In order to prevent this fellow from becoming a Madman, he chugged the chemical pool to avoid more profound theories and simply explained from a basic perspective.

"In short, for the particles that constitute the 118 elements, we call them 'basic particles'."

"Basic particles!!" Miranda feverishly noted down every unfamiliar word, like a parched sponge.

Meanwhile, he who had chugged the chemical pool carefully chose his words as he continued.

"Actually, basic particles can still be divided further, but for now, that remains the realm of philosophy. For the moment, you just need to have this concept in your mind—that our world is not only made up of the six fundamental magic elements but is composed of 'atoms', and that these atoms can be further divided into even smaller basic particles..."

Rather than referring to knowledge, it would be more accurate to say this is a perspective on understanding the world. It's like how NPCs in the game world understand matter through objective natural phenomena such as wind, water, fire, earth, light, and darkness, whereas real-life people understand it from another perspective.

At this point, he took out a piece of rusty scrap iron and a chunk of charcoal from his experimental tools and presented them before Miranda.

"If you were to use the theory of magic elements, how would you explain these two objects?"

Miranda stared at the objects in his hands for a moment and quickly answered.

"Iron, like copper, is a combination of earth and fire elements. During the spellcasting process, it requires the use of a spell to guide the elements' combination. If you want it to rust, you also need to apply wind element. Charcoal is a bit more complicated, as it can be understood as both a natural spell and a combination of earth and water elements, with the final integration of fire element... Of course, we generally don't produce these complex and not very useful things through spells."

Air magic and wind magic are different terms for the same thing. Mages born in the School favored using the classical term "air" to discuss academic matters, but when it came to the concept of the elements, they were still accustomed to referring to it as wind element.

It's worth mentioning that the six-element theory is not immutable. Initially, it was the five great elements: wind, thunder, water, fire, earth.

With the passage of time and changes in people's cognition, wind and thunder merged into air, and the five fundamental elements became the four elements: air, water, fire, earth. Added to life and death (Netherworld), these made up the earliest version of the six fundamental elements.

As for the "modern" six fundamental elements of wind, water, fire, earth, light, and darkness, these concepts emerged from the early second era after the "light" attribute was sanctified. Life and death were often discussed separately, not as one of the six fundamental elements.

"That's the problem. You study objective issues with subjective impressions, which is like marking the boat to find a sunk sword... Of course, I'm not saying there is anything wrong with that, just that our methods are completely different."

He who had chugged the chemical pool continued.

"We do not define matter by phenomena, but rather study the matter itself. For example, iron is the iron element, and this piece of rusty iron in front of you is a product of the combination of iron and oxygen elements."

"Oxygen element... is it a kind of wind element?" Miranda recalled what the skeleton soldier had previously said and astutely asked.

"You can understand it that way. The separate oxygen elements that can be encountered under natural conditions mostly exist in the form of gas," he who had chugged the chemical pool continued, "and it's the kind of gas with combustion-supporting properties that I mentioned... although its functions are far more than just supporting combustion; it can also accelerate the oxidation of metals."

Therefore, understanding rusty iron as a combination of earth, fire, and wind elements is not wrong at all. Being unable to grasp this alternative perspective may be one of the reasons why most players struggle to use magic.

Most people can't even imagine this process, let alone consider issues from this "tricky" perspective.

However, as soon as the ghost explained, he who had chugged the chemical pool immediately understood what elemental magic spells were all about.

This spells system was utterly different from the Netherworld Language.

Its existence serves the cognition of the Spellcasters, centering on the Spellcasters themselves. And yet this cognition is not just an individual Spellcaster's understanding but the consensus of the majority of "conscious entities" in the game world.

Iron comes from earth, is smelted by fire, and rusted by wind... This is the consensus among NPCs in the game world, or rather, the people of this era!

That is the concept of "everyone's thoughts" that Yiye Zhiqu had guessed.

But now is not the time to discuss this.

Looking at the ghost whose face was filled with astonishment, he who had chugged the chemical pool took out his experimental equipment and began his demonstration.

There was no need to demonstrate that oxygen and water would cause iron to rust; what he wanted to show was the filling of a container with powders made from grinding rusty iron and charcoal, mixing and heating them to reduce the rusty iron back to pure iron.

Not just that—

He also collected the carbon monoxide gas produced during this process using a glass flask and delivery tube, and lit it with flint right before Miranda's eyes.

He was very careful with this process, fearing it might explode.

Luckily, his experiment did not explode. Even though he failed several times due to imprecise operations, he ultimately succeeded in igniting it.

So gas can really burn!!!

Different from he who had chugged the chemical pool, who was satisfied with the success, Miranda was as excited as if she had witnessed the descent of Saint Sis!

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