Unable to repay my student loans, I had no choice but to work part-time as a demon hunter.

After Peter left, they lined up until night.

Charlotte waited standing up, then leaning against the wall, and finally sitting on a box, since her skirt was already dirty anyway.

Finally, an overly excited bald academic obtained the experimental product from the reactor.

He excitedly rushed out of the No. 6 reactor laboratory, bottle in hand, shouting, "I've succeeded!" Another voice came from inside the bottle, "You beast, what have you become?"

No one knew what that meant, but he was clearly happy.

Gordon watched him leave, then stood up and dusted himself off.

"Finally, it's our turn..." Gordon told Charlotte to take a good spot, then he used a trolley to push the box in, and slowly brought up the other three boxes.

The operating procedures are displayed on the wall, totaling fourteen articles, ranging from "Do not taste the products" to "How to break a window to escape," covering everything imaginable.

Gordon put on a leather apron, and Charlotte changed into a white blouse; her clothes were already dirty and couldn't be touched by the scalded mud.

"What do I look like dressed like this?" Charlotte tugged at her sleeve.

"Like Miss Monford, who was willing to get close to science."

Be real.

"Like a beautiful girl I kidnapped."

"You're finally right."

The two processed the samples by first weighing them, then adding precipitating salt in proportion, and finally pouring the viscous river mud into the reaction vessel in batches.

Gordon opened the steam valve, and hot air hissed as it flowed into the heating chamber through the brass pipe. The pressure gauge needle slowly rose, moving from black to gold.

Charlotte poured the separated liquid from the feed port.

"Slow down...steady...keep the rhythm..." Gordon chanted.

"I know!" Charlotte stared at the scale. "I'm not just a joke teller."

"If you mess this up, it will become a very funny joke."

"Gordon!" Charlotte's hand trembled with anger. "Shut up. How's the data now?"

"Pressure 2.3, temperature 165. I've started it."

The mud inside the pot began to rotate.

Gradually, the heavy coal dust sank downwards, while the light fish bones and organic matter floated upwards.

Between these two layers of filth...

Slowly, a thin, pure band of light appeared!

  

Gordon added the second batch of precipitate salt, and after the reaction was complete, he opened the reflux pipe.

The thin band of light was gradually extracted and flowed along the pipe.

Something was slowly dripping from inside the product chamber.

At first, it was just some gray water.

Gradually, tiny bright spots began to appear inside, and then more and more appeared. If you listened carefully, you could hear a sound similar to sand falling to the ground.

These bright spots attract each other, forming a thin layer of silvery-green crystal sand at the bottom of the bottle.

The texture is similar to what he scraped bit by bit from the strange fish, but it's much more refined.

[Water-based spiritual crystals. This time, we don't need to scrape them from the fish's intestines.]

Gordon couldn't help but smile.

"The shipment has been completed," he murmured.

Charlotte stared in astonishment at the creation, her eyes sparkling.

Spirituality comes from the source matter, but it is not as dangerous as the source matter.

Most potion-making requires spiritual crystals, which are crucial consumables, equivalent to iron ore and coal in industry. Without them, alchemists can only recite recipes into an empty pot.

Some spiritual factories have their own methods, which are basically based on the spiritual energy emitted by industrial-grade source matter, but the risk is very high. Once a source matter hunter finds out, it will be troublesome.

And now...

Gordon actually extracted spirituality from the mud.

"Oh my..." Charlotte looked at Gordon in surprise, finding it more and more unbelievable.

"You know what this means, right?" Gordon nodded.

"money."

"Yes, you have finally grasped the ultimate goal of scientific research."

"This is big business!"

"But it's not necessarily a business that the two of us can keep going."

"I can talk to my father."

"There are tens of millions of tons of mud in the Blackwater River. Once it's made public, the whole of Lundnim will start fighting over it. Even your father might not be able to eat it all by himself."

"Yes……"

"Besides, with so many people here, others must have discovered it as well, but no one has started mining it. This means someone doesn't want the river water to be turned upside down," Gordon said.

Charlotte thought for a moment and suddenly found the key.

All you need is a royal warrant.

The young Emperor Albert, whose appearance had not changed since the Noon War, ruled the country for three hundred years. His will influenced the fate of many, and his wisdom was extraordinary and unfathomable.

However, thanks to my father's connections in the royal family... I might be able to obtain this unique privilege from His Majesty.

The Blackwater River mud is transformed into a spiritual business franchise.

This may mark the beginning of the Monford family's rise from traditional aristocracy to modern industrial aristocracy.

Thinking of this, Charlotte couldn't help but feel a little excited.

"It must be kept secret," Charlotte said.

"It was kept so secret that we knew everything about this mud."

"And a little bit of maneuvering," Charlotte said thoughtfully.

She'd been acting silly with Gordon all day, and only now was she finally showing a bit of the serious expression befitting a young lady of the Montfort family.

……

Working from night until dawn.

The next batch of university students who were going to use the reactor had arrived. Every now and then, they would knock on the door, wondering whether the people in Laboratory No. 6 were processing materials or had already died inside.

Gordon was fast asleep, lying face down. Due to his biological clock, he would hallucinate that Vera was urging him to sleep. Charlotte, on the other hand, remained awake, only resting briefly in a chair, and then dismissing the fifth person who knocked on the door.

After the last batch of river mud was purified, Charlotte yawned and collected the last batch of products.

Weigh it, and round down.

40 grams of spiritual crystals.

One gram was worth about 50 copper cents, and a total of 2000 copper cents was exactly 1 gold pound.

This is just a laboratory environment; the real industrial reactors in refineries produce tens of thousands of tons of spiritual mud every year… Charlotte didn’t even dare to think about it.

She was afraid that if she calculated an exceptionally large number, she might do something irrational.

"How is it?" Gordon was awakened by the sixth person knocking on the door and looked up.

"You're just awake." Charlotte looked up. "I've finished collecting them all. The mud has turned into 40 grams of spiritual crystals."

"Very good, very good." When Gordon is happy, he will repeat "very good" twice, firmly believing that this will generate compound interest.

He took the bottle, shook it in front of the gas lamp, and the silvery-green crystals made a rustling sound.

"Ah..." Charlotte yawned, her eyes glistening with sleepiness.

"Go back to sleep first, I need to deal with the byproducts."

"No. I want to watch you do it." Charlotte's words were not harsh, but they carried an unyielding stubbornness.

"Okay. Listen to me, this needs to be kept secret. Don't tell anyone. You can still write the paper, but hide the connection with the silt."

"What about the presentation? We said we found spirituality in the mud, but we don't have any samples to demonstrate it."

"There's a spirit in the mud; this is something that can only get the professors to nod in approval. To get them all sitting up straight and listening, we'll have to do something special."

Gordon inspects the byproducts.

Spiritual crystals are pure; the rest are not.

He collected all the byproducts and residues from the reactor.

Upon closer inspection, Gordon noticed some thin layers of colored powder, which looked much more plain compared to the vibrant colors of mermaid scales.

They look like ground fish scales, but if you look closely, they contract and expand, like tiny worms slowly turning over.

Charlotte was so frightened that her drowsiness vanished.

"They are moving."

"Yes, yes." Gordon picked up the powder with a small spoon and examined it under the fluorescent light.

[Scaly crystalline salt. Remember to wash your hands after handling it.]

"What did you find?" Charlotte asked curiously.

"It seems like this is the Blackwater River's little secret."

"Is it dangerous?"

"It's highly likely that drinking too much of it will make you sick. And judging from the colors, I'm starting to think that humans really do experience rainbow-like ejaculation after drinking it."

"Stop talking about that!" Charlotte headbutted Gordon.

"We'll take care of a few more things, then go back to sleep."

Gordon collected the crystallized salt.

……

Next, Gordon went to the spiritual fumigation room 302 in the Sherwood Building.

With the water-phase spiritual crystal, Gordon was finally able to enhance his Living Water Compass.

With a slight change in materials, the compass is no longer as pitiful as it was when it was first bought.

Gordon refinished the outer shell, expanded the internal space, and added a few more pointers.

Suspended at the top was a thin, sharp steel needle. In the middle was a gleaming silver needle of medium length. At the bottom was a long needle made of a lead-silver alloy, heavy and slow, unlikely to deflect easily.

"You disassembled a compass into three layers?" Charlotte observed.

"This thing can locate the spirits of the Blackwater River, but its previous locating ability was too weak. Now I will use three needles: the light needle, which is the most sensitive, to lock onto the largest source of spirits; the medium needle, to find anomalies at medium distances; and the heavy needle, which only rotates when close to a strong source, to determine if any fishmen are faking it nearby."

"He sounds much smarter than before," Charlotte agreed.

Gordon proceeded step by step, atomizing the extraordinary active substance within the spiritual crystal. It was fully activated, transforming into a wisp of faint fluorescent smoke, regaining the characteristics of the Blackwater River, and slowly nourishing the three needles.

After feeding them all, Gordon then put the needle into the living water compass.

It did indeed change.

The light needle continues to spin in place, while the medium and heavy needles deviate less noticeably, becoming much more stable and no longer spinning wherever they go as before.

Charlotte played with the compass for a while, and the three needles turned toward the hem of her mud-stained skirt, which startled her so much that she returned it to Gordon.

"It works well." Gordon said as he left.

"Huh?" Charlotte was about to turn around when her legs gave way.

"What's wrong?"

"My feet are blistered." Charlotte sat on the ground.

"Are you alright?"

"Something's up!" Charlotte grunted.

She sat on the ground and took off her shoes.

"I'm so sorry." Gordon half-squatted down. "It's all red. You should apply some medicated salt when you get home."

"It's nothing. I can handle this little bit of pain," Charlotte complained while rubbing her heels.

She took off her semi-transparent white socks, and her feet, which had been confined all day, finally relaxed. Her cute toes stretched because of the soreness, and she lost her usual composure, but gained a touch of genuine delicacy, just like her body, exuding the scent of hazelnut perfume.

"You have to take responsibility. Think about who I went mud-digging with." Charlotte rubbed her hands.

"How will you take responsibility?"

"Sit here and rest with me."

Gordon sat down next to her.

"Thank you for helping me today," Gordon said.

"It's nothing." Charlotte rubbed her foot, occasionally wincing in pain but no longer complaining. "We discovered quite a few secrets together today: wriggling salt, mice with gills, money in the mud..."

The two of them were quiet for a while.

This is fine, Charlotte thought. It feels good to simply spend some things together with someone.

Before long, she remembered that Gordon was a very busy man and didn't want to take up his time, so she quickly put on her shoes and socks.

"Do you need help?" Gordon asked, seeing that she had recovered.

"No need." Charlotte stood up again, stamped her foot, and said, "Let's go."

On the road.

"...Speaking of which, if we're not showing mud and crystals, what are we showing?" Charlotte thought for a moment.

"The influence of spirituality on living beings."

"How exactly do we do it?"

"Go and get four white mice."

"The White Rat Monster?"

"Real lab rats."

"That's something only freshmen use," Charlotte said skeptically.

"Feed them the same diet as a control group. The first mouse is fed clean water, the second is fed a low-concentration saline solution, the third a medium-concentration solution, and the fourth a high-concentration solution. The diet quality and lighting should be the same, and the age and sex of the mice should also be the same. Record their weight, aggression, and hydrophilicity."

"Give a mouse a spirit? Gordon, that's horrible." Charlotte inhaled softly.

"I wouldn't do it if it weren't scary. This is our task: to feed the biggest mutant rat in all of Lundnim."

"What if it could talk?"

"That's even better. Let it report, and we'll listen downstairs." Gordon led Charlotte out of Sherwood Building.