95: Chapter 95 A heavy sword has no edge, great skill appears without artifice? No, this is a butcher's knife.

The door to the Artifact Refining Room had been tightly shut for seventy-two hours.

But in these three days, the sound of hammering inside had not stopped for a single moment.

The clanging sounds seemed to possess a certain magic, causing the instructors taking turns guarding outside to develop neurasthenia.

No one had ever seen this method of Artifact Refining.

Without using Mental Energy to guide it, without relying on precision instruments to control the temperature, relying purely on a large hammer and raw physical strength, he had hammered away for three whole days.

Inside the Artifact Refining Room, the temperature was high enough to roast a person dry.

Lin Qi was shirtless, his originally fair skin tanned dark and shiny by the furnace fire, sweat flowing along the contours of his muscles, evaporating into white mist the moment it hit the ground.

He had already gone through three hammers.

The first two had their handles shatter directly because they couldn't withstand the high-intensity shock.

On the forging table, that stubborn black lump had finally changed its appearance completely.

It had been stretched into a strip one and a half meters long, pitch-black all over, with rough hammer marks preserved on its surface, no edge, and a staggering thickness.

It didn't look like a blade, but more like a door panel used for smashing people.

"The final step."

Lin Qi tossed aside the deformed iron hammer in his hand and pulled a crystal bottle from his combat suit pocket.

The bottle contained a dark green liquid, which he had brewed using poison sacs collected from killing monsters earlier and several herbs that strengthened bones for quenching.

Ordinary oil quenching or water quenching simply couldn't satisfy the appetite of this piece of extraterrestrial meteorite iron.

To make it set completely, it had to be stimulated with more violent medicinal properties.

Lin Qi took a deep breath, the vortex of Qi in his Dantian spinning crazily, and the remaining True Qi flowed out through his fingertips.

He slid rapidly across the scalding hot blade body.

Where his fingertips passed, they left behind complex patterns.

This was the treasure at the bottom of Old Mo's chest — the Gravity Rune.

Although in this digitized world, this belonged to the category of Enchanters, in the ancient martial arts system, this was called "Willpower Infusion."

Forcibly imprinting the perception of weight inside the weapon.

Sizzle!

The True Qi made contact with the high temperature, emitting a harsh friction sound.

When the last rune closed, Lin Qi grabbed the red-hot blade blank and thrust it violently into the crystal trough filled with medicinal liquid.

Boom!

White smoke exploded, instantly filling the entire room.

A pungent medicinal smell mixed with the scorched smell of metal permeated the air.

The liquid in the crystal trough was like a boiling pot, bubbling with black foam.

That sound was strange; it didn't sound like boiling water, but rather like countless wronged souls screaming.

After a few minutes, the commotion subsided.

Lin Qi reached into the trough, grabbed the hilt, and pulled it upward violently.

Splash.

A pitch-black long blade broke through the water.

Dark red patterns on the blade flashed and faded; that was the remaining heat, pulsating like blood vessels before submerging deep into the black blade body.

An extremely fierce aura rushed toward his face.

The surrounding air, originally hot and dry, cooled down by several degrees.

The instructors outside the door saw this scene through the glass, pressing their faces against it one by one, their eyeballs almost popping out.

"It succeeded?"

"This Evil Qi... is this really something a student can forge?"

Lin Qi held the blade with one hand and flicked his wrist lightly.

Woo—

The air was brutally torn apart, emitting a low wail.

This blade had no edge, because it didn't need one.

With a self-weight of three hundred jin, combined with the extreme hardness of the meteorite iron, as long as it was swung, even a piece of blunt iron could smash tank armor into scrap metal.

So-called sharpness was just a joke in the face of extreme weight.

"Good blade."

Lin Qi stroked the rough blade body, feeling a sense of blood connection coming from his palm.

In these three days, he had hammered his True Qi, sweat, and even a portion of his mental will into this piece of iron.

It was no longer a dead object.

"Let's call you 'karma cutter'."

Lin Qi said in a low voice.

In his past life, Buddhism said that cutting off Karmic Obstruction could lead to becoming a Buddha.

But here for him, the meaning of karma cutter was more straightforward — cut down the people who create Karmic Obstruction, and the Karmic Obstruction would naturally vanish.

He casually inserted the blade back into the specially made magnetic scabbard on his back.

Click.

With three hundred jin of weight pressing on his back, Lin Qi's spine actually straightened even more.

For him now, this kind of load was just enough to serve as a constant exercise for his physique.

The door opened.

A heatwave mixed with a fierce and evil aura rushed out, forcing the instructors at the door to retreat several steps.

The balding middle-aged teacher swallowed hard, looking at the black item on Lin Qi's back: "Student Lin, this blade... what Rank is it?"

"No Rank."

Lin Qi walked out with big strides, grabbed a bottle of mineral water from the side, and took a gulp, "As long as it's hard enough."

The instructors looked at each other.

No attributes? No affixes?

In this data-supremacy world, this was just a Blank Slate weapon.

But what was that heart-palpitating pressure just now?

Before they could figure it out, a burst of rapid footsteps suddenly came from the end of the corridor.

"Brother Qi! Brother Qi, it's bad!"

Zhang Wei's round body rolled over like a meatball, his face full of sweat, his already small eyes wide open at this moment.

He was running so urgently that he almost crashed into Lin Qi.

Lin Qi reached out and pressed on his shoulder, helping him brake: "What's wrong? If it's to tell me that the five hundred thousand credits are spent, you can get lost now."

"It's not about money!"

Zhang Wei panted like a broken bellows, clutching a black envelope tightly in his hand.

There were no postmarks on the surface of the envelope, only a blood-red skull logo printed in the center.

In the eye sockets of the skull, red paint resembling fresh blood was still dripping down.

It looked ominous.

"This thing was nailed to our dormitory door just now." Zhang Wei handed the letter over, his hand trembling slightly, "I asked someone, this is a deathmatch post from the 'Shadow Guild'."

Lin Qi raised an eyebrow and took the envelope.

It felt very light in his hand, but the killing intent inside was heavy.

Shadow Guild.

He had some impression of this name.

The assassin Ying Wan who had tried to hunt him down previously was from this organization.

At that time, Ying Wan was crippled by him, and he guessed this grudge was completely settled.

"Open it and see." Lin Qi tore open the envelope casually.

Inside was only a thin piece of black cardstock, with a line of words written in white, the handwriting sloppy and sharp, revealing an undisguised arrogance:

[Midnight three days later, Western Suburb Potter's Field. We settle the score, and we decide life and death. — Shadow · Ghost Hand]

There was no signing date, and there was no room for negotiation.

This was a notification.

You either come to die, or wait to be hunted down by us endlessly.

"Brother Qi, you can't go!"

Zhang Wei saw the content, his face turned pale, "That Ghost Hand is a gold-medal executor of the Shadow Guild, a Second-Turn professional! It's said that he has more lives on his hands than the rice I've eaten. This is a trap, absolutely a trap!"

Hearing the name "Ghost Hand," the expressions of the instructors around them also changed.

That was a madman with a fierce reputation in the underground world.

Although this was Longya Academy and the Shadow Guild wouldn't dare to attack openly, being targeted by such a group of poisonous snakes hiding in the gutter meant one had to sleep with their eyes open.

"Call the police." The balding teacher advised kindly, "Or find Instructor Su; this has already exceeded the scope of student disputes."

Lin Qi looked at the card in his hand, expressionless.

He was thinking.

Not thinking about whether to go or not, but thinking about whether this newly forged blade could cut through the shield of a Second-Turn professional.

Ying Wan's mission failure meant that in the eyes of some people, he had changed from "prey" to a "threat."

If he didn't chop off the claws reaching out, these people would only come to die one after another.

It was annoying.

And it was a waste of time.

"No need to call the police."

Lin Qi exerted force with his fingers.

The specially made hard cardstock turned into black powder at his fingertips and fell down in a rustle.

"It just so happens that my blade is freshly made and hasn't seen blood yet."

He patted the hilt behind him, and the cold touch made him feel slightly better.

He originally wanted to find a few high-level monsters to test the blade, but now that someone had taken the initiative to serve as a target, this service spirit was worth praising.

"Brother Qi..." Zhang Wei looked at Lin Qi's eyes, which were calm to the point of being frightening, and swallowed back the dissuasion that had reached his lips.

He was too familiar with this look.

When he sent Li Qingxuan flying on the arena last time, Lin Qi had this look.

It was the look of a butcher looking at a pig.

Lin Qi stepped over the paper scraps on the ground and walked toward the exit, his voice echoing in the empty corridor.

"Tell them to bring more people; fewer won't be enough for me to cut."