150: Chapter 150 Prototype

After bidding farewell to Shen Weilan, Zhang Mingxuan did not pause and headed toward the Artifact Refining area.

There, the massive spherical reactor core was still floating quietly in mid-air, the surrounding air appearing distorted like ripples on water due to the high temperature.

Although the Formation had not yet been inscribed, the pressure exuded by this massive lump of metal alone was enough to make an ordinary Golden Core Cultivator feel suffocated.

Ye Duan was sitting cross-legged beside the cooling platform, holding a freshly opened jar of "Fiery Brew" and taking a deep gulp. Seeing Zhang Mingxuan return, he wiped the wine stains from the corner of his mouth without rising to salute, merely glancing sideways at the big guy in front of him with his bloodshot bull-like eyes.

"What? Worried? Afraid it will crack?" Ye Duan said in a muffled voice. "Rest assured, this thing is now so hard that even I want to take a hammer to it. Unless you fire one of your Primordial Cannons at it, no one will be able to leave a mark on it."

"I am not worried about the core; I am worried about the carrier."

Zhang Mingxuan walked to the cooling platform and reached out to sense the residual temperature. "With a heart, we must also have a body. If we are to build that battle boat capable of flying out of the land, have you decided on the Materials for the hull?"

Hearing this question, Ye Duan put down the wine jar. The drunkenness on his face instantly dissipated, replaced by the frustration of a clever housewife unable to cook without rice.

"It's tricky."

He pointed to the piles of discarded Ore slag around. "To build this core, we burned through almost all the 'star-core sinking iron' and 'soft silver fluid' in our inventory. What remains is just ordinary black iron essence and red copper mother. Using these common goods to build a hull? That's just making target practice for Nascent Soul Stage old monsters."

"The battle boat must sail through the turbulence of the Void Realm. The hull must not only be hard, but also able to withstand spatial tearing and gale corrosion. Ordinary metal essences would be weathered into dust the moment they go up."

Ye Duan scratched his messy hair, appearing exceptionally irritable. "Unless you can find me another star-core sinking iron mine, or go and drain the 'Sword Washing Pool' of the Heavenly Sword Holy Land to smelt iron."

"There is no more star-core sinking iron," Zhang Mingxuan said calmly. "But we have something else."

With a thought, he took out a huge, silver-gray carapace fragment from his spatial folding backpack.

That was the back carapace fragment of the Nascent Soul Stage Void Earth-Splitting Beast King hunted in the Falling Demon Valley years ago, as well as a large quantity of low-level Void Beast carapaces collected by Heizhang while sweeping the Endless Sea.

"You mean... using bones?" Ye Duan leaned in and tapped the carapace, producing a crisp metallic clanging sound. "The hardness is sufficient, and it comes with inherent spatial resistance. But this thing is a biological Material; its spiritual conductivity is too poor, and it is difficult to maintain uniform properties during large-scale smelting. If we piece it together directly, the seams will be fatal weak points."

"Who said anything about piecing it together directly?"

Zhang Mingxuan's eyes were cold. "I want you to grind it into powder."

"Mix these carapaces, along with the mountain of black iron essence in our inventory, and the high-purity 'waste slag' left over from refining the core, in a ratio of three to six to one."

"DeepEye, simulate the bio-alloy sintering process."

On his retina, a complex molecular structure diagram was instantly generated.

"Use the spatial attribute lattice in the carapace powder as the 'skeleton', fill the 'muscles' with molten black iron essence, and then use that slag with Chaos attributes as the 'adhesive'."

Zhang Mingxuan pointed at the projection in the Void Realm. "We don't need traditional forging. I want you to use high temperature and high pressure to forcibly 'sinter' them together to form a brand-new composite armor plate."

Ye Duan stared at the micro-structure diagram he had never seen before for a long time. The irritability in his eyes gradually turned into shock, and finally transformed into a near-maniacal grin.

"Grinding up the bones of a Yao Beast and refining them into iron... only you could come up with such a maniacal method."

He stood up abruptly, grabbed the carapace, and spiritual fire rose in his hand, tentatively scorching the edges.

"However, it is theoretically feasible. Although this new alloy's spiritual conductivity is not as good as pure metal, it excels in being thick-skinned and durable, and it has a natural immunity to spatial Spells."

"I need to make a sample first." Ye Duan kicked the standby Puppet assistant awake. "Go! Drag all those tons of 'Earth-Splitting Beast' corpses from the warehouse over here! And all the black iron essence inventory! I'm not sleeping tonight; I'm going to smelt a piece to test the hardness!"

Zhang Mingxuan watched Ye Duan, who was busy again, and did not say anything more.

Ye Duan was leading a group of Puppets, busily transporting mountain-like piles of Void Beast corpses and Ore from the warehouse.

Zhang Mingxuan did not follow. He stood in front of the reactor core, which had just finished cooling and was pitch black as ink, like a surgeon facing a giant beast waiting to be dissected.

"The core is formed, but without transmission vessels and exhaust ports, it is still just a lump of iron that generates heat."

He raised his hand, and hundreds of thick, ten-thousand-year black ice iron pipes floated up under the guidance of his Divine Sense.

"DeepEye, load the powertrain assembly blueprint."

"Align the interfaces. Control the error to the micron level."

"Hiss—!"

Innate True Fire spewed from his fingertips, transforming into the most precise welding torch. The connection point between the pipes and the core melted instantly under the licking of the high-pressure True Fire, fusing into one, leaving behind perfect dark golden welding seams.

This was a boring yet precise process.

Every bending angle of the flow pipes and every installation position of the cooling valves required thousands of fluid dynamics simulations.

Zhang Mingxuan was like an untiring machine, in this dark underground world, piecing together the ferocious giant beast that only existed on blueprints, bit by bit.

Three days later.

A prototype of a dark black engine, ten zhang tall with a wild yet geometrically aesthetic design, finally stood in the center of the workshop. It looked like a steel heart, with dense pipes winding around the spherical core like blood vessels. The twelve huge honeycomb-shaped propulsion nozzles at the rear, even in a silent state, still exuded a heart-palpitating pressure.

"Everything is ready, except for the Formation."

Zhang Mingxuan dispersed the True Fire in his hand, looking at the behemoth in front of him, a trace of fatigue flashing in his eyes. He could manage the simple stacking of hardware, but to make this machine truly operate, he still needed that set of complex algorithms capable of controlling the turbulence of the Void Realm.

"Hum."

The teleportation Formation in the distance suddenly lit up with a hazy yellow light; that was the spatial fluctuation unique to long-distance teleportation.

As the light dissipated, a figure covered in wind and sand, with coarse gravel mixed even in his hair, stumbled out.

It was Shen Weilan.

This formerly gentle and jade-like Formation Master now looked like a refugee who had just crawled out of a sandstorm. His robe was tattered, and his face bore several unhealed wind-blade wounds, but his eyes were frighteningly bright.

"Is it solved?" Zhang Mingxuan turned around and handed over a bottle of high-level recovery liquid.

"Solved."

Shen Weilan took the liquid and drank it in one gulp, not even having time to wipe his face. "The magnetic field in the Western Desert is like scribbles; I had to rewrite all the Formation runes of the relay towers, changing them to a kind of... 'dynamic adaptive frequency'. As long as the magnetic field changes, the Formation follows suit. Although it was a bit troublesome, the signal is finally through."

As he spoke, he looked at the huge black engine in the center of the workshop, his gaze instantly freezing.

"Is this... the Void Realm reactor?"

Shen Weilan didn't bother to rest, rushing to the bottom of the engine in a few steps, reaching out to touch the cold shell, feeling the terrifying potential inside that was not yet activated but still made his Divine Sense sting. "Good grief... how did you come up with this structure?"

"I have built the shell; the rest is up to you."

Zhang Mingxuan pointed to the bare black metal wall on the surface of the core sphere. "Multi-dimensional centrifugal Formation, as well as the supporting voltage stabilization and flow guidance runes. This place is too hard; ordinary carving knives cannot cut it. I will assist you by using True Fire to soften it. But the inscription of the Formation must be done by you yourself."

"No problem."

Shen Weilan took a deep breath, the fatigue on his body seemingly suppressed by a more intense desire in an instant. He took out his life-bound Formation Plate named "Thousand-Machine Change" from his bosom, his eyes shining with brilliance.

"Since you have set the stage, I will definitely perform this show well for you."

Just then, heavy footsteps came from the passage on the other side. Ye Duan rushed out carrying a newly smelted plate armor with an eerie silver-gray luster. Seeing Shen Weilan, he grinned:

"Yo, isn't this our Formation Great Master? You came back alive? Perfect, my first bio-alloy plate is fresh out of the oven, and it still lacks a defensive Formation to test its hardness. Will you lend a hand?"

The three of them stood under the shadow of the massive engine. Although covered in dust and fatigue, the aura that seemed capable of prying up the entire world reached its peak at this moment.