Starting from Robinson Crusoe-Chapter 161 - 69: Medicine That’s Not Medicine

The drizzle obscures vision slightly.

Through the damp forest, across the grass drenched with rain.

Not yet reaching the beach, from a distance, Chen Zhou noticed the wood and stone around the mysterious reward had shifted slightly.

He vaguely guessed that his idea was successful, but didn't dare to celebrate prematurely.

The higher the expectation, the greater the disappointment.

If he got closer only to find the displacement was caused by the wind or due to the deformation of the sandy ground, he would be dumbfounded.

He continued forward.

The closer he got, the faster Chen Zhou moved.

His heart racing, he couldn't keep up the appearance of walking, sprinting all the way without even glancing at what was inside the collapsed rain shelter, heading straight for the nearest pile of wood and stone.

As he rushed forward, the tremors from Chen Zhou's boots on the sand impacted the wood and stone pile.

Starting from the top, every long wooden strip and stone surface revealed a crack finer than a hair.

As Chen Zhou approached, this crack slowly widened, splitting the wood and stone in half, some sliding off, some tilting to the side, as if a gigantic structure had crumbled in an instant.

"Wow, invincible!"

The cutting surfaces inside the stone and logs were smooth as mirrors, as if polished, reflecting faces clearly under the rain.

In the puddles mirroring "mirror surfaces," Chen Zhou's face was filled with shock.

He threw himself down by the cut wood and stone pile, picked up a stone at random, only to find the edges of the cut were sharp as a knife.

Running his hand over the stone surface, he found it smoother than silk or glass or any material he had ever touched; his fingers skimmed over it with barely any resistance.

He imagined the surface cut by this invisible "blade" might be even smoother than modern graphene materials.

Smooth to such a degree, its uses are far beyond paving floors or building walls.

With Chen Zhou's limited knowledge, if you picked a sufficiently large square piece of metal, drew a circle on it, and repeatedly adjusted cuts, you could turn the metal into a bearing with extremely smooth edges.

With such a bearing, you wouldn't even need lubrication for axles.

The cut stone slabs could be used for grain pipelines.

Once the water-powered processing plant is built, grain transported through these stone pipelines would never clog.

Or using cut metal or stone as arrowheads would surely be sharper than a carpenter's crossbow bolts.

He even had an idea—using this "cutter" to cut thin glass slices, then finding a way to sell them upon returning to the modern era to institutions that manufacture optical instruments and medical devices.

Chen Zhou knew that lithography machines and many optical telescopes required extremely smooth lenses.

In modern times, the most advanced polishing technology is ion beam polishing, which can grind the roughness of lithography lenses to a level close to a neutron star's surface.

He didn't know what level of roughness this "Super Space-Time Cutter," which delivered rewards across space-time, could achieve, but it should be no less than ion beam polishing.

Even if the surface roughness was slightly worse than ion beam polishing, it didn't matter; the world's second-best lenses could still sell for a fortune.

Looking at it this way, the rewards delivered by the "Super Space-Time Cutter" were not important; its existence was what mattered most.

Cutting such a large circle at once, who knows how many lenses could be made.

What kind of cutter is this? It's clearly a money printer!

Thinking of a beautiful future, Chen Zhou couldn't help but shake his head, reminding himself to stay calm and dismiss those unrealistic ideas.

Strictly speaking, he didn't even have the instruments to measure roughness; all these ideas were wishful thinking, built on the shaky foundation of "I reckon."

Furthermore, even if the materials cut reached a molecular level view, they were still a bit short of top-tier lithography lenses.

As far as Chen Zhou knew, until the year he took on this challenge, the most advanced lithography lenses on Earth had pushed precision to the atomic level, where the surface fluctuations of the lenses were said not to exceed the size of a single atom.

From this perspective, the lenses cut by this Super Space-Time Cutter might not be up to standard.

Of course, no one could judge with a fingertip whether the cut surface of the stone was molecular-level or atomic-level roughness.

Uncertain about the future, Chen Zhou could only cut some lenses in advance to keep them handy, as a cost-free investment.

As for this pile of stones and logs that had undergone a single cut, they needed another cut to become stone slabs and planks. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

After two cuts, Chen Zhou would have to slightly roughen the surfaces to use them as building materials for floors or walls; otherwise, they wouldn't hold mortar at all.

Looking at it that way, being too smooth wasn't always a good thing.

...

Patiently collecting the half-cut wood and stone around, then aligning the cutting lines.

With so many materials for alignment this time, Chen Zhou's judgment on the "blade" position was exceptionally precise.

He could even guarantee that the new cutting line deviations wouldn't exceed two millimeters.

Aligning the wood and stone along the new cutting line.

He aimed for parallel surfaces and tried to keep the stone blocks about 8 centimeters thick, the wooden planks about 4 centimeters, so it would be easier when laying walls or flooring.

Moreover, the 4-centimeter thick planks could be not only for flooring but also sufficient for making furniture or a wheelbarrow body.

Neither too fragile to be easily damaged nor too heavy to be clumsy, this thickness was just right.