Chapter 246: Experiment

This is an era where knowledge is exceedingly precious; the Church has not yet become generous enough to allow outsiders free access to its library, so the task of consulting documents still falls to Father Green.

By the time the professor left, the priest had barely opened the first few pages of his long-neglected heraldry book, preliminarily studying the basic patterns and combinations in preparation for reading the original documents—still hours of all-nighters and a receding hairline away from practical application.

As for the task of tracing the king's eighteen generations of ancestry, that was even farther off. For secrecy's sake, only he could handle it.

Yet Father Green was an outstanding graduate of the Church school, and Kraft held optimistic views about his learning ability, believing he would deliver satisfactory progress before Kraft's own pre-experiment was complete.

Yes, a pre-experiment.

The absence of ideal conditions does not mean one must sit idle; conducting small-scale exploratory experiments is entirely feasible.

Of course, not in the clinic. Below were outpatient and ward rooms; next door was the kitchen and dining hall—there wasn't even a decent basement. Kraft was not mad enough to attempt dangerous operations in such a place.

He needed a relatively safe, sturdy location where no one would disturb him.

This was not easy to find. The professor hesitated all the way, then suddenly remembered the title appended to his name—he immediately returned to the university and claimed a laboratory.

Given that the Inquisition occasionally wandered about, severely disrupting the medical college's normal order, everyone had moved away objects suspected of violating regulations.

After this clearance, nothing remained. The upper-floor laboratories near the main building stood eerily empty; even rats would shake their heads.

But one person with a different situation noticed this blind spot.

"No, I'm not involved in any human experiments—just research on physical property changes," he explained to the administrator, which was in fact true, "No need to worry about Inquisition inspections."

—Consider it a visit to check on a colleague's progress.

Kraft, accompanied by Kup, moved his belongings into the newly assigned space—one of the largest areas, second only to the burned-out dome hall.

Yi Feng insisted on coming along, taking charge of carrying a heavy crate of equipment, and as expected, when she pulled items out, she tensed too hard and shattered two pieces. Glassware, limited by craftsmanship and not yet thin enough, was as fragile in her hands as breakfast eggs.

Seeing she was already clearly dejected, Kraft wisely removed a zero from the original price and urged her not to mind such small things.

Even after successfully relocating and rearranging the tables, the girl could not shake off her gloom—a sense of failure, "I accomplished nothing," followed her back to her reading.

"Perhaps Yi Feng should be temporarily kept away from these things; after all, her condition is unusual," Kup advised. He knew part of Yi Feng's illness—at least the visible changes.

Kraft watched Yi Feng descend the stairs, board the carriage back to the clinic, then turned and carried a table back to its original position. "No. The more such moments arise, the more she needs something to do—even if the task itself is meaningless."

"We must give her the confidence that 'I'm already doing well,' not pressure to achieve short-term results—that would push her toward a direction we don't want."

"Besides, Yi Feng is already doing very well. At her age, I was scheming to skip class and go catch birds in the woods, while she already has a strong sense of future planning."

"You skipped class?" Something significant had been inadvertently revealed.

"Never successfully. After all, my teacher only taught two people." No one could vanish without a trace on Old Wood's territory; the usual consequence of capture was traditional discipline.

"Let's get started quickly. As the saying goes: start early, finish early, eat early."

Kraft leaned out the window, confirming no elevated vantage points could observe this area, then half-closed the shutters and arranged the vessels on the table.

The most important experimental material was locked in an iron box; nestled in cotton padding was a small, transparent wax-sealed glass vial.

Crystalline granules inside the vial rolled and rubbed against each other, emitting a faint sound like a horned viper slithering through desert sand—like a jar of whispering black salt.

Kraft gently shook the vial, leveling the surface, then compared it to the engraved height line and used tweezers to pick out a larger grain, placing it into a large round-bottom flask.

He first tried slow heating via water bath; even when the water boiled, the crystal showed no change, completely ruling out the possibility of melting at body temperature.

Switching to candle flame heating, the sample remained unmoved, like a true grain of sand or salt, only dyed an extremely pure black—appearing as if a needle had pierced a hole in space.

Next, various solvents—pure water, acid, alkali, oil—were tried in turn, none effective. This was expected; if it could be dissolved so easily, there would be no need to transform it into a liquid.

The physicochemical properties of black salt were remarkably stable, fitting squarely into the category of "impurities."

This was good: if leaked into nature, it would settle steadily rather than liquefy casually and spread everywhere via the water cycle.

"We must go further," Kraft said, having struggled twice to fish the grain out of the oil. "We need to simulate its contact with biological matter."

"Should we feed it to the rabbit?"

The rabbit had been requisitioned from the kitchen—one of the chef's market trophies that morning. When the need for experimental animals arose, Kup's favor had granted it extra life—but now that luck seemed exhausted.

"Not yet. And I don't want to spend hours later searching its digestive tract for a black grain. Let's take blood first."

The professor skillfully pricked a drop of blood from the rabbit's ear tip, scraped it onto a glass slide, and dripped it onto the black granule to observe. The animal, unaware of its impending end, remained focused on its treat of vegetable leaves, emitting only a soft grunt when pierced.

Under the close gaze of two pairs of eyes, the red droplet slowly dried and solidified at room temperature, forming a thin film over the crystal grain—nothing happened.

Kraft blinked, moistening his dry sclera with tears.

The rabbit's ear suffered another wound, contributing its second blood sample. The result was clear: the sample showed no noticeable reaction to blood.

A faint, not-so-subtle gurgle from Kup reminded him of time passing—he sheepishly covered his stomach and asked not to mind this small accident, but the approaching mealtime was undeniable.

"Alright, today's attempts are over. No change is also a result—it proves we don't need to worry too much about it."

Once again, Kraft extended the tweezers, preparing to place the crystal into a separate test tube for storage until tomorrow.

But the grain slipped from his grasp, rolled back onto the glass slide, spun a few times, nearly falling into a crack between the wooden tabletop—only the experimenter's quick reflexes saved it.

Kraft tried again; his nimble hands finally sensed the increased difficulty in handling it.

He set up two surgical mirrors, reflecting sunlight onto the crystal for closer inspection. The once-sharp crystalline edges, clearly defined during formation, now seemed subtly dulled.

"When?"