At nine o'clock in the morning, the sunlight outside the window had already filled the entire room. Todd lay on the bed with his eyes open, the scene from last night still replaying in his mind.
The interaction lasted only ten seconds, without a single word exchanged or any pleasantries, yet Black Sheep felt like an old friend he hadn't seen in a long time.
When the girl returned to the stage to receive the cheers of the audience, Todd chose to leave voluntarily, neither waiting outside the tent nor glancing back at the dazzling spectacle in the darkness. Perhaps this was related to his personality from his past life; when encountering something pleasant and joyful, he always maintained a degree of detachment, believing that excessive contact would only ruin the initial beauty. He wouldn't allow himself to become addicted. He had always been so restrained.
Shaking his head, he chuckled self-deprecatingly; being sentimental was never a good thing. The monk sat up in bed, dressed, grabbed his notebook, abandoned his morning reading, and headed straight for the underground laboratory beneath the cemetery.
"Let me see. The materials for the lab are basically organized. Next, we should make equipment for biochemical experiments. First, we need to..." He flipped through his notebook, which was full of writing, and used the key at his waist to open the lab door.
A soft thud came from inside the room. Todd looked up at the sound and saw a figure he never expected appear in his line of sight.
Wearing a light-colored, round headdress, her long black hair was combed back and tied into two braids that hung down her cheeks. The loose-fitting, front-opening top naturally clung to her still-developing body. The lightly made-up Black Sheep sat on the marble laboratory table, her two leather patent boots swinging back and forth.
Todd stared wide-eyed, stammering, "You...how could you...not...you weren't..."
Black Sheep looked with interest at the table, which was filled with all sorts of equipment and strange little bottles. He picked up a dark bottle made of metal and glass, sealed with wax, and slowly read the words on the label in broken Latin.
"Concentrated...sulfur..."
"No! Don't touch that!"
Todd hurriedly dropped what he was holding at the door and rushed to the girl, about to snatch the bottle from her.
The girl flicked her finger, and a small pebble struck the wall on the other side. Her figure disappeared and instantly reappeared where the pebble had fallen.
Knowing that chasing her would be pointless, Todd opened his arms and pleaded, "Miss Black Sheep, please give me the bottle you're holding."
Hearing the address from the other person, the girl paused for a moment, then rubbed her fingers around the mouth of the bottle and asked, "What is this?"
Seeing the monk hesitate and remain silent, Black Sheep smiled mischievously and scraped off the sealing wax layer by layer with his fingers. He blinked and pretended to twist open the bottle cap.
"Concentrated sulfuric acid!" Seeing the other person's action, Todd's mind went blank, and he hurriedly said, "A highly corrosive strong mineral acid. It can burn the skin, and the resulting fumes can cause blindness. In short, it's a very dangerous substance. Now, please give it to me..."
Having obtained the bottle, Todd thought he could finally breathe a sigh of relief, but then he saw Black Sheep open the bottle of gunpowder. He immediately clutched his forehead in exasperation and let out a heavy sigh.
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An hour later, after confirming that the other party, led by Huggins, meant no harm, Todd taught the girl what she could touch and what she couldn't. Then, he turned on the kerosene lamp and prepared to begin today's experiment.
A pair of dark eyes darted around him, watching him weigh powders, prepare reagents, dilute gas, and heat and filter. Todd shrank back a little, feeling uncomfortable, and said, "Could you please stop staring at me like that while I'm doing my experiments?"
The girl, resting her chin on her hand, showed no awareness of needing to avoid him. Instead, she asked him, "Are you an alchemist?"
After considering the appropriateness of this title, Todd first nodded, then shook his head.
“I don’t think so either. I’ve met those alchemists, and what they do is boring and dull. What you do looks much more interesting.”
The monk raised his eyebrows, thinking to himself that it was only natural.
The girl started chatting with him intermittently.
Todd, focused on his experiment, gradually lowered his guard and unconsciously began to tell the other person what he was doing.
"Although this room has so much equipment, we still need a lot of cutting-edge equipment and precision instruments to actually conduct the experiments I want. The equipment I'm making now is a microscope."
"microscope?"
Gradually finding the feeling of teaching students in the laboratory classroom in his previous life, Todd spread his left and right hands apart, extending them to a distance of about 25 centimeters, and said to Black Sheep: "Under normal circumstances, at this distance, the human eye can only distinguish two objects that are 0.1 to 0.2 millimeters apart, which is about the thickness of a hair. That is to say, when two objects are less than this distance apart, the human eye will see them as one object."
"Really? Let me try." The girl actually plucked a hair, held it in front of her, and tried to distinguish it.
"With a microscope, I can magnify things 100 or even 1,000 times, so I can see many things that I couldn't see before."
Upon hearing the other person's words, Black Sheep's eyes lit up. He excitedly grabbed the edge of the table with both hands and shouted, "Then what are we waiting for?! Let's do it now!"
Todd lowered his hands and shook his head helplessly: "It's not that easy. The most troublesome part of manufacturing a microscope is the production of the lens. And the production of the lens requires the production of optical glass first."
The girl was confused again: "I've heard of glass. I've heard it's a treasure secretly crafted by artisans in southern China, but what is a lens?"
Upon hearing this, the monk and his apprentice were at a loss for words. Lenses involve optical principles, which cannot be explained in just a few words; and optical glass is not something that can be made by simply setting up a pot on the beach and heating sand, as depicted in movies and novels; he had also seen the glass made by those southern craftsmen, and their production processes were far too poor to meet the requirements of optical glass.
As he explained the production process to the girl in a simple way, and watched the light flash in her eyes, Todd finally realized why the black sheep gave him a familiar feeling.
The girl's inquisitive gaze and curiosity about the world reminded him of himself.
The sunlight refracted through the cracks in the roof turned golden again.
Black Sheep took a translucent crystal from the pot, held it up to the sunlight, and gazed in rapt attention at the seven-colored light it emitted. He carefully placed it into his bag and then reached out his hand to Todd.
“Mr. Todd, it has been a very pleasant afternoon. I almost forgot the purpose of my visit. On behalf of the Downtown Circus, I would like to extend an invitation to you tonight.”
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