my slow journey to infinity

Chapter 46: What is overtaking on a curve (tactical retreat)
The weather is getting colder, and Wang Shui's house is almost finished. Workers will no longer be needed for the subsequent work. He will use alchemy to perfect it bit by bit.

Aqua Regia has more important things to do than the house.

After several casual visits over a month, Aqua Regia left a very good impression on Hohenheim - cheerful, generous, calm, intelligent, helpful, and very talented in alchemy, able to recite any words from a book at will. Content, you can even memorize a book backwards.

Rather than mastering the alchemical knowledge mastered by Aqua Regia, Hohenheim preferred the self-discipline and kindness that this young man inadvertently showed.

Today, Wang Shui paid a special visit. In addition to the homemade food he brought, Shui Wang also brought a half-meter-high cylindrical bottle.

"You want to ask me for advice?"

Hohenheim's expression was always calm. It was impossible to tell whether he agreed or not, nor his mood. It was hard to get rid of the numbness and exhaustion in his eyes.

"I would like to ask you for advice on alchemy and perfect this experiment."

As he spoke, Aqua Regia gently clasped his hands together and controlled the activation of the refining array in the bottle. A wheat seedling broke out of the ground and grew rapidly in the sunlight on the study window sill. Two minutes later, the wheat matured.

Aqua Regia opened the bottle, took out the wheat ears and the soil inside and placed them on the straw paper for Hohenheim to inspect.

"The appearance of the wheat ears is normal, and so is the starch inside, but the soil has become sandy. This is normal. This is the effect of promoting growth."

After reading it, Hohenheim continued to comment, "For agriculture, alchemy is more about providing a good natural environment, water, fertilizer, temperature, insect repellent, etc. The efficiency is very low. Now it has been gradually replaced by various pesticides and fertilizers. Entering the virtuous cycle of industrialization, this kind of catalytic technology is too damaging to the environment and has too many limitations."

"But there is still not enough food. Not only in areas with harsh environments, there are also many people in this country, in this beautiful and fertile Amestoris, who are suffering from hunger. Mr. Hohenheim, you should have experienced this in your travels around the world. knowledge."

Hohenheim nodded. He had helped some people, but very few. He himself was wandering, and his power and knowledge were not particularly strong.

"I have a solution."

Wang Shui's words were astonishing. He plucked the ears of wheat under Hohenheim's gaze, stuffed the plants back into the bottle, then poured some water in and activated the other two alchemy techniques.

The straw was crushed and mixed with the soil, and the water was evenly distributed, but the soil still felt a bit loose and sandy.

Wang Shui once again took out a wheat grain and put it in, activating the first refining formation again. A new wheat seedling grew and matured in the sun.

Hohenheim frowned and just reused some materials. He didn't know what Aqua Regia wanted to express.

"Plant growth is my first plan. I think this is the most suitable method to quickly solve the food problem. It is more stable than directly refining air into starch."

Hohenheim looked into Wang Shui's calm eyes.

"Yes, this is what I want to show you. Let you know my efforts to solve the food problem. Please follow me."

Wang Shui took Hohenheim outside the house, and Wang Shui took out a huge kraft paper scroll from the off-road vehicle.

In the open space next to him, Aqua Regia opened the scroll, and Hohenheim's brows became more and more tangled.

On this huge scroll, there are three huge circles that are connected together to form an array, and what connects them are dense lines and words. The dense words almost blacken the surface of the paper, and it is difficult to see if you look away a little. Find out what's written on it.

"[Understanding], [Decomposition], [Reconstruction], none of the steps are simple. The content on this scroll is to push my [Equivalent Alchemy] to an advanced level overnight. Of course, these contents It wasn’t something I could figure out overnight, I borrowed the wisdom of my predecessors.”

Hohenheim did not speak. He read the text carefully. As for the formation formation, it was of little use to him, because everyone's formation formation would be different, and alchemy could not be reproduced by graphics alone.

Well, except for some fixed axiom formulas, those alchemy formations are either extremely professional and cannot be added to personal style, or they are simplified to the extreme and can be used by any alchemist.

After Hohenheim had read it once, Aqua Regia said, "Now, let me demonstrate it."

Without putting any materials on it, Aqua Regia directly put his palms together to activate the formation. The blue lightning did not fly up, but flowed on the scroll in the form of plasma.

1 minute, 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes.

Aqua regia had already stood up, but the plasma was still wrapped around his hands, and he was also concentrating on guiding the alchemy.

Twelve minutes later, the light disappeared. Hohenheim, who patiently watched from beginning to end, was attracted by the last formation, and a pile of fine white powder appeared on the kraft paper.

He knelt down and picked it up to examine it carefully, and then looked at Wang Shui.

Wang Shuizheng stumbled and lost his balance. He took two steps back and leaned on the car. He said weakly:

"Air, carbon dioxide to be precise, I used it to synthesize starch, but the decomposition and synthesis process is very delicate. To actively control the energy, I have written most of the fixed steps on the refining array, but it is still difficult to mass synthesis."

"Amazing," Hohenheim said. "So you're going back to growing crops? What do you want to learn from me?"

"Alchemy." Wang Shui got straight to the point, "I need to combine alchemy and alchemy. Although there are not many consumables for growing crops, and the materials can be recycled, it is useless to promote them one by one. I need a larger and more stable force, and I also need Restorative effects of alchemy.”

"Isn't alchemy a technology of your new country?" Hohenheim expressed doubts.

"This does not prevent me from knowing how to use alchemy. How many people in this town know how to use alchemy?" Wang Shui explained.

"But I don't know how to alchemy, especially the current alchemy. I just passed on the alchemy to the past. They merged the two technologies themselves, and I only saw the knowledge."

"What I want is knowledge." Wang Shui looked at Hohenheim's eyes sincerely. "Knowledge is enough. Of course, if you don't hesitate to teach me, I also want to ask you about alchemy. My dream is simple but difficult. , I want to make this world without hunger.”

"This is almost impossible." Hohenheim continued subconsciously. "The amounts of food and population will catch up with each other, and there will be war..." "Then do my best."

After a moment of silence, Hohenheim nodded and said: "I will teach you knowledge, but how much you can learn and how much you can let me take out depends on your ability and perseverance."

Sylvia, who had been watching the whole process, pressed her forehead with her soul form. Even she was almost deceived by Wang Shui's sincere performance.

The days that followed became more intense and regular. Shui Wang piled up the engineer's work in the morning, started studying with Hohenheim in the afternoon, and Sylvia's combat course in the evening.

Subjective thinking will interfere with people's perception of time, and happy time is always short-lived.Although busy, for Shui Wang, learning, especially learning the magical and creative alchemy, is indeed a rare joy.

[Lissenburg] The less obvious winter in the town passes quickly.

At the beginning of 1899, Hohenheim's eldest son, the protagonist [Edward Elric], was born. Aqua Regia, who was both a disciple and a friend, sent many supplements and food to Hohenheim's wife, [Theresa Elric].

Yes, Edward took his mother's surname, and Wang Shui saw deep guilt in Hohenheim's expression.

This father did not dare to hug and have affection with his child, as if he was afraid of soiling the pure new life.

Apart from working and spending time with his wife, Hohenheim spends most of his time in silence, even when he is teaching Aqua regia, and Aqua regia can still hear him whispering from time to time.

Wang Shui remembers this plot, after all, it is the reason why Hohenheim is immortal. This man with blond hair and golden eyes has more than 50 souls trapped in his body, and his blood also has 50 copies of the Philosopher's Stone flowing in it. .

But this was not what he wanted. From the moment he gained immortality, Hohenheim has been able to hear the screams of 50 souls in his body. The mental torture caused him to self-exile. He has been living aimlessly until he found his way to this place. In the small town, he found a temporary home.

Wang Shui knew that Hohenheim was not good at fighting, but Shui Wang also knew that Hohenheim could not be killed before all the Philosopher's Stones were exhausted, so he did not rush forward.

The birth of the protagonist Edward is just an episode. From now on, Aqua Regia's life will remain very regular, and Hohenheim will not leave for the time being, because the protagonist also has a younger brother, and he has to create another one.

When autumn came again, in the newly built greenhouse next to the house, Wang Shui stuffed a steel plate engraved with the formation formation and characters into a metal stand, then ran outside, put down the sunshade felt on the greenhouse, and let the inside Total darkness.

Then - bang~
After the crisp snap of fingers, Wang Shui's spirit flowed along the underground [Dragon Vein], locked the aura of the steel plate of the formation with a homologous metal ring, and then started the guidance.

In the brown observation window, you can still see the dazzling light inside the greenhouse. The array on the steel plate drives the nodes in the entire greenhouse. Blue lightning quickly covers the entire site. Then, visible to the naked eye, the wheat seedlings break out of the ground and grow rapidly.

At 30 minutes, the aqua regia timer has expired, and a mechanical arm has been inserted into the greenhouse to harvest wheat. Then, part of the straw is crushed, part is collected, fertilizer is added, seeds are sown, and then the next cycle begins.

Aqua Regia remotely modified the parameters, and the time after the second batch of wheat was harvested was exactly 90 minutes.Then came the third batch, the fourth batch...

Late at night a month later, Wang Shui began to sort out the data packed in more than a dozen large boxes:
The yield of each batch of wheat, the additional amount and consumption of materials, the control experiment under modified time parameters, the consumption and recovery of dragon vein energy, the reaction parameters of the earth's crust energy, etc.

For the subsequent observation of energy, Aqua Regia used his own modern alchemy to create an array specifically designed to detect energy flow.

After transcribing all the research contents into a palm-sized notebook, and closing the black leather cover, Wang Shui suddenly felt refreshed. Already familiar with this feeling, he opened his personal panel——

[Basics of Alchemy (Intermediate Level)], [Equivalent Alchemy (Intermediate Level)], [Dragon Vein Alchemy (Advanced Level)].

Um?There are two high-level skills that suddenly become mid-level?
Wang Shui's character was also much calmer than when he first became an awakener. He didn't make a fuss, but directly asked for help.

"Hill, what's going on with the intermediate skills?"

"Huh? Do you have skills that reach the intermediate level? Sure enough, your immersive learning is not slower than fighting. Just wait a moment while I park the forklift."

Wang Shui waited patiently for Sylvia, who was controlling the mechanical forklift behind the house, to place the piles of straw.

"Huh~ long wait, the small warehouse is full, it's time to clean it up."

"You seem to enjoy rural life, Queen Hill."

"Hey, are you itchy again?" Sylvia warned, and then her voice became louder, "Intermediate skills, I didn't expect you to get them so quickly. Excluding the time in the fantasy world, you become The Awakened One shouldn’t have had a year, right?”

"About seven months."

"My first intermediate skill was probably No. 11 months after I became an awakener. As for the level, it's easy to understand. The [Advanced] you saw before actually means [Low-level Advanced]. , the detailed division of low-level skills is to allow rookies to clearly understand themselves. Think about it for yourself, do your high-level skills have the feeling of reaching the pinnacle?"

No, Wang Shui gave the answer in his heart.

"Intermediate level is the beginning of skills becoming powerful, and it is also a very difficult threshold to cross. This means that you have your own insights on this skill. From then on, you can use skills more freely, instead of Press an icon and wait for the skill to take effect, and skills after the intermediate level will become more and more flexible.”

Wang Shui expressed his understanding. He now has a different feeling about alchemy. Without seeing the Gate of Truth, Wang Shui can already vaguely touch the threshold of releasing alchemy without using the alchemy formation. As for him, What is still missing is very simple - knowledge, more knowledge!
"After that, there are [Advanced], [Mastery] and [Master], but the road ahead is very difficult. Even if I reach the fifth level, only one skill reaches the standard of [Master]."

Sylvia's words made Wang Shui interested.

"Do you still have that skill?"

"Of course, that is the ability that is deeply imprinted in the soul. Hehe, do you want to know? Help me get a body, the artificial human body you mentioned before, and I will reluctantly show you the master's skills."

"Then you have time to wait, go play with your forklift, I'm going to dig a hole."

Putting away his notebook, Wang Shui looked at the town not far away. The first batch of goods had received feedback, and he could already see the street lights waving to him.

(End of this chapter)