A mage? A spell engineer!

Chapter 345 A Giant Leap in the History of Alchemy

This was a very strange explosion.

The sound wave suddenly lost its momentum halfway through, and people heard something more like a short clap of thunder.

Andrei, whose soul was about to be blown away, and the dwarves at the construction site dared not move. The scattered fragments were right in front of them, but they were still.

The entire explosion site was frozen in time.

"Don't move." Rorschach's voice rang out, and everyone and the devices scattered by the explosion were enveloped in a pale blue field. As if time had reversed, the fragments were reset along the trajectory they had been propelled by the expanding gas.

Meanwhile, the flames at the center of the explosion cooled and went out, leaving only the mixture of gases.

When all the pieces were put back together, it made a teeth-grinding sound.

Andre felt a tightness in his chest. He and Rorschach were closest to the explosion site. First, an unparalleled blast of air rushed into his lungs, followed by an unstoppable evacuation. Not only that, he could feel the magic power of the entire area being mobilized, fully participating in this miraculous repair.

Rorschach took direct control of all extractions from the "Transmutation Dust Collection and Conversion Device" and then activated the protection and mapping reversal spells he had prepared beforehand.

He is now the final and strongest guarantee for the entire experiment.

The teacher was so strong that Andrei held his breath and focused intently while Rorschach was casting his spell. He had never seen Rorschach perform like this before in Valuwana, and even in the Alchemy Department, he had never seen a mage who could compare to Rorschach at this moment.

After Rorschach finished, he raised his staff high, and a gentle blue light spread out from the tip of his staff, encompassing himself, Andrei, and all the dwarves present. Their ears suddenly rang, and they realized that their eardrums had ruptured during the explosion, and Rorschach was repairing them.

Luo Xia sent a message to the foreman, Jensen: "Find Mr. Hassai and inform him that the situation here is normal. Then check the windows of the nearby factories, provide appropriate compensation to those injured in the explosion, and then..." He glanced at his pocket watch, "...come to me for treatment this evening."

"I was so busy explaining things to you that I didn't do a proper purity test. Let's unload it." Luo Xia sighed and turned on the unloading valve at the bottom of the tower. A stream of steam gushed out, all of which were products of the collision between light phlogiston and phlogiston during the explosion.

What pained Rorschach the most was the catalyst. Andrei was startled when he saw a pile of black slag fall out: "Did the explosion destroy something?"

"No, that's how the catalyst packing is supposed to be." Rorschach picked up the residue; it was already wet, meaning the catalytic sites were no longer functioning. He wondered how much could be regenerated after baking.

The black catalyst is iron oxide, but its porous matrix is ​​aluminum oxide—to ensure purity, it is obtained by calcining aluminum salts from pure aluminum ingots.

"Besides hydrogen, we also need to drive down the price of aluminum." Rorschach gritted his teeth again. He seriously suspected that the dwarves who loved playing with electricity must have mastered the process of electrolytic aluminum, but taking advantage of the fact that humans and elves didn't know, they were still selling it little by little as a precious metal.

The dwarves, survivors of the catastrophe, were unaware that besides their fellow gas station workers facing unemployment, a group of smelters would also suffer pay cuts and layoffs due to a sharp decline in profits in the aluminum electrolysis industry, creating a second wave of disruption to the construction industry's labor market. All they knew for now was to have a beer to calm their nerves.

Since the first explosion, the device has been covered with a large enclosure. Rorschach originally wanted to keep it in the open, but to avoid alarming the residents, he temporarily set up a canvas factory building. For the past few days, Rorschach and Andrei have practically lived and worked inside it.

After the on-site instruction, Andrei was able to understand the blueprints and processes, especially after realizing that haphazard operation could blow him to bits—and there were always times when Rorschach wasn't around. So he also displayed the "Gorper learning spirit," referring to the death drive that helped him learn and improve.

After confirming that all indicators had stabilized, Andrei checked the pressure gauge on the last pipe and found positive pressure: "So we have the finished product."

"Yes." Rorschach kept an eye on the device, ready at any moment.

On a desolate winter day, they completed the entire driving process with bated breath, without any explosion. Since Luo Xia was too lazy to bother with any more freezing and liquefied ammonia separation, he simply let the produced ammonia gas be absorbed directly into the water.

"If the liquid level doesn't change, how do we know if what's coming out is the product?" Andrei was filled with a mixture of excitement and curiosity. He and his teacher had gone through countless hardships to finally get this production line running! More than celebrating the sparkling wine, he wanted to know what this large and complex device was producing.

Since Rorschach did all the testing and design of the catalyst himself, when Andre asked his teacher, Rorschach only told him that the product was "gaseous at room temperature, extremely soluble in water, and had a special odor."

What exactly is this special law?

"Well, you can open the detection port here and collect a little of the product's aqueous solution." Luo Xia knew that to satisfy Andrei's curiosity, he should let him try it himself, so he took a few steps back as he spoke.

Having never "experienced" the finished product, Andrei curiously turned the valve a little bit, and clear, transparent ammonia water, just like normal water, immediately flowed out in a trickle.

"It's still just water, vomit, vomit—"

As Rorschach had predicted, Andrei vomited, and tears streamed down his face. He'd spent a month working on this with his teacher, only to be rewarded with urine! A super-concentrated version!

Wearing an air filter, Luo Xia used his Mage Hand to remotely close the valve, and then kindly put one on his apprentice as well.

"Don't underestimate it just because it smells bad. Ammonia is an important raw material for many of our products. You see, farmers collect human and cow manure and urine to compost, and we will produce fertilizers that are hundreds or thousands of times more effective."

"In addition, nitrogen will be indispensable for high-performance explosives and gunpowder in the future."

"In short, this may seem like an ordinary vomiting episode in your life, but it's a giant leap forward in the history of alchemy! We've captured nitrogen from the air for human use! We'll have several times more food to feed the entire world!"

The successful implementation of the high-pressure synthesis process not only means the industrial-scale production of ammonia, but also paves the way and sets technical standards for other high-pressure, high-temperature production processes, marking the first milestone in the world's large-scale metallurgical industry. Simultaneously, its emergence signifies a new stage in global food production, and for the first time, the metallurgical industry will benefit all intelligent life.

Rorschach has made up his mind: from now on, the textbooks will be written as described above!

Andrei wiped his mouth and pointed to his undigested breakfast on the ground: "Teacher, should we collect this pile of 'footprints in the history of alchemy'?"

"Roll, roll, roll!"

After calming his stomach and emotions, Andrei reviewed the blueprints again. He suddenly noticed a problem: "Teacher, you designed a combustion tower and an absorption tower for the released gas. And this section... the recovery of waste gas, and the discharge of wastewater... I didn't see any of that?"

"We're just in the experimental stage right now, there's no need to make it so complicated." Luo Xia laughed it off, while Andrei thought that if the finished product smelled so impressive, the exhaust fumes must be even worse.

He was worried that the wastewater and exhaust fumes would pollute the surrounding environment and cause dissatisfaction among residents and employees. However, the apprentice walked around and around but did not see any smoke leaking out or any toxic wastewater flowing out.

Rorschach, of course, used the traditional skills he learned in the Alchemy Department to vigorously release energy into the Elemental Plane, so that the residents of the Elemental Plane could also enjoy the fruits of the alchemy industry.

Rorschach wanted to say that he could also protect the environment, but the environment specifically referred to the prime material plane, or more specifically, the place where he ate and slept.

"Next, learn how to park. Then I'll write the technical manual and safety operation manual, and you'll be ready to train new people. I need to free up the computing power of the intelligent core as soon as possible," Luo Xia said to Andrei as they walked, feeling a great sense of accomplishment.

When they arrived at the old factory area, they found it chaotic, with people discussing something.

"A fight has broken out!"

So, war has finally broken out? Rorschach sighed. He calculated the production timeline and estimated that it would be able to supply the army of the Kingdom of Bain by the middle of the war.

"The Kingdom of Valois has brazenly invaded the southern part of the Empire!" A junior manager read the headline of the newspaper aloud to his employees.

Huh? Did I hear that right? The Kingdom struck first? The situation is far more serious than Rorschach expected.

(End of this chapter)