Chapter 312.
Chapter 312 The Container
The circular laboratory on the 20th floor was the one that covered the widest area in the entire Sorcerer’s Tower.
Every mentor had a place here.
Saul was the only apprentice currently allowed to appear here.
According to Mentor Katz, Haywood and Konza also used to have a place here, but they were quickly disqualified and kicked out of the 20th floor.
And the only apprentice who wasn’t kicked out was named Ivan, but he was the one who played himself out and ended up with his body completely disappearing, leaving only a lost soul wandering the dormitory area every night in search of his physical body.
After hearing Mentor Kaz’s description of Ivan, Saul immediately recalled the gray shadow that he had once met during his several nightly trips to the Sorcerer’s Tower.
Mentor Katz said with a sigh, “One should never just experiment with oneself.”
But just as he finished speaking, he saw Saul, whose skin was gray and who was nodding his head in approval.
Kaz: “……”
Some laws don’t seem to apply to everyone.
In the end, Mentor Kaz tells Saul how to use some of the facilities in the circular lab and the precautions to take, and leaves him alone.
Saul made his way around the lab cautiously.
Although this place was called a laboratory, because it was a place shared by all the mentors and those involved in the experiments, it had instead turned into a place where the results of the experiments were displayed.
Those experiments that were less dangerous, or front steps were never put here.
This was not a rule, just a convention.
If Saul wanted to start his research here on his own, no one would stop him.
After all, no one usually showed up here either.
Mentor Kaz said that he could choose to follow one of the mentors in his experiments, or he could start a project on his own. But he didn’t have to rush, he could first look at the records of the experiments here, especially the ones that were recognized as failures and not necessary for research.
So that he wouldn’t waste time on the paths traveled by those who had gone before him.
As for whether or not Saul would see certain dangerous knowledge – it was already at the third level, did he still need a mentor to walk by hand?
After Mentor Katz left, Saul didn’t rush to look at the experiment records and corresponding books.
He was interested in the sarcophagi lined up in the room.
Some of the coffin lids were open, some were half-open, and some were not, surely not exactly what was needed for safekeeping.
On the side of each sarcophagus, a small booklet was tied with a piece of twine. This was obviously for recording information about the sarcophagus.
Saul came to the nearest fully sealed sarcophagus and squatted down to examine it.
The number was recorded on the booklet.
Vessel 1342, sarcophagus not to be opened without permission. Non-humanoid, unstable form of existence, experiment aborted. For specific information see: 19th floor, *study*, *shelf**. Information updated on: 1/1/311.
Saul flipped back again, followed by records from different periods for the state of 1342.
The record on the bottom page was dated 9/6/310.
The frequency of information updates then began to accelerate, and in July 310 it was even a day at a time. However, after entering August, the rate of updating plummeted, to the point where it was even once a month.
Until January 1, 311, the experiment was suspended.
From the account above, Saul could imagine that the experimenters at the time opened the experiment with great expectation and enthusiasm, and probably thought for a time in the middle that success was within reach. But in the end it failed. So they racked their brains, thinking about what went wrong, and kept improving. But repeated failures gradually made the experimenters realize that it might be their direction that was wrong, or it might be that a crucial node had not been breached.
Anyway, the experiment was suspended. The only good news is that suspension is not termination.
Saul stood up, and although he was a little curious about the container in the sarcophagus, he had no intention of opening it hastily.
It was clearly written in the record that the state was unstable, and if the contents were broken after opening it, it would ruin the work that the experimenters had spent so much effort on. It also failed to live up to the two words “abort” that were written with great difficulty.
Saul browsed through some of the records hanging next to the sarcophagus, and roughly summarized a pattern.
All of the sarcophagi that were completely closed here were containers for discontinued experiments – it was thought that those that were discontinued did not even have the qualifications to stay in this laboratory.
The sarcophagi that only left a gap were mostly containers that were in an unstable state or had a certain degree of danger.
Those that were half-open or fully open were containers that had been used for at least a month.
As long as the lid of the sarcophagus was open, it meant that the experiment was still going on.
But Saul swept through the entire room, and with his extremely strong mental power, he counted out the number of all the unclosed sarcophagi at once.
Not many, 12.
And the completely closed ones, 117 in total.
Next, Saul returned to the circular lab bench in the center of the lab.
This circular lab table was obviously for multiple people to use together as well. The tabletop consisted of a patchwork of polygons, and any polygon could be moved in front of one’s face if desired.
There was also a pipe in the center of the lab table that went straight to the roof, and this pipe could directly channel the materials needed – including spirit bodies.
Thor originally thought that this was some kind of modernized mechanical structure, but when he opened the door to the pipe and looked inside, he was surprised to see the slender arm that had once chased him passionately.
These arms were different from the appearance he had seen outside the bronze gate on the first floor of the East Tower, and each one of them shrank peacefully and honestly inside the pipe.
Saul wondered if these arms remembered him, but he remembered them well.
These thin, spaghetti-like arms hadn’t pestered him when he’d traded candles with Ferguson, and when he’d been pulled out of his soul by that ugly woman behind Heywood.
“Why so honest now?” Saul held his chin, “Is it just because this isn’t the rest of the East Tower? Because this is the Tower Master’s laboratory?”
These arms weren’t as crazy and chaotic as they appeared to be, at the very least they knew to restrain themselves when facing the Tower Master.
Although it was meaningless to count with a bunch of chaotic broken spirit bodies ……
“Bang!” Sol slammed the pipe door shut with a slap.
“Sooner or later, I’ll use you guys as experiments!”
By now Saul had pretty much wandered through the entire lab, with the occasional diary coming out to remind him that he couldn’t touch a few places.
Of course with Saul’s current eyesight he was also quite capable of discerning danger.
“The next step is to determine the direction of the research.” Saul walked back to the bronze gates and followed Mentor Kaz’s example, pressing his hands on the left and right gates, “I do have an idea already, I don’t know if it’s feasible.”
With a thought in his mind, he pushed open the gate on the 20th floor. He then waited in place for a while, listening to the thin voices behind the doors disappear, before taking a step out.
However, when he took a step out, the light in front of him suddenly became dim.
Saul instantly turned around and realized that the bronze gate behind him had already closed, but the walls on both sides of the gate were not quite the same as the walls on the 20th floor of the East Tower.
The subtle scratches on the walls told Saul that this was not the 20th floor of the East Tower.
He once again looked back at the darkly shrouded corridor behind him, and finally realized that he had passed through the bronze gate on the 20th floor and had actually arrived outside the bronze gate on the first floor of the East Tower!
(End of chapter)