Chapter 14: The Sword That Defied Physics
Chapter 14: The Sword That Defied Physics
While Bai Ge felt worried and confused, this all happened around 7:00 PM on the night the college entrance exam ended.
A temporary police dispatch occurred at a community police station in Xiangfan City.
They received a call from a resident who claimed a ghost possessed his evil-repelling sword.
Normally, they wouldn’t respond to such nonsensical alarms.
But soon after, that household and some neighbors rushed to the police station, adding so many details.
Being local officers familiar with these residents, they felt they had to check it out.
“Xiao Zhang, now no one dares enter my home. Look at this photo.”
The man showed a picture on his phone. Xiao Zhang saw nothing unusual.
“What am I supposed to see? What’s wrong?”
The photo showed a tidy living room with ordinary decorations.
“There’s no sword! Look—the sword isn’t in the picture!” the man said excitedly.
Xiao Zhang was speechless. So what if the sword wasn’t there?
Seeing the officers’ lack of reaction, the man and neighbors all talked at once: “A sword hangs on that living room wall, but it never appears in photos!”
“Our phones can’t capture it either!”
“Mine too! Even professional cameras show nothing!”
The three officers exchanged puzzled glances and decided to visit the house.
According to the neighbors, this was clearly a haunting.
But in this day and age? A ghost that hid only from cameras? Ridiculous!
Inside the home, the living room held a finely crafted sword hanging plainly on the wall.
It was clearly just a decorative piece—unsharpened and worth maybe a few hundred yuan.
“Isn’t it right here?” Xiao Zhang pointed at the sword.
“But we can’t photograph it!”
The owner rushed to show the police the live camera view on his phone.
Xiao Zhang glanced and froze.
It was true. The camera captured everything on the wall except the sword.
“How is this possible?”
The officers were stunned. More building residents crowded around as word spread, everyone attempting to take pictures.
And without fail—phones, cameras, instant film—all failed to show the sword.
The devices worked perfectly otherwise, recording every object sharply. Only the sword was missing.
“It’s eerie. Truly unphotographable.”
“Is it a ghost? Something invisible covering the sword?”
“Stop talking about invisible things—you’re scaring me!”
“That’s an evil-repelling sword… Maybe you shouldn’t place it carelessly? Why would it hide this…?”
Chatter filled the hallway, though no one dared enter the apartment.
The packed corridor left the officers sweating.
They pulled out their own phones. Still no sword appeared on-screen.
It truly seemed like a sword only visible to the naked eye!
“Well, I’m done with this superstition!”
Xiao Zhang, a bold, non-believer, insisted it must be some scientific phenomenon.
He strode forward and yanked the sword off the wall!
“See? Nothing scary at all! Where’s this ghost?”
He swung the sheathed sword twice. Still, nothing happened.
The crowd relaxed, seeing no danger.
Still, its photographic absence remained strange. Its owner refused to keep it, immediately surrendering it to police.
Xiao Zhang took it to their station, where it was quickly sent to the city bureau.
The inexplicable nature—and verifiable reality—drew serious attention. Anyone who tried filming it saw the weirdness firsthand.
Officers, even superiors, arrived skeptical, laughing it off as impossible.
But once they witnessed it, shock clearly twisted their faces.
This felt supernatural!
Prioritized intensely, the case moved fast. The next morning, experts from the provincial Chinese Academy of Sciences collected the sword.
Online, the topic stayed quiet despite scattered forum posts with very few replies.
How could it spread when uploaded images showed nothing odd?
Only those who’d truly seen the sword knew its mystery.
Original posters couldn’t provide clear proof of its presence, leaving netizens to mock it as “the Emperor’s sword.”
Media attempting to report it grew equally frustrated. Lacking images, they relied solely on words—unconvincingly describing a sword existing where recordings showed none.
Light-reflecting devices—anything beyond the naked eye—detected nothing. That alone defined the strangeness.
Without public display, the sword’s oddities couldn’t truly spread via visual media. It would fade away.
That disappearance pleased officials.
The sword held deeper, subtler anomalies. Ones making researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ provincial branch shudder.
“How? Microscopes can’t see it… Magnifying glasses show nothing… Infrared imaging fails too…”
“We can’t even determine its composition!”
Veteran researchers scratched heads over lab reports.
At first, they anticipated just obvious imaging flaws. Then they found even temperature readings impossible.
The sword absorbed almost no heat. Released almost none. Conducted none!
This defied the law of thermodynamics. Molecular structures must conduct heat. The Universe knows no heatless matter.
Yes, “imperceptible” offered a temporary answer—but offered little comfort after hours yielded no measurable parameters.
“Did you test the blade? Same effects as the sheath?”
“Exactly. Displaying identical ‘imperceptibility.’ But besides that—”
“Besides what?”
“We unsheathed it earlier. To test the blade’s sharpness.”
“What happened? Little Wang, explain!”
That Researcher had a strange expression and was covered in sweat, seeming unable to speak of something incredible.
This made the others very anxious, and they hurried to the test site to see for themselves.
They saw that the steel plate used to test sharpness was gone, leaving only a thin layer of unexplained ash on the ground.
“Academician Tang, the test plate has been decomposed…”
“What?”
Academician Tang exclaimed in shock: “Test this ash, and test again! Use titanium alloy!”
They hurriedly tested again, and when that sword struck a test alloy plate, the entire plate instantly deformed, leaving only a twisted lump of alloy on the ground.
Then Little Wang wiped his sweat and said: “We’ve already tested it; that ash is all the elements of the steel plate except the iron element…”
“When the blade of this sword strikes an object, the iron element it contains disappears. That’s why the alloy plate from the second test ended up like this after the iron element vanished.”
Academician Tang and the other Researchers all froze, as the experimental results were too bizarre and unbelievable.
“All the iron elements disappear from whatever is struck? Can this sword absorb the iron element from objects? How is that possible? Truly…”
Academician Tang was expressing his shock and confusion when Little Wang spoke again.
“Academician Tang, I’m sorry, I need to correct that… I said disappear, not absorb.”
“…”
The others fell silent for a moment, and gradually some faces turned pale; Academician Tang was so unsteady he could barely stand.
Little Wang quickly supported Academician Tang, who said: “Don’t talk nonsense… How could matter vanish into thin air? If the molecular structure of this sword has adsorbency for the iron element, that might be explainable…”
“I’m sorry, I don’t want to believe it either, but the data from the gravimeter leaves no doubt… The mass of that sword hasn’t changed at all. Also, the total mass in the test chamber dropped.” Little Wang said dazedly.
“Absurd!” Academician Tang shouted, unwilling to believe such experimental results.
“Try again!”
In a laboratory, that sword with the “photon-heat uncanny effect” was used to repeatedly slash various steel plates, alloy plates, and even animals.
Without exception, the iron element in any material struck by it vanished.
The vanished iron elements were not in that sword, not in the laboratory, and no one knew where they had gone.
The sword worked the same on animals too; a white mouse that was struck exhibited symptoms like respiratory arrest, upward-turned eyes, purplish tongue, and curled up. After several minutes, it died immediately.
The cause of death was beyond doubt: not a single Iron Atom was left in its body.
Confronted with such ironclad experimental results time and again, the Researchers present fell silent.
They all knew what this implied.
There were only two possibilities. The vanished iron elements were transported by some unknown effect to a place beyond their knowledge.
Or… this sword could make matter vanish into thin air.
The former was barely acceptable, perhaps to be explained with hypotheses later.
But the latter was too unacceptable, because that meant this sword could reduce the total mass of the universe.
Regardless of which possibility, the existing physics of Humans could not accommodate this sword.
“Who made this sword…” Academician Tang murmured suddenly.
At that moment, if someone told him aliens did it, he would have believed it.
At least that would be somewhat scientific.
However, Little Wang said: “According to the police investigation in Xiangfan, this sword was forged by a master at the “Baibing” sword shop, a handcrafted artifact. It was ordered online by a Xiangfan City resident, Mr. Yang, for three hundred and sixty dollars… free shipping.”
“…” Everyone stared at Little Wang, speechless.
Little Wang added bitterly: “Mr. Yang had bought this sword three years ago. The local city bureau said all procedures were complete; the man bought it as a collection. At first, the sword had no issues… until three days ago when the college entrance exam ended. Mr. Yang fetched his daughter home and video-called his wife in the living room, only to find the sword couldn’t be seen through the camera. Mr. Yang video-called in the living room every day, and the sword was always visible, so it must have changed suddenly on the day the exam ended…”
Academician Tang and the others looked bewildered after hearing this.
A sudden mutation?
If it were some living thing, they could conjecture from many angles.
But a sword… a three hundred and sixty dollar free shipping artifact, how could it mutate!
This made it impossible to study the cause.
“Has it been reported to the Capital City?”
“Yes, Academician Hu wants to meet you privately.”
“Good, arrange for it here.”
…