The basement, once used as a practice area, had been transformed beyond recognition. All the training equipment had been removed, half the space converted into a three-meter-deep swimming poolâempty for nowâand the other half into a smelting room. A military-grade smelting furnace was already installed and ready for use.
A pile of metals and stones lay beside the furnace, while Qi Ze was meticulously selecting them, his focus intense.
"It seems you're planning to craft a property weapon here so that Ouyang Ye can participate in the Abilities Combat Tournament?" Yan Junyu approached and whispered, "If I hadn't spent some time with you, I'd think you had lost your mind. Before the tournament begins, there will be professionals to test Ouyang Ye's abilities and their level. Do you think he can pass this hurdle smoothly?"
He shook his head, scoffing at himself, "Never mind, consider me as if I hadn't said that. Deceiving machines is seemingly your forte. You always turn the impossible into possible..."
He fell silent, for the truth was right before his eyes. This weak carbon-based lifeform could absorb various elemental properties and then imbue them into the tools he crafted, as if breathing life into them. Common sense, convention, and reason, when applied to him, would only be shattered time and again.
"I truly wonder how far you will go," Yan Junyu genuinely marveled.
Qi Ze now only retained the cultivation level of the Qi Refinement stage, unable to use his divine sense and Spirit Eye. Therefore, he had no way of knowing how much spirit energy and impurities the materials he picked contained, which parts could be utilized, and which parts needed to be removed. He could only rely on intuition for a while before he had to abandon the idea of using the original materials of the Black Eye Galaxy.
If a weapon was crafted without the craftsman understanding the characteristics of the materials used, the result would only be a defective product. He gritted his teeth and endured the heartache as he took out two Domain Stones from his Cosmos Sack and threw them into the smelting furnace. As the name suggested, Domain Stones encapsulated their own realms, capable of absorbing the spirits of the Five Elements, accommodating Yin and Yang energies, and weaving time and space. As such, they were often used by craftsman to forge storage tools.
But Qi Ze had a peculiar fondness for using them as a base because they could seamlessly integrate materials of various properties, making them the best medium for crafting growing-type Spirit Weapons.
For a craftsman to achieve enlightenment, they would dedicate their entire life to crafting a divine weapon, making many prototypes along the way. As they progressed in their cultivation levels, they would gradually discard the weaker failures, leaving only the final Spirit Weapon to accompany them in their ascension or downfall.
Growing-type Spirit Weapons existed, but they were based on using god-level materials as a medium. However, Qi Ze could go against convention. He could choose to continuously craft more powerful Spirit Weapons or opt to forge only one in his lifetime. His fusion power destined his path to enlightenment to be broader than others'.
To put it simply: at the beginning of cultivation, one's strength is always the weakest, and the Spirit Weapons crafted are also meager. To make them stronger, one must add better materials. This is like stacking bricks on top of a base made of straw. The higher the bricks, the more the base wobbles, and sooner or later, it will collapse under the sudden increase in weight. Conversely, using the hardest diamond as the base, no matter how high you want to construct your building, you do not need to worry about the load-bearing capacity.
Therefore, to craft an artifact, one must first prepare the corresponding divine-level spirit materials as the base.
But Qi Ze's special spirit root could, in the process of stacking, fuse the straw and bricks into a new material, then tightly bind them into a whole. No matter how many better and heavier materials were added later, they could always perfectly integrate, without any danger of collapse.
Even more miraculous was that when others needed to tame spirit fires for smelting various materials, Qi Ze's fusion power could replace the spirit fire and melt them. Since learning the craft of forging, he had always used the unspirited Green Cauldron, often having to ignite the fire himself, thus earning the honorific title of True Master of Green Cauldron bestowed upon him by his father.
Others saw this as a mockery of his low cultivation level, unaware of the shocking truth behind it. This was also why the elders would join forces to evacuate him when a fierce battle erupted. He was born to forge, and this phrase was not exaggerated in any way. As long as he was alive, the Supreme Divine Forging Sect would not fall.
Upon coming to Neptune, Qi Ze discovered the marvel of smelting furnaces, which didn't require him to control the fire himself, yet the temperature was higher than that of a spirit fire. With just a thread of fusion power, he could effortlessly melt the hardest materials. This was a tool tailor-made for him.
Realizing this, the heartache of using two Domain Stones finally subsided. He peered through the semi-transparent window, slowly adjusting the temperature and the amount of spirit energy inputted. Without his Spirit Eye open, he had initially worried about not being able to grasp the right timing for forging materials, but he discovered that modern technology was very user-friendly, having a transparent opening on the smelting furnace. This way, even a half-baked craftsman could easily complete the first step.
When the two Domain Stones melted into a liquid state, Qi Ze used a mechanical arm to guide them out and placed them in a small groove. The lava-like red hot liquid caused the surrounding air to boil, a sweatdrop sliding down Qi Ze's temple, evaporating before it hit the ground. The temperature was nearing the limits of human tolerance.
Yan Junyu felt his soul gradually contort in the intense heat, hastily stepping back a few paces, his expression one of astonishment. This fire wasn't just ordinary furnace fire; it continuously absorbed the fire elements around it, forming a small vortex in the air, imbuing the temperature with a powerful aggressiveness that could even scorch spiritual bodies. The two stones melted into liquid were no ordinary stones either. They writhed like living creatures at the bottom of the groove, slowly coalescing into two identical black longswords.
But Qi Ze treated this spectacle as ordinary, taking out three items from his Interspatial Button: a hammer, a pair of tongs, and a massive iron block with protrusions on both ends and a base. Yan Junyu couldn't name the iron block, but guessed it might be a tool for weapon forging.
"You're actually planning to craft a property weapon here," he murmured after a long silence, his astonished expression fully composed, though the tumult in his heart remained unsettled.
He had seen Mu Ran forging mechs, and compared to the Mu family's unique skill, Qi Ze's tools and smelting methods seemed primitive. Yet, this primitive atmosphere imbued the two longswords with a sharpness that was hard to describe in words. It seemed to pierce through the unchanging torrent of time, breaking through the vastness of the universe, in this cramped, dim, and sweltering basement, infusing them with souls.
They appeared to be alive!
Yan Junyu shook his head, chuckling at his own madness, for having such a preposterous thought. But the next moment, his self-mocking expression froze on his face. He watched as Qi Ze used the tongs to lift one of the longswords and place it on the iron block, pounding it repeatedly. Ding ding dang dang, the rhythmical sound of pounding echoed in the air. And more and more red light spots, as if hearing the summons, surged over from all directions, penetrating walls, bodies, and any obstructions, and without hesitation, threw themselves into the sword.
The originally dark and rough longsword slowly became lustrous, continuously revealing flames' patterns which then merged under the pounding. Qi Ze was enveloped in a brilliant red light ball, his exquisite features becoming blurred. He was hot, having already taken off his bathrobe, wearing only a pair of pants, large beads of sweat streaming down the undulating lines of his muscles, forming a small puddle on the ground.
Yan Junyu could not approach, yet his gaze remained glued to him, reluctant to move. This was a Qi Ze he had never seen before, serious, focused, his eyes full of passion and determinationâ
Qi Ze was unaware that while he was immersed in forging, a wisp of a soul was observing him. At the moment, his heart and eyes were only full of the longsword in his hands, now taking shape. After reaching the Golden Core stage, forging Spirit Weapons no longer required the use of a hammer, tongs, and anvil; a mere thought would cause the solution in the furnace to autonomously coalesce into the shape the craftsman desired. Then, they only needed to change their hand seals, engraving the spirit language and spirit array into the Spirit Weapon, and after a ritual of spirit invoking, the task would be complete.
Qi Ze advanced quickly, taking only two years to completely break away from the process of manual Spirit Weapon forging. But now, as he picked up the tools and pounded again, he realized what he had missed. Intense fire elements coursed through his body, into the longsword, continuously washing over his meridians, with a part remaining in his Dantian, condensing into spirit liquid. Though the process was unbearably scorching, its effects were a hundred times stronger than absorbing spirit stones.
His arms, initially somewhat sore, now felt brimming with energy, as if they had inexhaustible strength. The saying "tempered a thousand times to become steel" was probably something akin to this.
Finally finishing the sword embryo, and then tempering it with energy liquid to increase its hardness, Qi Ze murmured to himself, "Father, your child understands. I understand why you wore a disappointed expression when I threw away the hammer you gave me. How laughable that I was gloating about my rapidly rising cultivation, but forgot the most important thing for a craftsman, which is accumulation. You gave me the hammer not to forge Spirit Weapons, but to forge myself, right? If I had been more obedient, more down-to-earth, I wouldn't have ended up in this situation."
He lowered his head, looking at the longsword placed on the anvil, emitting an intense red glow, its spirit energy flowing, and said in relief, "But it's not too late. Weapon forging starts with heart forging, this is something your child now understands. In the future, I will not disappoint you, nor will I disappoint our ancestors."
Crafting the sword embryo was only the first step. To endow the Spirit Weapon with formidable defensive and offensive capabilities, one must engrave the spirit language and spirit array one by one. This process was called spirit attachment, a term in the interstellar common language akin to empowerment.
A high-level craftsman could attach spirits with just hand seals, each seal often concealing tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of spirit languages and spirit arrays. Under their mutual influence, the Spirit Weapon would demonstrate its formidable power. A low-level craftsman could only rely on a file to engrave the spirit language and spirit array one by one, then repeatedly pound to ensure stability. This process could only be described as arduous and grueling.
Qi Ze initially found it troublesome, wishing he could regain his Golden Core stage cultivation overnight. But now, he sincerely thanked Heaven for sending him to Neptune. Without this experience, he would never have known what he was missing.