Chen Siyao continued, "Very useful. After we imported the model into the simulation system, the wormhole's spatial distortion rate jumped straight from twelve percent to fifteen percent. Overnight."
"But?"
Chen Siyao bit her lip. "But, Hao, that model of yours... is too complicated."
Zhou Mingyuan squeezed into the frame from behind her. "High God, forgive me for being blunt, but what you gave us is like a calculus paper written in some celestial script from the Primordial Era."
"We can tell what it's describing, but we have to translate every single word. Even after translating it, we still need to run experiments and decipher it."
"How much have you translated?" Chen Hao asked.
Zhou Mingyuan and Chen Siyao exchanged a glance.
"Zero point two percent," Chen Siyao said.
The living room fell silent for a few seconds.
"Zero point two percent," Chen Hao repeated.
"The entire team of thirty-seven—no, twenty-nine people worked all night without a wink of sleep." Chen Siyao's voice was taut.
"And we only managed zero point two percent. Hao, the workings of your Laws of the Way of Space are far too profound."
"The logical hierarchy inside... Professor Zhou calculated that there are at least forty-seven nested layers, each with its own self-consistent system. So far, we've only deciphered a fifth of the outermost layer."
"How much do you need to decipher before you can use it on the wormhole?"
"About ten percent." Chen Siyao answered quickly; she had clearly worked it out long ago.
"If we can decipher just ten percent of the rules governing how those Laws operate, it'll be enough to reconstruct the wormhole's core algorithm. At that point, long-distance interstellar jumps would theoretically be possible."
"How long would it take?"
Silence.
This time, Zhou Mingyuan spoke. His voice was dry and strained.