She tried pouring spirituality into it, but there was no response.
"Lillian, what did you find?"
Victoria had not followed her, but called out from a distance.
Lillian instinctively twitched her fingers, and the husk turned into a wrapping, enveloping the strange crystal.
She glanced at Victoria below, hesitating over whether to share the item.
She had found it, after all. There was no reason to share the credit.
Victoria narrowed her eyes slightly, then suddenly said, "Lillian, since the Great Being had the two of us search together, there must be a reason."
Watching Lillian's hesitant expression, a thought struck her. "You don't know what that is, do you?"
Lillian drew in a deep breath of seawater, and the seawater brought out the sphere wrapped in the husk.
With a light tap of her finger, the husk split open on its own:
"Do you know what this is?"
A strand of spider silk attached itself to the crystal, sticking to it and suspending it in the water.
Victoria looked up and examined it closely, a trace of surprise appearing on her face. She glanced at Lillian:
"How can you not even recognize this?"
Lillian visibly hesitated. "Is it something that obvious? Why should I recognize it?"
"This is a Difference Engine Core. How could you never have seen something like a Difference Engine?"
"A Difference Engine Core?" Lillian paused in surprise. "I have seen Difference Engines, but never any cores."
There were quite a few Difference Engines in Sidney's Palace, but Lillian had no interest in such machines and had never examined them.
After all, they had never influenced history.
Victoria glanced at Lillian, then quickly looked away, frowning at the Difference Engine Core.
This should be the core of a new-model Difference Engine-in other words, the kind manufactured