"What?"
Mr. White's face changed drastically, and he hurriedly asked, "Wh… why is that? After all, Lord, you holding this bottle shouldn't be of much use, right? Or is it that you plan to breed them yourself?"
"But you have to know, breeding this kind of eavesdropping bug is extremely troublesome. Not only do you need special herbs and plants like invisible flowers."
"At the same time, their larval stage is extremely sensitive to the environment. The smaller the size, the easier they die."
"Lord, you don't know this…"
"In our merchant association, there's a base specifically responsible for breeding all kinds of insects, called the Insect Division. Even experts as experienced as them get all kinds of headaches when it comes to breeding eavesdropping bugs."
"I think Lord, wouldn't it be better to resell them to professionals?"
"After all, if such precious eavesdropping bugs were to die, that would simply be a loss to all of humanity, and also a loss to the entire Mist City."
"Mr. White, you don't need to lecture me with grand principles."
Ethan smiled and waved his hand, "I'm not planning to breed any eavesdropping bugs myself. I'm not interested in this thing at all. I just purely feel that the way you're doing business isn't quite decent, so I might consider changing to someone else to talk business with. That might be better."
"Ahem! Ahem! Ahem!"
Mr. White awkwardly fake-coughed a few times, then hurriedly put on black dragonhide gloves and took out the two witch signet rings from before, placing them on the table.
"These two witch tail rings were originally discovered within Lord's territory as well. But because they carry a witch's curse, I planned to wait until the curse was lifted before giving the rings to you."
Mr. White quickly explained, "I absolutely had no intention of keeping them for myself. Lord, please don't misunderstand."
"Hehehe!"
Ethan laughed along and didn't expose him.
'Isn't the highest realm of a merchant just saying human words to humans and ghost words to ghosts.'
And since Mr. White wanted to play dumb, Ethan naturally played dumb along with him and said, "So that's how it is. Then Mr. White has a way to remove this curse?"
"The method to lift the curse is actually quite simple."
Since Mr. White wanted to buy the eavesdropping bugs in Ethan's hands, he naturally didn't dare to hide anything and said, "The first method is to find a servant to test it."
"Anyway, whoever touches the curse first with their hand, the curse will automatically attach itself to that person."
"So using servants to test curses is also the most commonly used method."
"..."
'Listen to that, is this even something a human would say?'
Ethan was somewhat speechless and said, "Then call your servant out and help me test it."
"Hehehe!"
Mr. White laughed awkwardly again and again, "Lord is joking. There are far too many kinds of curses from wild witches."
"Besides the most basic tracking spell, there are also death curses, explosion spells, parasitic insect brain-piercing techniques, and there are even large-scale group attack types, plagues!"
"If I casually let my subordinates test it, being short on manpower later would be one thing. I'm more afraid that this dead wild witch was a hatred-driven extremist, and the curse she placed just happens to be a plague-type magic."
"Then I'm afraid everyone in this villa would die."
"Uh…"
Hearing this, Ethan immediately patted his own chest.
Luckily, the wild witch he encountered last time was still considered a pacifist.
She only put a tracking spell on her tail ring.
Otherwise he was afraid, he would have been completely finished.
"There's a second method, and that is to first put these two cursed rings into isolation bottles," Mr. White continued, "Then take them back to the merchant association headquarters. There are professional alchemists there who can refine the curse into something else, and then it can..."
"A curse can also be refined through alchemy?", Ethan was shocked.
Then he started rummaging through his warehouse, and very quickly he found a copy of [Alchemy].
[Alchemy: Based on the principle of equivalent exchange, turning certain substances into other substances. Not a very practical spell. PS: But there are always some people who want to get rich overnight and hope to try this spell.]
This was a scroll he had previously obtained from a witch's tail ring.
Now that he heard that curses could be cracked using alchemy, Ethan had other thoughts. Since he could open loot boxes himself, why would he need to rely on someone else's hands, right.
"Of course it can be refined."
Mr. White said with a smile, "Those alchemists, what can't they refine? They can even refine their own hands and feet, let alone a mere curse."
"Oh right, in my product list, isn't there a kind of bread called air bread?"
"That thing is a product alchemists directly exchanged from air and a kind of nectar through equivalent exchange. It's extremely popular!"
"If Lord is interested, you could actually learn a bit about this profession."
"This makes much more money than being a merchant."
"Really?"
As soon as he heard it could make money, Ethan's eyes immediately lit up and he said, "Then Mr. White, have some wine first. I'll go to the restroom and be right back."
"No problem, go ahead!"
After saying that, Mr. White waved his hand toward Ethan.
And Ethan wasn't actually going to the restroom at all. He simply wanted to use the duplicator to copy a copy of the [Alchemy] skill and learn it by the way, to see if he could open loot boxes, that's all.
As for why he didn't want to do it in front of Mr. White, it was purely because he didn't want others to know too much about him.
After all, Mr. White was just a passing merchant. And a big profiteer at that. You can never be too careful.
———
After returning to the villa, Ethan finally took out the duplicator, casually copied three copies of the [Alchemy (Fake)] skill, and then learned one of them.
At the moment he learned alchemy.
Ethan felt as if a new world had opened up inside his brain.
It was like some kind of channel had been constructed in his mind, and in that instant, he saw many different things, such as many alchemical formulas.
Alchemical magic arrays.
How to perform alchemy, what alchemy is, and so on.
[Alchemy: Using the principle of equivalent exchange to exchange things from this world with things from another world. When this world gains an extra piece of gold, there must be a world that loses a piece of gold.]
[PS: Don't use living beings for exchange, otherwise it will be very difficult for you to control what you exchange for.]
'So alchemy is just like this?'
'To put it plainly, it's actually just sending something from this world to another world, and exchanging it for something from that other world, and the items exchanged on both sides must follow the principle of equivalence.'
'And the closer the nature of the items is, the less mental energy is consumed in the exchange.'
For example, air bread is just exchanging air and pollen for an air-based food similar to bread. Not only are the properties similar, but even the internal nature doesn't change much, so it only takes a small amount of mental energy to successfully make it.
However, based on Ethan's current [Alchemy: Level 1] situation, the amount of mental energy he could expend was only a pitiful 100.
According to the formula for making air bread, making one air bread actually required 25 mental energy. That meant... With his current rookie ability, he could only make four air breads. This was simply worse than even an alchemy apprentice.
'Forget it.'
'No matter what, let's try it first.'
Ethan remembered that there was still some chocolate flower pollen in his warehouse.
These chocolate flowers were picked from the Mist Forest by Herb Three and the others. The flowers naturally carried a chocolate fragrance and were edible, but they could only really be made into tea drinks or used to make desserts.
Ethan just happened to take out a few and try out his alchemy, to see how effective it was.
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