Chapter 40 Application Problem Training·Part 1
The next day.
The morning general alchemy course ended.
In the afternoon there is an alchemy branch course.
Anruer wants to learn oil alchemy in the oil alchemy area.
Xia Zuo walked into the poison alchemy area alone.
"Professor, I'm here."
Kulov put down the wordless book in his hand and said to his only student:
"There is a military report on Rossak Province on the desk. Take a look. It has something to do with you."
Xia Zuo was startled, walked to the table, picked up a two-finger-wide letter bag, and poured out a stack of documents wrapped in hard leather.
The signature on the cover is a familiar name:
Pieck Fortress, First Clerk, Lieutenant Wilson.
Wilson is a middle-aged man with a scar on his face.
The first time I met him was in a high-end pub. That day, Audrey rarely wore a slit dress.
I don’t know how the circus’s business is lately...
Several pictures appeared in front of Xia Zuo's eyes. The look of recall only lasted for a few seconds before he settled down to read the military report.
Piek Fortress gathered troops and thoroughly swept away the rogue bandits in the territory, then crossed the border and advanced southward.
There is no other country to the south of the kingdom, only great wilderness, endless forests and mountains.
The main enemy of the army is the bandit forces that have been entrenched there for a long time.
Thirteen bandit dens and a sizable slave town were destroyed.
The opening and middle sections of the report state the casualties and spoils of each battle.
The second half lists in detail the sins and final fate of every sinful person.
Xia Zuo's parents died in a rogue robbery about two and a half years ago.
The murderer was a leader of a slave town and his three bands of bandits, all of whom had been sent to the guillotine.
After seeing the content on this page, Xia Zuo's expression became stiff and his thoughts surged.
This...is this...revenge for me?
If the real "Xia Zuo" were here, he might burst into tears?
Crying tears of joy and then kneeling down to pray for your dead parents?
No, if the real "Xia Zuo" hadn't been time-traveled by me, he would have died in a cave long ago, let alone enter Starry Night Academy...
Xia Zuo didn't know how to react for a moment. He held the military report tightly, his fingertips turned white and his hands trembled slightly. He could only mechanically read the words that the culprit should be punished over and over again, and in his mind There was a tangled mess that was getting tighter and tighter.
Kulov's voice sounded in the silent alchemy room:
"Seventy years ago, when I entered the academy in my first year, my tutor was Beatrice, the dean of the academy. She handed me a letter bag and whispered, 'The army of Sbrier Province has avenged you.' I know this When I heard the news, I had the same reaction as you.”
Kulov walked from the soft sofa to the desk and sat down. He said to the complicated-looking student:
"How similar you are now to me then..."
"cough"
He coughed lightly, changed the subject and said:
"Let's get back to business. Don't let time be wasted in sadness or other emotions. Doing so will have a negative impact on the spiritual ocean."
Xia Zuo stuffed the military report back into the letter bag, rubbed it hard on his stiff cheeks a few times, and raised his head to look at his mentor.
"Professor, what do you want?"
"The final exam for general studies will be in one month. How are you preparing?"
Kulov pointed to the chair opposite and asked the other party to sit down and talk.
Xia Zuo knew that his superior memory had spread throughout the school, and there was no need to hide anything anymore, so he answered straightforwardly:
"I have memorized all the knowledge points in the 25 textbooks."
"That alone is not enough."
Kulov shook his head slowly:
“Final exams are not like regular quizzes in class.
“There are not only multiple-choice questions, but also application questions involving alchemical operation experience.
"You have some talent and experience in poison alchemy, but that doesn't mean you have the same talent in other branches of alchemy."
Xia Zuo remained silent and stared at his mentor.
Since the other party would say this, he must have thought of a countermeasure.
After all, exams are not just a competition between students.
In Xingye University, the basic income of each professor comes from Ms. Xingye.
The professors train mages of the Alchemy School for Ms. Starry Night, and Ms. Starry Night provides them with financial and material support.
If professors want to earn more resources, they have to rely on the mage apprentices they have trained.
Therefore, the examinations within the school also involve the additional income that each tutor can earn in the future.
The better a student's test scores are, the higher his alchemy attainments will be, and he will get more teaching resources in the school, and the greater the chance of becoming a mage apprentice in the future.
The mage apprentice, as the name suggests, is just an apprentice, and he has to pay a price to learn things.
It's just that Starry Night Academy is very generous and allows the mage apprentices to learn first and then pay the tuition.
Before becoming an official mage, any mage apprentice must give back to his mentor.
After the Mage Guild was established at Starry Night Academy, every time the mage apprentices completed a bounty order and received rewards, they had to pay a small portion to their mentors.
Kulov has not yet set the rules in this regard, but the instructors of other alchemy branches have announced the commission details within the discipline.
For example, the Department of Pharmacy and Alchemy has the largest population.
It is divided into two disciplines.
Department of Injury Medicine and Tonic, Department of Functional Pharmacy.
The professor of functional medicine, the head of the school, Beatrice, will provide functional medicine to every student who goes out to do the bounty mission.
She will take 1% to 5% of the task reward as a commission.
The more mage apprentices he has, the more generous the total commission will be, and the more resources will come from outside the school.
Kulov originally had three students, but he drove away two of them, and now only Xia Zuo is left.
The extra income he will earn in the future is pitiful.
However, he himself seemed to be very uninterested in this income. It seemed that he had never thought of relying on a mage apprentice to enrich his pockets, and he never showed any worry about money on his face.
Could it be that he knew he couldn't fight and chose to lie down forever?
Kulov said nothing about this.
Xia Zuo never asked about it, just assuming that everyone's pursuits are different, maybe the other person just likes to meditate on a soft sofa...
Under the gaze of the students, Kulov pinched his beard and thought for a moment before saying:
“In this afternoon’s class, we are not learning about new poisons or identifying complex toxins.
"You have mastered the alchemy operations and identification methods of poison alchemy quite well.
"It's time to teach you the practical content of other alchemy branches."
He summoned a few books from the bookcase and let them float above the desk. "Are you sure you have memorized all these books?"
Xia Zuo glanced at the title of the book on the cover.
"Essentials of Potion Alchemy Operation"
"Injury medicine, supplements and human body structure"
"Oil Identification Guide"
These three books are textbooks for the general course examination.
"I'm sure I've memorized it all."
"Then let's start with oil alchemy. Come and help us move the poison bottle farther away."
Kulov stood up from his chair and turned his cuffs to his elbows as he walked toward the shelf.
[When refining toxins and poisons, you cannot use spells, nor can you let elemental servants do it for you]
This was what Kulov specifically told him in the first class.
Not only that, Kulov will be very cautious whenever it comes to toxins.
He refused to use magic to control the poison bottles to fly to the designated location, but moved them with both hands and a trolley, raising his hands with great care.
The two spent half an hour clearing a small area.
Then, Kulov walked into the storage room, walked out with a suitcase, and put it on the desk:
"The smell of oil is difficult to wash off. Once it gets stained, it will remain for a long, long time. You should pay more attention to it later."
He opened the cover of the suitcase and counted the oil bottles inside. "Smell them one by one and see how many bottles you can identify among these 30 bottles."
The basic textbooks on oil alchemy are "Comprehensive Solution to Oils", "Guide to Oil Identification" and "Blending of Oils".
There are 30 kinds of oils that you will come into contact with at the trainee level, all of which are highly volatile.
It evaporates faster when affected by light and temperature.
They need to be stored in brown or green glass bottles that are more light-proof, and some even have to be packed in special leather bags or iron cans that are completely opaque.
Unless the oil is poured out, its color and liquid form cannot be seen, and the best way to identify the oil is its smell.
The knowledge of identifying oils was learned in the oil alchemy course.
The teacher of this subject is Professor Zhuo Lang.
An old man with white hair and some bald spots on his head, usually wearing a pair of round-rimmed glasses. He is very funny and likes to joke with students.
When he first came to class, he made fun of the smell of oil on his body, calling himself a walking oil box.
However, all joking aside, Professor Zhuolang is very serious during class.
It took him more than three months to introduce all 30 common oils in detail.
Xia Zuo memorized the smells of these common chemicals in the oil science class, and now it is easy to distinguish them.
He throws a scrying spell at the oil bottle to know what's inside.
But he still honestly opened the cork of the bottle, put it to the tip of his nose and took a sip, then pretended to think for a few seconds, and then said the name of the bottle of oil.
Kulov nodded with a smile, "Very good. It seems that you have indeed memorized the knowledge of oil identification. Has Professor Zhuolang taught the book "The Blending of Oils"?"
Xia Zuo put the last oil bottle back into the suitcase and made sure it was firmly inserted into the groove of the cushion:
"Not yet. He just finished teaching "Guide to Oil Identification" this morning."
Kulov counted with his fingers, pondered for a few seconds and then said:
"This old guy is still as shrewd as ever. He happened to finish teaching "The Mixing of Oils" on the last day before the exam. I'll teach you this book in advance."
Xia Zuo heard his instructor's complaints about Professor Zhuo Lang and decided to pretend that he didn't hear it. He stared at the bottles and cans in the oil tank expressionlessly.
"Have you finished memorizing "The Mixing of Oils" too?" Kulov continued after seeing the students nodding:
“The difficulty of oil preparation lies in blending the oil.
"Professor Zhuolang may assign application questions related to blending oils on the test paper. It is estimated that it will be difficult for students in non-oil alchemy subjects to get full marks for such questions.
"Hmm... Let me think about it... He wants to make it less easy for students in other subjects to score, and at the same time, he wants to avoid being scolded by the head of the school for setting questions that are too difficult..."
Xia Zuo blinked at the meditative mentor and suddenly realized that he had a great advantage!
He is the only student in the poison alchemy subject.
This means that among the whole new students, he is the only one who can refine poison from time to time. Well, starting from tonight, there will be Anruer.
If the exam set by Kulov also included practical questions related to making poisons and identifying toxins, then he and Anruer would have scored much higher than others.
Of course, the word problems set by Kulov will not be difficult.
It is necessary to allow students who are thoughtful and qualified in alchemy operations to get higher scores to distinguish them from other students. This is the real purpose of setting application questions.
Each exam should have similar question ideas.
Kulov thought for a moment, then clapped his hands and said:
"Well, let's start with the oil alchemy exam questions from previous years. Professor Zhuo Lang can't assign the same exam questions, but you can practice with past questions and accumulate experience in blending oils."
He walked into the storage room again and took out a large suitcase. After rummaging through it, he took out two wooden boards of different materials.
"The lighter one is pine and the darker one is fir. They are the most common wood used for houses."
Kulov pointed to the two boards in turn:
"The wooden houses in the northern part of the kingdom will use pine wood, because the air here is drier and pine wood has better resistance to drying. The air in Rosak Province is humid, so cedar wood that is not prone to mold is used there, and its moisture content is also higher than More pine.”
Kulov picked up a wooden board in each hand, "These two types of wood have a common problem. They are not fireproof. We have to use oil alchemy to solve this problem. Do you have any ideas?"
Xia Zuo subconsciously looked at the fire retardant oil in the oil tank.
Different from the edible fire-retardant oil used in fire-breathing performances, the bottle of fire-retardant oil in the box in front of you cannot be taken orally, sucked in the mouth or smeared on the body.
Kulov followed the student's gaze and looked over:
"Fire retardant oils are expensive, aren't they? The price of one bottle is worth the lumber needed to build half a house.
“When doing multiple-choice questions, you can use fire retardant oil as an option for this question.
“But in word problems, you lose points because it’s expensive.
"To apply fire-retardant oil to a ten-square-meter cabin will consume more than a dozen bottles of fire-retardant oil, with a total value of more than 20 gold coins, which is very uneconomical.
"Do you have any other ideas?"
Xia Zuo scratched his cheek and racked his brains to recall what he had learned in his previous life.
It's a pity that he is not a graduate of chemical engineering or materials science... The ideas that come to his mind are more like conjectures and guesses.
He struggled for several minutes, then finally gave up on the scientific approach to fire protection and turned his attention back to alchemy and the tank.
There are three elements of combustion: combustibles, combustion-supporting materials, and ignition source or temperature.
This is a knowledge point from the basic textbook on the subject of giant creation - "Basics of Forging and Casting".
The wooden house itself is combustible, and its interior and exterior sides are filled with combustion-supporting air.
The fire retardant oil itself is non-flammable. It prevents the protected wood from direct contact with the air, that is, it isolates combustible materials from combustion-supporting materials.
At the same time, its thermal conductivity is extremely low, which greatly delays the transfer of flame temperature to the protected wood.
"The Complete Solution to Oil Agents" says that in the process of refining fire retardant oil agents, a large amount of raw materials related to the water element will be used.
Xia Zuo nodded secretly, carefully recalled the oils related to the water element, and took out a glass bottle with a slender mouth from the box.