"The sandwiches are delicious."

Claire couldn't help but let out a sound of pleasure as she felt the rich aroma of gravy between her lips and teeth, as well as the taste pleasure of the fresh vegetable mix.

Still, she succumbed to the tantalizing aroma and demanded a sandwich from Reiner, and immediately immersed herself in the delicious food.

But soon, Claire noticed Reiner's meaningful eyes, and immediately turned her face away, and spoke in a somewhat indistinct tone.

"Don't get me wrong, I just wanted to learn how to make this sandwich, so I ......"

Reiner smiled when he heard Claire's lame explanation, and didn't dismantle it, but turned to look at Charlotte.

"Xia Luo, what do you think of that paper?"

Charlotte heard Reiner call her name, she looked up, she still held Reiner's paper in her hand, and thought for a moment before the girl spoke.

"The arguments in the paper are so clear and the evidence is so comprehensive that I honestly can't believe that the experiment here is the one I did before."

After a pause, the girl continued.

"But there is one thing I don't quite understand, which is the content of the penultimate chapter."

Flipping through the paper, Charlotte pointed to one of the pages, which was titled "Chapter 4: An Inquiry into the Change of Mass in Experimental Processes," in which Reiner focused on the basic idea of the law of conservation of mass, which seemed to Charlotte to be incomprehensible.

Prior to this, Xia Luo had not considered what would happen to the mass of the object before and after the experiment, nor did she understand the value of discussing it.

Because in her concept, the quality of the same seems to be a matter of course, but after Reiner's mention, Charlotte realizes that there seems to be another mystery in it.

"Why is it that when one substance is burned and becomes another, the total mass of the product before and after the reaction does not change, and from this experiment, it seems that the mass is transferred from limestone to white rock and this special gas, and what method is used to achieve this?"

Listening to Xia Luo's question, Reiner bowed slightly.

This girl is really good at alchemy, and she realized the problem so quickly.

"Are you trying to say that there is a carrier for quality?"

Reiner was a little surprised, and what he said surprised Claire.

In Master Hohenheim's alchemical theory, mass is an intrinsic property of an object, which is the amount of elements contained in an object, and in his view, the elements have a uniform mass, and the more elements an object contains, the greater the mass, and the mass of an object in a unit volume is called density.

For example, the reason for the difference in density between rock and metal is the amount of earth elements, and in a unit volume, there are more earth elements that make up iron, and less earth elements that make up rocks, which is the fundamental difference between the two as different substances.

But in Reiner's paper, it is clear that part of the limestone's mass has escaped into a special gas, which seems to involve the transformation of the elements, after all, according to common sense, the earth element should be heavy and stable, as opposed to the flowing and light wind element.

But Master Hohenheim has long asserted that the four basic elements are the most basic forms of composition of objects, and they cannot be transformed into each other, and all other substances are formed by the condensation of the four basic elements.

If you can really find a way to transform the elements into each other, it will be a shocking discovery.

Even though flowing water can turn into steam when heated, the mages have long understood that those are not real gases, but just small droplets of water that cannot be observed by the naked eye, and the real elemental transformation has not yet been realized.

In this way, that special gas is a new substance formed by mixing the earth element and the wind element?

That's weird.

Because Reiner's argument is like saying that the basic elements are not really "basic", they can be subdivided down, which is completely contrary to the current theory of alchemy.

As Claire fell into deep thought, Charlotte shook her head slightly.

"I don't know, I don't think there's a way to find conclusive evidence just by relying on this one experiment."

In the final analysis, in the experiment of heating the limestone to form white rock, the matter was not completely transformed, and there was no extra thing out of thin air, and in the absence of a clear gas composition, it cannot be said that the special gas must have escaped from the limestone, and they need more direct evidence.

Alchemy has always been an experiment-based discipline, and any theory can be overturned by special experiments, but conversely, if it cannot be reproduced experimentally, then all conjectures are meaningless.

"I also think that maybe the four basic elements are not the most basic substances, such as water, may be a combination of certain substances, of course, these are all conjectures, and I may find an opportunity to do some experiments to verify them recently."

Reiner pretended to be helpless and said, although he had 10,000 ways to prove that water was actually a chemical compound, it seemed too ostentatious to put it forward so rashly, after all, the first paper could be said to be inspired by Xia Luo's experiments, and the second subversive paper would be suspicious if it was put forward so quickly.

He also needs to wait for his paper to ferment in the academic world, and everyone will start to change their concepts and then step by step, although there may be accidents, such as a certain academic master relying on Reiner's paper to inspire and decompose the water, but it is better than Reiner being caught slicing for research.

"Do you already have an idea, Mr. Headmaster?"

Xia Luo was a little surprised, these questions that they didn't dare to think about in the past, the headmaster in front of her, who looked a little cynical, had already begun to think, was he talented, or was he crazy?

"I don't have a clue yet, but I have a general direction."

Reiner decided to put an end to the topic, and this first paper has not yet been published, so don't think too far ahead.

"Let's not mention this first, Teacher Claire, I need to leave the school tomorrow, you come with me."

"Huh?"

Claire had obviously not recovered from the discussion just now, and only hesitantly replied when she heard Reiner call her name.

"Where are you going?"

"Didn't I say before, we need to find an alchemy workshop that can produce Coke."

Reiner asked rhetorically, looking at Claire with a caring look for the disabled.

"Uh, I—Of course I remember, I mean, where are we going to find the Atelier?"

Claire hurriedly disguised her embarrassment, but it was quite pitiful.

"Right here."

Pointing to a sketchy map spread out on the table, Reiner smiled.