Cellphone

With the day's work done he took out Starlight Crafting Plate. He had some ideas he had been delaying for some time and it was time to work on them. One of those was a cell phone and another was a camera. He was thinking about the cellphone idea since he had inherited Robert's memories. But electromagnetic waves, digitalization of information, electronics, and all of those were too much for him. He had to find a way to create it with the methods of his world.

Some linked arrays allowed to pass some information between them, but they had some serious limitations. One of those was the requirement for knowledge of arrays. So he was looking for other methods. He knew that there were some different long-distance communication artifacts, but he didn't know how they worked. Such artifacts were very rare.

And he didn't want to create some exclusive artifact. He needed a large number of those. And fate smiled at him. In the Orchid City treasury, he found some Twin Spirit Stones. They were also called sympathetic stones because the two stones were connected to each other. In the ancient ages, parent's used them to look after their children. While their child kept the stone with them they could know how they were feeling through the second stone.

The stone could be divided into two parts. But then they would lose their connection with their previous twin and make a connection with each other. Strangely stone always broke into two equal parts. And the smaller the stones were, the less information they could pass. But Nie Li thought that the stone lost the ability to interpret information rather than its ability to pass information.

And Nie Li didn't care that much for its ability to interpret information because he can make an artifact to do it. They worked like quantum entanglement and didn't care for distance. He wanted to check if it would work between the worlds, but he doubted that it would because nothing was so easy in the cultivation universe.

Nie Li wanted to know what was the smallest size where its ability will become useless, but even a sand-grain-sized pair of stones could pass an enormous amount of information between them. This was a goldmine! He could create so many things with them.

First, he decided to create the base station. It would be connected to all cell phones and connect them to each other. He made 1024 pairs of Twin Spirit "grains". That should be enough for now.

After two hours of work, the base station and two cell phones were ready. They were a bit bulky and looked like old telephone handsets without a cable. He can change the design when he worked out the kinks. He decided to use 4-digit numbers to identify the phones to contact. The tests were successful. The voice call worked perfectly.

He could install a camera into it when he makes them. Video calls or even holo calls could be possible.

He became excited. He had been thinking about creating a camera since he learned how soul crystals' spirit force sensitivity worked. He had already created sensors with them. But there were many other possible uses for them. Cameras, scanners, and radars were some of them.

It had taken him some time to create cameras with both 2D and 3D image modes. He was able to create even a holographic projector. Another problem was the memory. Phones may not need memory cards but cameras did. He may even need to add memory cards to some phones.

And he had some idea how to create them. The key was an item called knowledge crystals.

Knowledge crystals were created when a cultivator crystallized part of his heavenly power concentrating on some knowledge and embedding it into the structure of the crystal. It required a large amount of energy and it would be permanently lost. So it wasn't commonly used. In the Draconic Ruins Realm, it was used to teach the language to newcomers from other worlds. And it crumbled after one usage. Yet Nie Li wanted to create a multi-use memory crystal on its base.

But it was a thought for another day. Right now he must improve his device designs and miniaturize them. After some work, he was able to reduce them to the size of a small coin because most of the job was done by the crystals and inscriptions. However, they weren't finished yet. He had some ideas to improve them. Like illusion arrays instead of a holographic interface. But not now. He stood up and stretched. It was already late. Well, the work was so exciting that he hadn't noticed the passage of time. He started his daily cultivation session.

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The next morning before the lessons, he quickly wrote a letter "Another 30 uses of Purple Haze Grass". As the name suggested this was the second part of his letter and explained better and more valuable uses of the grass. His first letter raised the price to 25 demon spirit coins. It was almost a 50 times increase. Now he will see what will the price be after this letter.

He multiplied the letter and put them each in a package with a box of five kilograms of Purple Haze Grass. Just in case the recipients didn't have any Purple Haze Grass left. They may need it to test out the methods. Then he again anonymously sent the package to the previous addresses. The next few days are going to be very interesting.

Another interesting thing was Shen Xiu's attitude towards him in her lesson. She hadn't said anything derogatory and was polite to him the entire lesson. It looks like Shen Yue informed her about some things. It may become a problem but not a big one. Because they don't see him as an enemy yet. They may even try to recruit him into their family.

After classes, he noticed his friends have already started to gain followers. It's good that they are taking things seriously.

Nie Li himself went to look for Nie Wen. He wanted to contact his family. Sending letters through the postal service was a bit problematic. Because their services were very slow in the outer territories where their clan resided. And Nie Wen must have some quicker method to contact the clan.

It took him some time but he found him still at school.

"Nie Wen, good day. Do you have any quick way to contact the family?"

"Yes. I usually send letters through our family traders. They leave every two or three days"

This was good. Because through the postal service it could take weeks for the letter to reach the family.

"Okay. Can you send this letter to elder Nie En?" In the letter, he had asked him to visit him on a serious family matter. Of course, this could attract the Patriarch's attention. But Nie Li suspected the old coot already received reports about him. Even in the novel, he knew more than he let on. But Nie Li didn't care. He wasn't planning to act against his family. And he couldn't visit his family himself because of the school rules.

Strange rules. They are not against students going on a two-week-long training outside the City, but they can't allow them to visit their parents for a couple of days. It was an archaic rule no one wanted to change. Because traditions were much valued at the Institute. Only those students who resided in the Inner City could visit their homes.

"Yes. I will send it today" Nie Wen said.

"Thank you, Nie Wen,"

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Nie Li returned to his room. He worked on creating some spy equipment, like listening devices, hidden cameras, etc. He had almost everything for those. Even a long-distance communication method through his cellphone network.

The only unsolved problem left was the memory crystal. So Nie Li got to work. After some work, Nie Li was able to create a multi-use memory crystal combining a soul crystal and knowledge crystal method with the help of Starlight Crafting Plate and energy from Heavenly Energy Crystal. Now it couldn't be used as a knowledge crystal, because it wasn't a crystallized knowledge anymore. It was a real crystal with the ability to store data. It didn't crumble when that data was read or deleted. Nie Li decided to call it a memory crystal because it worked like a memory card.

The good thing was that in the cultivation world the information could be interacted with. It was more real than in Robert's world and the cultivators learned to work with it. In other words, it wasn't just virtual, it had its own spiritual form. There were many techniques to extract one's memories and knowledge. And it was a great boon to Nie Li. Because he didn't have to worry about data formats, network protocols and etc.

Another plus of his experiments was he learned that he could create real knowledge crystals inside the Starlight Crafting Plate. But creating too many of them may deplete the Heavenly Energy Crystal so he wouldn't be creating ancient language crystals for everyone any time soon.

When he finished with that he was free to work on his Star Shuttle project. If he could make it, traveling around the world would be much easier. But it still had many problems he still didn't know how to solve. At least the idea was slowly taking shape. He hoped to finish it by the exams so he will be able to travel to some locations in a reasonable time.

At some moment he was interrupted from his work by Zhang Ming who informed him that his uncle could meet him tomorrow in the evening. Nie Li thanked him. It was quick. He had expected that it would take a few days more.

That means he must make some preparations before the meeting.

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