59: Chapter 59 The Basement, Silent Sleeve Arrows and Zhuge Crossbows

After returning to the courtyard, Bai Qi entered the building. Instead of rushing back to his room, he went to the basement and stood before a wall.

He pressed a stone slab on the wall and injected Soul Power. Immediately, a person-wide opening appeared, revealing a flight of stairs extending downward.

This was a basement Bai Qi had specifically discussed and designed with the System when he spent money to build this small building.

On the surface, there was only one floor, but in reality, there was another floor hidden beneath, tucked inside the walls.

Walking down the stairs, the space on the bottom floor was larger than the one above, roughly over two hundred square meters. The walls and floor were covered in silver-white metal plates that emitted a cold luster, and the lights on the ceiling were arranged in regular geometric patterns, making it as bright as day.

Along the wall, a row of holographic projections hovered over the workstations, clearly presenting various data in the air, while several floating light screens rotated slowly in mid-air.

The entire space's aesthetic was completely out of place with the Douluo Continent; it looked more like a futuristic laboratory Bai Qi had seen in movies in his previous life.

Bai Qi walked to a wide metal table in the center, which was covered with blueprints.

Placed right in the middle was a blueprint. Just looking at the annotations was enough to make an ordinary person dizzy: the blueprints for Battle Armor.

Bai Qi's current intention was just to take a look and wait until he had time in the future to start manufacturing them.

Battle Armor was equipment that wouldn't appear on the Douluo Continent for another twenty thousand years. It was divided into multiple Ranks, starting from One-Word Battle Armor, Two-Word Battle Armor, and so on.

The higher the Rank, the more complex it became. There were eleven components in total for the whole body, and the forging of every single component relied heavily on high-level forging techniques.

Bai Qi flipped to the attachment pages of the blueprints, which recorded the Battle Armor forging System in detail.

The metal used to forge Battle Armor needed to go through layers of refinement, such as Hundred Refinements, Thousand Refinements, Spirit Refinement, Soul Refinement, and even Divine Refinement. Different Ranks of Battle Armor corresponded to different forging standards.

Bai Qi's current forging level... well...

It should be barely at the Hundred Refinement level, with theory but no practical experience.

More importantly, Battle Armor required the Spirit Master to personally participate in the forging, engraving of formations, and debugging. Only by finally achieving Fusion with the Spirit could its true power be unleashed.

So Bai Qi didn't plan to touch Battle Armor for the time being. Not only would it waste Materials, but he might not even be able to make it. It was far better to focus on the tasks at hand.

He already had a preliminary plan in his mind. After the Spirit Fighting Competition ended, he would go to Gengxin City to see if he could directly sign in for forging abilities, and then formally study forging. For now, he just needed to look at the blueprints to understand them.

Bai Qi carefully rolled up the Battle Armor blueprints and put them back into a waterproof storage tube. Then, he turned to another set of blueprints on the table, which he was very familiar with.

The Hidden Weapons from Tang San's original story—from the most Elementary Sleeve Arrows and Throwing Knife to the advanced Godly Zhuge Crossbow, and then to the more complex Powder Shooting Shadow—were incredibly easy for Bai Qi, who possessed this knowledge.

He had his own arrangements. Although these things weren't very useful for himself.

Bai Qi also knew well that his fighting style relied more on his physical body, Spirit Abilities, and Spirit Bones.

Hidden Weapons were merely the icing on the cake, but for the current stage of Xiao Wu, Ning Rongrong, and Zhu Zhuqing...

Hidden Weapons were excellent self-defense tools.

Bai Qi planned to first manufacture a batch of basic Hidden Weapons. Currently, Sleeve Arrows and the Godly Zhuge Crossbow would do, as their structures weren't particularly complex.

Materials could also be bought in the System Mall. He would start work now, as they were going to the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile School tomorrow.

He took out several pieces of high-quality Refined Iron from the System Mall and entered a small room prepared in advance. The room wasn't large, only about a dozen square meters. This was the forging room Bai Qi had specially prepared, and he placed the Refined Iron on the forging table.

The forging table was also custom-ordered by Bai Qi from the System Mall. The whole thing was forged from solid black metal, with its four corners firmly rooted in the ground.

Above the table were three metal shelves hanging various hammers. There were iron hammers of all sizes, arranged neatly—a typical case of 'the worse the student, the more stationery they have.'

Bai Qi started with the most basic Silent Sleeve Darts.

He picked up a small ingot of Refined Iron on the forging table and directly activated the Ultimate Fire within his body.

The Ultimate Fire instantly enveloped the iron ingot, and the entire ingot immediately became red-hot and glowing.

Bai Qi put it back on the forging table, grabbed a hammer, aimed at the right spot, and struck down precisely.

Clang—

With one strike, sparks flew everywhere, and a regular indentation immediately appeared on the surface of the iron ingot.

Followed by a second strike, then a third.

The 'clang clang clang clang' sounds of hammering echoed in the enclosed basement.

As Bai Qi became more proficient, his hand movements grew faster. Coupled with his precise grasp of space, every strike landed in exactly the right spot with even force, without a single bit of deviation.

The Ultimate Fire significantly shortened the forging time of the metal, but the mechanical parts of Hidden Weapons required extremely high precision; a hair's breadth of difference could result in the entire piece being scrapped.

Fortunately, this wasn't a difficult task for Bai Qi. He already knew these things like the back of his hand.

With the auxiliary calibration of his spatial perception, every hammer strike, its force and angle, was under control.

Following the dimensions on the blueprints, he hammered the Refined Iron bit by bit into the embryonic form of the sleeve dart's main body.

Then, he used fine files and grinding tools to slowly smooth out the surfaces and achieve standard dimensions, before creating the installation slots for the internal components.

In the basement, there was only the sound of metal being forged and the occasional rustle of flipping blueprints.

Bai Qi's eyes were fixed on the parts being processed, meticulously controlling the force and angle of each hammer strike.

He first made six sets of Silent Sleeve Darts.

The Sleeve Arrows were hidden on the arm and only needed a light press of a finger to fire. The sound was extremely faint, and in a close-range surprise attack, they were enough to disrupt an enemy's rhythm.

Each set of Sleeve Arrows was equipped with twelve short arrows. The arrow shafts were also forged from Refined Iron, and Bai Qi had specifically dipped the arrowheads in anesthetic, which could cause localized paralysis upon hitting an opponent.

After finishing the Sleeve Arrows, Bai Qi began making the more classic Godly Zhuge Crossbow.

However, the original version of the Godly Zhuge Crossbow was quite large and inconvenient for girls to carry around.

Bai Qi spent nearly an hour optimizing it. He reduced the magazine capacity and replaced the parts that became weaker after the reduction with harder rare alloys bought from the System Mall. Finally, he produced a finished crossbow body about the size of a palm.

The power of the miniature crossbow naturally decreased some, but it still posed enough of a threat to unprepared Spirit Masters below the five-ring level.

Bai Qi then made six sets of Godly Zhuge Crossbows in one go, with each set equipped with three boxes of bolts, twelve bolts per box.

Bai Qi examined the finished products in his hands over and over with fondness, his lips curling slightly. He felt a sense of satisfaction that his half-day of hard work hadn't been in vain; after all, the design of this current crossbow could be considered a blueprint rewritten by Bai Qi himself.

Afterward, he bought some leather and packed these twelve sets of Hidden Weapons (six sets of Sleeve Arrows plus six sets of Godly Zhuge Crossbows) into pairs using specialized leather cases, then temporarily stored them in his storage ring.

He looked up at the mechanical clock on the wall; it was already nighttime.

Then, Bai Qi took out the blueprints for the Powder Shooting Shadow and began studying them.