"It seems you've been quite busy lately," Liang En said with a genuine smile as he hugged Pierce after entering the room. Although they hadn't met as often as before due to their respective responsibilities, they still maintained their friendship, and Liang En was genuinely happy for his friend's current situation.
"It's all thanks to you," Pierce replied with a smile. "If you hadn't invested back then, those people wouldn't have trusted us, and our business wouldn't be doing so well. By the way, are you here to pick up your things?"
"Yes, this time I really had to trouble you because it's difficult for others to gather all these items," Liang En replied with a smile. "I never expected you to complete the collection in such a short time."
"It wasn't as complicated as you might think," Pierce shook his head. "Although the list you gave was quite detailed, most of the items aren't very valuable; they're just diverse in type, which made them a bit troublesome to gather."
"But as you know, our family has a network across the entire Mediterranean region, so all I needed to do was send out some emails and wait for the items to be mailed in."
"Regardless, I still have to thank you," Liang En said with a smile. "If it weren't for you, it might have taken me months or even years to collect all these items."
Soon after, Charles instructed the staff to bring out the items for Liang En. The items were obviously well-organized in advance, totaling seven large suitcases.
Once everything was loaded into the pickup truck, Liang En bid farewell to Pierce and drove north. Liang En thought it was more appropriate to stay in a remote location for the upcoming experiments with his newfound extraordinary powers.
After all, no one knew what consequences might result from using this new power, and if the effects were too noticeable, it wouldn't be suitable to conduct the experiments in a populated area.
After some thought, he realized that the residence near Fox Town would be the best place to conduct the experiments, so he decided to head there.
"I feel like what we're doing is akin to the legendary wizards, hiding in the forest and planning things not meant for the public," Jeanne joked with a smile as they drove north.
This showed that Jeanne had adjusted well to modern society; otherwise, she wouldn't have joked about wizards, a term that was once taboo for her. This was, of course, a good sign.
They soon arrived at Fox Town, where everything looked almost the same as it did during their last visit, with no significant changes.
This was a characteristic of such small towns; in the West, it's common for towns to remain unchanged for centuries, so it wasn't surprising.
After passing through the town, they quickly drove to the residence in the woods and entered the house. The place hadn't changed much since they last left, except for a thin layer of dust covering some of the facilities.
After summoning Tumbaq to start cleaning, Liang En and Jeanne began unloading the suitcases from the truck and moved them to the central room, which had been converted into a workshop.
This room was the only modification Liang En had made after acquiring the property: they built a 10-square-meter room in the center of the ground floor, surrounded by over half a meter of reinforced concrete and several layers of steel plates.
This was the room Liang En had prepared for his extraordinary experiments. Initially, they planned to build an underground laboratory, but they abandoned the idea after discovering the high groundwater level in the area.
"Are you planning to create the charging stones for this thing?" Jeanne asked curiously as she watched Liang En take out various items from the suitcases. "Yes," Liang En nodded.
He then opened one of the suitcases and placed several test tubes filled with gold, silver, and gemstone powder onto a test tube rack in front of him, removing the stoppers.
"I originally thought it would take me a long time to complete this task, but thanks to the new powers I've acquired, the time required has been greatly reduced."
The acquisition of new extraordinary powers had greatly accelerated Liang En's plans. Previously, he could only slowly transmute materials using alchemy, but now he could directly refine them.
Although the end results of both methods were similar, the efficiency was vastly different. Using pure alchemy would have been much slower.
This was why Liang En was eager to conduct the experiments, as he saw the potential to quickly decipher the information recorded on the mithril disk.
Once everything was ready, Liang En began his work in the lab. However, he quickly frowned as the tasks ahead turned out to be more complex than he had anticipated.
The reason for this was that he was now dealing with the more intricate aspects of extraordinary powers, and there was a significant difference between knowing the theory and actually performing the operations.
What Liang En didn't know was that even in worlds where extraordinary powers were common, alchemists were a rare profession, precisely because of the complexity involved.
But Liang En was well-prepared for this. He had collected multiple sets of materials, some of which were inexpensive and intended for practice.
"Alright, let's start practicing," Liang En sighed after mentally reviewing the entire process, then began using his extraordinary powers to alter a small piece of opal.
The only saving grace was that most of the extraordinary power required for alchemy wasn't in large quantities; it just required precise control, allowing Liang En to conduct many experiments in a single day.
However, despite this, Liang En's progress was slow, mainly because there was a considerable difference between understanding the process in theory and executing it in practice.
The records he had only provided a list of formulas with few operational details, so many aspects had to be figured out through trial and error.
Especially since many of the differences were extremely subtle, multiple experiments were needed to pinpoint the exact procedures. By the time Liang En felt he was finally on the right track and ready to eat, he realized it was already dark outside.
When Liang En stepped out of the room, it was nighttime. He found Jeanne sitting at the dining table reading a book, with some partially prepared food nearby.
"Ah, you're finally out. I'll start cooking now," Jeanne said, looking at Liang En after hearing his footsteps. "We're having curry tonight. Everything's ready, just needs a quick cook, and it'll be done soon."
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