The problem of the tilting hovercar was not a setback; it was a fascinating new challenge, a puzzle that Ren and Xianyun tackled with a shared, enthusiastic, and brilliant, synergy.
"The issue is that the propellers are all working as one," Ren explained, pointing to his new, hastily drawn schematics on a large piece of parchment. "We need to give each one its own… brain. A way to think for itself."
Their first step was to install a small, incredibly precise, gyroscopic balancer on each of the four main propeller units. These were small, spinning, adeptal-infused discs that Xianyun crafted, each one capable of sensing the slightest, most infinitesimal, change in angle or orientation.
Next, came the genius of the design. They created a central "communicator," a crystalline hub that was connected to each of the four individual gyroscopes. This communicator acted as the master brain, receiving a constant stream of information from each propeller about its current angle.
"Now," Ren said, his eyes gleaming with the excitement of a new idea, "we give them the ability to move."
He and Xianyun worked to redesign the propeller housings, giving each one the ability to tilt, just a few, crucial degrees, in any direction. They then assigned, through a series of complex, inscribed runes, a set of standard, pre-calculated, tilt angles for each directional movement.
If the car was to move forward, the communicator would instruct the two rear propellers to tilt slightly upwards, and the two front ones to tilt slightly downwards, creating a perfectly balanced, forward thrust without dipping the nose of the car. The gyroscopes would then constantly, in real-time, make millions of tiny, microscopic adjustments to these angles, ensuring the car remained perfectly, flawlessly, level at all times. They even added safety protocols, a maximum angular limit that would prevent the car from ever tilting too far and becoming unstable.
With the problem of balance and forward movement solved, Ren then turned his attention to the steering, a detail that had been bothering him from a deep, almost instinctual, place in his memory.
"The lever," he said, looking at the simple, boat-like tiller. "It's not… right."
He remembered the feeling from his past life, the intuitive, satisfying feel of a steering wheel in his hands. He explained the concept to Xianyun, and together, they scrapped the lever-based system and built a new one. They created a circular, comfortable steering wheel, directly in front of the driver's seat. Turning the wheel to the right would now send a command to the communicator, which would then precisely angle the eight smaller, directional propellers, pushing the car into a smooth, graceful, and perfectly stable, right turn.
The final piece of the puzzle was the forward and backward movement. He kept the idea of a lever, but he moved it from the main console to the side of the driver's seat, in the exact spot where the gear shift of a car from his old memories would be. Pushing the lever forward would engage the forward propulsion. Pulling it back would engage the reverse. And the middle, neutral position, would leave the car in a state of perfect, silent, hovering stillness.
It was a perfect, beautiful, and deeply, wonderfully, familiar, fusion of his past and his present. He had taken the impossible, magical technology of this new world and had given it the familiar, intuitive, and deeply satisfying, soul of the world he had left behind. The hovercar was no longer just a flying machine; it was becoming a true, proper, and utterly, wonderfully, impossible, automobile.