My health recovery is incredibly fast.

Xia Zuo manipulated Servant No. 5, who was parked next to the main entrance, to grope along the door frame of the alchemy room for a while, and found a small gap that he could squeeze through with difficulty.

Through Servant No. 5, he saw Aganna walking on the tree bridge toward the east side of the Catfish Forest, where two guards stood watch in front of the alchemy chamber.

Arganna's alchemy chamber was built on a sturdy platform constructed from pond wood.

The platform was built on several large trees whose crowns had been cut off.

There are only two entrances to the alchemy room: the main door and the windows on the side walls.

Shazo let Servant No. 5 attach to the eaves of the main entrance, while Servant No. 4 squeezed through a tiny gap in the window to the side of the alchemy room, keeping watch over the wetlands and nearby bushes below.

With that, the external surveillance work was completed.

Aganna placed the metal box containing the books under the bed and covered it with two sheets.

Xia Zuo tore several pages from his notebook and, comparing them with the perspective of Servant No. 6, drew the interior layout of the alchemy chamber, noting the creases in the sheets, the location of the scraps of paper on the floor, and so on.

Everywhere that can be seen with the naked eye must be recorded exactly as it is, so that the secret room can be restored to its original state after reading the book.

The metal box has three locks, and the key is with Aganna. Theoretically, there seems to be no way to open the metal box except by brute force.

But Xia Zuo had an idea.

He manipulated his Bloodpoint-sized minion, number 6, to crawl into one of the locks and examine it, concluding that he could unlock it with his Bloodpoint minion.

These three locks are pin tumbler locks, and the operating principle of the lock cylinder is relatively simple, without the use of complex anti-theft technology.

The lock cylinder will be released by pushing multiple lock springs of different heights to the same height.

Xia Zuo spent more than ten minutes drawing the lock spring structure diagrams of the three locks on a piece of white paper. He transformed servant number 6 into the corresponding key shape, inserted it into the keyhole, and flicked it to unlock the three locks in turn.

There are 6 books in the metal box.

Three of them are classic texts on magic alchemy.

The remaining three are thick reference books containing a lot of information about monsters, essentially monster encyclopedias.

Although Aganna did not leave behind the texts on bone alchemy and flesh alchemy, Xia Zuo felt that the six books in front of him were enough to read.

...

In the alchemical school of the Temple of Mages, the process of extracting the essence of something generally involves alchemical operations such as cleaning with a cleaning agent, heating at a constant temperature, and filtering after dissolution.

In the art of magic alchemy, the style of alchemy operations is completely different.

This discipline utilizes the habits of monsters to extract their essence.

For example, the Black Iron Python.

To extract its demonic essence, one must first learn how to raise it, know what kind of food it likes to eat, what kind of nest it lives in, and the relationship between the color and shape of its feces and its physiological state, etc.

To obtain a Black Iron Python rich in essence, one must raise it to the point where its scales are tightly packed, its skin is dry and smooth, and its shed skin can adhere to the new skin, making it a "perfect" existence among its kind.

Every part of it is a treasure.

The fat from the snake's belly, when processed together with the magic herb, can be made into snake oil ointment, which is the base medicine for brewing the essence of the Black Iron Python.

After the snake scales are removed, they are cleaned, sun-dried to remove moisture, ground into powder, mixed with heated and melted snake oil, and then pure snake blood is added. The mixture is simmered over low heat, while stirring and adding snake slough, snake tendons, and internal organs.

Once the slurry in the crucible solidifies into a hard lump, you can obtain a small amount of Black Iron Wild Essence.

This alchemical method feels more like primitive witchcraft—a bunch of strange and unusual things are added to a crucible, and what comes out depends entirely on the maker's luck.

Ironically, this very primitive alchemical method produced the essence of a demon...

After reading the section on refining the essence of monsters, Xia Zuo marveled at it while sitting at his desk.

As for how to preserve the essence of monsters... that's relatively simple.

The essence of Black Iron Wildfire has a fishy smell, easily attracts mosquitoes and insects, and can even cause maggots to grow. After being exposed to sunlight, the essence will be quickly lost.

Therefore, it's fine to store it in a glass jar with excellent airtightness.

The same applies to other monster essences.

The only thing to note is that monster essence has a certain shelf life after it is extracted.

The shelf life of the same monster essence can vary from 1 day to 1 month, depending on the level of the refining technique and the alchemy environment.

This book, which teaches how to preserve monster essence, devotes more than four-fifths of its content to teaching methods for determining the shelf life of monster essence in days.

This concludes the reading of the core section of Magical Alchemy.

The remaining content focuses on explaining experimental cases and the difficulties that may be encountered when refining the essence of monsters.

Xia Zuo sat at his desk with his arms crossed and pondered for a moment before deciding to copy down the knowledge from these six books according to priority.

If you have enough time, after copying the content of the common language, you can copy the content of the unknown language again to learn the unknown language on your own and prepare for reading the classics of bone alchemy and flesh alchemy in the future.

The copying took place not in the study at home, but in Jing Shui Town.

The copyist was Servant Number 1, not Xia Zuo himself.

The copied pages will be kept in Stillwater, not in St. York’s home.

This way, Anru'er won't accidentally discover the knowledge of magic alchemy, thus avoiding a lot of trouble later on.

Xia Zuo glanced at the time on the table.

It's 11:10 PM in the Silver Moon Federation.

Tomorrow is December 29th, the last day of the holiday.

Starting December 30th, people will go back to work or school, and Xia Zuo will also have to return to work at the Boxin Building.

Therefore, the only time he has left to copy is tonight and tomorrow evening after training.

Xia Zuo controlled his No. 1 servant to fly out of the Beast Arena and arrive at a high-rise room in the City Hall, where he found a room where pens, ink, and white paper were stored.

This room is filled with office stationery, and there are several similar stationery warehouses next to it. Basically, no one comes here, making it a perfect place for copying.

Xia Zuo placed the perspectives of Servant No. 1 and Servant No. 6 side by side in his field of vision. Servant No. 6 flipped through the book, while Servant No. 1 copied it down. At the same time, he kept an eye on the perspectives of Servant No. 4 and Servant No. 5 to prevent anyone from entering Aganna's alchemy room at this time.

Chapter 19 The Witcher's Tragedy

The copying speed of the Magical Alchemy was much faster than Xia Zuo had expected.

The universal language of alchemy is the language of alchemy. Having been an alchemist for over ten years, he had long since mastered the essence of this language.

The knowledge system of monster alchemy is divided into three parts: cultivating monsters, refining essences, and preserving essences.

The experimental steps of refining and preserving the essence are written in alchemical language and have a relatively fixed format.

After copying dozens of recipes, Xia Zuo summarized six common formats from them.

He used six blank sheets of paper to create six templates based on these six common formats.

In the future, when copying recipes, you only need to copy the names, quantities, and extraction steps of the monster materials, as well as the time points for these steps. By putting these phrases into a specific template, you can obtain a complete magic essence recipe.

Xia Zuo did not copy the entire content on raising monsters.

Considering that the Blood Element servants would not leave the territory of Stillwater Town in the short term, he only copied the information on the monsters near Stillwater Town.

When all this was done, it was exactly 4 a.m.

I almost stayed up all night again.

I can't do that tomorrow night, or I'll be late for work the next day.

Xia Zuo made up his mind not to get involved further in the affairs of the Mishima Group and the Yizhu Group.

Tomorrow night, I'll at most control the Blood Element servants, copy down the unknown language from the magical alchemy tomes, and try to figure out the logic of this language. I will absolutely not let the Blood Element servants monitor unimportant people and things.

...

12 month 29 day.

10 o'clock in the morning.

Xia Zuo used his Windwalking technique to reach the manor near the outskirts of the city.

Today the weather is sunny, and the cold wind seems milder under the bright sunshine.

In the backyard of the manor, the bald man was lazily basking in the sun, holding a bottle of wine.

When Rexor saw Shazo arrive, he sat up from his recliner and asked, "I heard that you bought a course on bioalchemy at the Innocent Academy."

“Uh…yes, Master.” Xia Zuo nodded, not understanding why the other party would suddenly bring this up.

Rexor rubbed his shiny bald head. "I introduced my elemental body to you before. Did that inspire you? You want to explore how the mages of the Fourth Age used monster scales to armor their elemental bodies, right?"

Xia Zuo nodded again, "Yes. There are no textbooks for this part, and I've never heard anyone else mention it. So I'm very curious."

He said as he pondered:

"I haven't studied what limb-splitting armor is... nor do I know the principles of flesh alchemy... but I have a strange feeling... using monster scales to arm an elemental body is similar to using alchemical bio-armor to arm the body, while using products of artifact alchemy to arm an elemental body is very similar to using mechanical prosthetics."

Xia Zuo paused for a few seconds, then continued:

"Based on my experience before Winter Veil, I think that alchemical suits and mechanical prosthetics, when applied to our bodies, will replace a part of us."

"But the elemental shell is different. When installing alchemical products on the elemental shell, no modifications need to be made to our bodies."

"This is probably the most obvious difference between the Limb-Splitting Armor and the Elemental Shell..."

“Besides that, I have a hypothesis.” Shazo looked up at Rexol. “Based on my existing knowledge and experience, I’ve deduced a conclusion…”

Before stating this conclusion, Xia Zuo felt it necessary to carefully consider his tone and check for any possible oversights.

In the eyes of the people in the Mage Temple, represented by Rexor, Shazo's knowledge of bio-alchemy was not deep; he was still at the stage of being able to recognize the types and growth stages of monsters, and it was absolutely impossible for him to have come into contact with knowledge related to [Monster Essence].

These four words are words that only appear in the field of magic alchemy, and they must not come out of his mouth.

Xia Zuo pondered for a few seconds before saying:

"My conjecture is that the Limb Split Armor is unrelated to [elements]. Whether it is creating or using the Limb Split Armor, there is no need to use the Unruly Element or the Obedient Element. The Limb Split Armor is an alchemical system that is completely detached from orthodox alchemy."

Rexor paused for a moment after hearing this. "I can't imagine how your brain works. With just a few words from me and some textbook knowledge, you grasped the key to the Limb-Splitting Armor... If you were born in the Fourth Age, even if you weren't a pure-blooded mage, you could still become a big shot, and it wouldn't be impossible for you to build the Temple alongside those old guys..."

After figuring out the mechanism of free attribute points, Xia Zuo also wanted to go to an environment similar to the Fourth Era.

Because there must be many monsters and beasts waiting to be slaughtered there.

Fighting monsters day and night, quickly accumulating massive amounts of experience, and using cheat codes to allocate attribute points, you can transform yourself into an all-rounder with exceptionally high eight attributes, freely roaming the world.