Extreme Cold Era: Shelter Don't Keep Waste

Perfikot spent a bit of time to achieve mass production of carbon fiber and Carbon 60 in her laboratory.

After all, she chose carbon as the base, and there is a technological iteration and research connection between Carbon 60 and carbon fiber.

To put it more simply, as long as Carbon 60 is arranged in a line, a line long enough to serve as fiber, it can be called carbon fiber.

Of course, the carbon fiber used in practical applications is not like this, but that doesn't prevent Carbon 60 from genuinely being made into carbon fiber, although people usually call it carbon nanotubes.

Using carbon nanotubes to make carbon fiber is a cutting-edge material science topic in the original world, and while some progress has been made, it hasn't reached a stage of technical maturity.

So Perfikot's "little time" actually closed the technological gap of at least two hundred years between this world and the original world through Imaginary Alchemy.

But for Perfikot, this research result is meaningless because it doesn't allow her to open the Jade Record.

These are just two new materials, not a broadly applicable new technology.

It's like creating a steam core is useless unless Perfikot installs the steam core onto the Steam Knight's armor.

While Carbon 60 is indeed impressive, unless Perfikot uses it to make carbon nanotube fiber, and then uses that to manufacture ultra-light Steam Knight armor, it remains "useless" in the evaluation standards of the Jade Record.

Perfikot, of course, knew this, so her subsequent research direction was to metallize the obtained Carbon 60 and carbon fiber without changing any material structures and properties.

This is simply infeasible in the original world because it completely defies science.

If Perfikot had said this in the original world, she would only be considered a fool or a fraud.

But in this world, because of the existence of alchemy, all of this has become possible.

Especially in the hands of Perfikot, a master of Imaginary Alchemy and in possession of the Philosopher's Stone, doing these things is not difficult.

The only problem is that Perfikot is not satisfied with simply metallizing carbon fiber.

Even though the performance slightly decreases after metallizing carbon fiber, and it melts into a puddle upon reaching the metal's melting point, losing all its special properties, it is still considered a good material.

But using fiber as material to construct Steam Knight armor means using this metallic carbon fiber to weave and process, then obtaining the desired material shape.

This is actually the main way people in the original world utilize carbon fiber, after all, weaving is a good choice to make rational use of fiber.

However, for Perfikot, this is too inconvenient.

After all, you can't build a Floating City in the same way, right? How large would the loom need to be? You can't just say to splice it with small pieces of material?

You have to know, a Floating City is a city, and no one has ever heard of splicing a city together with small fabric pieces.

Moreover, even if this is doable, the mass of the entire city is astonishing, even if made entirely with ultra-light metallic carbon fiber, its weight would reach staggering levels, which would be a massive burden even for carbon fiber itself.

A slight mishap could lead to the collapse of the entire Floating City's structure.

It is precisely because of this that Perfikot hopes to obtain a kind of metal material that can be kneaded into any shape, rather than a limited material that can only exist in the form of "fiber."

In this regard, Perfikot slightly stalled in her research progress.

Although her strength and research capability are not weak, and she has the divine artifact Jade Record as a boost, along with the Philosopher's Stone on hand, this research challenge truly is not a problem for her.

But Perfikot indeed encountered some problems in her research, which halted her progress until they were resolved.

The main problem for causing such a situation still lies in the molecular structure of Carbon 60.

As stated before, the molecular structure of Carbon 60 is a sphere composed of 60 carbon atoms, which decides its structural stability and also means this material easily forms new compounds when combined with other elements.

This is harmless for Carbon 60 in the original world, after all, it is merely a new material in the lab, it can be researched slowly and methods of utilizing it can be gradually found.

But for Perfikot's new material, this is more problematic.

She intends to use this new material to manufacture Steam Knight armor and Floating Cities; new compounds formed due to material instability would be catastrophic for both.

After all, no one can assure that the new material used to construct the main axle or important support pillars of a Floating City won't react with other elements to form new compounds, causing the structure to collapse.

Thus, during the time Perfikot's research progress was stalled, she was constantly trying to solve this issue.

The simplest method, of course, was to start from the structure of Carbon 60 either by breaking the original Carbon 60 molecular structure or by using it to create materials with new structures.

The former means Perfikot would need to overturn the existing research progress entirely, which would undoubtedly be a huge loss.

For Perfikot, unless it was an absolute last resort, she wouldn't do so.

And the latter? Isn't it the method to prepare carbon fiber?

Linearly arranging countless Carbon 60 football structures, then using their affinity for combining to have all Carbon 60 link with each other, ultimately forming a stable line, this is carbon fiber.

So, after going round and round, it eventually returned to the starting point.

Obviously, this is not what Perfikot wanted.

And when Perfikot encountered a research conundrum, good news came from the Witch Workshop.

Under Weir's leadership, the Witch Workshop had successfully achieved oil fractional distillation and successfully obtained the first synthetic fiber.

While currently, this synthetic fiber material is still only produced in the laboratory, this progress is already extremely gratifying compared to the previous lack of satisfactory results.

This made Perfikot feel happy and also spurred her on to a competitive impulse.

After all, she was always the Empire's strongest and most outstanding Alchemist, even though she hadn't been acknowledged prior to her fame, ever since she became the Count of the Northern Territory, particularly after destroying three nations' capitals with a Thermobaric Bomb, this title was never in doubt.

In such circumstances, Perfikot naturally had no rival or could find no competitor worth comparing with herself.

But now, with the emergence of Weir, the once Legendary Alchemist, Perfikot finally had a sense of having encountered a rival, making her very eager to compete with Weir.