Chapter 88: The Troubled Chemist
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
"Mu, are you sure we are going there?" Ye Chong asked in his head along the way.
"Yes. What Shang had proposed was correct. As stated in the information, Do-Kun stones are indeed able to grow in numbers as stimulated through presets by an alchemist."
"Gosh! You mean the chemist?" Ye Chong reminisced the torture he had been through these past few days in his head. It was melancholic, depressing or literally mind-blowing. The headache lasted for the entire 3 days and he almost broke his teeth from grinding them in pain. He made it through as the aches were slowly lifted. He did not feel anything particularly improved, despite the fact that his mentality was much stronger than before, as stated by Mu judging by the stable brainwaves in his head.
That sounded quite rewarding for the suffering he had undergone. He did not suffer for nothing at the very least. Nonetheless, before he could rejoice on the end of his agony, Mu had commenced the following torment for him - the Chemist Classes. The two big Cs struck on Ye Chong’s head the moment he saw them hanging on the classy golden plate right outside the classroom. Luckily Mu was merciful enough to conduct mini classes on marksmanship in between, just to ‘relax’ his mind a little. Mu recommended a set of marksmanship based on his calculations, which were the usual Mu style - concise yet effective. They were not fancy enough to be called grandly as the "marksmanship" since the set contained only 8 movements. Yeah, movements. They were not even combos to begin with. They were just 8 basic movements of action as the final result of Mu’s numerous intensive calculations and improvements after countless simulations in his processor. Considering how the ancient marksmanship was long gone, it would be a technological error 404 to find any applicable references. These movements were constructed on a variety of physic theories with the aspect of minimizing the force input while maximizing the force output for instance. In short, these movements were a kind of production from Mu’s simulating calculation.
Fortunately the workshop was spacious for his training. It was truly a huge storage. Ye Chong cleaned up one corner and hopped onto his Harmony, starting his training.
Ye Chong mastered combative skills on mech way faster than learning those gibberish in chemist theories. He had finished his marksmanship training, however, "I still have no idea what a chemist actually does." he mumbled as he got off his mech.
The chemist class today was on experiments. Well, experiments were the bread and butter of the chemist syllables. One did more experiments than theoretical lectures, unless the teacher was Shang, then it would be a parade of theoretical knowledge dancing through your left ear pinna all the way exiting from your right.
"Mu, don’t you know what one needs to know about being a chemist? What am I here for?" Ye Chong asked blankly.
"What you need to know about being a chemist is that it is all about hands-on experience. The current theories in books are not perfectly constructed. They could lead to fallacies and consist major flaws. I would define chemist as an occupation that have not found their ideologies on logics. That is why Shang and I do not have much of an advantage in this. Unlike humans, they seemed to be able to conduct this perfectly fine despite the lack of logic."
The dean of the alchemy faculty in Blue Ocean Academy was Ms. Jiang Xiao’wei, who reacted with confusion the moment she saw Ye Chong’s name as mentioned by Headmaster Lan beforehand. She did not understand how a boy would be interested in the alchemy, especially when he excelled in mechanics. Normally she would assume that the boy did not come for the classes, but rather, he came for the girls. The boys in alchemy classes were almost non-existent. Yes, they were all girls, and very pretty ones too. The overflowing pheromone in the classroom usually netted a number of boys on their puberty. So if she were to see a boy in her class, the boy would normally be sitting fairly close to one of the girls and his eyes would be more onto the girl than the texts in front. However such label did not appear to be workable on a person like Ye Chong. She had seen him before. He was rather a cold person in her eyes and such cold person would not be interested in flirting an opposite gender using such a gimmicky trick.
More importantly, he seemed to have something going on with Rui Su. While she did have a few good-looking girls in her class, they were not of the same level as Rui Su. Yeah, it was just like comparing a bunch of sodium with a mere piece of rubidium. If he did have something with Rui Su, Ye Chong should not even be interested in her girls. Ms. Jiang was puzzled. It was as if she was presented with astronomical chemical equations bounded embodied with the truth of life.
…
"Here you are," stated Mu as they arrived.
The alchemy faculty was rather feminine for its imagery. Precisely speaking, it was flooded with girls and Ye Chong was like the ugly duckling among the swans as he walked in the corridor. These girls had first seen Ye Chong, only on a live channel that is. It was their first time seeing him in person.
He walked on expressionlessly, as his entity somehow set off an aura of isolation. No one was daring enough to initiate a conversation with him, though Ye Chong would not reply even if one did. It was an isolation that one would feel like hanging a sign over him, with the words written in red, "No Entry - Recognized Personnel Only". Ye Chong was too engaged in the conversation with Mu in his head that he simply did not have the time to take notice of those girls around.
"Oh? Really?" Ye Chong sounded surprised as he spoke.
"Correct. Data shows that quite a few types of special ores could multiply by simulations in certain presets, even though most of the data were lost while some of the remaining ones were already damaged. Shang is currently at a vigorous attempt to repair the existing data," Mu replied.
"Shang actually knows how to do that?" a shocking fact it was to Ye Chong. Apparently Shang was no other than the joker of mischief in his impression. Other than potentially being a mascot of the Fal Galaxy, he did not think of anything else befitting to this expressive intelligence.
"Yes. Shang has a much more mature mood matrix in comparison to me. So undeniably he has a better sense in alchemy too. In addition he expresses high interests in his past, while I agreed on the fact that these information could be very much useful in finding out the mech. Shang treated this repair as an excavation to his life, although I did not understand what he meant. At least I understand that it would be absolutely helpful for you if we were able to find out where this mech came from," Mu explained flatly.
"You have a point. You and Shang are so great, I believe the creator of both of you would be much greater," Ye Chong replied with expectation.
"Unknown. I have yet to receive sufficient information to justify that. But I could justify that your statement contains one flaw. I was not created, or ‘produced’ by them in your terms. Perhaps Shang was created under their hands, however my emergence was of an accident," corrected Mu.
"True."
Ye Chong’s focus went back to the reality as he held his steps and looked around. At some point in the campus, the sense of direction was also considered as a fundamental skill for students. It was so compact that one could be lost forever if one did not take the effort to remember the routes. Thankfully, Ye Chong’s sense was not that bad and he had Mu. It would be much more challenging for one to lose the way than not to.
The girls at the surrounding were looking foreignly at Ye Chong. Some started chattering as they giggled, while the others sometimes pointed their fingers and whispered on. A male in the alchemy faculty was like a lamb falling into a pack of wolves. "And that happens to be the popular Mr. Ye Chong!" mumbled one of the girls excitingly.
Ye Chong did not seem to care. However, he could not show total ignorance as his ears were good. He could discern even the softest mumble from the girls. Well, the name "Ye Chong" consists of quite a number of sounded vowels and consonants, which made it outstanding in a whisper. Those whispers sounded like a flock of flies buzzing around his ears. It was not fatal, but it was annoying!
While the girls in love were flourishing the pumping heart of spring, Ye Chong stopped by and fired his stare. An ice beam round the corridors turned the living corridor of endearment into an arctic walkway of consternation. His sight launched a shower of arrows upon the girls.
The girls shuddered while some were hiding behind the lockers with their faces drained.
That settled it.
Leaving the girls, Ye Chong stepped into the lab building.
Unlike the spaciousness of his workshop, the lab for chemists was separated into countless tiny independent rooms. This was for safety ppurposes because of a certain risk a chemist had to bear whenever an experiment was conducted since living things possessed a chance of transmutation in a preset while the chemist’s setting would accelerate and enhance the process. Spreading of these mutations were strictly forbidden without permission and certification of an official organization. This was reasonable because the mutations could cause negative impacts to the ecosystem. They could kill the ecosystem too. Thus, it would be necessary to have cubicles instead of a spacious lab, for both the safety of the chemists and the environment.
And that was the time Ye Chong bumped into Ms. Jiang Xiao’wei. He had been in her class a few times so they were sort of acquainted by then. Nevertheless, Ms. Jiang had not gotten used to his existence in the alchemy faculty as she flinched when seeing Ye Chong, "Oh." She snapped out from her shock and gave a sweet smile, "Good day, Mr. Ye."
"Dean Jiang, what a pleasure. I hope to receive more of your teaching."
Ms. Jiang’s smile was quite warm and natural. It was comforting to Ye Chong’s eyes as his expression grew gentler.
"Well, it was not really a teaching. Just a few heads up sometimes. Mr. Ye, you can always come and drop by my office if you have any question regarding alchemy in your mind," she kindly replied.
"Thank you very much. Certainly I will," Ye Chong responded with courtesy.
They bade farewell to each other. "Well, Mr. Ye Chong isn’t as unfriendly as I had heard…" muttered Ms. Jiang.
Ye Chong entered the class of the day. It was not Ms. Jiang who conducted the lesson. It was someone else, a female teacher he had never seen before.
Looking at the varies flasks scattered on the table, along with tubes and tubes of reagents, Ye Chong was dumbfounded. He looked at the teacher who was being truly helpful as she did not seem to feel like talking, shutting her mouth tight at her desk. His eyes scanned through the items in blank dismay, he laid his hands over the flask and he withdrew them. As being still less competent than a greenhorn in the lab, he simply had no idea where to begin.
Frowned, Ye Chong noticed how the girls around him were eyeing him the whole time.
"Ye." Just when Ye Chong was lost on the lesson, a voice came weakly by his ears, "C-Can I… you know… Can I group… Can I group with you?" Only then he realized there was someone by his side, as the intonation caught Ye Chong’s attention. It was familiar.
He raised his head, "Is that you?" He saw someone standing right in front of him with her head lowered. Her fingers twiddling the skirt of her faculty uniform. It was Xiu. Her head was so low that Ye Chong could not see her face. But he could tell that she seemed pretty nervous as her shoulders were shaking.
The lab lost its usual hustling and muffling as everyone paused their works. Someone nearly dropped the thermometer in her trembling hands. They looked at two of them with their mouths wide open unconvincingly. Mr. Ye Chong was the celeb in the academy and the shrinking violet Xiu was outrageously fearless today to have a talk with the celeb himself. It was an earth-shattering sight. The whispers were gone too by then. The classroom was dead silent.
Xiu who seemed to have noticed everybody’s incoming sights were lowering her head much more, as her cheeks reddened. Ye Chong was wondering if her neck would be broken as she lowered her head further. He lifted his head and glared at the girls around.
His cold sight caused everyone to retreat their stares right away as the hustling continued. The girls started acting they were busy carrying out their experiments all of a sudden. A dramatic acting it was too as one could hear the exaggerated clinking and clanking in the lab.
Xiu’s appearance was like an angel coming from the sky to Ye Chong in rescue of his terrible day. Still he inhibited his emotion as expressionlessly he replied, "Yes, you can."
"So they knew each other!"
"Oh my gosh!"
"This is one more story to our tea session later."
"Stop thinking about tea, we should do some research."
"On them?"
"No stupid. Only him."
Sharp gossips of exclamations rushed through the group of girls who were all ears to the conversation between Mr. Ye Chong and shy girl Xiu the whole time. Such a Columbus discovery! "I never knew Xiu was such a chaser!" Their impression towards Xiu grew complicated.
"Rea-" Xiu swiftly lifted her head, "Really?" she asked in disbelief. The polished face of hers dinted with a hint of scarlet, a beautiful moment of embarrassment to be perceived.
"Of course," he nodded his head. Ye Chong hurrahed in his mind as there was finally an assistant to guide his way out of this glassware jungle.
And so Assistant Xiu started a brief tutorial for Ye Chong. It went well.
Maybe.
…
… …
"So… Th-this is the Ga…ga…Gallo-blue culture medium. It is one of the 15 types of basic mediums you would use. And… And…what it does is… it helps speeding up the… g-g-growth of plants… by…by producing… I mean, providing the necessary nutrients for the process… Umm…"
"Also… the heater is very easy to use. You just… you just… set the temp…temp…temporal? W-what… oh, the temperature at the processor, b-b-but you have to be careful… that… umm… what was it again… umm… uhh…"
…
Could I ever exit the jungle in one piece?
Especially under the aid of this troubled chemist?