Chapter 5: Solving the Puzzle
A quarter of an hour later, two magistrates brought in the items and set them up in the hall.
The three lords swept their eyes over the implements before turning their heads to look at Xu Qi'an.
Prefect Chen said in a deep voice, "All the things you want are here, be sure to give this official a satisfactory answer."
There was a shift in his attitude.
In a quarter of an hour, this official of the fourth grade racked his brain for a long time, and had to admit that Xu Qi'an's deduction made sense, but there were still many mysteries that remained unsolved, such as the fact that the tax silver had fallen into the river.
He could not understand what the mystery was.
Xu Qi'an nodded and squatted down in front of the apparatus, the props in front of him were candles, salt, porcelain cups, and iron wire.
What he was going to do was simple, high school chemistry knowledge: extracting metallic sodium.
Set aside in ancient times, this thing is simply impossible to extract, two difficult points: electricity, the melting point of sodium chloride.
But in this world, Xu Qi'an knew of a profession that could do it.
The sixth rank of the Divine Constabulary Warlock: the Alchemist!
Alchemists belonged to a household profession in Dabong, and their various inventions and creations had long been integrated into the lives of ordinary people.
Xu Qi'an was not sure that the exploding tax silver must be sodium metal, this point was not important, what was important was to open a thought process to explain the phenomenon of the tax silver explosion.
In the process of solving cases, bold assumptions, rigorous reasoning is the necessary work in the early stage. Only in the end is to verify and collect evidence.
In his previous life, he once encountered a murder case that was still fresh in his memory, and the criminal police worked all night, opened their minds based on the clues, and made several speculations about the process of the case as a basis to collect evidence.
Then all of them were overturned and the reasoning was renewed.
It's also possible that the taxed silver was not sodium metal, which in any case the alchemists were able to do.
And that was enough.
Finding the right direction for a few lords, that was what he had to do.
With the right direction, it would be possible to go down the line of investigation, and it wouldn't be hard to find out who was behind it.
If you are still struggling in this thinking of demonic rebellion, the case will never be solved, even if the case is solved in the future, he has been court: send you away, a thousand miles away!
He melted coarse salt with water, stirred it, then covered the mouth of the cup with raw Xuan, and poured the salt water slowly.
After filtering, and then set the porcelain cup on the candle sizzling, with a bamboo stick constantly stirring.
Not long, the cup of brine evaporated, the crystals precipitated inside is sodium chloride.
The essence is to further purify the salt.
Chen Fu Yin, the middle-aged man, and the yellow-skirted girl with a superb face value, the three of them stood around the edge and watched intently.
Xu Qi'an raised his head and grinned at the yellow-skirted maiden, "Your Excellency is a disciple of the Si Tian Supervisor, right?"
He noticed the Feng Shui disk on his waist, this thing, no one would use it except for the disciples of the Si Tian Supervisor.
The yellow-skirted girl gave a 'hmm' sound and smiled, "My master is the Si Tian Supervisor Supervisor."
The delicate and bright goose egg face was like a peeled egg, white and flawless.
The disciple of the Supervisor Zheng .... Boobs and whatnot don't matter ..... Xu Qi An's tone was gentle, "Trouble sister to melt these crystals for me."
Sodium chloride was roughly eight hundred degrees Celsius.
The yellow-skirted girl deflated her small mouth, "Controlling fire is an ability that only alchemists have, I'm just a Feng Shui master."
"But my master gave me a magic weapon." Her words changed, she took off the Feng Shui disk on her waist, her green fingers were fiddling with it a few times, her Qi input, and the word "fire" lit up.
"Back off!"
Xu Qi'an immediately stepped back, and the next moment, bright to piercing tongues of fire spewed out, flooding the porcelain cup.
"Stop!" Xu Qi An immediately shouted stop, then quickly inserted two wires into the porcelain cup and asked, "Electrified .... No, it's the lightning method! Pay attention to controlling the voltage .... Well, this step is difficult, perhaps it will fail many times."
She rotated the Feng Shui disk, her green jade finger lit up the word 'thunder', and a few arcs of electricity flashed in the void, touching the iron wires.
'Zi zi ....' The melted sodium chloride underwent a violent chemical reaction.
"Stop!"
Xu Qi'an held his breath and moved to the mouth of the cup to see, a pile of silver-bright colored metal lumps taking shape, rimmed with some of the crystals and impurities that had yet to be transformed.
Surprisingly, it worked in one go, the voltage was just right .... Xu Qi'an was pleasantly surprised.
Electrolysis to produce sodium metal, the voltage is about 6-15 volts, he prepared his heart for repeated failure.
He didn't expect the Emperor to possess him, and it worked in one go.
Chen Fu Yin and the middle-aged man couldn't wait to come over to see, in the cup, was a pile of silver-colored metal, at first glance, it was quite similar to silver.
Chen Fu Yin's pupils shrank, his heart was extremely shocked.
Li Yuchun clenched his fists hard, staring blankly at the silver-colored metal block, as if lightning had struck in his mind, splitting open all the fog.
"Several lords, please look," Xu Qi'an poured out the sodium metal, wrapped it in rice paper, and weighed it in his hand:
"This stuff is much, much lighter than silver, but its appearance is extremely similar, if someone uses this stuff to pass off as silver, can it be faked as real? Several lords can weigh it as well."
He handed the sodium metal to the Chen Prefect, at this point, the color of the sodium metal gradually turned dull, and it was almost identical to silver.
The middle-aged man took it and weighed it, his eyes sparkled as he said repeatedly, "It is indeed much lighter, if this is what is being transported, then it makes sense. Miss Caiwei, you try it."
The yellow-skirted girl took it, weighed it, and then stared at Xu Qi'an with odd eyes, "You, are you an alchemist?"
No, I'm not, I'm just a mover of chemistry.
Reading people's thoughts are more active in the end, after Chen Fu Yin's surprise, he suddenly shook his head and said in a deep voice: "No, no, even if the silver was replaced like this. Then what happened to the explosion, if not for the demonic creature hidden in the river, how could the fake silver explode when it entered the water."
Xu Qi'an did not reply, reaching for the sodium metal, he walked over to the desk and threw it into the pen-washing jar.
A blazing fire lit up and smoke rolled out.
"Boom!"
The sodium metal reacted violently in the water, and the pen-washing tank crumbled into thin cracks.
"This, this ...." Prefect Chen was stunned.
"This fake silver will explode when it encounters water, and this side explains why the silver will explode that violently when it falls into the water." Xu Qi'an explained.
The middle-aged man muttered, "From the very beginning, we were misled, and the mastermind behind this, through the explosions and the demonic winds, made us think that it was a demonic creature that was causing the havoc, and focused the investigation on tracking and searching for it."
"No wonder the Qin Tian Supervisor's lookout technique couldn't observe the demonic creature either."
Xu Qi'an added, "After the tax silver fell into the water, the pawns only recovered more than a thousand taels of silver, and if I'm not mistaken, all of this silver was laid on the top layer to hide it from the public."
It was a tight fit, all the anomalies matched up.
"Xu Qi'an!" The middle-aged man's eyes were filled with approval, "Good, you're good."
A sudden frown froze on Xu Qi'an's crooked collar, and Li Yuchun proceeded to tap his shoulder, helping to pull his collar neatly.
Xu Qi'an was flattered that this lord was so appreciative of himself.
Prefect Chen frowned, "Since the silver is fake, where did the real silver go?"
The yellow skirt girl heard, also showed a grave color: "Tax silver out of the warehouse into the capital, layers of change hands, to be asked for punishment, a large number of officials have to be imprisoned, the difficulty of recovering the silver, is no less than a needle in a haystack. And this matter is beyond our purview, we have to report it to His Majesty."
Prefect Chen nodded, this was what he meant.
The middle-aged man had a different view, his voice low: "The tax silver was escorted all the way to the capital, changing hands at every level, if it was fake, it would have been discovered long ago. The only possibility is that it was dropped recently."
Prefect Chen's eyes lit up, this greatly narrowed down the scope of the investigation.
"Come on people, prepare a sedan chair, quickly prepare a sedan chair, this official wants to travel." Chen Fu Yin eagerly ran out of the inner hall.
The middle-aged man followed closely behind.
Xu Qi'an hurriedly shouted, "Mr. Prefect, don't forget the promise you made to the straw man."
