Chapter 17: Anticipation

"However... it's truly incredible. It is clearly gold of extremely high purity, so why can 'Essence Gold' be refined from it? Moreover, although the density is very high, the mass is nearly half of what it was before. Where did the other substances and mass go? And what are those impurities?"

Although the process of refining Essence Gold was very "Cultivation-like," it was not "scientific" at all, and not even "Wizard-like."

Jie Ming picked up the stone cauldron and checked it carefully, confirming that no substances remained inside.

He also used the Magic Net terminal to detect the amount of waste gas and material processed by this laboratory just now. Although quite a lot of "impurities" had disappeared as black smoke, even adding the mass of that waste gas, there was still a significant amount of mass that had vanished into thin air during the refining process.

"It is truly... a phenomenon that makes one feel curious."

If he had encountered this situation simply in the Cultivation World, Jie Ming might not have been so interested, but this was the Wizarding World. Judging from the knowledge learned from the basic alchemy manual, the material structure of the Wizarding World was similar to his previous life; they were all composed of various fundamental particles.

Therefore, theoretically speaking, even if something like gold were purified to the limit, it could only be "gold." The possibility of refining a substance like Essence Gold from it did not exist.

However, now was not the time to study these things. If it were just to verify whether the refining method could truly refine Essence Gold, Jie Ming would not have spent such a great price.

After all, just renting the laboratory had already consumed most of his remaining credit balance. What he needed to do now was to use this bit of Essence Gold to break even or even earn an extra profit to obtain his initial startup capital.

Thanks to the Wizarding World's extreme regard for knowledge, as long as Jie Ming was not stupid enough to sell the raw materials directly, no one would dare to delve into things like the production process or principles.

As for how to cash in, the original Jie Ming had planned to do it slowly, but just now, while "surfing the web," he had found a quite good "sales channel."

He came to the Magic Net terminal on the laboratory wall and entered a command to connect to the academy's internal Magic Net.

Jie Ming used his spiritual sense to search for material information related to "stability," "isolation," "anti-magic," and "anti-detection."

The search results jumped out immediately.

Various types of isolation materials did indeed exist in the academy's internal database. They were widely used in laboratory protection, sensitive area shielding, storing precious items, and even the manufacture of certain special equipment.

And what surprised Jie Ming most was that these types of materials were not only expensive but, in a sense, could be considered semi-consumables.

Data showed that although basic isolation materials were very cheap, those high-tier isolation materials were ridiculously expensive, and some more special materials required astronomical credits to redeem!

Because they often needed to conduct various messy experiments, the wizarding system seemed to have a great need for these materials that could resist various energy and spiritual sense erosions. And because accidents often led to excessive wear and tear, they even belonged to the category of consumables, with huge demand.

"Haha... Hahahaha..." Jie Ming couldn't help but laugh wildly in his heart.

His "Essence Gold" had properties so stable that it was almost unaffected by any energy. Even compared to the isolation materials in the database, it could be considered a high-tier product.

As for the cost, if one deducted things that were hard to measure, like knowledge from other systems, it was just the consumption of gold, the laboratory rental, and labor costs.

The laboratory aspect could not be saved; it cost at least five credits each time, but this was already within his previous planning. Labor costs could be ignored, and as for the remaining gold cost...

Jie Ming checked the price of buying gold directly on the Magic Net, and his face couldn't help but twitch: "One credit can exchange for one cubic meter of non-supernatural metal... Holy cow!"

Although gold was precious in the eyes of ordinary people, for wizards, it was still within the range of non-supernatural metals.

"So... is this the feeling of mastering core technology? It is truly fascinating!"

After the excitement, Jie Ming immediately started calculating.

He did not need to refine a large amount of Essence Gold; that would consume too much True Essence, and if the effect as an isolation material were too good, it would also attract attention.

He only needed to refine a small amount of Essence Gold and then use alchemy's adhesion technology to "plate" this layer of Essence Gold onto an ordinary metal base to endow it with powerful isolation properties.

This Essence Gold plating consumed very little True Gold compared to pure Essence Gold blocks, and the effect would not be overly excessive.

Thinking to continue, no longer hesitating, Jie Ming simply and cleanly spent his last bit of points to buy one cubic meter of white iron.

This was a very common metal material; its attributes in all aspects were quite ordinary, but it had high plasticity and was the base material for various alloys.

As the laboratory door was knocked, Jie Ming opened it to see a silver-white golem carrying a huge iron block standing outside the door.

Directing the golem to place the white iron in the center of the laboratory, Jie Ming watched the golem merge back into the silver-white wall of the corridor outside the laboratory.

White iron, just like its name, had an overall color leaning towards white.

Jie Ming took out the alchemy disc, placed it upside down on the white iron block, closed his eyes, focused his mind, and mobilized the Truth Rune deep in his spiritual sea.

More than half a month had passed since the first class, and Jie Ming had also constructed a second Truth Rune in his spiritual sea.

As an apprentice of alchemy, the core pattern of the second Truth Rune represented the concept of "fusion" in alchemy, which was also the main reason why Jie Ming only started acting today.

What Jie Ming had to do was also very simple: the main body of the material was white iron; he would make the vast majority of the white iron into standard-sized iron sheets, while the Essence Gold would be fused with the white iron and used as a thin film "plated" on the surface of the iron sheets using alchemy.

As for selling, it was even simpler. The laboratory's Magic Net terminal had a function to list products for sale. Wizards in need would buy them directly from the web, and the proceeds would be automatically transferred to Jie Ming's account.

However, before selling, these items still needed to pass the academy's testing to confirm their specific properties and isolation levels before they could be sold.

But these things had nothing to do with Jie Ming. He just handed all the products and the original test samples to the golem outside the laboratory, and for the rest, he just needed to wait.

He glanced at the time; there were still a few minutes left before the laboratory usage time ended.

He destroyed the stone furnace he had fashioned, cleaned up all traces, and ensured that this low-tier laboratory was restored to its original state.

The moment he walked out of the laboratory door, Jie Ming felt somewhat physically weak due to the large amount of alchemy, but his spirit was exceptionally excited.

"My initial idea was correct. The knowledge in the Great Dao Library regarding artifact refining, talismans, and arrays... once I find suitable materials and methods to realize them in this world, I will become the wealthiest alchemist in the Wizarding World!"

He seemed to see countless credits and rare resources beckoning to him.

(Extra update today, one more chapter to go.) ===== CHAPTER 18 =====