Underground Fire Artifact Forging

Though it was only the lowest-grade C-class Underground Fire Room, underground fire was still underground fire. Its flame temperature was far beyond anything burning Blazing Sun Wood could compare to.

Following the proper procedure, Zhou Yang cast an activation hand seal at the dragon-head fire outlet in the Underground Fire Room. The dragon-head artifact, forged from Third-tier Spirit Gold "Obsidian Iron," immediately let out a soft dragon's cry, opened its mouth, and spewed out a pale violet pillar of underground fire as thick as an arm beneath the cauldron ahead.

This C-class Underground Fire Room had originally been equipped with a Tier 2 Low-grade Cauldron for renters to use. However, after Zhou Yang had advanced to a Second-tier High-grade Artifact Forger, Old Clan Leader Zhou Minghan gave him the Second-tier High-grade Cauldron he had previously used. Naturally, Zhou Yang had no use for that Tier 2 Low-grade Cauldron.

The cauldron the Old Clan Leader had given him was called the "Purple Phoenix Welcoming Sun Cauldron." It was a treasured cauldron forged from the Second-tier Spirit Gold purple copper. Purple copper conducted heat exceptionally well and was resistant to both heat and high temperatures, making it the preferred material for forging pill furnaces and artifact cauldrons.

Since acquiring the Purple Phoenix Welcoming Sun Cauldron, Zhou Yang had only used it a few times. Moreover, this was also his first time using underground fire, so he needed time to familiarize himself with both. Thus, during the first few days, he did not forge Second-tier Artifacts. Instead, he used some low-value First-Rank materials to forge First-Rank Artifacts as practice.

Only after spending two or three days thoroughly familiarizing himself with the Purple Phoenix Welcoming Sun Cauldron's properties and the techniques for controlling underground fire did he begin forging artifacts in earnest.

The underground fire was extremely hot, and the Purple Phoenix Welcoming Sun Cauldron also enhanced flame temperature. Zhou Yang needed no more than half an hour to forge a Tier 2 Low-grade Artifact, while even a Tier 2 Mid-grade Artifact took no more than an hour.

With his current cultivation and divine sense, he could easily withstand forging artifacts for an entire day without food or drink.

Of course, to ensure his success rate, Zhou Yang would never actually do that. After forging two or three artifacts, he would generally rest for one or two hours to recover his mental strength and sum up his experience. He kept his daily forging attempts between roughly fifteen and twenty.

And amid one forging attempt after another, Zhou Yang was delighted to discover that, with the aid of the underground fire and the Purple Phoenix Welcoming Sun Cauldron, his success rate in forging Tier 2 Low-grade and Tier 2 Mid-grade Artifacts had risen by another ten percent.

Do not underestimate that ten percent. For an Artifact Forger, an additional ten percent success rate during artifact forging did not merely mean a higher chance of successfully forging artifacts. It also meant he had taken another great step toward a higher level of Artifact Forging Art.

Old Clan Leader Zhou Minghan had once told Zhou Yang that for a Second-tier High-grade Artifact Forger to attempt becoming a Third-Rank Artifact Forger, he first had to raise his success rate for Tier 2 Low-grade Artifacts to one hundred percent and his success rate for Tier 2 High-grade Artifacts to over sixty percent. Only then would success be possible.

Zhou Yang was naturally still far from meeting those requirements. Yet after his artifact-forging success rate increased by ten percent, his Artifact Forging Art was no worse than that of Artifact Forgers who had been Second-tier High-grade Artifact Forgers for many years.

Under Zhou Yang's frantic artifact forging, the more than one hundred orders Jade Spring Tower had received in a short time were all completed in less than half a month.

At that point, the Artifact Forgers and shop owners who had been watching the results of his forging were all dumbfounded. From the order completion results published by Jade Spring Tower, they discovered that Zhou Yang had not, as they expected, lost the shirt off his back. On the contrary, after deducting the material costs paid as compensation for failures, he had earned over a thousand low-grade spirit stones!

Since these thousand or so spirit stones had been earned entirely through his own Artifact Forging Art, Zhou Yang only needed to hand over thirty percent to the Lineage. The remaining seventy percent belonged entirely to him.

"Wow, what a cunning little brat! Look at the orders they published. Out of more than a hundred orders, fewer than ten were for Tier 2 High-grade Artifacts. He used the fees earned from forging Tier 2 Low-grade and Tier 2 Mid-grade Artifacts to cover the losses from failed Tier 2 High-grade Artifact forging. No wonder he not only avoided losses in the end, but even earned over a thousand spirit stones!"

Other than the few people born without much sense in their heads, most cultivators were not fools. Once Zhou Yang had clearly posted the completion results for over a hundred orders, they only needed to savor them carefully to taste what was going on. Then they could not help cursing Zhou Yang for his cunning.

The Artifact Forgers of the various families actually all knew that, at their level as Second-tier High-grade Artifact Forgers, forging Tier 2 Low-grade Artifacts would definitely yield more profit than loss.

But the problem was, first, under their high-fee system, Rogue Cultivators would rather save up to buy finished artifacts than risk coming to them to commission custom artifacts. Even when someone did come seeking a custom order, there were very few such people.

Second, there was the matter of their own circumstances. As Second-tier High-grade Artifact Forgers, they were all upper-ranking members within their respective families. With the support of their entire families, they normally lacked no materials for practice. They simply did not wish to lower themselves to personally forge a Tier 2 Low-grade Artifact for some cultivator who came to their door.

For a long time, these Artifact Forgers had thought, since they could earn several times the profit by selling finished artifacts, why lower themselves to earn that small bit of hard-earned money?

Before Zhou Yang, none of them had realized that if they could monopolize all—or no, even just fifty or thirty percent—of the artifact customization business from the Rogue Cultivators in the market, then under a strategy of small profits and quick turnover, they could also earn enormous profits.

"No, we must lower our prices too. That Zhou family brat's success rate for forging Tier 2 High-grade Artifacts is only a little over thirty percent, while this old man's is forty percent!"

"Lower prices. We must lower them. Since we can still make money after lowering prices, why should we not earn it?"

"We cannot let the Zhou family take all this money. My Luo Family must get a share of the pie as well."

Having finally come to their senses, the shops of the various families began following Jade Spring Tower's example, lowering their prices to fight for market share.

Yet they quickly discovered that even if they followed Jade Spring Tower's standards in every respect to attract customers, the Rogue Cultivators still chose Jade Spring Tower first rather than their shops.

Even when they pounded their chests and guaranteed that their own Artifact Forgers were more skilled than Zhou Yang, they could not reverse this situation. In the end, they could only watch Jade Spring Tower continue raking in spirit stones day after day with envy and jealousy, swallowing up vast numbers of orders from Rogue Cultivators who had come after hearing the news.

And all of this had been within Zhou Yang's expectations.

The experiences and knowledge from his past life had taught him better than anyone here how important a "first impression" was. So long as cultivators were still human and still possessed the common patterns of human thought, they would be no different from mortals in this regard.

Under normal circumstances, as long as the first person to eat crab did not court death himself, those who followed the trend afterward could basically only eat dust behind him. Those who could rise above the rest were one in ten thousand.

Even if someone surpasses me later, it does not matter. Golden Sand Market is only so large, and the number of Rogue Cultivators is not limitless. Give me a few months, and I will be able to take more than half the market share. By the time the market is saturated, my Artifact Forging Art should have reached great mastery as well.

Zhou Yang smiled confidently, the expression on his face brimming with the assurance that everything was under his control.

And that was indeed the case. Although the artifact shops of the various families desperately promoted just how skilled their own Artifact Forgers were, among the Rogue Cultivators who heard the news outside the market and rushed over carrying artifact-forging materials, most still chose Jade Spring Tower first.

Rogue Cultivators had it hard. When they finally found some spirit materials of decent value, those Cultivation Families and sects would ruthlessly force down the prices, leaving them long since filled with hatred for the profiteers in these markets.

The more extravagantly those shops advertised, the more Rogue Cultivators who had suffered losses there in the past suspected ulterior motives, and the less willing they were to go there.

Of course, some Rogue Cultivators who had previously suffered losses at Jade Spring Tower heard those advertisements and abandoned Jade Spring Tower for other places to have artifacts forged. But how many people had Jade Spring Tower alone actually cheated?

Thus, in the end, those who went to Jade Spring Tower to place orders directly accounted for over sixty percent of the Rogue Cultivators who later poured into the market. The other dozen or so shops, including the Chen family's artifact shop, could only look on with envy, jealousy, and resentment, then silently trail behind to pick up scraps.

No cultivator would ever turn up their nose at spirit stones, especially after seeing someone make a fortune through such a method.

Watching Zhou Yang earn over a hundred spirit stones each day through his artifact customization service, how could the Artifact Forgers of the other families still care about their dignity? If not for the last shred of face holding them back, they would have wanted to go out and solicit customers themselves.

And after Zhou Yang had grown fat from the first wave of profits, his courage also increased. Orders for Tier 2 High-grade Artifacts began piling up in greater and greater numbers.

In any case, he currently had nothing that required him to spend spirit stones. As long as he did not have to pay out of his own pocket and suffer losses, and as long as his Artifact Forging Art could improve, he would not care even if he had to lose every spirit stone he earned from forging.

Spirit stones could be earned again after they were gone. But if he missed this opportunity to improve his Artifact Forging Art through large-scale forging of Tier 2 High-grade Artifacts, then if he wished to raise it further in the future, he would have to spend decades slowly grinding away at it.

How to weigh the gains and losses involved, he knew as clearly as a mirror.

Once a person had a direction and moved toward it, he would not feel tired or bitter.

The Underground Fire Room was no pleasant place. Even after the underground fire from the depths of subterranean magma had been suppressed and purified by formations and artifacts, its fiery Baleful Intent was still scorching. Even a Late Qi Cultivation cultivator like Zhou Yang, who cultivated a Fire Element technique, would suffer all kinds of physical and mental discomfort after staying inside for too long.

Previously, he would certainly have forged artifacts for two days before resting for one.

But not now. The Artifact Forgers from the other shops had now also accepted artifact-forging orders and needed the Underground Fire Rooms for their work.

If he left the Underground Fire Room, he would not be able to rent the inexpensive B-class and C-class Underground Fire Rooms for artifact forging again.

It was not that he could not afford the one spirit stone per day difference in rental cost. These Underground Fire Rooms had originally been opened by the Chen family to accommodate Artifact Forgers and alchemists from other families. If he occupied the latrine without taking a shit, they would have an excuse to cancel his rental.

He had already harmed the interests of the other families by breaking the rules this time. They were worrying over how to catch him by the handle and cause him trouble. If he pulled this stunt now, he would be handing them a handle himself.

Therefore, in order to preserve his market share and establish Jade Spring Tower's reputation, Zhou Yang could only summon the drive he had once used to stay up late working overtime in his past life, enduring the discomfort as he remained in the Underground Fire Room.

And he remained there for an entire month!

Over that month, Zhou Yang averaged more than ten artifact-forging attempts per day. His success rate steadily rose through one forging attempt after another. By the time he emerged from the Underground Fire Room, his success rate for forging Tier 2 High-grade Artifacts had already reached more than forty percent.

With a success rate of over forty percent, even if he accepted only orders for Tier 2 High-grade Artifacts, he could ensure that he would not lose money.

Besides greatly advancing his Artifact Forging Art, Zhou Yang was delighted to discover through that full month of high-intensity forging that the barrier obstructing his cultivation breakthrough was gradually loosening as well. He estimated that in at most another year, he would be able to break through to Qi Refining Layer Nine.

Second chapter. Please vote with recommendation tickets, please join the new book investment group, and lastly, thank you to reader Villager Grows and Sells Vegetables for the daily reward of 100 Qidian coins.