Chapter 306: Chapter 302: The Ability on Page 4
Once again delving into her inner self, Perfikot saw the Jade Book. Her heart no longer felt the previous excitement but rather a sense of calmness.
Just like most things in this world, once you’ve experienced them enough, nothing seems worth a big fuss, becoming increasingly mundane.
"You’re here," the Jade Record greeted Perfikot.
"I’m here," Perfikot responded to the Divine Artifact’s greeting. She approached it and asked the Jade Record, "I should be able to turn to a new page now, right? What’s the new feature this time?"
This might be Perfikot’s greatest anticipation for the Jade Record.
Compared to the technology on each page, it’s the new features unlocked by the Jade Record that truly captivate Perfikot.
She hadn’t forgotten, last time she visited, the Jade Record told her that the ability of the seventh page was "omniscience", which could grant her all the alchemical knowledge she desired in the world.
If she had this feature now, building a Floating City would be trivial; even constructing a gigantic dome to artificially create a utopia of perpetual spring amid the apocalyptic winter would be no big deal.
For Perfikot, what constrains her is knowledge, not creativity.
As the former so-called "terrifying upright ape", "eight billion mad dogs", "P-Corp criminal", "black hole above the neck", Perfikot had no shortage of solutions for dealing with these apocalyptic disasters.
What she lacked was the technology to put these plans into practice, whether it was technology or alchemy.
Therefore, the so-called "omniscience" of the Jade Record has quite a significant allure for Perfikot, but it’s clear that the seventh page is not what she can hope to unlock now.
After all, counting the page she is about to unlock, she has only turned four pages of the Jade Record thus far.
It must be said, the Jade Record lives up to the name Divine Artifact. Although seemingly not offering much help to Perfikot at first glance, her achievements now owe much gratitude to the Jade Record.
After all, the abilities this book has brought her have greatly enhanced her skills as an Alchemist.
The first page’s discernment allowed Perfikot to identify and understand all alchemical creations, granting her the ability to recognize everything.
The second page’s analysis enabled Perfikot to understand and analyze various alchemical creations based on discernment, thereby continually learning new alchemical knowledge.
The third page’s optimization, though seemingly less extravagant than the previous two abilities, allowed Perfikot to perfect and improve her designs, resulting in more flawless creations.
It can be said that just these three abilities alone are enough to make her the greatest Alchemist of this era.
And the entire Jade Record has thirteen pages, each representing a powerful ability.
So Perfikot is very curious about what new ability the next page will bring and what changes and impacts it will have on her.
Facing Perfikot’s curiosity, the Jade Record answered straightforwardly: "The ability of the fourth page is deduction, which shows you the possibilities of a technology."
"Deduction?" Perfikot showed a hint of puzzled expression but soon understood the function of this ability.
At first glance, the deduction of the fourth page doesn’t seem much different from the optimization of the third page, both enhancing existing technology or design.
But if broken down, one would understand the significant difference between the two.
Optimization is to perfect and improve a design based on the existing one, relying on the design itself and will not go beyond the boundaries of the original design.
Simply speaking, if Perfikot optimizes the design of a steam engine based on a piston steam engine, no matter how she optimizes it, the final product will always be a piston steam engine.
Even if she optimizes it into a steam engine capable of sending rockets to space, it would still be piston-style, and wouldn’t turn into a steam turbine.
But deduction is different. Perfikot, even with the earliest Hero’s steam ball, can deduce a piston steam engine, a turbine steam engine, and even a disk-type steam engine that the original world has never seen.
Deduction reveals precisely the future possibilities of the steam engine technology.
"I understand. I must say this is a very powerful ability." Perhaps to some, deduction might not seem as good as optimization, but Perfikot can deeply feel the terrifying potential of this ability.
What is the biggest fear in scientific research? It’s not the obscurity of the project, the difficulty of the topic, or the complexity of the experimental process.
Rather, it’s like drawing from a mixed pool without guarantee in a game, not knowing how many times you have to draw to win, or even if the character you want is in the pool at all.
To put it more directly, it’s not knowing if the research direction is right, and even if the right direction is found, how much time and how many experiments it would take to produce results.
And deduction, this ability, can directly anchor the originally uncertain research direction, and further display the results of known or unknown research directions, eliminating the most time-consuming and labor-intensive trial and error phase.
Although Perfikot’s description might not be entirely accurate, deduction is indeed such an ability to remove the most tedious and complicated parts of research, aiming straight at the core of the problem.
As long as one can develop a new technology, with the deduction ability, new innovations can be rapidly derived based on this technology, accelerating the progress of technology.
Even if this ability is only usable on alchemy, it is still extremely terrifying.
It can be said that if Perfikot can properly apply this ability, her previous boast about the Floating City might genuinely float in a short time over the Northern Territory.
Of course, Perfikot had always been capable of building a Floating City; her real concern has always been the societal issues arising after its creation.
However, this issue isn’t something technology can solve, or rather, limiting technological development due to potential societal issues may be another form of abandoning development due to trivial obstacles.
But no matter what, Perfikot indeed won’t be constructing Floating Cities or flying warships temporarily, even if she has the technology to do so.
This isn’t about considering social issues but rather, as she explained to the elders at the Military Department, humanity does not have extra resources for such endeavors and should first solve the survival issues of most people before considering these when having spare capacity.