[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies":3,"chapter-notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-chapter-128":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"chinese","Notes on Kraft Anomalous Studies",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},2283606,4467,"Chapter 128","notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-chapter-128",128,"\u003Cp>Thanks to Vichem, his skilled friend was also a master craftsman; only three days passed before a custom-made large pottery jar, with both smooth contours and reliable thickness, was delivered to the priest’s room behind the church.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Upon delivering the finished product, he assured them there was no need to worry about the man being talkative—craftsmen themselves were accustomed to guarding their secret techniques, and industry norms could be harsh, with an intense sense of secrecy.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Relying on Vichem’s repeated assurances of quality, the priest confidently added a generous amount of green vitriol powder.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“It’s been many days since I last saw William—I’ve never known him to fail to come personally for his wine.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“He needs time to turn a single piece of news into enough gold coins to last a lifetime—perhaps more. Give him time.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The main reason he couldn’t come was that the captain flatly refused to leave the ship, but the business dealings also consumed a great deal of time.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After the news spread, William began meeting frequently with intermediaries and peers, seeking introductions from church contacts and even probing whether the church had any interest in purchasing. The interpersonal dynamics and commercial mechanisms were too obscure for outsiders to grasp; this professional handled everything alone, leaving others with nothing to do but split the profits.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“We should produce a batch while they’re busy arguing over there—it’ll make our credibility stronger.” Kraft sealed the pottery container’s lid, plugged the filling port, and opened the room’s windows.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The glass bottle the priest used for wine was temporarily borrowed, propped up on a square block of wood to raise its height, ensuring the pottery’s curved neck could be inserted fully into the bottle’s base.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Too bad there was no tubing—make do with this; excess gas vents directly out the window. After all, no one would come knocking to discuss acidic gas effects on the atmosphere or rainfall for centuries.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Naturally, there were teammates whose experimental safety awareness lagged centuries behind.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Heating such a large pottery vessel to hundreds of degrees Celsius couldn’t be done with two candles, so they brought in a small furnace. Vichem hadn’t yet been able to craft a thermometer; carbon was added by feel, and temperature control depended entirely on luck.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Before we begin, I must reiterate one last time—if anything goes wrong...”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Run, right?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Correct. What if you get splashed by the liquid inside the bottle?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Wipe it off, then rinse with the big basin of clean water by the door?” After two days of relentless drilling, Father Adrian could now answer Kraft’s questions without hesitation.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Good.” Kraft nodded, lit the furnace. From past experience, even the best theoretical knowledge often failed in practice, especially when sudden danger struck. It was normal to freeze in place, let alone make mistakes—he hoped the priest would react in time.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The charcoal burned, flames licking the bottom of the jar; the room fell silent.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The two pulled up chairs and sat side by side, watching the jar’s base heat up. Nothing needed doing now—only waiting.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This wouldn’t be a quick process. After sitting a while, the priest grew restless; compared to the rapid distillation of alcohol, staring at a pottery jar showing no visible change felt like downloading something with no progress bar—boring and doubting.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He couldn’t believe the answer was so simple: just toss a mineral, neither rare nor common, into a jar, heat it, and turn water into a magical alchemical agent capable of eating through iron.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Long moments passed—then a few sluggish bubbles rose from the glass tube’s tip. The priest turned to Kraft in delight. The latter shook his head and added more charcoal to the furnace.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It was too soon—just air expanding and escaping. But at least it confirmed the apparatus was airtight.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As the priest began worrying whether the pottery could withstand even higher temperatures, the curved neck began spitting out a new wave of bubbles; they took a while to shift from intermittent to steady.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Afternoon sunlight streamed through the arched stained-glass window, falling on the square table where a blackened patch had formed two days prior. Inside the bottle the glassmaker had lovingly shaped for his wine-loving friend, a string of pearlescent bubbles rose steadily.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As they ascended, they shrank—some dissolved into the liquid, others released into the air.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A foul, pungent odor filled the room—most escaped out the window, the rest lingered, evoking thoughts of burning, rotting eggs, and other unpleasant things.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“It stinks.” The priest fanned his nose and mouth with his sleeve, but couldn’t dispel the smell—perhaps this was why many disliked alchemists.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Let’s step away for a moment.” The odor was worse than Kraft imagined, and inhaling too much was unhealthy.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He pulled Adrian to his feet and went downstairs to sample the priest’s new alcohol substitute—dried fruit snacks. These little treats could distract a drunkard from his bottle, if only temporarily, and add another layer of fat to his belly.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>When they returned to the second-floor room, half-full, the pottery jar had released its final few bubbles.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Using a glass rod, also sponsored by Vichem, they dipped a drop and touched it to an iron scrap they’d casually taken from the workshop—immediate dangerous hissing, gas bubbling with acid.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Adrian cradled the iron scrap like a sacred parchment, “God be praised—you’ve done it... you’ve done it!”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This was heavy—surely the weight of at least one full church hall.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Looks right.” Kraft, wearing gloves, carefully moved the glass bottle away; though not yet at fuming concentration, he dared not risk testing how strong it was, “But it’s not done—we need it stronger.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Next came heating: the glass curved-neck bottle released slow white vapor. After the volume shrank, they reintroduced the distilled green vitriol product until the liquid took on an oily appearance.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Adrian watched as Kraft operated, now wearing a bird-beak mask to avoid accidental splashes of acid mist.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Did you find a detailed manual, or did you dig this process straight out of the alchemist’s head?” Such precise, purposeful steps—unless that alchemist loved writing down precious knowledge word for word, this level of accuracy was impossible.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But as far as Adrian knew, to protect their secrets, those fellows wrote even more obscurely than heretics. After all, heretics needed to convert—they had to make their teachings understandable. Alchemists had no such need. They built walls of pure riddles, rivaling prophets and astrologers.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Neither. But I think this is how it works—could you pray for me?” Kraft used tongs to remove the fixed bottle, wiped its surface clean, and unexpectedly made a request he’d never made before.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Very well. May the Lord bless you—may your blessed hands never burn, and your favored vessels never crack.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“A bit too perfunctory.” Kraft sealed the bottle’s mouth with a glass stopper, then dripped wax over it. William and the priest’s goal had now been achieved.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But Kraft’s goal was only halfway complete.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Any other requests?” In high spirits, Adrian took the glass bottle and placed it in a box lined with straw, improving its appearance.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After all, prayers cost nothing—just a few words. For the sake of his impending wealth, he could spare a few more, without seriously violating his faith.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Kraft opened the wooden crate he’d brought and pulled out several glass instruments Adrian had never seen—delicate, fragile, unmistakably crafted by Vichem. Though still made of cloudy glass, their shapes were precise.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“The next part can’t withstand strong light.” He moved the table away from the window, to the opposite side of the room, and began assembling the apparatus.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Now, pray I don’t blow this up.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Forgive me for asking, Kraft—what exactly are you making?” The question wasn’t idle; Adrian had a bad feeling, and the spot burned by glass began to throb again.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Something that knocks a man unconscious instantly.” Once assembled, Kraft retrieved the smallest wine bottle from the cabinet—the one the priest had spent the most time on but hated the most, too concentrated to retain any wine’s flavor, utterly unpleasant to drink. “Borrow half a bottle. You can’t drink it now, right?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Under the priest’s terrified gaze, fresh green vitriol oil was poured into the round-bottomed flask, while the wine was added through a delicate, long-tailed funnel with a precision knob, threaded through the stopper into the bottle.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Assuming everything was correct, the procedure now should involve slowly dripping alcohol into the flask while heating it to a precise temperature.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Now, “a precise temperature” was truly required—not too high, not too low, around 130–140 degrees. Kraft could recall this from memory. But without a thermometer, hitting that mark was pure superstition.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>No matter how well Kraft understood the theory, he’d never taken more than a few chemistry lab classes. Manual temperature control was simply too much to ask of him.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“I’m joking. Besides prayer, I need you to do something else—control the heat.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Leave the professional work to the professional. Here stood a man who, for years, had manually controlled candle-heated alcohol distillation without water baths—a temperature-control prodigy.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Yes, I’m talking about you, Father Adrian.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As is well known, in the other world, some claimed hand-forged iron pots had souls and could cook soulful dishes. Soul-devouring creatures praised this primitive, inefficient, experience-based method, convinced it achieved subtle effects no electronic instrument could replicate.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Kraft, of course, rarely cared for such notions—but he admitted that some people, after years of repetition, could achieve effects machines couldn’t. When desperate, he was willing to try—just to get by.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Previously, craftsmen handcrafted soulful products; today, Father Adrian heats manually, cools the gas neck manually with ice water—how could such soulful craftsmanship not produce ether?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“It’s like this—slightly above boiling water temperature, not too high, just enough to produce a colorless liquid.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“You’re sure?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“I’m sure.” Kraft looked at Adrian with hope. One final step remained—cross it, and the horizon would open wide. Volumes of academic knowledge waited for this artisan to perform miracles, bridging centuries in a single step into this wilderness.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Minutes later.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Get down!”\u003C\u002Fp>",1667,"2026-06-20T02:15:55.761Z",1,"Qwen3-Next 80B","6e12a5268c679aac09e2cfe088822a1048b35a79c31c540db79ff223a60854da","notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-chapter-129","notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-chapter-127",406,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fnotes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-cover.jpg"]