Chapter 118: When science is added to the magic bullet

The Periodic Table of Elements is something that junior high school students know, and it can even be said to constitute the underlying logic of how the vast majority of civilized people in the 21st century understand the world.

For this kind of thing built on cognition, Gulping Down the Chemical Pool had always used it as common sense, but never thought about how to prove it.

Speaking of which, does this thing need to be proven?

And how to prove this thing in the game? Don't know if it was arranged by the developer on purpose, in order to test the limits of the physics engine, this Miranda was like a piece of chewing gum, following him, following him wherever he went, squatting beside him when he went offline, and even if he disappeared for a while, he would suddenly pop out and scare him.

Never expected that the first time he was targeted by a stalker was in a game, and he was targeted by an NPC.

Gulping Down the Chemical Pool was crying without tears for a while, and even started to regret the show-off he spent two days installing.

If it weren't for the fact that there weren't many contribution points, he would have wanted to just give a head to the resurrection point! Gulping Down the Chemical Pool thought about it and there was only one possibility, the game's development team was probably targeting him, so they used the game mechanism to force him to test the game's physics engine.

Since that's the case, hiding doesn't seem to make much sense, so it's better to just obey the dog planner, maybe he can mix a reward or something.

And he didn't believe it.

This broken game can restore one or two physical phenomena with code, but can it restore all physical and chemical principles in reality?! If it's really that awesome, how should magic be explained?

With a decision in his heart, Gulping Down the Chemical Pool stopped and looked back at the ghost following closely behind.

"Since you are sincere and want to learn, I can teach you... but I don't have tools on hand now, you have to give me some time."

Miranda nodded in surprise.

"No problem! You can prepare as long as you want! I can also help you!"

He now completely regarded this skeleton soldier in front of him as a teacher.

Gulping Down the Chemical Pool nodded approvingly, and after leaving a sentence "Follow me", he left Mist Town and walked toward Iron Yacheng on the third layer of the labyrinth.

Some experiments are not convenient to do in Mist Town, firstly there are no tools, and secondly there are too many unrelated people there.

He was afraid of causing trouble again, alarming the Demon King, and finally having contribution points and favorability deducted, which was really not worth it.

As for Iron Yacheng, there were no such concerns.

That place was the headquarters of the I Think Group, not only with a bunch of ready-made garbage to pick up, but also a group of younger brothers who could help him scavenge outside and help him process parts.

It took about half a day to collect materials, and Gulping Down the Chemical Pool took the bottles and cans picked up by the Mole-men and walked to a corner that didn't get in the way.

Miranda followed closely behind him.

Both were undead, no monsters would be interested in them, and experiments could basically be done outside the settlement.

Looking at Miranda following behind, Gulping Down the Chemical Pool stopped and the soul fire in his skull flickered with a serious light.

"First of all, you already understand that this world is composed of 118 elements, right?"

"Hmm!" Miranda nodded, "What I want to know is how you prove this point."

When he said this, he immediately added another sentence.

"Of course, I didn't ask you to prove the existence of all 118 elements at once... at least I want to know what that so-called 'difference between gas and gas' is about."

Everything has to be done step by step.

Being able to prove the limitations of the six basic elements is already a breakthrough progress. Before determining "what it is", he was more eager to figure out the question of "whether it is".

Looking at the thirsty-for-knowledge ghost, Gulping Down the Chemical Pool said.

"I will prove this to you, but before that, I have to popularize a basic concept with you..." Speaking of this, he paused for a moment, cleared his throat and continued, "In fact, these 118 elements can continue to be subdivided."

Miranda was instantly shocked.

"Can continue to be divided?!"

As the saying goes, leading half a step is a genius, leading ten steps is a lunatic, he now couldn't tell which one this skeleton in front of him belonged to.

And what shocked him even more was that, according to this skeleton soldier, the undead of the entire Necropolis knew this.

If this is really the case, then the Demon King who summoned these "not only have self-consciousness, but also have knowledge far beyond ordinary people" undead must be how powerful!

What is in front of him is just the lowest-level skeleton soldier!

Thinking of the man who saved him from under Novell's claws, Miranda only regretted that he ran too far because of fear at that time, and didn't have time to say a word to him until the end.

A bit afraid of that fanatical gaze, Gulping Down the Chemical Pool hurriedly explained.

"That's right, but don't think too much... we can't observe smaller ones, we can only guess their existence."

In fact, from the perspective of 21st-century technology, this statement is inaccurate.

But Gulping Down the Chemical Pool can be sure that if he introduces concepts such as quarks, leptons, propagators, etc., let alone this magic apprentice whose academic level is suspected to be Renaissance level, he himself, a half-baked coder, would probably be circled in.

According to the worldview background of this game, this world is probably not even born with scientific thinking.

And in the face of medieval-style dogmatism, even empiricism prevalent in the 17th to 19th centuries is suspected to be too advanced.

In short, in order to avoid this guy becoming a mad speaker, Gulping Down the Chemical Pool avoided deeper theories and only explained from a shallow perspective.

"In short, for the particles that make up the 118 elements, we call them 'elementary particles'."

"Elementary particles!!" Miranda thirstily remembered every strange word, like a dry sponge.

And Gulping Down the Chemical Pool carefully chose his wording and continued.

"In fact, elementary particles can continue to be divided, but that is still the field of philosophy for the time being. In short, you only need to have such a concept in your mind—our world is not just composed of six basic magic elements, but composed of 'atoms', and atoms can continue to be divided into smaller elementary particles..."

Rather than knowledge, this is a perspective of understanding the world. Just like the NPCs in the game world understand matter through objective natural phenomena such as wind, water, fire, earth, light, and darkness, while people in reality understand the world from another perspective.

Speaking of this, he took out a piece of rusty waste iron and a piece of charcoal from the experimental tools and displayed them in front of Miranda.

"If you explain these two items with the theory of magic elements, how do you explain them?"

Miranda looked at the objects in his hand for a moment and soon answered.

"Iron, like copper, belongs to the combination of earth element and fire element. In the process of casting, it needs to be combined with spells to guide the combination of elements. If you want it to rust, you have to apply wind element. Charcoal is more troublesome, it can be parsed as natural magic, or as a combination of earth element and water element, and finally integrated into fire element... Of course, we generally don't generate these complex and useless things through spells."

Air magic and wind magic are different ways of saying the same thing. Magicians born in the Academy are used to using the classical concept of "air system" to discuss academic issues, but when it comes to the concept of elements, they are still used to calling it wind element.

It is worth mentioning that the six-element theory is not constant. The earliest were the five basic elements of wind, thunder, water, fire, and earth.

With the passage of time and changes in people's cognition, wind and thunder merged into air, and the five basic elements became the four basic elements of air, water, fire, and earth. Added with life and death (Nether), they formed the earliest six basic elements.

As for the "modern" six basic elements of wind, water, fire, earth, light, and darkness, they are concepts born since the early Second Epoch when the "light" attribute was sanctified. Life and death are often discussed separately, rather than as one of the six basic elements.

"This is the problem. You study objective problems with subjective impressions, which is like carving a boat to find a sword... Of course, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this, it's just that our methods are completely different."

Gulping Down the Chemical Pool continued.

"We don't define matter by phenomena, but study matter itself directly. For example, iron is iron element, and the rusty iron in front of you is the product of the combination of iron element and oxygen element."

"Oxygen element... is a kind of wind element?" Miranda recalled what the skeleton soldier had said before and keenly proposed.

"You can understand it this way: under natural conditions, the individual oxygen element one can come into contact with mostly exists in the form of gas," he said, downing the chemical pool in one gulp before continuing, "and it is the gas I mentioned that possesses combustion-supporting functions... although its function is far more than just supporting combustion; it can also accelerate the oxidation of metals."

Therefore, understanding rusted iron as a combination of earth, fire, and wind elements is actually not wrong; the inability to understand this alternative perspective is perhaps one of the reasons why most players find it difficult to use magic.

Most people cannot imagine this process at all, and they wouldn't even consider the problem from this "tricky" angle.

However, after hearing this explanation from the ghost, One Gulp of Chemical Pool immediately understood what elemental magic was all about.

This is a spell system completely different from Nether Script.

Its existence serves the caster's cognition and is centered on the caster themselves. At the same time, this cognition is not just the cognition of the caster alone, but also the consensus of the vast majority of "conscious individuals" in the game world.

Iron comes from earth, is smelted by fire, and is corroded by wind... this is the consensus of the NPCs in the game world, or rather, the people in this era! It is the concept of "the thoughts of the masses" that Brother Ye Zhiqiu guessed.

However, now is not the time to discuss this.

Looking at the ghost whose face was full of surprise, One Gulp of Chemical Pool took out his experimental equipment and began his demonstration.

There was no need to demonstrate that oxygen and water cause iron to rust; what he wanted to demonstrate was filling a container with powder made from grinding rusted iron and charcoal, heating the mixture, and reducing the rusted iron back into pure iron.

Not only that—

He also used a glass flask and a tube to collect the carbon monoxide gas generated during this process and lit it with a flint in front of Miranda.

He was very careful during this process, terrified of causing an explosion.

Fortunately, his experiment did not explode this time, and even though he failed several times due to imprecise operations, he finally succeeded in lighting it.

So gas really can burn!!! Unlike One Gulp of Chemical Pool, who felt a sense of accomplishment, Miranda was as excited as if he had seen Saint Xisi descend to earth! Seeing Miranda excitedly leaning in to smell it, One Gulp of Chemical Pool was so startled that he reached out and slapped the back of his head.

As a result, the former smelled nothing, and the latter slapped nothing.

This guy is a ghost; he can't be touched, and naturally, he can't smell anything either.

"What are you doing?" Miranda asked, looking at One Gulp of Chemical Pool's actions in surprise and confusion.

One Gulp of Chemical Pool coughed and said.

"I wanted to say this stuff is poisonous... uh, I just remembered you're a ghost, poison can't kill you anyway."

Miranda: "Poisonous?! Why???"

One Gulp of Chemical Pool almost vomited blood.

"Are you a walking 'One Hundred Thousand Whys'!?"

Miranda was stunned for a moment and said subconsciously.

"'One Hundred Thousand Whys'... what is that?"

"... Anyway, it's poisonous, just remember that. As for why, you can research it yourself; I don't know either." One Gulp of Chemical Pool actually knew the answer, but he really didn't want to continue explaining.

Because once you explain this question, you have to involve the fact that humans are also composed of countless tiny things called "cells."

Forcibly ignoring that thirst for knowledge in those eyes, One Gulp of Chemical Pool pulled the topic back to the subject he wanted to discuss.

"In short, as you can see, 'Qi' and 'Qi' are also different; some Qi can burn, while some Qi can extinguish flames. You cannot explain this phenomenon with the simple six elements, so it can be concluded that the wind element can be further subdivided."

While speaking, One Gulp of Chemical Pool covered the burning flame with the waste gas produced after combustion; the flame flickered for a moment and quickly went out.

Miranda's eyes widened.

"This is?"

One Gulp of Chemical Pool smiled and said.

"Another product of the combination of oxygen and carbon elements; this time it's two parts oxygen and one part carbon. Unlike the previous 'carbon monoxide,' it is generally non-toxic, and at the same time, it can neither burn nor support combustion; it can be used to extinguish fires."

Actually, this experiment is not rigorous; it belongs to the category of shooting the arrow first and then drawing the target.

If he were to be serious, he couldn't even confirm whether the flame went out because of insufficient fuel or if it was truly extinguished by the high concentration of carbon dioxide. But this isn't a college entrance exam.

He only needed to make the ghost in front of him understand roughly what was going on.

Although he felt that what he was talking about was the most superficial knowledge, it sounded like a thunderbolt to Miranda, shaking him so much that he didn't recover for a long time.

It felt as if a door to a new world had been pushed open in his mind! What Imperial Archmage—

The lifelong study of his learning was actually not as good as a skeleton from the Great Graveyard! Unfortunately, One Gulp of Chemical Pool didn't know what he was thinking, otherwise, he would definitely have gloated for a while.

Lifting his skeletal arm to wipe the dust off his face, Brother One Gulp said.

"Are you satisfied now?"

Miranda nodded excitedly, but soon shook his head again.

"Oxygen and carbon... and iron, I know now. What about other elements? Is there any pattern between them? You must know, right?!"

"Holy crap!" One Gulp of Chemical Pool glared at him, "Are you addicted to listening now?!"

After saying that, without waiting for his plea, Brother One Gulp continued in an irrefutable tone.

"No, no, it's too much of a loss for me to give you free lessons every day; just to prove this stuff to you, I haven't done a single one of Lord Demon King's tasks!"

Miranda immediately asked.

"What task did Lord Demon King give you?"

One Gulp of Chemical Pool: "Capture adventurers! Female knights! Princesses!"

"Uh, this... can we change to another one?" Miranda said with some trepidation; having already caused a massive disaster, he really didn't want to harm anyone else.

One Gulp of Chemical Pool said regretfully.

"There's also killing monsters."

Miranda immediately said.

"That's no problem, I can help you."

One Gulp of Chemical Pool looked at him in surprise.

"Really?!"

"Of course," Miranda smiled slightly and said confidently, "Don't look at me like this... actually, I'm at least a Bronze-tier magic apprentice."

Actually, he was originally Black Iron-tier.

It was just that after completing Novier's ritual, the God of Chaos, in order to reward him for pleasing Him, had performed a sublimation on his soul.

Although it seems like bait now, for him personally, it could be considered a blessing in disguise.

One Gulp of Chemical Pool smacked his lips, thinking it was passable; at least he had gained a Bronze-tier thug.

Although he had more powerful robots he could use, those things couldn't be deployed in the labyrinth, and they were "crystal-devouring beasts" when they moved.

"Fine then... I'll give you four hours of lessons every day, and you take me to grind levels for eight hours, which means hunting magical beasts."

"Four hours?!" Miranda exclaimed, "Why so short?!"

One Gulp of Chemical Pool said irritably.

"Be content! Knowledge has a price! I haven't even charged you tuition yet!"

Thinking about this made him angry.

Having held the closed beta qualification for so long, although he hadn't made much money, he rarely did business at a loss.

Yet with this dead ghost, he had lost money right from the start!

A full three days just to do a physics and chemistry experiment that a middle school student could do, and he even specifically went online to buy a second-hand chemistry textbook.

Don't doubt it—

This must be the malice of the development team!

And the purpose was to have him cooperate in testing the game's physics engine.

However, having said that, he hadn't gained nothing in these three days.

At least in his understanding of magic, especially at the theoretical level, he might have even gotten ahead of Ye Zhiqiu.

Additionally, recruiting a Bronze-tier lackey was not bad, especially since this guy was a ghost mage with "physical immunity."

Just as One Gulp of Chemical Pool was thinking this, a deafening roar suddenly came from not far away.

It didn't sound like an explosion.

It sounded more like something heavy crashing to the ground.

"What's the situation?!"

One Gulp of Chemical Pool's heart skipped a beat, thinking that perhaps the prototype of "Crack No. 2" had malfunctioned; he didn't even care about the experimental equipment scattered all over the floor and hurriedly ran back toward the direction of Iron Yacheng.

Miranda followed closely behind him.

The two undead had just arrived at the gate of Iron Yacheng when they ran head-on into a group of screaming, fleeing mole-people and a humanoid monster that looked like it was built from clay!

The moment he saw that guy, Miranda exclaimed.

"Clay Golem?!"

One Gulp of Chemical Pool was also shocked.

"Monster siege?!"

Seeing the skeleton boss appear at the gate of Iron Yacheng, a group of mole-people immediately dove behind him as if they had found a savior.

"Boss! Help!!!"

"Help, help, help!!!"

"Holy crap?!" Looking at the mole-people diving behind him, One Gulp of Chemical Pool panicked and said, "Don't yell for help at me, use your magic energy guns to fight them!"

Why are these mole-people so useless?! Just as he was speaking, the sounds of battle came from afar; Bond, wielding a greatsword, had just knocked over a clay golem, only to be targeted by another golem soon after.

There were at least thirty clay golems gathered inside the Mechanical Temple in front of Iron Yacheng, and among them were even huge clay giants!

Yet there were very few on the mole-people's side who could contend with them; the only two experimental exoskeletons were brought out, but they were beaten dizzy due to a lack of combat experience.

Bond and several temple acolytes were soon trapped in a bitter battle.

And facing these golems, the engineering spiders of the Shadow Weaving Nest had no choice but to spit from afar, unable to do anything else but jump around in anxiety.

Arachto was not here.

As non-combat spiders, they had no combat power at all.

At this moment, a clay golem suddenly locked onto the skeleton soldier standing at the entrance of the Mechanical Temple and immediately charged toward him with heavy, dull steps.

One Gulp of Chemical Pool was startled and was about to turn and run, but saw Miranda raise his right hand; a wind blade whistled out and slammed into the clay golem's body.

"Boom—!"

The violent airflow raged! However, the clay golem took the hit head-on with its sturdy chest and stood in the chaotic airflow unscathed.

"Holy crap, are you useless—" One Gulp of Chemical Pool had just blurted out this sentence when he saw Miranda snap his fingers.

"Ignite!"

That was the most basic Black Iron-tier fire magic.

However, the moment the spell was released, an incredible scene occurred! The suddenly appearing flame flashed and vanished on the clay golem's chest, and immediately after, that chest, sturdy as a city wall, exploded like a lit gunpowder barrel with a deafening roar and eye-piercing firelight!

"Boom—!"

The shockwave of the explosion not only instantly destroyed that clay golem but even knocked over three others nearby.

The dust kicked up drifted more than ten meters away and soon filled half the hall, scaring all the mole-people into freezing on the spot.

It wasn't just the mole-people.

One by one, the clay golems also looked toward the center of the explosion, their dull foreheads faintly flickering with disbelief and fear.

Also looking at the scene in front of him in astonishment, One Gulp of Chemical Pool felt the scorching airflow passing through his ribs and said, dumbfounded.

"You, what did you do?!"

Miranda was clearly stunned as well.

He had just tried to apply what he had just learned, but he hadn't expected the effect to be so astonishing.

"I, I just did as you said, combined oxygen and carbon elements one-to-one, and combined them into that combustible gas... I think it was called 'carbon monoxide'?"

Although he couldn't understand what carbon monoxide was, he had already understood the concepts of carbon and oxygen elements, he could understand the one-to-one combination, and he understood the combustible gas... so he used it to replace the wind element and used it in the wind blade spell.

It was just that what he hadn't expected was that when he cast the ignite spell, the effect produced was not combustion but an explosion.

After hearing his explanation, One Gulp of Chemical Pool was even more completely dumbfounded.

This works too?!

Magic and science were organically combined at this moment, and in an instant, countless unimagined possibilities flashed through his mind!

Immediately afterward, those wild ideas acted like firewood, filling the soul fire burning fiercely in his skull.

Magic crystal cannons? That kind of "brute force creates miracles" stuff is simply weak!

The "I Think" Group will have its own black technology!

And as long as he doesn't make it public, no one else will be able to copy it!

That fanatical look made Miranda's heart tremble, and he couldn't help but take a step back.

However, One Gulp of Chemical Pool stepped forward and grabbed him, saying excitedly.

"That... the magic of filling a wind blade with carbon monoxide!"

"Teach me!"

(End of chapter)