342: Chapter 342: The Mirage That Couldn't Find the Original City!

Jiang Zhe looked out at the audience, scanning every solemn face.

"Why is it that in some mirages, what appears is not scenery from far away, but scenery that does not exist?"

"Why is it that some mirages do not show current cities, but ancient ones?"

"When ancient people saw mirages, they thought they were celestial palaces."

"Modern people see the same thing and call it an optical phenomenon."

"But optical phenomena cannot explain it. If what is being refracted is scenery from far away, then why does this scenery not exist on Earth?"

As this series of rhetorical questions fell, the barrage in the live stream room suddenly vanished, and then erupted like a tidal wave.

"???"

"Holy crap, I've never thought about this question before!"

"That's right, if a mirage is refraction, then the refracted scenery should exist, right?"

"So, are those celestial palaces recorded in ancient times real or fake?"

"It's over, my scalp is tingling again."

"So what exactly is a mirage? Isn't it an optical phenomenon?"

"..."

At this moment, no one in the room made a sound; everyone stared intently at Jiang Zhe, waiting to see how he would explain it.

"Pop, pop, crackle!" A burst of firecracker sounds came from outside.

The sound came quickly and faded just as fast.

Jiang Zhe's gaze fell on Xiaoyu, who was in the back row behind the experts and professors.

"Xiaoyu, help me push that whiteboard from the study over here, and bring down the laptop from my bedroom desk."

"Oh, okay!" Xiaoyu immediately trotted off to do it.

Soon, a mobile whiteboard was pushed to the front of the living room, and the laptop was connected.

Jiang Zhe operated the laptop a few times and projected the screen onto the whiteboard.

"Before we discuss those abnormal cases, let's first define what a normal mirage is."

He clicked on a folder named "Mirages." This was material he had prepared in the past, intended for tutoring Xiaoyu later on.

Who would have thought it would never be used.

"Case One: Normal Refraction Type!"

He operated the mouse, displaying photo after photo, which were projected onto the whiteboard behind him.

The images showed a hot, endless desert with a clear oasis floating not far away.

Then it jumped to mirages captured over the sea in normal coastal cities.

Image after image flashed by; some mirages were suspended in the air, while others were closer to the sea surface a kilometer away, as if one could sail a boat right into that mirage.

After a dozen or so photos, Jiang Zhe stopped the playback and looked at the group in front of him.

"What I just showed you are mirages from deserts and coastal areas."

"Regardless of the location of the mirage, the prototype for these mirages can be found within a few dozen, or even a few hundred kilometers!"

As he finished speaking, the scholars nodded one after another; this was the mirage they were familiar with.

Soon, Jiang Zhe clicked on the next picture.

On the projection.

It was a series of building complexes appearing above a coastal city, incredibly long!

On the left were clearly high-rise buildings, in the middle were tower cranes, and on the right was a section of a mountain range.

It looked very abrupt, like spliced architecture, a composite mirage with mountain bodies.

The playback stopped, and Jiang Zhe looked at the group in front, beginning to explain:

"Case Two: What I just showed you is the composite type, or the spliced type."

"It occurred in 2015, somewhere in Gansu, our country."

"After comparison, the high-rise building A in the image is a landmark in a city 150 kilometers away."

"Tower crane B is from a construction site 120 kilometers away."

"Mountain body C matches a section of a mountain range 170 kilometers away."

"This is the result of atmospheric layers with different densities stitching together scenery from different directions and distances, which falls within the realm of what can be explained."

Jiang Zhe pulled up a light refraction diagram and projected it onto the whiteboard.

The diagram used simple lines to draw multiple layers of air, each with a different density.

When light emanates from the actual scene, it continuously bends and shifts between the air layers; eventually, multiple light rays overlap, synthesizing a spliced virtual image at the position of the human eye.

"Therefore!"

He stopped drawing, turned to face everyone, and said, "These above are normal mirages, which existing science can explain."

"The principle is that sunlight undergoes path curvature in media of different densities, causing us to see a virtual image of the actual scene, or a virtual image spliced together from multiple scenes."

"Anyone with some experience and knowledge knows that these are spliced, composite types."

Having said this, he paused for a few seconds, his tone becoming serious.

"But the following cases are a bit intriguing."

Jiang Zhe sat back on the sofa and operated the laptop.

He switched folders. The first image was a sketch photographed from an old newspaper, showing a group of spired buildings appearing above the sea surface.

The gray sketch showed the gloomy Irish Sea, calm and waveless.

Yet, hanging eerily in mid-air was a complete group of spired buildings—

Looking closely, they were Gothic spires poking into the clouds, the outlines of the bricks and stones sharp and clear.

The lines of the chimneys, arched windows, and corridors were distinct. It didn't look fake at all; it was as if a medieval city had been cut out and placed above the sea, looking exactly like a small European medieval town.

"Case One: July 1954, Liverpool, Fu Nation."

"Witnessed by thousands of citizens, it lasted for about three hours. The spires, towers, and chimneys were all very clear!"

"The problem is, opposite Liverpool is the Irish Sea. The nearest Irish coast is 100 kilometers away, the terrain is flat, and there are no such buildings."

"Dublin's style doesn't match, the Isle of Man doesn't have it, and the distance, angle, and style of Wales are all wrong."

"The official explanation afterwards was: anomalous light refraction transported the image of some unknown distant city."

"This sounds very scientific, but in reality, it means the experts from Fu Nation said nothing at all."

"Because that refracted object cannot be found in reality at all!"

Hearing this, several gasps of cold air came from the room.

Academician Zhang narrowed his eyes, staring at the sketch from the last century. "There is only a sketch; the evidence is weak. Could it be a collective hallucination, or a splicing, or even an exaggerated perception of a known scene?"

Jiang Zhe nodded gently. "A reasonable doubt, Academician Zhang."

"A single case can indeed be questioned, so let's look at the next one."

He clicked on the next set of data. Next to the written records was a clear hand-drawn schematic of a palace, which was clearly another scene from the black-and-white newspaper era of the last century.

In the image, a large area of classical palaces suddenly appeared above the sea.

Red walls paired with dark gray barrel tiles, the palace halls spread out symmetrically along the central axis, corridors connected, pavilions scattered, and the scale was magnificent.

At first glance, it was clearly a standard Chinese imperial-style building.

"This is a mirage that occurred in Qingdao, our country, in August 1942!"

"A huge palace complex appeared over the sea. Witnesses included residents, garrison troops, Neon officials, and the mayor at the time, Li Xianliang."

"In Mayor Li Xianliang's memoirs, it is recorded: 'The architecture is of a typical classical Chinese palace style'!"

Jiang Zhe scanned the crowd, and a subtle expression appeared on everyone's face.

He finally rested his gaze on Professor Chen Runzhi, who had been watching his live stream from the very beginning. "Professor Chen, what do you think of this architectural style?"

Professor Chen Runzhi squinted and leaned closer to the whiteboard, staring at the drawing for a moment before slowly shaking his head:

"The scale is grand; it is not an ordinary folk building. It is similar to an imperial palace, but the details are somewhat different."

"There has never been a palace of this scale in the history of Qingdao and its surrounding areas."

"This mirage is also different in form from the Confucius Temple in Qufu and the Dai Temple in Tai'an."

"And the straight-line distance from Qingdao to the Forbidden City in the capital is over 1500 kilometers. Given the atmospheric conditions at the time, it was basically impossible for light refraction to pull such distant scenery so clearly, and let multiple people watch it stably for several tens of minutes!"

After finishing, Professor Chen walked back to his sofa with reluctance.

After the other party sat down, Jiang Zhe nodded slowly. "Yes, and the wartime witnessing component is complex; the possibility of collective fabrication or misidentification is very low!"

"The question remains the same: where is the original object being refracted?"

"This incident was very famous in the last century. Countless domestic geographers and explorers conducted in-depth investigations into it."

"And afterwards, the Republic of China had no decent explanation at all, and in fact, the Republic of China didn't even take this matter to heart!"

At this moment, the barrage from the netizens in the live stream room erupted again.

"I checked, and this segment is really in 'Eight Years of Qingdao'!"

"The 1942 record has high credibility."

"And there were some foreign scholars who heard about this and came to look for it later, but those scholars weren't very famous; the result was that they didn't find anything."

"Unable to find the prototype, this is simply too eerie!"

"Could it be that it just wasn't found, and it might really exist somewhere?"

"I actually feel it doesn't look like architecture from our world."

"..."

Inside the room, a few young scholars discussed it with their heads together. After finding no results, their attention returned to Jiang Zhe.

At this time, Jiang Zhe operated the mouse and clicked on the third case.

A screenshot of a mobile phone video was projected onto the whiteboard.

In the sky, half-hidden by clouds, a complete city was floating.

The high-rise buildings had smooth lines, many of which were streamlined with curved shapes.

Some of the buildings in the picture had suspended structures, with a very avant-garde style, full of a futuristic feel.

It was completely different from the local architecture in Hubei, and no matching city could be found in the country.

"Case Three: What you are looking at now is a mobile phone recording by a citizen in Hubei in August 2019."

"A complete futuristic city appeared within the clouds. The architectural style was very unique, not belonging to the local area; it was also completely different from any known city in the country."

"Later, after this matter became a big deal, it was debunked as post-production editing. The reason given was that the publisher did not respond, leading to the video being deleted, and experts also deemed it impossible."

Jiang Zhe's gaze swept across everyone present, and he smiled slightly:

"The interesting thing is, if it really were a natural phenomenon, is there any need to specifically debunk it?"

"Is the basis for the debunking based on technical appraisal proving the video was fake, or is it because it couldn't be explained, so it was simply labeled as fake?"

This was said sharply, and several scholars lowered their heads, lost in thought.

"Of the three above, the last one is somewhat controversial, but even so, it's just an appetizer."

"All three small cases share a common point: there are records, descriptions, and even evidence, but the prototype of the refracted scenery—cannot be found in the corresponding space-time location on Earth!"

As this series of words fell, Researcher Zhou, who had originally just asked a casual question, now had an unusually solemn expression.

He hadn't expected that a casual question he asked would cause Jiang Zhe to treat it with such seriousness.

He sat upright on the sofa, his gaze stern, not discussing with anyone, listening more attentively than anyone else!

"Alright, the small cases are finished. Next, let's look at a few more stimulating mirages!"