Diary of a Dead Wizard-Chapter 172: The Candle’s Composition

The pipeline behind the candlestick made Saul’s hair stand on end, but it wasn’t enough to stop him from continuing his experiments.

Ferguson might be scheming against him, but the offer he proposed was truly tempting.

Saul lacked magic crystals, lacked credits, and lacked all kinds of rare experimental materials. On top of that, he had plenty of problems on his hands. Solving those would require deep research—which meant a whole new set of expenses.

Since Ferguson and Kujin were plotting against him and tossed out a sugar-coated bullet, why couldn’t Saul just swallow the sugar coating and throw the bullet right back?

Visit ƒree𝑤ebnσvel.com for the 𝑏est n𝘰vel reading experience.

He didn’t know the true value of the real candle, but he figured he could at least make a convincing fake.

After all, Ferguson only wanted the candle as leverage—not for actual use. As long as it looked passable, it should be enough.

Of course, “passable” still had to be a high-quality imitation. If it looked fake at a glance, there’d be no sugar to enjoy.

No sooner thought than done—Saul immediately began reverse-engineering the candle’s properties to start crafting a replica.

First, he listed all of the candle’s observed characteristics, then worked backward to deduce the possible substances it might contain, even deriving and calculating synthetic reaction formulas.

This round of deductions had him working straight through the night.

The mental strain left him thoroughly exhausted, and he didn’t feel like using meditation to replace sleep.

“The cocoon of the Nightmare Butterfly has already been extracted and sealed. No strange activity... might as well use this chance to sleep and see whether the cocoon still affects me.”

Reassuring himself, Saul lay down on the low bed beside the long table.

The bed had originally belonged to Kujin. It was too big to move easily, so Kujin had simply left it behind.

Saul had swapped out the bedding and kept using it.

Before going to sleep, he removed the gauze. His left eye was still a grayish haze—unable to see clearly.

“Looks like I really will need someone to use advanced healing magic. Hope it’s not too expensive to fix an eye.”

Saul slowly closed his eyes.

“Please, no dreams tonight.”

He quickly fell asleep.

But while he slept soundly, others were tossing and turning, unable to rest.

The powerful Third Rank apprentices, Kujin and Ferguson, had secretly gathered again to discuss tomorrow’s moves.

Kongsha, her beauty now marred, curled up under her bed, both eager and afraid of what the future might bring.

Angela, freshly marked with Saul’s five-fingered seal, wandered the night-shrouded West Tower with her mask on.

And the usually silent, tomb-like library was unusually lively tonight.

The three librarians—young, middle-aged, and old—had come together for the first time in ages.

“You’re sure?” the young one asked nervously.

“I’m sure,” the old man replied, raising his hand. All ten of his fingers were missing part of the first knuckle, and they still hadn’t regrown.

The young man’s eyes lit up—then blurred with tears. “We… we have a chance to get out!”

But the middle-aged man threw cold water over their hope. “You’re crazy. All of you! There’s no way we can escape!”

He looked terrified, glancing left and right as he spoke, as if scared someone would suddenly appear behind them, watching coldly.

The young man sneered at him. “Afraid? What is there to be afraid of? What, he gonna kill us again?”

Just hearing the word he made the middle-aged man tremble all over.

The old man ignored his cowardice and stroked his beard, “I have an idea… tomorrow, we send someone to test him.”

The young one blinked. “Didn’t you already test him?”

The old man steeled himself. “This time we test harder. Push our way right out!”

The middle-aged man screamed and leapt into the air, passing through the ceiling and crashing back down. “You’re insane! Completely insane!”

But the young man grinned with twisted excitement. “Let’s do it. Who’s going?”

The old man stood up, hands clasped behind his back. “I will.”

The young man smirked, but didn’t object.

Only the middle-aged one kept muttering, lips trembling: “Insane… all of you are insane!”

…

The morning sun could not reach the darkness of the Wizard Tower.

Saul had a dreamless night—and slept wonderfully.

He shot upright, feeling refreshed and clear-headed. Even the gloomy storage room looked a little cuter today.

He stood and prepared to tidy up and return to his experiments. But when he saw the experimental records on the table, he suddenly felt something was off with his field of view.

He raised a hand to his eye, then closed his right eye to look around. To his surprise, he found that his left eye had already recovered its vision.

He quickly grabbed the reflective side of a knife on the table and checked his reflection. His eye had returned to normal, and the color was black again.

“What, my body can self-heal now?”

Saul rushed over to check the sealed test tube holding the cocoon. When he saw the small silver sphere floating slowly up and down, he let out a deep sigh of relief.

Thank goodness the cocoon hadn’t returned to his eye, or everything he did yesterday would’ve been for nothing.

Since his eye hadn’t healed due to the cocoon, then had someone secretly healed him? Or was it as he had suspected—his body was regenerating on its own?

Only two people could enter the second storage room freely: Saul himself and the Wizard Tower’s master, Gorsa.

Gorsa certainly had the ability, but he typically never interfered with Saul’s studies or research. He clearly preferred to let him grow independently.

In that case, self-regeneration seemed the more likely answer.

With that in mind, Saul picked up the knife, gave it a quick disinfecting wipe, and then rolled up his sleeve to cut three wounds into his right arm.

The wounds varied in depth.

After quickly disinfecting and stopping the bleeding, he wrapped them with gauze.

Then he carefully noted the time and wound conditions, intending to study whether his body really had regenerative properties.

With that done, his focus shifted back to the candle.

Yesterday, he had basically broken down the ingredients of the endlessly burning candles throughout the Wizard Tower. By comparing his findings with experimental notes he’d kept over the years, he’d actually identified one of the main ingredients:

The nectar of the Symbiotic Flower.

However, the composition of this nectar slightly differed from the data in his notes. He couldn’t tell whether that was due to experimental error or natural variance in the plant’s makeup.

After all, the Symbiotic Flower was a broad category, with subtypes used for things like poison crafting, magic enhancement, mental stabilization, and more.

Saul had owned several Symbiotic Flowers himself and still had quite a few petals saved.

He immediately took two petals from different function types and ran another component analysis.

This time, the two resulting data sets were slightly different from each other and from the candle—but the overall trend was consistent.

“If both new sets show the same pattern of differences, I can conclude the ingredient is indeed a Symbiotic Flower.”

To ensure reliability, Saul gritted his teeth and pulled out another two petals of the same types and ran the tests again.

The results were consistent with the first run. The difference between the sets was consistent as well.

Saul picked up the analysis sheet for the candle. “So the flower used in these candles is a type I haven’t cultivated.”

He stared at the data sheets for several minutes, then suddenly scribbled the words Mental Stabilization on a fresh sheet and drew a big question mark next to it.

“The flower added to the candle is probably one that stabilizes mental entities! That’s why the Wizard Tower has been cultivating and buying this plant all along.”

The candles spread across the Wizard Tower… were all being used to stabilize one or several mental entities?

“If that’s their function, they’re indeed important. But taking a small piece shouldn’t affect the candle’s performance. If Kujin wanted to use the candle to threaten me, he’d at least demand a complete one.”

Still, though he had confirmed one of the primary ingredients, he had yet to identify the second.

If he couldn’t produce a convincing candle by this afternoon, he’d have to turn down Ferguson’s offer.

And with Ferguson’s twisted body, who knew what he might do if pushed to desperation?

Saul wasn’t afraid but that sugar coating would definitely slip away.

“What’s the other main ingredient? Or what could be used to imitate its effects?”

“Pipe-like structures resembling blood vessels or intestines… white substances being transported inside… the candle automatically repairing itself when burned and melted…”

Saul’s spinning pen suddenly stopped as his gaze fell on the three small cuts he had made on his arm.

“…Wanna give it a try?”

(End of Chapter)