18: Chapter 18 Crafting Magical Artifacts

When the news reached the Generals Mansion, Zhou Muqing was practicing calligraphy in the study.

She was writing in running script, the strokes sharp and fierce, bearing a striking resemblance to the handwriting of her husband, General Jiang Ce.

As she finished the final stroke of the character "Kill," there was a knock at the door.

Zhou Muqing's brush paused.

"Come in."

The steward in black pushed open the door and entered, holding a wooden box in his hands.

The box was black, devoid of any decorative patterns, its edges worn smooth and shiny.

He did not speak, simply placing the wooden box on the edge of the desk, stepping back three paces, and standing still with his hands at his sides.

Zhou Muqing put down her brush. She looked at the wooden box for a moment, then reached out and opened it.

Inside the box was a silver hairpin.

The shaft of the hairpin was bent and stained with dried, dark brown blood.

The head of the hairpin was carved into a plum blossom, with a small piece chipped off the edge of a petal, revealing the silvery-white break underneath.

Zhou Muqing recognized the hairpin. It was the silver gift she had given to Murong Yan.

The plum blossom on the head of the hairpin was a design Zhou Muqing had drawn herself, having the craftsman carve it accordingly.

She did not touch the hairpin. Her hand hovered over the box for two breaths, then she withdrew it and closed the lid.

"Where is she?"

"She has been reduced to ashes," the steward in black replied in a low voice. "All thirty-seven government soldiers are dead as well."

"An Innate Middle Stage expert, and thirty-seven government officers," Zhou Muqing said calmly. "There wasn't a single survivor?"

The steward in black did not respond.

Outside the window, most of the leaves on the old locust tree had fallen, with the remaining few trembling on the branches, flipped back and forth by the wind.

The afternoon sunlight filtered through the bare branches, casting shattered shadows onto the carpet.

Zhou Muqing stood up, took the wooden box and the letters on the desk, and walked out of the study.

General Jiang Ce was at the practice grounds in the backyard.

He was shirtless, standing barefoot on the rammed earth ground, holding an iron spear.

The spear was nine feet long and jet black, and he was practicing with it.

It was not the kind of practice that whistled with wind. His spear movements were slow.

Every thrust felt like pushing a mountain; the spear tip moved slowly through the air, yet one could hear the muffled sound of the air being torn apart.

Most of the black lacquer on the spear shaft had worn away, revealing the dark silver metallic luster beneath.

When Zhou Muqing entered the practice grounds, he did not stop.

She stood at the edge of the practice grounds, holding the wooden box, waiting for him to finish the set.

General Jiang Ce never allowed anyone to interrupt him when he was practicing with the spear.

After about a quarter of an hour, he retracted the spear and stood still.

Sweat streamed down his bare upper body, flowing along the muscle grooves of his back and dripping onto the rammed earth, soaking into small dark spots.

He inserted the spear into the weapon rack and picked up a cloth towel draped over it to wipe the sweat from his face.

Then he turned around and looked at Zhou Muqing.

Or more accurately, at the wooden box and letters in her hands.

Zhou Muqing walked over and handed him the wooden box.

General Jiang Ce took it, opened it, glanced at it, closed it, and then carefully read the letters.

General Jiang Ce placed the wooden box and letters on the stone platform next to the weapon rack. He pressed his fingers against the edge of the stone platform, and a fine crack appeared silently in the granite beneath his fingertips.

"Thirty-seven people, two Second-rate Martial Artists, one Innate Middle Stage expert," he said. His voice was low, as if he were stating a very ordinary matter.

"Yes."

"The people your brother provoked."

Zhou Muqing did not answer. This question did not require an answer.

General Jiang Ce was silent for a moment. The only sound in the practice grounds was the wind blowing over the weapon rack—the blades of the swords and spears vibrated slightly in the wind, emitting a very faint, fine humming sound, like a swarm of mosquitoes flying in the distance.

"You don't need to worry about this matter," he said.

Zhou Muqing looked up.

"I will send men to investigate," General Jiang Ce said. "Once they are found, I will go personally."

When he said this, his tone was the same as before, neither high nor low, as if he were discussing what to have for dinner.

Zhou Muqing looked at his face. There was no expression on it—not because it was deliberately suppressed, but because there truly was none.

He had killed too many people, so many that one more would not make his heart beat any faster.

"Alright," Zhou Muqing said.

She turned and walked out of the practice grounds. When she reached the door, she paused for a moment but did not look back.

"Leave one person alive."

General Jiang Ce did not reply.

Zhou Muqing left.

General Jiang Ce stood in the center of the practice grounds, the sunlight casting the shadow of his bare upper body onto the rammed earth, stretching it out long.

He looked down at his hands—the calluses on the webbing between his thumb and index finger and on his fingertips were as thick as leather, worn down from thirty years of gripping a spear.

Then he looked at the wooden box on the stone platform.

He looked for a while.

He turned and walked toward the study. He needed to look at some things—the portrait of that youth, the map Murong Yan left behind before entering the mountains, and other minute details.

He walked quickly. His boot soles pressed into the rammed earth, leaving a deep imprint with every step.

...

In the mountain cave, Jiang Yan did not know about this.

He was doing a tedious task—Artifact Refining gold essence.

Pale green spiritual fire burned in his palm, enveloping half of a spear shaft.

The iron on the surface of the spear shaft turned red, softened, and bubbled in the flames, then dissipated as wisps of black smoke.

gold essence does not oxidize. Iron and copper would burn into slag, but gold essence grew brighter the more it was burned.

The gold essence within the spear shaft had originally been intertwined in a net-like fashion within the iron, like blood vessels in a human body.

Under the scorching of the spiritual fire, the iron peeled away layer by layer, and those gold threads gradually revealed themselves—fine, bright gold threads emitting a warm, gentle glow in the flames.

Jiang Yan gathered the molten gold essence.

The liquid gold essence flowed in his palm, as viscous as honey.

He picked up the spear tip with his other hand.

The gold essence content in the spear tip was higher, so it did not need to be peeled away layer by layer like the spear shaft.

The spiritual fire enveloped the three-edged spear tip, burning away the iron entirely.

The spear tip gradually shrank in the flames, from one foot two inches down to less than three inches, finally turning into a fist-sized ball of liquid gold essence, which fused together with the gold essence extracted from the spear shaft.

A day later, both the spear shaft and the spear tip had disappeared.

In their place was a ball of gold essence floating in Jiang Yan's palm.

It was a circle larger than a fist, entirely red-gold, with a luster like flowing water on its surface.

The luster was not reflected; it shone from within the gold essence—like liquid flowing, or like clouds rolling.

Jiang Yan weighed it in his hand.

Six jin and three liang.

A few liang more than he had estimated.

He glanced at the wooden box in the corner brought out from the Zhou Family secret chamber. The box contained semi-finished gold essence.

That was enough. Six jin and three liang of gold essence was enough to refine a Flying Sword.

As for those semi-finished products, he would deal with them later.

Jiang Yan cradled the ball of gold essence in his palm and closed his eyes.

The first step of Artifact Refining is shaping.

He did not have an Artifact Refining furnace. But he had spiritual power, Divine Sense, and the Artifact Refining experience of a quasi-fourth-rank Artifact Refiner from his previous life.

Spiritual power surged from his palm, transforming into an invisible forging force, hammering the gold essence from all directions simultaneously.

It was not random pounding. The strength of every strike was precise to the same value—it could not be a fraction too heavy, for if it were, tiny cracks would form inside the gold essence, and these cracks would be fatal when inscribing the Restriction later;

Nor could it be a fraction too light, for if it were, the Impurities would not be expelled, the purity of the sword blank would be insufficient, and the Restriction would not hold when inscribed.

Jiang Yan was a quasi-fourth-rank Artifact Refiner in his previous life. This strength did not come for free.

What was the concept of a quasi-fourth-rank? In the Dongxuan Cultivation World of his previous life, fourth-rank Artifact Refiners could be counted on one hand, all of them highly respected with immense wealth.

A quasi-fourth-rank meant he had already touched the threshold of the fourth rank, just one step away from breaking through.

An Artifact Refiner of this level was extremely precious and held a very high status in any major Sect.

Of course, he was currently only at Qi Refining Stage 1, and his total spiritual power was not even a fraction of what he had in his previous life.

But experience was something unrelated to spiritual power.

Three hundred years of feel, three hundred years of discernment, three hundred years of intuition honed through countless furnace explosions and failures—these things were all still there.

The first hammer blow fell.

The gold essence deformed slightly, a ring of extremely fine ripples appearing on its surface.

The second hammer blow.

The third hammer blow.

The hundredth hammer blow.

The forging continued for three days.

The light in the cave changed from bright to dim yellow, then from dim yellow to grayish-white, and then back to bright.

Jiang Yan did not know if it was day or night outside; he only knew that the ball of gold essence in his palm was deforming bit by bit.

From an irregular, fist-sized lump, it gradually elongated.

It was as if a pair of invisible hands were stretching it, kneading it from a ball into a long strip.

Then flattened—not pressed into a thin sheet, but pressed into the embryonic form of a sword.

The sword body, the sword spine, and the sword hilt emerged bit by bit from the gold essence, like a statue being chiseled out of stone.

Half a month later, the sword blank was formed.

The sword was two feet seven inches long and two fingers wide. The sword body was flat, not yet sharpened, and the surface was as rough as sandpaper.

The sword hilt and the sword body were forged as one piece, with the hilt slightly thinner.

He stopped for a day.

It was not because he was tired. It was because the sword blank needed to "cool down"—to allow the internal stress of the gold essence to release naturally.

If he inscribed the Restriction immediately, the sword blank would shatter when the Restriction was activated.

This principle was the same as needing to temper iron after quenching, except that the tempering of gold essence did not require a furnace, but time.

A day later, Jiang Yan cradled the sword blank in his palm again.

The next step was the most critical—inscribing the Restriction.

A Low Grade First-rank Flying Sword required at least three basic Restrictions.

Sharpness Restriction, to increase the cutting power of the sword edge.

Lightness Inscription, to reduce the weight of the sword body and increase flight speed.

Durability Restriction, to enhance the strength of the sword body and prevent the edge from chipping during combat.

These three Restrictions were indispensable.

If one were missing, this sword would not be a Flying Sword, but merely a piece of gold essence shaped like a sword.