Sui Xiong's new tool was, roughly speaking, an adjustable metal frame. You placed an ore inside it, adjusted the frame to clamp it tight, then turned a knob to press the mithril probes on the upper and lower sections of the frame against the ore. Next, using a magic crystal, you could create a flow of magic power between the two probes. The upper probe bore a magic array highly sensitive to magic power, capable of emitting light of varying brightness according to the strength of the flow. By observing the array's brightness, one could determine whether the ore contained mithril and roughly estimate how much it contained.
But after actual testing, Sui Xiong discovered that it was nowhere near as useful as he had imagined. More than once, it failed to detect any flow of magic power even though the ore did contain mithril.
He studied the matter over and over again, eventually discovering that mithril was distributed unevenly throughout the ore. If the probes failed to touch any mithril, magic power naturally could not pass through the stone—and that, of course, produced an incorrect result.
How was this problem supposed to be solved?
Sui Xiong's engineering skills were utter trash, not even matching those of a middle school student with decent hands-on ability. He wracked his brains, but ultimately found himself unable to come up with a solution.
He asked Morani, who smiled and shook his head. "People thought of your idea long ago. The crucial difficulty lies precisely here. Minerals are unevenly distributed inside ore, severely affecting its ability to conduct magic power. For example, say you have a piece of ore with silver on one half and stone on the other. How would you test that? No one has solved that problem even now, so manual