A Proper Student, Only Taking Nine Potions a Day

"Uh... First, elements are composed of indivisible, indestructible atoms."

He licked his lips, his gaze drifting.

"Second, atoms of the same element differ in mass and properties..."

"Wrong." Mons's voice was like a pair of scissors, cleanly cutting him off.

The blond young man opened his mouth, stammered out half another sentence, then fell silent.

Mons called on several more people.

The second person got stuck on the third point. The third could barely recite the first, even turning "indivisible" into "irreproducible."

The old man's expression darkened further and further, and a storm began brewing in his eyes behind the lenses.

"Not one of you can recite it in full?" His voice was quiet, but every word seemed squeezed through clenched teeth.

"Then all of you will write lines. Copy each point twenty times and hand it in next class."

A wave of suppressed groans rose through the classroom.

Then, from a corner in the last row, a bony hand slowly rose.

"Teacher, I can."

Mons's gaze passed over forty heads and landed on the frail student in the patched jacket at the back.

His grizzled eyebrows lifted slightly. His eyes swept from Evan's frayed collar to the front of his jacket, missing a button, taking about two seconds to complete the appraisal.

"You tell us."

Evan stood up. His chair slid back with a brief, grating screech.

He did not look at the textbook or his notes.

The four hours of intense focus from three to seven in the morning had hammered the material into his mind like nails.

"1: Elements are composed of indivisible, indestructible atoms."

"2: Atoms of the same element are completely identical in mass and properties."

"3: Atoms of different elements differ in mass and properties."

"4: Compounds are formed by different atoms combining in simple whole-number ratios."

"5: Chemical reactions are merely rearrangements of atoms. They neither create nor destroy atoms."

He spoke at an even pace, enunciating clearly, with just the right pause between each point.

Evan did not stop.

"It can explain the law of definite proportions because, under Dalton's framework, the ratios of different atoms in a compound are fixed. No matter how a compound is prepared, the mass ratio of its constituent elements remains unchanged."

"It can explain the law of multiple proportions because the same two elements can form several different compounds, and in those compounds, the mass of one element stands in simple whole-number ratios."

"For example, nitrogen and oxygen can form NO, N2O, and NO2, in which the masses of oxygen are in simple whole-number ratios."

Teacher, Are There Any Other Potions?

After Evan finished answering, the classroom fell silent for a moment.

Several students could not help looking at him twice, somewhat surprised.

Professor Mons's expression remained calm. He merely nodded, as if confirming something that should have been obvious.

"Not bad. Sit down."

Evan sat back down.

The chair creaked. The student in the front row with the side-parted hair glanced back at him again, but this time he did not laugh.

Mons turned and wrote another line on the blackboard, the chalk striking the surface with crisp, decisive taps.

He set down the chalk and faced the class.

"What is the Mendeleev Periodic Table ordered by? Why do elements in the same main group exhibit gradual changes in properties? Explain using the halogen group as an example."

The classroom fell into dead silence again.

All forty students seemed to have collectively contracted some form of selective deafness. Their gazes dropped to their textbooks, desktops, fingernails—anything that was not Professor Mons.

The old man drew a deep breath, a furious rebuke gathering in his chest.

Then that withered hand rose again.

"I... can."

Mons's gaze crossed the room and landed on the corner of the last row.

He paused for half a second, then nodded.

"Arkham, tell them."

Evan stood up for the second time.

"Sir, the periodic table is arranged by atomic weight, with elements of similar properties placed in the same vertical column, known as a group."

"From fluorine to iodine, the halogens increase in atomic weight and atomic volume, while their electronegativity and reactivity decrease.

"Fluorine is the most reactive and can react violently and directly with water and hydrogen. Chlorine comes next, while iodine is the mildest."

"At the same time, the acidity of their hydrides increases from HF to HI, while the solubility of their silver salts decreases in sequence.

"AgF is soluble. AgCl, AgBr, and AgI become increasingly insoluble, and their precipitates gradually deepen in color."

Mons's eyebrows rose slightly.

A trace of nearly imperceptible surprise appeared on his old face, deeply lined from years of sternness.

"Oh?" He removed his glasses, wiped the lenses with the hem of his vest, then put them back on, as if confirming he had not mistaken the person.

"You can even connect properties across categories, going from reactivity to acidity to solubility.

"That shows genuine understanding, not rote memorization."

He nodded, his tone one or two degrees gentler than before.

"Very good, Arkham."

If the first question was simply the duty a student from the lower ranks needed to fulfill to rise above his class—doing the homework he ought to do and memorizing what he ought to memorize—then the answer to the second question had already gone beyond duty.

The ability to casually draw upon different points of knowledge and connect them together was not something that could be faked through rote memorization.

Yet the other students showed no admiration.

There was more mockery, contempt, and a condescending sneer steeped in superiority.

The meaning behind those looks was obvious, almost translatable directly into words: This idiot caught syphilis, had nowhere left to turn, lost his friends and social life, and could only gnaw at books alone.

Mons noticed those looks.

The old man snorted coldly. His gaze behind the lenses swept over several faces that believed they had hidden their ridicule well, but he said nothing more.

At this university, some things were harder to change than chemical equations.

He turned back to the blackboard and picked up a fresh piece of chalk.

"Now for today's lesson. Mercury compounds."

The chalk touched the blackboard and began to write.

The morning's four classes rumbled past like a fully loaded freight train.

The Night Demon Potion had been completely absorbed, and his Constitution had reached 0.701.

[Detected further recovery in health. Mental energy has naturally recovered.]

[Mental Energy +0.2]

Evan understood immediately.

"Looks like before Mental Energy reaches 1, it doesn't need to be raised separately. It can recover along with my health."

At noon, the bell rang for the final mathematics class. Evan packed his notebook, filled from cover to cover, together with his textbook into his canvas schoolbag, fastened the buckle, slung it over his shoulder, and headed for the cafeteria.

He had not eaten lunch before.

His five-cent breakfast and streetcar fare were already the largest expenses of the day. He saved lunch whenever he could and simply endured the hunger until he got home at four in the afternoon.

Besides, the potion trials had already left him with little appetite and little desire to eat.

But that would not do now.

The Night Demon Potion was being digested, his body was rebuilding itself, and this furnace needed fuel.

He could feel his stomach growling. It was no longer the habitual sensation of emptiness, but real, urgent hunger.

The cafeteria was on the first floor of a two-story red-brick building at the back of campus. He pushed open the door.

Inside was a long hall with a high ceiling, from which hung several cast-iron chandeliers.

Along one wall stood the serving counter. Kitchen workers in white aprons stood behind clouds of steam, ladling food onto plates.

The air was filled with the mixed scent of boiled beans, baked bread, and butter.

Evan stood before the serving counter for a long time, scanning the price board three times before finally gritting his teeth and spending eleven cents on a lunch that was practically extravagant to him.

A piece of dark bread. A small pat of butter. A bowl of hot bean soup. A glass of milk. A tomato.

Eleven cents.

That was enough for him to eat for two days before.

When he turned around carrying his tray, he noticed the crowd around him automatically parting like water around a stone.

The news about his syphilis had spread throughout the entire school.

What had happened during gym class four days ago had probably been spread and embellished by forty mouths into dozens of horrifying versions.

Wherever he went, students stepped aside. Some even picked up their trays and changed seats, their movements exaggerated as if they were avoiding a plague victim.

A low murmur of snickering followed behind him, buzzing like flies circling rotten meat.

Evan was happy enough to have the peace and quiet.

He found an empty table in a corner and sat down. The three tables around him were all unoccupied, leaving a private territory two meters wide in every direction.

He set down his tray and first picked up the glass of milk for a sip.

The milk was warm, with a faint gamy scent and slight sweetness.

As the liquid slid down his throat, he could almost feel his body greedily absorbing every gram of protein, every drop of fat, every milligram of calcium.

The sensation was strange, like cracked earth meeting the first spring rain, every cell opening its mouth.

He spread butter over the dark bread and ate quietly and attentively, taking one bite of bread for every spoonful of bean soup.

He ate the tomato last. The moment he bit through the skin, sweet-and-sour juice burst across his mouth, and that fresh, lively taste unconsciously eased his furrowed brow.

Just as Evan was enjoying his meal, the chair opposite him was pulled out.

The scent of expensive men's cologne arrived before the person did—notes of sandalwood and bergamot, utterly out of place amid the cafeteria's cheap butter smell.

A thin figure sat down and gently placed a tray on the table, every movement precise and restrained, without a single unnecessary sound.

He wore a dark, large-hooded coat over his clothes, the hood pulled low enough to conceal most of his face.

Beneath the coat was a finely tailored pure-cotton shirt, covered by a black wool vest. A length of silver pocket-watch chain peeked from the vest pocket.

His belt was genuine cowhide, and its brass buckle had been polished to a gleam.

There was no need to mention the leather shoes. That shine could not be built up with polish; it was the texture of fine leather itself.

When he removed his hood, his grizzled hair was revealed, meticulously groomed and combed smoothly back.

Black-framed glasses rested on a thin, pale face. Behind the lenses were a pair of light blue eyes, so pale they were nearly transparent—strikingly unusual.

Evan's biology teacher.

The man who had given him the Night Demon Potion: Professor Pulis, a handsome gentleman who looked to be in his early fifties.

Rumor had it that he had suffered some serious injury in his youth. Since then, his body had required constant medication, and his skin could no longer be exposed to sunlight.

That was why he wore that hooded coat year-round, kept the curtains tightly drawn while teaching, and always dimmed the laboratory lights to their lowest setting.