"Shield... bronze... high density... acoustic reflectance..." Limeng lunged obsessively toward the stack of shields, his knuckles rapping against the heavy metal surfaces. The dull echoes reverberated through the workshed, shaking loose a shower of dust from the rafters above. "A tuning fork! This is a ready-made resonance chamber!" The engineer's characteristic brilliance sparked in his eyes as he snatched up a charcoal stick and scribbled furiously on the mottled wall: the abandoned gear train from an Inazuma mine cart could be modified into a crank drive shaft, and the remaining pieces of spring steel from Albedo's experiments could be cut into precision leaf springs...
Jingyi suddenly pinned his spasming wrist: "The Ley Line frequency changes with the lunar phase. The parameters must be adjusted dynamically." She pulled the charcoal stick from her hair knot and wrote a string of formulas on the back of Limeng's hand. The ice-cold tip of the charcoal grazed his skin, and the knowledge of two worlds converged in their sweat-dampened palms.
The hardened soil of the experimental plot was caked as hard as pig iron. When Limeng's team pushed forward the Millelith shields covered in patina and rust, undisguised sneers erupted from the surrounding crowd. An old one-armed veteran spat a glob of mud-stained saliva, his empty sleeve swaying in the wind: "The ground I couldn't crack back then with a steel pickaxe—what good are these pieces of junk going to do!"
Chapter 22