Gospel

"What are you planning now?" Zijin asked curiously. "I want to verify a hypothesis," Su Ming replied, then asked, "Can you manufacture temperatures as low as -120 degrees Celsius?"

Zijin frowned, then took out paper and pen and did some calculations. "Normally, at such a low temperature, a medium-sized magic circle needs to be constructed."

"So, the current situation is abnormal?" Su Ming understood the implication.

"Of course, this is the Arctic Circle in winter, where the temperature is below -25 degrees Celsius!" Zijin put down her pen. "So all I need to do is set up a small magic circle to achieve this."

"Is the cost high?" Su Ming asked.

"Not bad, most of the day was spent, and I gathered materials worth three thousand gold coins," Zijin replied. "What are you planning to freeze that requires such a low temperature?"

I need liquid oxygen.

"Oxygen liquefies to over -180 degrees Celsius! This isn't just a matter of simple addition; it requires a super-large magic array!" Zijin asked strangely. "Did you misremember the boiling point?"

"Pressing can increase the oxygen liquefaction temperature," Su Ming explained. "If the pressure exceeds five megapascals, then only -120 degrees Celsius is needed."

"Five megapascals of pressure?" Zijin clearly noticed the crucial point; that's fifty times the pressure of atmosphere. "Looks like you'll have to bring over some new equipment again."

"That's a must."

That night, Miao Xin went to the supplier's warehouse to pick up the cryogenic gas cylinders, leaving behind some cash. She found a junkyard and had Su Ming transport them there, conveniently covering up the debris.

****

The next day, Zijin cleared a patch of snow outside the work shed and began setting up a low-temperature magic array. She was fully armed, wrapped in thick winter clothing, wearing a hat that covered her entire face, and was equipped with a scarf, gloves, elbow pads, and goggles.

Qiluo ran over curiously, glanced at the runes on the magic circle, and shivered all over. "It's already so cold, and you're still using stacking cooling methods!"

Su Ming transmitted the high-pressure air pump over and then injected 30 MPa of air into the gas cylinder. When he finished, he found that the Zijin that had been drawing the magic circle outside had frozen into a ball.

"Why aren't you using Flame Protection Spell?" Su Ming asked as he walked over.

"The dissipated Magic Power will corrupt the magic circle," the girl replied, trembling.

Su Ming dragged her back to the work shed, filled a hot water bottle, and shoved it into her hand. "You're so afraid of the cold, take a break after you've worked for a while!"

After a moment, Zijin began to answer, "Once I'm in a warm place, I don't dare go out anymore. I just wanted to do as much as possible in one trip." She looked utterly hopeless. "I've only done a quarter of it, and I'll have to come three more times!"

"I'll stay with you, and you can teach me about magic arrays while you're at it," Su Ming said.

"What I'm drawing now is High Rank ice-type magic circle, which is far from useful to you."

"It's okay, it can't hurt to know more."

After resting for thirty minutes, Su Ming followed Zijin, who had warmed up, outside. He glanced at the rune array on the ground, then turned to run back, saying, "I just remembered, I still have some equipment to adjust."

Zijin grabbed him by the back of the neck, "Too late!"

"No, you didn't say the runes were reversed!"

Su Ming had only recently mastered positive magic runes, so he couldn't handle this.

"This is a mirror array," the scholar explained. "One freezing rune array can lower the temperature by 10 degrees Celsius, and we need ten in total."

The more layers of the magic array, the more complex it becomes; ten layers are simply too complicated.

"So you simplified the number of layers, engraving a set of runes on both sides of each layer?"

"Yes, this is a very new two-way overlay technology," Zijin replied. "The magic array runes on the back are naturally reversed. So let's do our best, we'll each take half!"

Su Ming had no choice but to accept his fate and began to painstakingly draw the reverse runes.

The two worked tirelessly until the afternoon before finally setting up the low-temperature magic array. Su Ming placed five gas cylinders filled with high-pressure air into the center of the array and activated it to cool and freeze the air.

Three hours later, the gas pressure inside the cylinder dropped to about half of its initial value and stabilized. Su Ming put on protective gloves, turned on the valve, and began to release the gas inside.

The gas pressure in the cylinder immediately dropped, and a low-temperature mist spread out. Su Ming also moved away to avoid frostbite. The ambient air humidity was extremely low, and the released ultra-cold air could only freeze into tiny ice crystals that drifted everywhere.

After a while, he came back, wiped the ice off the thermometer, and found that the temperature inside the gas cylinder had dropped to -140 degrees Celsius, and the pressure had dropped from 15 MPa to 0.3 MPa.

"Why has the temperature dropped so much?" Qiluo, who had been watching the two of them struggle, was very puzzled. "Isn't this magic circle only supposed to reach -120 degrees Celsius?"

"Liquid oxygen evaporation absorbs heat," Su Ming explained. "The released gas carries away the heat."

Qiluo Luo's face was clear and bright. Zi Zijin took out paper and pen and drew her a diagram. "The capacity of each jar is 50 liters. Su Ming filled each bottle with 300 atmospheres of pressure, which is 16 kilograms of air. This includes 3.5 kilograms of oxygen and other gases, mainly nitrogen."

"I do know a little about this," Qiluo said, pointing to her finger, her words not entirely sincere.

"Then comes the first step: freezing." Zijin continued drawing, "Under this pressure, freezing to -120 degrees Celsius will cause the water vapor and carbon dioxide inside the jar to freeze, while the oxygen will turn into liquid."

"The water vapor and carbon dioxide content is less than 10g, which can be ignored. Nitrogen cannot be liquefied due to insufficient temperature, and it will escape immediately after Su Ming opens the valve, so there's no need to consider it further."

"What's left is liquefied oxygen, which will begin to boil due to the pressure loss," she wrote down the numbers. "Each gram of liquid oxygen evaporating will take away 213 joules of heat, which can lower the temperature of 11 grams of liquid oxygen by about 20 degrees Celsius. Therefore, the liquid oxygen continues to decrease, and the temperature inside the cylinder continues to drop. This process will continue until the temperature of the liquid oxygen falls below its boiling point at atmospheric pressure, which is -183 degrees Celsius."

The unicorn had already covered its ears, while Hansite nodded, "I don't understand numbers very well, but I can grasp the general principles."

"Oh, by the way, bring over that statue you use to press down the pickled vegetables," Su Ming said.

Qiluo Luo fled like the wind, and after a while, she ran back carrying the statue. She stuck the statue into the snow, then took out a small stool, sat down, and pulled out a bag of melon seeds. She didn't understand academics, but her intuition for eating melon seeds was second to none.

Su Ming went to the back of the statue, unscrewed a plug there, and sure enough, a small hole was revealed, leading all the way to the innermost cavity of the statue.

"Pour liquid oxygen into it?" Zijin didn't understand Su Ming's purpose, but she could guess that he intended to do so.

"Yeah, let White Skull handle this one," Su Ming suggested.

"That's fine, so we don't get frostbite," Zijin said.

When the pressure in the gas cylinder dropped to 0.11 MPa, close to atmospheric pressure, Su Ming ordered Bai Lou to move forward. At this level of low temperature...

The skeleton's bones will also become hard and brittle. If you accidentally pour it on yourself, it will definitely shatter.

But it was still better than them doing it themselves. Even with protective spells, the temperature was too low and they would still get their skin peeled off. So the three humans and one beast watched as the valiant white skeleton risked being pulverized to do the work.

Fortunately, the white skull lived up to expectations, pouring the liquid oxygen from the five bottles into the statue one by one. Each bottle had two kilograms of liquid oxygen remaining, and even after adding them all, it only filled one-third of the statue's internal container. Then, the stoppers were screwed on, and a faint white mist immediately escaped from the vents on the statue.

A thin vertical line on the outside indicates the liquid oxygen level. As the liquid oxygen continues to evaporate, the temperature inside the statue is also cooling down. Su Ming had placed a sensor inside beforehand to read the temperature; currently, the temperature inside the statue has dropped to -60 degrees Celsius.

"Its external material has excellent heat insulation properties." Zijin took off her gloves and tried it on; the external temperature of the statue was still around -25 degrees Celsius.

"It hasn't dropped much." "How did you find that out?"

"There's no Magic Power, but there's a continuous flow of water," Su Ming replied. "The first thing that came to my mind was condensation."

"What about the sacred mist?" Qiluo asked. "My mother said that inhaling a breath of that sacred mist can indeed invigorate one's spirit."

"It's oxygen," Su Ming said. "Oxygen is heavier than air and cooler, so it evaporates and settles below the statue. During events, that area is packed with people. Squeezing through the crowds and taking a breath of oxygen is naturally refreshing."

The ultimate goal of metaphysics is science, and the otherworld is no exception.

Zijin suddenly realized, "Then there's only one question left: why does the Church of the God of Light cool the inside of the statue to -183 degrees Celsius?"

"It might not be -183 degrees Celsius," Su Ming said. He watched as the sensor reading dropped to -110 degrees Celsius, and a sense of unease began to rise within him as he stared at a small black patch placed on the statue.

At a certain moment, the small black piece was suddenly bounced away with a Qiluo thud. Su Ming quickly checked the reading: -132 degrees Celsius.

Atmospheric pressure, 141K?!

Su Ming covered his mouth in disbelief. He didn't bother to answer the questions of the others. He took off his gloves, took out a magnet, and placed it above the statue with trembling hands until the magnet was steadily suspended above the statue's head!

Su Ming suddenly jumped up and started running wildly in the snow, making strange cheers and even rolling around in the snowdrifts.

"What's wrong with him?" Qiluo used her mental powers to investigate. "Strange, he hasn't been affected."

"God said, 'Do not be mad!'" a voice rang out, and everyone turned around sharply. The statue, silent for twenty-seven years, lit up its blue eyes; the spirit of the Gospel had been activated!

Noticing the startled expressions on the three faces, the statue continued to speak, "You should always rejoice."

"Who are you?" Zijin asked.

"I am the Gospel, a servant of the Father."

Upon hearing this famous signature response, the former saintess jumped up, all her pent-up frustration vanishing. "Aha, it's the real deal!"

Those old bastards think they can swindle back a few hundred thousand gold coins? Dream on! She happily ran towards Su Ming, pounced on Su Ming, and jumped around on the snow with him.

"Wow!" Qiluo exclaimed, her mouth agape in shock, then her face fell. "My premium pickled vegetable stone is gone!"

Hansite took off his gloves, touched the idol, and a satisfied expression appeared on his face. "So, I've finally touched something like this!"

"This trip was totally worth it!" Hans thought to himself. The monstrous train, as fast as a flying White Bone ship, with its enormous, imposing frame, was being driven by him personally!

Now that we have the Heavenly Father of the Gospel, dying right now would be worthwhile.

He composed himself, turned to the unicorn, and said in a serious tone, "I've heard rumors that the Heavenly Father of the Gospel is sweet, more delicious than the finest honey!"

****

"That's fantastic!" Zijin exclaimed loudly to Su Ming.

"No, you have no idea how amazing it is!" Su Ming gasped. He paused, calmed his breathing, then put his arm around Zijin's shoulder and pulled her closer. "That's not a statue, that's a true Gospel, a superconductor at atmospheric pressure with a temperature of 141K!"

Zijin turned to look at him, her mind racing through the geophysics data she had browsed, recalling the terms Su Ming had mentioned. She was also slightly out of breath, their breaths mingling together.

"The diamagnetism of superconductors?" She finally realized the connection. "So the secret to the levitation of the statues is that... what, effect in physics?"

She hadn't read many textbooks from Earth, as understanding them was extremely difficult given the different civilization systems. She often had to rely on Su Ming for guidance, and neither of them had much free time.

But the concept of superconductivity was so well-known that she had at least seen some of it.

"It's the Meissner effect," Su Ming said, then explained the basic process.

Zijin then realized that the Heavenly Father of the Gospel statue she had stolen had always been real. Only after being infused with liquid oxygen and cooled to a certain temperature...

Only when a certain internal component enters a superconducting state can levitation be achieved with the help of large magnets placed in the church dome.

Therefore, it naturally needs to be suspended by ropes when liquid oxygen is not injected for cooling.

This plan, which relies entirely on neither Magic Power nor runes, is beyond the scope of a scholar's understanding, which is why she failed to discover the problem.

"A brilliant design," Zijin exclaimed in admiration. "Unfortunately, the Heavenly Father of the Gospel needs a large magnet to levitate, and it also needs to be cooled to over minus one hundred degrees Celsius. Apart from missionary work and showy displays at celebrations, this technology has no practical application."

Su Ming was speechless.

For Earth, the material on the statue is the highest-temperature, atmospheric-pressure superconductor ever discovered. While -132 degrees Celsius might not sufficiently reduce the difficulty of application, as Gospel Material from another world, it undoubtedly represents a completely new process and approach. What's especially remarkable is...

The material is capable of suspending such a huge statue, indicating that it has mass production potential and a certain degree of machinability.

It can absolutely lay a solid foundation for breakthroughs in this field.

These things were difficult to explain to Zijin, including the significant importance of superconductors to Earth. After all, she was a scholar from another world and lacked sufficient knowledge of Earth's technological system.

"Could the sentiments embodied on the Forward locomotive be poured into this statue?" He changed the subject.

Now is not the time to dismantle and study the Gospel Material. Advancing the progress of our affairs in the other world and constructing the interdimensional teleportation array are the key tasks; otherwise, everything will be in vain.

"Theoretically, there's no problem," Zijin replied. "Let me first analyze the core circuitry of the Heavenly Father of the Gospel."

"Alright, let's continue!" Su Ming, clenching his fist with one hand.