Chapter 431: Flame Experiment
“If I hadn’t followed the advice of Lord Ace and Allen, maybe I would be lying on the ground like Tortis, a cold headless corpse. And I would be even more miserable than him; I don’t even have a wife or child.”
Bachelor Bruce sighed with a mix of relief, lingering fear, and sympathy. His thoughts also gradually became firmer: perhaps his foundational path needed to change!
The next day, a Shadow Crow banged on the window of Allen’s house, startling him awake from his dream. Allen didn’t get up but groggily chanted the spell “Open Window.” The glass window opened immediately. A roll of thick magic paper smashed onto his bed with a thud, and the crow cawed, turned, and flew away.
“The latest issue of the newspaper has arrived.”
Allen rubbed his sleepy eyes and unrolled the magic paper. A few words caught his eye: High Tower Weekly Supplement. A paragraph came into view.
“The affinity of matter and the resulting natural phenomena seem to depend largely on the motion and mechanism of the minute components of objects that we cannot observe.
“The difference between objects depends solely on the way their common matter is composed… Therefore, according to how the minute components of matter repel and interact with each other, this or that named object is produced.”
Allen rubbed his eyes. This hypothesis looked beautiful, but the Four Elements Hypothesis also looked beautiful. Conjectures lacking experimental verification should be doubted.
Overnight, the entire High Tower Territory seemed to have been attacked. Advanced wizard apprentices had their heads explode one after another. Even with psychological preparation, many advanced wizard apprentices who didn’t disintegrate their foundational spell models in advance like Bruce had their Soul Sanctuaries shattered and solidified because they found it difficult to accept the new theory, completely losing their future.
“Have the statistics come out?”
Ace suddenly appeared on the top floor of the Central High Tower outside the city and asked Leon, who was on duty.
Seeing Ace, Leon stood up subconsciously and bowed forty-five degrees. This was a habit he developed from serving as the First Administrative Officer for many years.
“Lord Ace, the release of the new theory this time caused a total of fifty-one advanced wizard apprentices to die from the explosion of their foundational spell models and the shattering of their Soul Sanctuaries. One hundred and twenty advanced wizard apprentices had their Soul Sanctuaries shattered and solidified. The Elemental School wizards suffered heavy losses.”
Listening to Leon’s words, Ace sighed.
“Magic has developed to a new stage. Perhaps every theoretical breakthrough in the future will create a large number of headless corpses. The innovation of magic theory might have to step on the corpses of old theories to reach a higher level.
“How is Betty’s situation?”
Listening to Ace’s words, Leon felt somewhat uneasy. He wasn’t actually a serious research-type wizard. His talent and effort in theory weren’t much; his focus was more on the research of his unique Misfortune series spells.
“Betty’s current situation has stabilized. Her Fire Element series spell models have disintegrated, and her Soul Sanctuary suffered some trauma, but fortunately, it can be repaired and shouldn’t affect future development.”
Meanwhile, at Betty’s residence.
Pale-faced Betty casually tied up her twin tails and began her experiment.
“If the Fire Element does not exist, then there should be a new explanation for the phenomenon of combustion. Our combustion all takes place in the presence of air. The Four Elements Theory says wind aids fire. Not acknowledging the Four Elements Theory doesn’t mean not acknowledging air.
“Ollie once conducted an experiment using a U-shaped tube filled with mercury and a glass tube, proving that air can be compressed and rarefied, and the volume of gas is inversely proportional to pressure. That is to say, air itself is a medium, and combustion phenomena exist in an air environment. If…”
Betty prepared a sealed bell jar, placed a scorching red-hot iron plate under it, and pumped out the air inside with a suction machine.
A fixing device at the neck of the bell jar dropped combustible material onto the hot plate. The combustible material Betty prepared was sulfur. When the sulfur fell onto the hot plate, it only smoked but didn’t catch fire.
Betty opened the ventilation plug on the bell jar. Various small sparks appeared, including the blue flame of sulfur.
“In the case where air is evacuated, which I call a vacuum, combustion seems impossible. However, more experiments are needed to be certain.”
Betty experimented with several combustible materials, and the results were similar to sulfur. But when she experimented with black gunpowder, she got a very wonderful result. The gunpowder falling on the hot plate in the vacuum burned slowly without exploding.
“A very wide blue flame, like a sulfur flame. It’s so strange that it can burn continuously for so long. It can burn, but no explosion occurred. Why is there such a strange phenomenon?”
Betty frowned tightly. She continued to test the gunpowder. She covered the gunpowder with a sealed glass bell jar and heated the gunpowder with a magnifying glass. She found that the gunpowder only burned where it was heated, but when air rushed in, the gunpowder burned up all at once with a whoosh.
“Could it be that air was mixed into the saltpeter crystals used to make the gunpowder? Otherwise, how to explain this phenomenon?”
Betty lost her elegant ladylike demeanor. She scratched her head unconsciously, turning her hair into a bird’s nest. She thought for a while and decided to re-prepare saltpeter crystals in a vacuum environment.
These saltpeter crystals could be guaranteed to have no air, but the result was the same. Gunpowder could still burn in a vacuum environment, only without exploding.
“Substances mixed with saltpeter can burn even in places without air. Heating saltpeter can produce spark vapor similar to air!”
Betty stopped the experiment. She unrolled a piece of magic paper and wrote the title “New Experiments on the Relationship between Flame and Air” on it.
Betty detailed the purpose, design, process, and conclusion of the experiment. At the end, she wrote:
“Air is the universal solvent for all sulfurous bodies; a large amount of heat is generated during the dissolution process, which we call fire; the dissolution process is produced by an inherent substance mixed with air. This substance, if not identical, is extremely similar to what is fixed in saltpeter; in the process of air dissolving objects, a part is compounded and mixed or dissolved and converted into air, floating and sinking with the air.
“We can assume that because there is something in the air that also exists in saltpeter, it can dissolve the combustible object itself, and the heat released is the heat of dissolution, similar to the heat released when substances like potassium carbonate and sulfuric acid dissolve in water.”
Betty carefully wrapped the paper, opened her Grimoire, and tapped a few times. About ten minutes later, a Shadow Crow flew to the window of Betty’s house, flapping against the glass.
Betty dispelled the barrier magic on the window. The Shadow Crow penetrated the glass and appeared directly in the room. It transformed from a shadow into a lively black-feathered crow and opened its mouth wide.
Betty stuffed the wrapped scroll into the crow’s mouth and watched with hopeful eyes as the crow turned into a shadow and flew toward the Central High Tower outside the city.
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