The road remains the same dark corridor, and the door remains the same iron gate bearing the proverb.

At the far end of the underground hall, Huggins stood before a tightly closed iron door, took a strange key from his waist, and opened a new world for Todd.

The room was covered with a floor made of Wulian red granite, which was hand-polished. Four huge marble slab tables were placed in the center of the room, on which were placed tools such as iron stands, asbestos nets, alcohol lamps, beakers, test tubes, gas collecting bottles, reagent bottles, and mortars. Although the alcohol had long since evaporated and the iron nets were rusty, the long period of storage made these items appear to be at least undamaged.

Three cedar glass cabinets stood side by side against the wall, containing various bottles and jars of all sizes. Some held specimens preserved in liquid, others contained unknown dried powders, and some had broken seals and were even covered in fungi and mold. Using Edgar's torch, Todd carefully examined the faded and distorted markings on the bottles and jars. Aside from the obscure symbolic symbols, the remaining Latin text described things he had never heard of before.

A circular cloth map hung on the wall directly opposite the main gate, depicting an octagonal pattern resembling a magic circle. The cardinal directions (east, south, west, and north) were labeled with the elements of water, earth, fire, and wind, respectively; while the southeast, southwest, northwest, and northeast directions were labeled with the elements of cold, dry, hot, and humid, respectively.

The monks and apprentices stood in the center of the room, turning their feet and looking down at the nearly two-hundred-square-meter room. They couldn't help but marvel at how they had never imagined that they could find such a medieval-style chemistry laboratory in such a place.

Seeing the satisfied expression on the boy's face, Huggins raised an eyebrow and said with a smile, "You think that's all? I guarantee you'll be shocked when you see what's coming next!"

The man walked to the end of the room, opened a hidden compartment in the wall, grabbed a hand crank, and carefully turned it.

The sounds of gears turning and belts rolling came from the basement ceiling.

A short while later, a huge natural crack slowly appeared in the dark roof and rock wall. The midday sun, through the many bronze mirrors and glass stones installed above the crack, used the principles of light reflection and scattering to instantly illuminate the entire room; fresh air also slowly flowed in from above, dispelling the stale and stuffy atmosphere of the enclosed environment, making people feel refreshed and relaxed.

"Holy crap..." (in Chinese)

Todd looked up, his eyes wide, his mouth agape involuntarily agape, and he couldn't help but praise the room while thinking: The person who designed this room must not only be proficient in alchemy, biology, and physiology; they must also understand engineering, optics, and mechanics. Such a person must be a genius…

The apprentice's blissful expression greatly satisfied Huggins.

The man tossed the keys from his waist to Todd, whistled towards the room, and then said, "It took us quite a bit of work to open this room. I was originally planning to take these things out and sell them..."

"no!"

Without thinking it through, he blurted out his objection. When the boy came to his senses and saw the mischievous expression on the other person's face, he laughed sheepishly.

The Slavic man patted him on the shoulder: "Then I thought, perhaps you can discover its true value in a place like this."

"This is the best gift I have ever received in my life..."

Todd looked into the other person's eyes, opened his arms, pursed his lips, and said sincerely.

Wearing gloves, Huggins raised his hands, took two steps back, and said with his head in his hand, "Forget about the hug. I'd rather leave the time to you and this room."

The man, who was about to turn and leave with Edgar, turned back and saw little Jerry standing next to Todd, looking on with curiosity. He sighed, walked over, grabbed Jerry's clothes, and pulled him outside, saying to himself, "You little brat, don't join in the fun! Don't forget, it's been three days since you last went crazy. You'd better come with us and soak in the cold water!"

Looking at the tall young man pleading and looking unwilling, Todd shook his head helplessly.

Since the last attack, he and Hudgens devised a stress-relief plan for little Jerry:

During each episode of rage, his body was immersed in cold water. The low temperature slowed the parasites' movement, thus reducing the rate of adrenaline release. Although the total amount released remained the same, the duration of release increased, but the physical pain was greatly reduced, and he did not experience a mental breakdown.

Both of them understood that this plan was only a temporary solution, but it was at least the best option at the moment.

After seeing the three off, Todd closed the door and excitedly went into the room, touching and looking around.

Soon, several places caught his attention.

One is experimental glassware, which differs from modern glassmaking techniques. All the glassware has a metallic luster, and some of the larger pieces have strange characters marked on their mouths, somewhat resembling Arabic script.

One was the powder in the bottles and jars in the cabinet. Todd could roughly guess what some of the powders were by looking at their appearance and smelling them, such as calcite (calcium carbonate), obsidian (silicon dioxide), cassiterite (tin oxide), alum (potassium aluminum sulfate), etc., but he couldn't figure out what the others were.

The last one is those strange specimens. Some can be identified as animal tissue, some look like plant roots and stems, and some resemble mutated organs of humanoid organisms.

Suppressing his curiosity for the time being, Todd thought that the most important task at hand was not identifying the objects.

As the apprentice felt the sticky floor beneath his feet and touched the thick layer of dust accumulated on the stone table, a phrase that often hung on the wall of the laboratory in his previous life involuntarily came to mind.

Maintaining hygiene is everyone's responsibility!

Todd retrieved a mop and rags from the storage room in the underground hall, then carried a wooden bucket to the underground river to fetch water. He rolled up his sleeves and began a thorough cleaning of the laboratory, which had been untouched for many years.

The floor was mopped clean, the stone table was wiped until it shone, and the bottles and jars were polished until they were shiny and transparent. Buckets of black, dirty water were carried out of the room, and baskets of useless waste were dumped out of the room.

Several hours have passed.

The light from the ceiling slowly turned golden, signifying that even though daytime had ended, night was fast approaching.

Todd poured the last bucket of sewage onto the floor deep in the hallway outside the door. Returning to the lab, he looked at the clean and bright room in the afterglow of the setting sun and nodded in satisfaction.

It might seem ridiculous to think this way, but this might be the starting point for me to make a living and create a legend in this strange world...

The boy turned the handle and closed the crack in the roof. Reluctantly, he closed the door, taking one last look at everything inside before leaving, thinking to himself.