145: Chapter 145 The Fifth Life, The Blazing Sun Illuminates the Martial Path (Ninety-Three)

Early the next morning, Chu Shi walked out of the refining room, preparing to find something to eat.

He was surprised to discover several brand-new wooden crates at the entrance of the workshop.

Shi Tie was organizing them nearby.

"Senior Brother, you've come out!" Shi Tie hurried over upon seeing Chu Shi.

"These are materials delivered from within the peak last night. It is said that Elder Jin specially requested them, specifically for your use."

Chu Shi walked forward and opened the wooden crates.

Inside were not ordinary iron ingots, but rare metals like black iron and cold iron.

Each piece was uniformly sized and of extremely high quality.

There were also some unknown ores that emitted a faint glow, looking valuable at first glance.

A warm current welled up in Chu Shi's heart.

He knew this was Elder Jin's recognition of him.

The old man didn't say it aloud, but he had been silently paving the way for him.

"Shi Tie, put these materials away properly," Chu Shi said.

"Yes, Senior Brother," Shi Tie replied respectfully.

Chu Shi helped him up and patted his shoulder.

"Keep up the good work."

After a simple breakfast, Chu Shi continued crafting the high-grade magical artifact.

He needed more experience to prepare for the subsequent push toward top-tier magical artifacts.

In the days that followed, the furnace fire never went out, day or night.

For a full month, Chu Shi barely left the refining room.

Even his three meals a day were replaced by Inedia Pills.

Shi Tie and two other Utility Disciples kept watch outside the workshop, silently clearing away the scrap iron produced daily, never daring to disturb him in the slightest.

Behind the crack in the inner door, Elder Jin would occasionally pause for a moment.

He would watch Chu Shi shirtless, sweat sliding down his back, his engraving knife moving as if in flight, before leaving silently.

For the first seven days, Chu Shi obsessed over the foundations of the nine-rune array.

He continuously circulated the Earth-rank inheritance, Mind-Focusing Technique, calibrating the depth, angle, and spacing of every rune.

At noon on the seventh day, a longsword forged from ordinary iron ingots came out of the furnace. Nine golden patterns lit up simultaneously, and with one strike, it shattered a half-foot-thick black iron anvil, while the blade itself remained completely undamaged.

Shi Tie's pupils shrank at the sight, but he merely silently put the longsword away into storage.

Chu Shi weighed the fragments of the scrap anvil in his hand, frowned slightly, and remarked with some emotion:

"Finally, it's stable. However, ordinary iron materials seem to be nearing their limit."

But he did not use the materials stored away earlier; instead, he picked up new ordinary iron ingots and began attempting to add more runes.

However, the rune array of a high-grade magical artifact seemed to be an indivisible whole.

Every time a rune was added, it was like inserting a new part into perfectly operating gears; the slightest deviation would cause the whole thing to collapse.

Chu Shi could only continuously circulate the Mind-Focusing Technique, combining it with his superb comprehension to find that single point of insertion.

However, the Earth-rank inheritance was not famous for nothing, and neither were the Blazing Sun Body and his extraordinary comprehension of 3000 points.

After two failures, the third furnace produced a ten-rune long saber.

The blade carried a pale golden flame edge upon being drawn, with power thirty percent greater than the nine-rune version.

But after clashing with a magical artifact of the same grade dozens of times, fine cracks appeared on the blade.

Chu Shi remained expressionless, threw the broken saber into the scrap pile, and started the furnace again.

On the tenth day, eleven runes. He added a feedback rune; the counter-shock force could reinforce the blade, and the ordinary iron ingot could barely withstand a hundred strikes.

On the twelfth day, twelve runes. He added a Qi-gathering rune, doubling the rate of Qi absorption; the moment the iron ingot formed, its edges turned slightly black.

On the fifteenth day, thirteen runes.

The rune array derived its first array eye, and a majestic pressure spread out, causing all the metal implements in the entire workshop to hum spontaneously.

When the final pattern was set, the surface of the iron ingot was instantly covered in spiderweb-like cracks, coming within a hair's breadth of exploding completely.

Chu Shi looked at the precarious longsword in his hand and remained silent for a long time.

The material limit of ordinary iron ingots was almost reached.

But he still did not touch those high-grade materials.

He wanted to polish his rune-engraving skills to perfection under the most extreme conditions possible.

On the twentieth day, he pushed for fifteen runes.

This was almost an insurmountable chasm.

Fifteen runes required the array eye to bear the full force, which ordinary iron ingots simply could not withstand.

Chu Shi failed seven times in a row; in the most severe instance, the entire furnace of molten iron exploded into powder, and the flying iron filings cut several deep gashes into his arm.

He wrapped it casually with a cloth, picked up the engraving knife, and continued.

On the eighth attempt, he integrated a Diamond rune group into the rune array, using his own fire-attribute metal Qi to temporarily stabilize the structure of the iron ingot.

When the array eye rune was set, fifteen golden patterns lit up simultaneously; the longsword barely formed, looking like glass ready to shatter at any moment.

Elder Jin, inside the inner room, saw this scene and nodded gently while stroking his beard.

That night, another batch of even more precious materials was quietly delivered to the workshop warehouse, and Shi Tie locked them away untouched, following Chu Shi's previous instructions.

On the twenty-fifth day, sixteen runes; the difficulty increased several times over.

Chu Shi hadn't closed his eyes for three days and three nights, failing over ten times in a row.

On the last attempt, he exhausted most of his mental energy just to get these runes to barely balance.

The moment the longsword came out of the furnace, it emitted a piercing hum, and holding it in his hand, he could clearly feel the inside of the metal constantly cracking.

Chu Shi placed it on the anvil and tapped it lightly.

"Snap."

The longsword broke into two pieces.

Looking at the rough metal texture at the break, he finally understood.

No matter how perfect the technique was, it couldn't compensate for the innate insufficiency of the materials.

The molecular structure of ordinary iron ingots was too loose; it simply couldn't bear the power of more than sixteen runes.

To push for a top-tier magical artifact with seventeen or even eighteen runes, ordinary iron ingots were absolutely impossible for him.

He finally stopped being stubborn and remembered the rare iron materials Elder Jin had prepared for him a month ago.

"Shi Tie, bring a piece of black iron from the warehouse." Chu Shi's voice was slightly hoarse but exceptionally firm.

"Yes!" Shi Tie's eyes lit up, and he immediately ran to the warehouse.

Soon, a piece of pitch-black, heavy black iron was placed on Chu Shi's furnace.

Chu Shi took a deep breath, circulated his Qi and blood throughout his body, and precisely smelted the black iron into a sword blank.

This time, there were no obstacles.

The engraving knife descended, moving like flowing water.

Nine runes, ten runes, eleven runes... fifteen runes, sixteen runes.

When the final stroke landed, the seventeenth rune was perfectly embedded into the long saber, like the finishing touch on a painting.

In an instant, the entire workshop was enveloped in light, and the seventeen runes flowed slowly across the black iron sword, forming an extremely complex yet incredibly harmonious cycle.

Chu Shi held the longsword in his hand; it felt warm and substantial, with no sensation of it being about to shatter.

As his True Qi flowed, the seventeen runes resonated simultaneously, and its power was many times greater than the first high-grade magical artifact he had refined.

"Success."

Chu Shi said in a low voice, his nerves, which had been tense for a month, finally relaxing.

Just then, the door of the refining room was pushed open.

Elder Jin walked in slowly, his gaze falling on the black iron sword in Chu Shi's hand, his eyes filled with gratification:

"I knew it; sooner or later, you would understand that both materials and technique are the foundations of a refiner, and neither can be dispensed with."

Chu Shi bowed respectfully: "This disciple was foolish before, thinking that I could break through the limits with technique alone. Only today do I understand the Elder's painstaking efforts."

"Not foolish," Elder Jin shook his head.

"It is not impossible to break through the limitations of materials with technique, but that is built upon a high vantage point and is not suitable for beginners. However, this persistence of yours is more precious than any heaven-sent treasure."