Volume 5: Taming the Beast Chapter 3: A Love Affair (Part 1)
If I had known that Xian Ge Yayi's so-called "good idea" was to let me once again bring mountains of quartzite jade to grind lenses, I would never have thought of using a telescope to help him improve his eyesight from the beginning.
The short-sighted Elf Ranger seemed very confident in his speculation. He spent almost every penny he had and bought a large amount of alchemical raw materials and ingredients for refining glass. I always thought that he didn't need to spend so much money to verify a hypothesis. One third of the materials would be enough. However, Xian Ge Yayi replied helplessly with a depressed look on his face:
"Just spend it all you can. If you stay here, Feiyin will exploit you sooner or later anyway."
I really can't think of any sufficient argument to refute him.
After buying all the necessary items, we came to the laboratory in Edgwell and started this frustrating and boring work again.
The so-called "frustrating" and "boring" are only for me. You know, in order to make the "telescope", I have repeatedly studied in this small and dilapidated laboratory, almost grinding down the entire mountain by myself. Only the omnipresent and omniscient Supreme God Darimos can understand the hardship and boredom. Now let me face this magic furnace that looks like a large coffin again. It is difficult for me not to have a strong psychological shadow. I only feel that the road ahead is endlessly dark, making me desperate and wanting to die. I just want to put myself in it and melt it together with the raw materials for refining glass.
But the heartless elf ranger did not understand my distress at all. His first visit to the alchemist's house made him very curious about everything around him. He ran to Mr. Edgwell excitedly and almost put his whole face against my teacher's nose. Only then did he vaguely see his appearance, and then he immediately spit in his face in astonishment:
"Pfft... Einstein ? He's the one who taught alchemy?!"
Xian Ge Yayi obviously mistook my teacher for another weird old man with a gaunt face, messy hair, bright eyes and a nervous look. I have to admit that if an old man possesses all of the above characteristics at the same time, then they do not look that different.
Xian Ge Yayi lay on the table, watching Edgwell doing his explosion experiment with great interest. She was completely unaware that danger had come and was still asking him all kinds of strange questions without knowing whether he would live or die:
"Hey, Jeff, what's in this?" He grabbed a small bottle on the table that was filled with small black granular objects, pinched out one and played with it while asking me the question.
"Rat feces." I turned around and saw this overly curious elf ranger licking my teacher's biological catalyst on his tongue.
"Ah, bah, bah, bah, bah..." Xian Ge Yayi hurriedly threw the rat feces in her hand back onto the table, then pointed at a tool the size of a washbasin under her feet and asked me, "Then... what is this used for?"
"That's a small-sized rotary rotor solid pulverizer, which can grind large hard objects into powder. Generally speaking, we call it a grinding wheel." I didn't stop working for a moment and only looked back.
"Then what is this?" Xian Ge Yayi grabbed another small gadget on the table and said.
I was annoyed by his frequent and boring questions, but I still patiently explained to him: "Mr. Edgwell calls this thing a molecular polymer of calcium carbonate and silicon dioxide, but generally speaking, we usually call it 'stone'..." I shook my head helplessly and said to him unhappily, "...Although your eyesight is not very good, you should recognize this thing, right?" I really couldn't understand where his strong curiosity came from.
After hearing my impatient words, Xian Ge Ya Yi finally quieted down. He was walking around the laboratory, looking at a tool with great interest for a long time, as if he could find some special interest in it that I couldn't see. However, his silence didn't last long. After a while, he couldn't help but ask again:
"Jeff, I promise this is the last question. I just can't understand why your teacher's face looks so dark."
"This is because... ah, be careful!"
"Boom!" Before I could finish my sentence, Mr. Edgwell's experimental table suddenly exploded as expected. A ball of fire and thick smoke burst out, enveloping Xian Ge Yayi who was leaning over to observe carefully.
When the smoke cleared, Mr. Edgwell looked around cheerfully, then said with his signature simple smile, either to himself or to my elf ranger friend, "Don't worry, it's just a small accident."
"...Now you know why his face is always so dark, right?"
Xian Ge Yayi's face was covered in grease. He took a deep breath, blew out a cloud of black smoke in a panic, and nodded woodenly.
This small accident did not reduce my work efficiency. For me, who once had a mental breakdown in front of the magic furnace to make a telescope and whose alchemy was about to reach level 7, the production and purification of glass can almost be regarded as a simple physical labor, although it is tedious. It does not present too much technical difficulty. Before long, the ore and other materials bought by Xiange Yayi turned into small pieces of "pure glass".
The real headache is the grinding of the lenses. What Xiange Yayi needs are two concave lenses that are thin in the middle and thick around the edges. Unlike making a telescope by looking at a blueprint, I don't know what shape I need to grind the lenses to be successful. All the criteria are based on the very subjective personal judgment of my elf friend. Every time I polish a finished lens, he will hold it in front of one eye, squint the other eye, and look out through the lens. His blank eyes are like a pool of stagnant water, unable to gather any lively light. Then he will shake his head in disappointment and ask me to grind the lens a little thinner - until the lens breaks and becomes scrapped during my continuous processing.
I don't know if it's because the improvement of my alchemy level has enabled me to grow my ability to control matter, or because the long-term operation of grinding lenses has made me more adept at this job. In any case, fortunately, I found that my success rate in grinding lenses has improved significantly. I no longer clumsily slam a whole piece of glass on the grinder and directly plane it into pieces. Instead, I can adjust the grinding angle lightly, find a delicate touch in the slight touch, and make the glass in my hand undergo subtle changes bit by bit.
It was a magical feeling, although in fact the glass had not changed much, it had only become slightly thinner in a subtle way, and no one would notice its change even if they held it in front of their eyes. However, the feeling of my fingers was becoming more and more precise, and even the most subtle changes in the lenses could not be hidden from its increasingly sensitive sense of touch.
With Xian Ge Ya Yi's repeated adjustments, the lenses I tried to make became thicker and thicker, even thicker than my shield, but it seemed that Xian Ge Ya Yi felt that they were still a little too thin. I don't know how thick a concave lens he needs, but I think if he only uses this thing as a tool to improve his vision, it would be a bit of a waste - if he can make this lens bigger and completely cover his little face, I think this glass mask may be more protective than a solid steel helmet.
When I was grinding telescope lenses before, I discovered some strange phenomena: looking at objects through a convex lens makes them look bigger, while looking through a concave lens makes them look smaller. But now it seems that this little principle has no effect on these thick lenses in my hands. Through these lenses that are as thick as a wall, I can only see a dizzying chaotic world. Large patches of blurred colors flow with the changes of light and shadow, stirring into a distorted and turbid terrible world, which makes people feel headache. I think it is simply a great tool for self-abuse. If you wear it on your eyes, even if you do nothing, you may faint and die. Now someone tells me that relying on it can "improve your eyesight"? ! I can only say: this world is so big that it is possible to meet all kinds of strange people.
After hundreds of failed trials, to be honest, I have completely lost confidence in our attempts. The reason I continued was, firstly, because my ranger friend seemed to be very fascinated and interested in this matter, and I didn't want to spoil his fun; secondly, I found that in the process of constantly grinding the lenses, my alchemy skills were also slowly improving - since it was not my money, I could just consider it as free skill training - I felt sorry for taking advantage of Xian Ge Yayi, but at the same time I couldn't help but feel secretly happy for getting such a good thing that didn't cost me any money.
