The furnace stood three feet and three inches tall, its entire body a chaos-colored hue impossible to describe precisely. No single color defined it; deep black, ancient gray, and gentle purple flowed and shifted across its surface, as though the chaos and dust from the universe's birth had been cast into it.
Its surface was not smooth but covered in naturally formed ridges and hollows like a cosmic star chart. Those patterns were not still. They brightened and dimmed with the flowing radiance as if breathing, revealing faint visions of star systems spiraling and nebulae forming and dying.
The furnace took the shape of a round cauldron on three legs. Those legs did not look carved; they resembled three powerful dragon claws reaching out of chaos to grip the void. Dark gold light flowed faintly over their tips, giving off an aura steady enough to subdue earth, fire, wind, and water.
No flowers, birds, insects, fish, or sacrificial scenes adorned the furnace. In their place were Dao Traces more abstract and grander in scope: the paths of burning flames, the ripples of medicinal properties merging, the instants when energy collapsed and erupted. It was as if countless acts of alchemy had been branded into its walls in the most fundamental form of Dao Principles.
The lid bore a crouching Otherworldly Beast of indistinct form. Neither dragon nor phoenix, neither qilin nor turtle, it seemed more like a living convergence of concepts, embodying smelting, purification, and creation.
The beast's mouth hung slightly open. It held no jewel; instead, it resembled a miniature black hole, ceaselessly drawing in and breathing out faint Chaos Currents. A heart-shaking power of devouring and transformation emanated from it.
The entire furnace floated there without deliberately releasing any mighty pressure. Yet its very existence seemed to form