Underground Fire Artifact Forging

Even though it was the lowest-grade Class C Underground Fire Room, it was still an underground fire, and its flame temperature was far beyond what the flames from burning Blazing Sun Wood could match.

After Zhou Yang cast an opening Hand Seal at the dragon head fire outlet of the Underground Fire Room according to the usage steps, the dragon head Artifact, refined using the Third-tier Spirit Gold "Obsidian Iron," immediately let out a faint dragon roar. It opened its mouth and spewed out a pillar of pale purple underground fire, as thick as an arm, which landed below the Cauldron in front of him.

This Class C Underground Fire Room was originally equipped with a Second-tier Low-grade Cauldron for renters to use. However, after Zhou Yang broke through to become a Second-tier High-grade Artifact Forger, the Old Clan Leader Zhou Minghan gave him the Second-tier High-grade Cauldron he used to use. Naturally, Zhou Yang looked down upon that Second-tier Low-grade Cauldron.

The Cauldron the Old Clan Leader gave him was called the "Purple Phoenix Welcoming Sun Cauldron." It was a treasure cauldron refined using the Second-tier Spirit Gold Purple Copper. Purple Copper had excellent thermal conductivity and was resistant to heat and high temperatures, making it the preferred material for refining Alchemy Furnaces and Cauldrons.

After Zhou Yang obtained the "Purple Phoenix Welcoming Sun Cauldron," he hadn't used it much. Moreover, this was his first time using underground fire, and he needed time to get used to it. Therefore, he hadn't forged any Second-tier Artifacts in the past few days. He had only used some low-value First-tier Materials to forge First-Rank Artifacts to practice.

It was only after he spent two to three days fully familiarizing himself with the performance of the "Purple Phoenix Welcoming Sun Cauldron" and the techniques for controlling the underground fire that he officially began artifact refining.

The temperature of the underground fire was extremely high, and the "Purple Phoenix Welcoming Sun Cauldron" also had the effect of enhancing the flame temperature. The time it took Zhou Yang to forge a Second-tier Low-grade Artifact would not exceed half an hour, and even for a Second-tier Mid-grade Artifact, it would not exceed an hour.

With his current cultivation level and divine sense, he could completely endure a full day of artifact refining without eating or drinking.

Of course, to ensure the success rate, Zhou Yang would definitely not do that. Basically, after forging two to three Artifacts, he would choose to rest for one to two hours to recover his energy and summarize his experience. The number of artifact refining sessions per day was controlled at around fifteen to twenty.

In the process of repeated artifact refining, Zhou Yang also happily discovered that his success rate in forging Second-tier Low-grade Artifacts and Second-tier Mid-grade Artifacts had actually increased by another 10% with the help of the underground fire and the "Purple Phoenix Welcoming Sun Cauldron."

Don't underestimate this 10%. For an Artifact Forger, a 10% increase in success rate during artifact refining not only meant an increase in the success rate of forging Artifacts, but it also meant that he had taken a big step closer to a higher level of Artifact Forging Art.

The Old Clan Leader Zhou Minghan had told Zhou Yang back then that for a Second-tier High-grade Artifact Forger to attempt to become a Third-Rank Artifact Forger, he must first increase the success rate of forging Second-tier Low-grade Artifacts to 100%, and the success rate of forging Second-tier High-grade Artifacts to over 60% before there was a chance of success.

Zhou Yang was still far from meeting this requirement, but after the 10% increase in his artifact refining success rate, his Artifact Forging Art was no longer inferior to that of Artifact Forgers who had entered the Second-tier High-grade Artifact Forger realm for many years.

With Zhou Yang's frantic artifact refining, the hundreds of orders that "Jade Spring Tower" had received in a short period were all completed by him in less than half a month.

At this time, the Artifact Forgers and shop owners who had been watching the results of his artifact refining were all stunned. Because they discovered from the order completion results published by "Jade Spring Tower" that Zhou Yang not only didn't lose his pants as they had expected, but after deducting the material costs for failed attempts, he had actually made a profit of over a thousand low-grade spirit stones!

Since the spirit stones were earned entirely through his own artifact refining skills, Zhou Yang only needed to hand over 30% of these thousand spirit stones to the family, while the remaining 70% belonged to him entirely.

"Waaah, what a cunning kid! Look at the orders they published, out of hundreds of orders, less 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 Artifacts. No wonder he didn't lose money in the end, but instead made over a thousand spirit stones!"

Excluding the few people who were naturally not very bright, most cultivators were not stupid. After Zhou Yang clearly posted the completion status of hundreds of orders, they just had to think about it carefully to understand the situation, and then they couldn't help but curse Zhou Yang for being cunning.

In fact, all the Artifact Forgers knew that with their Second-tier High-grade artifact refining level, forging Second-tier Low-grade Artifacts would definitely result in more profit than loss.

But the problem was, firstly, under their high charging system, Rogue Cultivators would rather save money to buy finished Artifacts than risk coming to them for custom orders. Even if someone came for customization, it was rare.

Secondly, it was due to their own reasons. As Second-tier High-grade Artifact Forgers, they were considered high-ranking within their own families and had the supply from the entire family. They usually didn't lack materials to practice with, so they were unwilling to lower themselves to individually forge a Second-tier Low-grade Artifact for a visiting cultivator.

For a long time, these Artifact Forgers' idea was, since they could sell finished Artifacts and earn several times the profit, why should they lower themselves to earn that meager hard-earned money?

Before Zhou Yang, none of them had realized that if they could monopolize all, no, even if they could monopolize five or three tenths of the custom artifact business for Rogue Cultivators in the market town, they could still earn huge profits through small profits and high sales.

"No, we have to lower our prices too. That Zhou family kid's success rate for forging Tier 2 High-grade Artifacts is only a little over 30%, but I'm at 40%!"

"Lower prices, we must lower prices. Since we can still make money by lowering prices, why shouldn't we earn it?"

"This money can't all be earned by the Zhou family; my Luo family also needs to get a piece of the pie."

The various shops that had come to their senses began to follow the practice of "Jade Spring Tower" by lowering prices to compete for market share.

However, they soon discovered that even if they did everything according to "Jade Spring Tower's" specifications to attract customers, the preferred choice of the Rogue Cultivators was still "Jade Spring Tower" and not their shops.

Even if they patted their chests and guaranteed that their Artifact Forgers' skills were even better than Zhou Yang's, it did not change the situation. In the end, they could only watch with envy and jealousy as "Jade Spring Tower" continued to make a fortune, taking in a large number of orders from the Rogue Cultivators who had heard the news.

And all of this was within Zhou Yang's expectations.

His experiences and knowledge from his previous life made him understand the importance of "first impressions" better than anyone else here. As long as cultivators were still human and had the commonality of human thought, they would not differ from mortals in this regard.

Generally speaking, as long as the first person to eat the crab doesn't court death themselves, the followers behind can basically only eat dust. Those who can stand out are one in ten thousand.

"Even if someone surpasses me later, it doesn't matter. This Golden Sand Market is only so big, and the number of Rogue Cultivators is not infinite. As long as I have a few months, I can capture more than half of the market share. When the market is saturated, my Artifact Forging Art should be close to completion."

Zhou Yang smiled confidently, revealing a confident smile that everything was under control.

In fact, it was true. Although all the artifact shops were desperately promoting how good their Artifact Forgers' skills were, most of the Rogue Cultivators who heard the news from outside the market town and rushed over with artifact refining materials still chose "Jade Spring Tower" as their first choice.

The Rogue Cultivators suffered. They finally found some valuable spiritual items, only to be severely suppressed in price by those Cultivation Families and sects, causing them to resent these profiteers in the market town.

The more the shops advertised extravagantly, the more the Rogue Cultivators who had been cheated by them in the past became suspicious of their impure motives and were even less willing to go to them.

Of course, there were also some Rogue Cultivators who had been cheated by "Jade Spring Tower" and heard the advertisements, so they abandoned "Jade Spring Tower" and ran to other shops. But how many people had "Jade Spring Tower" cheated before?

Therefore, the final result was that the people who went to "Jade Spring Tower" to place orders directly accounted for more than 60% of the Rogue Cultivators who flooded into the market town later. The other dozen or so shops, including the Chen Family's artifact shop, could only watch this scene with envy and jealousy, and then silently followed behind to pick up scraps.

No cultivator would go against spirit stones, especially when they saw someone making a lot of money this way.

Seeing that Zhou Yang was making hundreds of spirit stones daily by providing custom artifact services, the Artifact Forgers from other families could no longer afford to maintain their dignity. If it weren't for the support of their final reputation, they would have wished they could personally go out to solicit customers.

And Zhou Yang, after the first wave of profit, also became bolder, with more and more orders for Tier 2 High-grade Artifacts being queued up.

Anyway, he had nowhere to spend spirit stones now. As long as he wasn't losing money out of his own pocket and his artifact refining skills could improve, he wouldn't mind losing all the spirit stones he earned from artifact refining.

Spirit stones could be earned again if they were gone, but if he missed this opportunity for large-scale forging of Tier 2 High-grade Artifacts to improve his artifact refining skills, he would have to spend decades slowly honing them in the future.

He clearly understood the gains and losses involved.

Once a person has a direction and moves towards it, they will not feel tired or bitter.

The Underground Fire Room was not a good place. The underground fire from the depths of the magma, even after being suppressed and purified by formations and artifacts, still had a scorching malevolent energy. Even for a cultivator like Zhou Yang, who practiced fire-attribute cultivation techniques and was in the Late Qi Cultivation stage, prolonged exposure would cause various discomforts to his body and mind.

If it were before, he would definitely forge for two days and then rest for one day.

But now he couldn't. Now, the Artifact Forgers from other shops had also accepted artifact forging orders and needed to use the Underground Fire Room for artifact refining.

If he withdrew from the Underground Fire Room, he wouldn't be able to rent cheap Class B and Class C Underground Fire Rooms for artifact refining anymore.

He didn't lack the rent for one spirit stone per day, and this Underground Fire Room was originally opened by the Chen Family to accommodate artifact forgers and alchemists from other families. If he occupied it without using it, they would have an excuse to terminate the lease.

He had already damaged the interests of other families by breaking the rules this time. They were just looking for an excuse to cause trouble for him, and if he pulled this stunt now, he would be handing them a perfect opportunity.

Therefore, in order to maintain his market share and build the reputation of "Jade Spring Tower," Zhou Yang had to summon the same spirit he had when he pulled all-nighters working overtime in his past life. He endured the discomfort and stayed in the Underground Fire Room.

He stayed there for a whole month!

In that month, Zhou Yang averaged over ten artifact forging sessions per day. His success rate in artifact forging steadily increased with each attempt. By the time he left the Underground Fire Room, his success rate for refining Tier 2 High-grade Artifacts had reached over forty percent.

With a success rate of over forty percent, he could guarantee he wouldn't lose money even if he took all the orders for Tier 2 High-grade Artifacts.

In addition to his great progress in Artifact Forging Art, through this month of high-intensity artifact forging, Zhou Yang was also pleasantly surprised to discover that the barrier hindering his cultivation breakthrough was slowly loosening. He estimated that he would be able to break through to Qi Refining Layer Nine within a year at most.

Chapter Two, requesting recommendation votes, requesting investment in the new book's group, and finally, thanks to the book friend "Villager Self-Growing Vegetables for Sale" for the daily reward of 100 Qidian coins.