Chapter 215 — Industrial Products
Blade of Dawn · Page 2 of 4
"In fact, compared with ordinary alchemical potions, they really are 'worthless' now, my lady," Pi Yun said, standing by the table with a face full of pride. "The greatest cost of an alchemical potion used to be the caster, but now the reaction vats and their accompanying magical apparatus have taken the caster's place. And the volume of potion this great machine can produce in a single run is nothing a few flasks and test tubes on a little alchemy bench could ever match. In fact, the most valuable part of the potions before you is not the liquid inside at all, but something you would never guess."
"The most valuable part?" Rebecca blinked. "If the potion itself isn't worth much, then what is?"
"The bottle," Pi Yun spread his hands. "These crystal vials cost more to make than the liquid inside them. If a potion sells for thirty copper coins, then at least fifteen of those coins are really paying for the bottle."
Amber was startled. "Bottles are that expensive?!"
"The bottles haven't gotten more expensive—it's just that the production cost of the potions is so low," Rebecca said, already catching on. She looked thoughtfully at Gao Yang. "Ancestor, I recall you mentioned before that a kind of artificial crystal called 'glass' would be cheaper than any artificial crystal we have now..."
Gao Yang gave an awkward little cough. "Ahem—glass... never mind that for now. I haven't found a substitute raw material for it yet."
They say a transmigrator's three great treasures are papermaking, glass, and black powder—but Gao Yang had gotten his hands on none of the three. This world already had papermaking; though there was room for improvement, it was already a mature technology, and it was not his turn to "invent" it all over again. Black powder had been a project that failed in the early days of building the domain. And as for glass...
This world possessed a special technology called "artificial crystal." By Gao Song's judgment, the commonest grade of artificial crystal, "white crystal," was in fact the "glass" realizable in this world. The chief materials of this artificial crystal were quartz sand and colorless crystal rock—and those two things... were both magical materials.
Quartz sand was manageable enough; it counted as the cheapest of magical materials. But colorless crystal rock... though it could hardly be called expensive, it was definitely more precious than sand. Until a substitute was found, crystal rock would remain the single largest cost in the making of artificial crystal.
"It's actually not so bad. The smaller the artificial crystal vessel, the easier it is to make, and the vials used for alchemical potions are the cheapest crystal bottles around—they already count as very cheap," Pi Yun explained. "Our alchemical potions already enjoy an unimaginable advantage in cost. A somewhat pricier bottle... hardly matters."
Hetty nodded. "That makes sense. But I do have one concern: these alchemical potions made in metal vats and magic arrays... will their effects really be as good as potions brewed by hand by druids, alchemists, or mages?"