Nine-tailed Mountain was rich in pure Heavenly Essence. Jiang Ping'an sat cross-legged atop a jade platform at the center of the cave abode, with the Creation Furnace floating before him.
The furnace was entirely blue-gold, with three legs and two handles. Its body was engraved with patterns of Sun Moon Stars, mountains, rivers, vegetation, and trees. At this moment, the furnace glimmered faintly. The innate Spirit of the Artifact within seemed to sense the coming transformation and let out a soft hum.
Jiang Ping'an drew a deep breath and took out a portion of Myriad Mother Qi.
"Go."
With a light tap of his finger, the Myriad Mother Qi turned into a stream of light and slowly merged into the Creation Furnace.
The furnace suddenly shuddered, and blue-gold radiance blazed forth. The patterns on its body seemed to come alive: the Sun Moon Stars began to revolve, while mountains, rivers, plants, and trees seemed to grow. The Spirit of the Artifact inside gave a joyful cry, greedily absorbing the origin of creation contained within the Myriad Mother Qi.
This was the foundation, laying the groundwork for the furnace's advancement into a Saint Artifact.
What came next was the key.
Jiang Ping'an took out the "Heart of Time." The half-real, half-illusory crystal floated in his palm. The pulsation of the time dimension gave the surrounding space a strange sense of distortion, as though time itself flowed sometimes swiftly, sometimes slowly.
The Heart of Time contained that Demon Emperor's understanding of the laws of time and part of its origin. So long as it was refined into the furnace's core and fused with the Spirit of the Artifact, the spirit would be able to "experience" the passage of endless time in an extremely short span—as though awakening after sleeping for thousands, even