Although the system required gold as energy to stabilize the spatial channel, the resources needed by the people of the three Song dynasties who arrived in the Tang Dynasty were immense. The Tang Dynasty's existing assets were insufficient to support such a massive expenditure, so points had to be accumulated to exchange for sufficient resources from the system.
Thinking of this, Fang Er said to Qian Yi, "Mr. Qian, please take your time with the diagnosis. I have some urgent matters to attend to."
"I will have people come in to await your instructions. If there's anything you need assistance with, Mr. Qian, please just tell them."
"Duke Fang, please feel free to do as you wish." Qian Yi couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief upon hearing that he was leaving. On the way, he had heard from Ge Luoyang about Fang Er's identity, a Duke from the divine realm, which inadvertently placed immense pressure on him.
Fang Er, unaware of his thoughts, pushed the door open and walked out. After instructing the soldiers to go in and assist, he headed towards Li Shimin's courtyard.
"How are the injuries of those two soldiers?" Li Shimin sat by the door, holding a cucumber and eating it with great relish.
Fang Er replied, "Qian Yi has already come to treat them. It's nothing serious, and they'll be fine in a few days."
"However, I have some matters to attend to and need to leave for a while."
"Oh? What matters?" Li Shimin looked at him with some confusion. He was about to leave shortly after settling in, which surely meant something he wasn't aware of had happened.
"Did you hear that earth-shattering sound just now?"
"I heard it. What about it?"
"I suspect the volcano on Wō Island erupted, so I plan to go and take a look."
"Wō Mansion? Did a volcanic eruption there really reach this far?"
"Let me put it this way: sounds that we normally perceive as very loud rarely exceed one hundred decibels. However, the sound of a volcanic eruption can reach up to 170 decibels at its peak. This is ten million times louder than 100 decibels. If it reaches 194 decibels, that's the limit for sound propagation. Such a sound is enough to shatter internal organs like a shockwave from an explosion."
"What are decibels?" Li Shimin stared at him, completely bewildered. He couldn't understand any of it!
Fang Er scratched his head, unsure how to explain. Recalling an article he had read in his past life, he took out his mobile phone and a small Bluetooth speaker from his pocket. After connecting to Bluetooth, he opened his phone, randomly found a pre-saved song, and pressed play.
"See the hooves that charge, across ten thousand miles of mountains and rivers."
"I stand at the edge of the wind, holding the sun and moon as they spin."
"May the world be filled with peace and happiness."
"I truly wish to live five hundred more years~~"
The impassioned singing emanated from the speaker. Li Shimin listened, feeling more and more engaged. He slapped his thigh and exclaimed, "This song perfectly captures my feelings! Quickly find it for me, why isn't it on my phone?" With that, he handed his phone to Fang Er.
"This song is not important. I wanted to explain to you how the commotion on Wō Island could reach here," Fang Er said, shaking his head and refusing to take the phone.
Li Shimin's eyes widened, and he shoved the phone into Fang Er's hand. "Nonsense! I don't care how the sound traveled. Find the song for me, and then you can leave~"
Fang Er: ...
He had intended to let him experience the feeling of one hundred decibels at his ear. He hadn't expected that a single song would dismiss him. Helplessly, he picked up Li Shimin's phone, unlocked the children's mode, opened the music player, deleted everything except for this song, "Borrowing Five Hundred Years from Heaven," and handed it back.
"Here, this is the song."
Li Shimin took the phone with satisfaction, asked how to play it, and then waved his hand. "Go, go, you can leave now~"
Seeing that he was serious, Fang Er stood up, patted his backside, and left. After reporting to Li Xiuning in another courtyard, he called Wang Xuance and Xue Rengui. The three of them left the city and flew their anti-submarine aircraft towards Wō Island.
Two hours later, as they passed over Goryeo and were about to reach the waters around Wō Island, the sky was already close to darkness. It wasn't the sunset, but volcanic ash that had spread throughout the sky.
"Your Excellency, look below!" Xue Rengui shouted at Fang Er, pointing below with a look of shock.
"Holy cow, did it also shake here?" Wang Xuance exclaimed as he operated the helicopter.
"It's not an earthquake," Fang Er shook his head and then pointed at the ground. "Look, apart from collapsed houses and diverted rivers, there's no mountain collapse. If my guess is correct, the volcanic eruption on Wō Island must have caused a tsunami that affected this area."
Xue Rengui asked incredulously, "It affected this far? That volcanic eruption is too powerful!"
Fang Er sighed, "If it was the largest volcano on Wō Island that erupted, causing this result is very normal."
"Alright, let's find a high place to land and then head there tomorrow." Although the Ka-27A anti-submarine aircraft had its own radar system and could fly at night, they lacked the necessary training. The eastern side of the Korean Peninsula is mostly mountainous, so finding a place to land was not difficult.
The three landed on a mountaintop. Instead of hunting for prey in the forest, they took out several bags of field rations for dinner. Although the Korean Peninsula and Wō Island are not on the same earthquake belt, caution was still necessary. After filling their stomachs, the three spent the night in the helicopter. Wang Xuance and Xue Rengui took turns on watch, ready to take off immediately if anything seemed amiss. Fortunately, the night passed peacefully.
The next morning, when Fang Er opened his eyes, the sky was still covered in volcanic ash, and visibility was extremely low. The forest outside the cabin resembled the landscape after a heavy snowfall, except that what covered the leaves was not snowflakes but cotton-like volcanic ash. The helicopter itself was also covered in a thick layer.
He opened the cabin door, put on a mask, and looked up at the sky. Volcanic ash, like falling goose feathers, was still drifting down. This was troublesome! Volcanic ash, composed of rock, mineral, and volcanic glass fragments, has a diameter of less than 2 millimeters. Extremely fine volcanic ash is called volcanic dust. If this material were sucked into the engine while the helicopter was flying, a crash could happen at any moment.
Helplessly, Fang Er had to personally modify the engine air intake.
PS: I apologize, I had many things to do today. There are still two thousand words to come, which will not be in a separate chapter. I will add them to the end of this chapter and post them later.