Chapter 1451 - 936: Steel_2

Chapter 1451: Chapter 936: Steel_2

The blazing molten body rapidly cooled in the icy air, its color darkening, until at last it completely set and hardened...

Vane’s will sank into vagueness amid this violent upheaval of temperature; the very notion of time was utterly twisted, madly accelerated.

No knowing how long had passed, he "felt" himself become incomparably hard, cold, and unbearably heavy.

All around was absolute, suffocating darkness and a crushing weight pressing in from every direction. Then a dull yet persistent sound pierced through the thick, death-stilled layers of rock.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!..."

It was the blunt crash of Metal tools fiercely striking Solid rock—steady and stubborn—coming from far to near, growing ever clearer.

Each Heavy Hammer blow shook the massive rocky shell encasing him, sending fragments rustling down.

He was being "excavated."

Dazzling daylight surged once more into his "perception," but what followed immediately was a far more familiar, almost soul-engraved wave of scorching heat.

He was cast into an immensely vast furnace, its hearth seething with a blinding orange-red glow.

His Solid body, under this ultimate flame of extreme high temperature, swiftly yielded, softened, and finally completely "melted," once more becoming a searing, flowing pool of white-incandescent liquid Metal.

Within his blurred, deforming sense, he "flowed," guided by an invisible Power, slowly pouring into a preset narrow groove—that was a sword-shaped mold.

"Clang! Clang! Clang—!"

A clear, rhythmically Powerful hammering of Metal on Metal suddenly rang out, as though a Heavy Hammer were beating directly upon the deepest core of his "Spirit"; every stroke brought a violent tremor that Pierced through his Spirit.

They were the phantoms of countless invisible Iron Hammers, bearing mountain-splitting, stone-cracking force, pounding and pressing from all directions upon this mass of blazing, soft, malleable substance that he had become!

With every Heavy Hammer fall, blinding, searing sparks burst and scattered like fireworks; with every mighty Impact, the minute impurities within him were brutally squeezed out, and the Metal’s structure grew denser, more uniform, Resilient and undying.

Amid a pain like his Spirit being torn apart, he "felt" himself being repeatedly folded, stretched, shaped, and tempered.

That ringing rhythm of hammer blows was the supreme law of Forging; that flame’s Power of destruction and rebirth was the primal force of Transformation.

His blurred perception, along with the hammering, became ever clearer, ever more intense.

From a Chaos-blank, liquid Metal embryo, he was being beaten and quenched under ten thousand strokes, Forged into a single piece of steel with flawless form, containing unmatched Power...

His Solid will was being driven, blow by blow, deep into the very essence of his "Life."

No knowing how long it took before the hammering, dense as rainfall, finally thinned and fell silent. The contours of the world steadied amid the heat-warped waves and grew distinct once more.

Vane discovered he was once again standing firmly upon Solid earth, once more possessing a human-shaped body.

Yet when he lowered his head and looked at his rough hands, thickly callused and newly scarred, his body was clad only in the coarsest, thinnest linen, his feet bare and covered in wounds.

All around stretched a boundless, despair-breeding expanse of desolate mountains.

Jagged rocks jutted sharp and abrupt, not a single blade of grass in sight; between heaven and earth there was only the gray-white of deathly stillness and the oppressive dark-brown of stone, piling on without end to form an undulating, lifeless waste.

A bitter mountain wind howled through the jagged cracks in the rocks, letting out a wailing sound like weeping and lamentation.

"Who... am I?"

Vane’s mind was a blank, like some ancient stone tablet that had been thoroughly scrubbed clean.

He vaguely felt he ought to know something—that there seemed to be an important mission or shards of memory—but that thought was like a stray thread in the wind, vanishing in an instant without a trace.

The only shred of knowing he retained was that he "knew" his name was Vane; beyond that, there was only nothingness.

The sensation was eerily strange; he did not feel as though he merely had amnesia, for "amnesia" implied memories once existed to be lost, while his mind at this moment was an utterly empty, untilled, barren field.

A heavy bewilderment, like an icy, bone-piercing mist, enveloped him completely.

Within this Spiritual World made purely of "Solid" and "desolation," he relied only on a near-primordial instinct, silently, mechanically lifting his leaden feet to move forward.

The sharp stones underfoot mercilessly dug into his bare soles, bringing a clear, piercing pain, yet he seemed to have lost all nerves of sensation; feeling nothing, he only trudged on numbly, step by step, without end.

No goal, no direction—only this path beneath his feet, paved with cold fragments of stone, winding and twisting onward toward some unknown Abyss.

He walked without weariness for a time beyond knowing, until at last a towering, precipitous peak, its whole mass laid bare in snarling stone, rose before him like a gray wall that reached the sky, pressing down upon his entire field of vision in silent enormity.

Vane did not hesitate in the slightest, as though climbing this giant peak were the only path and destiny that existed for him now.

He began to climb upward with hands and feet together, laboring up the slope.

The rough, icy rock mercilessly abraded his already battered soles and palms, leaving fresh trails of blood, yet he still clenched his teeth in silence, straining to cling to the frozen rock face, up, and further up, as if he meant to pierce this dim sky.

The mountain wind grew all the more bitter and bone-cutting, like icy blades slicing into his skin.