out to test what actually caused Smooth Rock to form and disappear.

In the end, he found that it seemed to vanish at night only when placed directly on sandy ground. If it was even slightly isolated, changes in the sand and the day-night cycle had no effect on it.

Most likely, the transition from day to night caused some change throughout the sandy ground, making Smooth Rock form and disappear.

To test this theory, Dian placed five Smooth Rocks of different sizes within the same marked-off patch of sand at night.

He observed how long they took to disappear. After repeated measurements, he found that larger Smooth Rocks vanished more slowly, while smaller ones vanished faster.

By that logic, a Smooth Rock large enough might not lose any material at all, while one small enough might disappear in an instant.

But matter could not simply vanish and reappear. The Smooth Rock must be returning to the sand, then repeating the cycle with each sunrise and sunset.

If so, could that process continue even when the Smooth Rock was not