Chapter 107: Earth Grade Forging Master

Lin Hao wanted to offer Gu Yuan a reward for taking the Soul-Nourishing Ring off his hands, but Gu Yuan refused, and the two of them simply talked for a while.

"By the way," Lin Hao said, as though the question had only just occurred to him, "I heard that besides the Heavenly Twin Stars and their husband, this grand palace is also home to Ruxi, that powerful cultivator from the Ji Clan. But I’ve never seen her."

"She lives here," Gu Yuan replied casually. "But unless there’s a reason to meet, I rarely see her."

Then, as if a thought had suddenly crossed his mind, he looked at Lin Hao with suspicion. "Wait. Are you actually interested in her? You just got yourself another woman, and you’re already looking for someone else?"

"Hahaha! Brother, the more the merrier." Lin Hao no longer seemed particularly interested in hiding his intentions.

Gu Yuan fell silent for a moment before answering. "Senior Brother, I won’t stop you. But be careful. Ruxi is at the Unity Realm. She might be accommodating because of my position, but she’s a proud woman."

"Don’t worry. Proud women are my specialty!" Lin Hao declared confidently. "Anyway, can you introduce me to her?"

"No. I said I wouldn’t stop you. I never said I’d help." Gu Yuan shook his head. "If you want to win her over, you’ll have to rely on your own skills."

Lin Hao laughed, apparently finding nothing discouraging about that answer. He continued asking about Ruxi, trying to squeeze every last detail he could out of Gu Yuan.

Unfortunately for him, Gu Yuan knew little about her daily life and could offer few useful answers. The conversation continued for a while, until Pei Qingluo and Tang Xueli finally emerged from the forging room.

Perhaps realizing that he’d spent long enough asking about another woman in front of his own, Lin Hao smoothly changed the subject and began praising Tang Xueli instead, as though that had been what they were discussing all along.

Gu Yuan didn’t expose him. He simply turned toward the two women.

"Your forging room is impressive," Pei Qingluo said, glancing back at the room they’d just left. "The furnace, the surrounding formations, even the arrangement of the tools. Everything has been carefully considered."

"My wife arranged it, even when it was unnecessary" Gu Yuan replied with a faint smile. "Now, I need to worry about putting it to good use."

He made it sound like some troubling matter, but the hint of pride in his voice was difficult to miss.

Pei Qingluo glanced at Lin Hao, then back at Gu Yuan. The look in her eyes seemed to carry a simple question: His wife went to such lengths for him. What about you?

Lin Hao met her gaze without the slightest embarrassment. In fact, he looked almost amused, as though he had a question of his own: His wife prepared all this for him. And what exactly have you prepared for me?

Pei Qingluo’s lips twitched. Lin Hao, of course, took that as a victory.

Pretending not to notice their silent exchange, Gu Yuan turned to Pei Qingluo and picked up the conversation about the forging inheritance they had left unfinished before, spending some time exchanging their understanding of the Resonance method.

Lin Hao and Tang Xueli stood to the side, quietly observing without interrupting. Once the discussion finally came to an end, the three took their leave.

Alone again, Gu Yuan used his Heart of Comprehension to consolidate the insights he’d gained from the exchange. Once his thoughts had settled, he began considering how best to apply them.

With his current accumulation as a Forging Master, Gu Yuan felt he was finally approaching the threshold he had been working toward. By combining his own forging technique with the Resonance Method from the inheritance, then incorporating Blood Forging into the process, he might finally be able to attempt forging an Earth-Grade weapon.

But what should he make? Gu Yuan entered the forging room and lit the furnace with the Crimson Fire, pondering his options as the flames gradually grew brighter.

Another saber?

The thought brought back a memory of Ji Yan fighting in the last war, her figure cutting through the battlefield as she wielded a dagger in each hand. The image lingered in his mind for a moment before he made his decision.

He would forge a pair of daggers.

Gu Yuan spent the next two days preparing, carefully considering which materials would best suit his plan. In the end, he settled on Blacksteel Essence as the primary material.

Ordinary Blacksteel was already considered precious, and Blacksteel Essence, which had passed through many rounds of condensation and purification, was even more so.

Once he had settled on his materials, Gu Yuan took out the corpse of a demonic beast he had previously killed and stored inside the Orb of Creation. He extracted its blood and collected it in several prepared bottles, ensuring he had enough for the tempering process.

With the two most important preparations complete, he began forging. The first step was to temper the Blacksteel Essence with the demonic beast’s blood.

Once he started, Gu Yuan finally confirmed his speculation about how well the Resonance Method and Blood Forging complemented each other. The former required him to listen to the voice of the material and understand its properties, while the latter involved infusing those properties with the qualities contained in blood.

Now that he could perceive the material’s voice, he found it quite easy to guide the blood’s properties into the Blacksteel Essence.

Even so, he proceeded slowly and carefully, unwilling to ruin such precious material through impatience. Peak Master Tie Shan had once spent several days blood-tempering his own materials, yet Gu Yuan devoted an entire month to the process, allowing the blood’s properties to seep thoroughly into the Blacksteel Essence.

By the time he finished, the rest of the forging process came far more naturally.

Daggers were the weapons Gu Yuan had practiced most often. Back when he was still an outer sect disciple working under Deacon Zhao, he hadn’t been wealthy enough to waste precious materials on larger weapons, so daggers had been a practical choice for training. That experience now served him well.

With the blood tempering complete, he moved on to the conventional forging process. Using his Crimson Fire, he painstakingly refined the material, removing as many remaining impurities as possible. This stage took another two weeks before he finally finished shaping the pair.

Two sleek, black daggers rested before him, their narrow blades dark as the night. At first glance, they seemed almost entirely black, but when the firelight struck them at the right angle, a faint crimson sheen surfaced beneath their polished surfaces, like traces of blood trapped within the steel.

Gu Yuan examined his work with growing satisfaction.

He would have been content simply to succeed in forging an Earth Grade weapon for the first time. The daggers had gone further than that.

They had reached Mid-Earth Grade.

He was delighted. But both twins were occupied, and he had no one to share the joy of becoming an Earth Grade Forging Master with. All he could do was settle down, meditate on the successful forging process, and carefully reflect on the experience while it was still fresh in his mind.

Once he had rested sufficiently, he returned to the forge and continued practicing, hoping to build on what he had learned.

Of course, forging wasn’t the only thing he intended to pursue. Now that he had become an Earth Grade Forging Master, it was time to advance his array mastery to the same level.

There were other techniques he wished to hone as well. He had no intention of neglecting them all for the sake of forging.

In this manner, ten years passed.

Gu Yuan sat in the palace garden beside the Bodhi Tree, now nearly a meter tall, almost to his waist. Its slender trunk and young branches had begun to take shape, though it was still a long way from resembling the towering sacred tree it would one day become. In the distance, Ji Yue sorrounded by the shining golden light could be seen, while Ji Yan sat beside him, enjoying the meat he was grilling for her.

"Your cooking skills have really improved!" Ji Yan praised, pulling another piece of grilled meat from a thin wooden skewer.

Gu Yuan smiled. "I’m glad you like it. But are you planning to leave any for me?"

Ji Yan lowered her gaze to the table. Countless empty skewers lay scattered across it, stripped clean of meat and even the last traces of oil. She then looked at the skewer in her hand, which still held a single piece.

"I’ll share this one with you."

She spoke with such solemn generosity that Gu Yuan couldn’t help laughing. After devouring so much meat, she genuinely seemed to expect praise for offering him a single piece.

"Then how about feeding me? My hands are occupied."

Ji Yan nodded without hesitation and moved closer, holding the skewer toward his mouth. Gu Yuan, however, didn’t take the offered meat. He shook his head with a faintly mischievous smile.

"I’m afraid I’ll hurt myself like this. Why don’t you feed me with your mouth instead?"

"You’re right. We can’t have you getting hurt." Ji Yan nodded seriously, as though he had raised a perfectly reasonable concern.

She took the piece of meat between her teeth and offered it to him that way.

Gu Yuan accepted it, tasting the meat along with the sauce called Ji Yan. Somehow, the food seemed to taste even better this way.

Unwilling to waste any of it, he made certain nothing remained, licking her lips and then the inside of her mouth clean with his tongue.

The heat of the meal was quickly forgotten. Absorbed in each other, they escalated without care for being outdoors, knowing the array formation that enveloped the palace and its grounds kept any outside eyes from prying.

That someone else lived in the palace with them seemed, for the moment, to have slipped their minds.

In her room. Ruxi had her cheeks flushed red as she watched. She would have preferred to close off her senses and remain unaware of this side of the people she served. Curiosity, however, proved stronger.