Has the knight lady who married into the countryside fallen into depravity today?

With Ophelia's help, Klein's experiment went very smoothly.

The window of the third-floor laboratory was half-open, and the afternoon breeze, carrying the scent of freshly cut grass from the manor lawn, rustled the several formula manuscripts on the table.

Klein freed one hand to hold down the corner of the paper, while the other hand steadily held the distillation flask. He kept his eyes fixed on the changes in the liquid level inside the flask, even slowing down the frequency of his blinking.

Ophelia stood to his right, in charge of controlling the firepower of the alchemy furnace.

Although it's called "control," this job is actually quite complicated. The alchemy furnace is different from a kitchen stove; the temperature adjustment must be precise down to the last mark. If you're not careful, the entire batch of alchemical liquid will be ruined.

When Klein used to do experiments alone, just switching back and forth between furnace temperature control and distillation observation was enough to keep him busy. There was a chapter in the alchemy textbook called "Why You Need a Reliable Assistant." When he was self-studying, he thought it was exaggerated, but after doing it himself, he realized that the chapter was actually too subtle.

So he originally wanted to give a few more words of advice.

When he turned around, he saw that Ophelia had already firmly pinned down the line he needed.

The knight's hand was steady, which is not surprising.

What's remarkable is that she even figured out the rhythm of the temperature fluctuations.

Every time the furnace temperature was about to rise but hadn't quite reached its target, the firepower was reduced by half in advance, precisely timed.

Ophelia didn't even look at the thermometer.

Klein raised an eyebrow, refraining from praising her aloud.

If you praise her, given her personality, she'll probably reply with "What's so difficult about that?" and then continue operating without expression—but her ears will secretly turn a little red.

He'd seen her a few times; she was quite interesting, but now wasn't the time to tease her.

"Hand me those two packets of powder."

Ophelia turned to reach for the powder container beside the workbench. The workbench wasn't wide, and as she turned, her shoulder brushed against Klein's arm, creating a light breeze.

Klein didn't move, but simply moved the distillation flask half an inch closer to him, giving her room to turn around.

Two small porcelain jars were handed to him, placed at just the right angle—within his right reach, the mouths facing him, and the lids already loosened.

Klein glanced at the arrangement of the jars but said nothing.

But he noticed it.

This is the herbal powder that Leila has processed. He picked up a small pinch of evening primrose pollen and rubbed it between his fingertips. It felt smooth and was ground very evenly, so it was usable.

Looking at the powder of the Tranquilizing Herb, its color is pure and there are no impurities mixed in with roots or stems, indicating that it has been carefully sorted.

"Well done," Klein said, referring to Lyra.

"She learns quickly," Ophelia added, her tone flat, but her willingness to speak well of others was an attitude in itself.

Klein poured the two powders into a distillation flask in the correct proportions and stirred them slowly with a glass rod.

A pale blue halo appeared on the surface of the liquid, a normal reaction caused by the release of the faint magical power remaining in the evening primrose pollen under high temperature.

In alchemy, this halo is called the "dissolving reaction," and it is an important indicator of the quality of the potion base—the more uniform the halo, the more fully the potion has dissolved.

He stared at the rate at which the halo spread, muttering to himself as he calculated the dissolution time.

"A little to the left," Ophelia suddenly said.

Klein was taken aback: "What?"

"You're stirring off-center. There's some sediment on the bottom right side of the bottle that hasn't dissolved."

Klein glanced down—the bottle walls were frosted, and from his angle, he couldn't see the bottom at all.

He suspiciously adjusted the stirring direction, and sure enough, the glass rod touched a small clump of undissolved powder at the bottom right.

"...How did you figure that out?"

"The light refracted by the bottle wall is uneven. The right side is one shade darker than the left."

Klein stared at the frosted bottle for three seconds, then gave up.

With the naked eye alone, he couldn't see anything. The frosted bottle wall itself refracted light, and with the interference of the furnace fire, he couldn't even distinguish how many layers of light there were.

"One color level?" He repeated, pausing to consider the word "color level." "Can you distinguish the color level differences in the alchemical aura with the naked eye?"

Ophelia paused, noticing his expression, and asked, "Can't I?"

She was genuinely asking.

Klein opened his mouth, then closed it again.

He turned his head and glanced at the crystal prism instrument on the worktable, which was specifically used for spectral analysis.

Then look back at his wife—who has a completely matter-of-fact look on her face.

Fine.

Even without Miss Knight using her battle aura to enhance her eyesight, it could still rival alchemical instruments in terms of precision, something he witnessed firsthand today.

"Your eyes," Klein said sincerely, tapping the distillation flask with a glass rod. "If you had been born twenty years earlier, the optics department at the Alchemy Institute would probably be scrambling to offer you a professorship."

"Is it that impressive?"

"Yes, very impressive." Klein looked into her golden eyes, his tone serious. "Most alchemists spend their entire lives and still don't reach your level."

A brief silence.

Ophelia looked away.

A breeze blew in through the window, lifting a strand of her golden hair that hung beside her ear. As the hair brushed against her earlobe, Klein noticed that her earlobe was indeed tinged with a faint pink.

He didn't ask any further questions and refocused his attention on the experiment.

But he couldn't quite stop smiling, so he simply lowered his head and let the steam from the distillation flask obscure his expression.

The liquid gradually became clear, and after the pale blue halo dissipated, the liquid in the bottle turned out to be a transparent amber color.

Klein shut down the alchemy furnace.

Just as he picked up the silver needles to conduct the final test, Ophelia suddenly tilted her head.

"The color has changed," she said.

"Hmm?" Klein looked down—the amber liquid looked as expected, nothing unusual. "What's different?"

"Lower left. Near the bottom of the bottle." Ophelia's golden eyes narrowed slightly. "There's a hint... a very faint blue."

Klein frowned. He leaned closer to the bottle and examined it carefully for a long time, but couldn't see anything. But he had learned his lesson and no longer doubted his wife's eyes.

He took the crystal prism from the worktable, adjusted the focus, and aimed it at the bottom of the bottle.

Sure enough, in the spectrum refracted by the prism, there was an extremely thin abnormal peak in the blue band.

Klein remained silent for two seconds.

"What is that?" Ophelia asked.

"A deep extract of the Soul-Soothing Grass." Klein's expression shifted from surprise to contemplation. "Normally, this component would be completely decomposed at high temperatures. The presence of residue indicates..."

He paused, his gaze falling on the hand Ophelia was using to control the alchemy furnace—her right hand.

"What does that mean?"

"That shows your temperature control is incredibly precise." Klein put down the prism, a somewhat meaningful smile playing on his lips. "Precise enough to have completely preserved a trace component that would normally be destroyed by excessive heat."

He picked up a charcoal pencil, quickly wrote a line in the blank space of the formula manuscript, then crossed it out and rewrote it.

"If this ingredient could be stably preserved..." he muttered to himself, "its effect on suppressing Karen's auditory hallucinations should be even better. But that's on the condition that this temperature curve can be reproduced every time it's refined."

He turned to look at Ophelia.

Ophelia looked back at him, her expression unchanged.

"You mean," she said calmly, "that every time you do an experiment, I'll have to be there to tend the fire for you?"

Klein blinked and gave a self-righteous smile: "I think this is a very reasonable request."

"..."

Ophelia didn't respond. But she didn't refuse either.

Klein understood and continued with the test. He picked up the hollow silver needle, took a drop from the bottle, and placed it on the test strip.

Three concentric rings slowly appeared at the edge of the test strip—half a ring more than the standard product, and that half ring was a very faint blue.

"It's done." He straightened up and stretched his stiff neck. "The base fluid is fine, and it's even half a grade better than expected. The rest is just packaging and secondary purification, but that's not urgent. We can do that after it cools down naturally."

He casually placed the silver needles into the cleaning tank and turned to Ophelia.

"Thank you for your hard work, you've been a great help."

"I didn't do anything, I just adjusted the heat."

"Adjusting the heat is the most crucial step," Klein corrected her earnestly. "Sixty percent of alchemical failures are due to improper heat control. If you had partnered with me earlier, I could have saved at least half of the materials I wasted over the past two years."

He thought for a moment, then added, "No, it might be more than half."

Ophelia glanced at him, as if she wanted to say, "You don't have to exaggerate," but in the end she only slightly moved the corner of her mouth and said nothing.

The laboratory was filled with the faint scent of herbs and wood as the amber-colored medicinal liquid cooled, mixed with the smell of fresh grass blowing in from outside the window, creating a reassuring atmosphere.

Klein leaned against his workbench and picked up the formula manuscript that had been blown about by the wind to reorganize it. He turned to one of the pages and added a few lines of annotations in the corner with charcoal—about the dissolving temperature and optimal ratio of evening primrose pollen.

He paused halfway through writing, thought for a moment, and then added a small line of text next to it:

"The grinding standard for the Tranquilizing Herb is based on Lyra's finished product."

Start a new line below:

"Temperature control requirements—Ophelia's assistance is needed. There is no alternative at the moment."

After writing the line, he looked it over and suddenly felt that the phrase "no alternative at the moment" was written too formally.

So he crossed out the word "temporary".

Ophelia leaned over for a look.

Her gaze first fell on Leila's line of text, lingering for two seconds. Then she moved to the line below, lingering for another two seconds.

"...'No alternative'?" she read aloud, her tone so flat it didn't sound like she was asking a question.

"Just stating the facts," Klein replied without looking up.

"What happened just now... Klein, you could have done that with magic, couldn't you?"

Ophelia asked.

"Ophelia".

"Um?"

"Sometimes it's not a good thing to expose someone's flaws."

Klein chuckled.

The sound of dishes clattering came from downstairs; it seemed Raymond had already prepared dinner.