The successful mass production of the Body Strengthening Pills and Qi Recovery Powder had Bulma excited for days. She spent all her time in the lab optimizing the production process and had even started designing automated pill-filling lines and flashy packaging.
Lin Fan, meanwhile, used these basic pills to consolidate his mid-stage Qi Refining cultivation. He could feel the stream of True Qi inside him growing ever stronger and more solid.
But it still wasn't enough.
Pills were consumables. They were merely supplements.
How could a true cultivator get by without a handy magical artifact?
The flying swords and magical treasures recorded in the Great Dao Source Scripture, the ability to ride a sword through the air and take an enemy's head from a thousand miles away—that was the realm he yearned for.
Of course, with his meager cultivation, refining a true flying sword was pure fantasy.
But he could try making a "prototype" and nurturing it with his spiritual sense ahead of time, laying the groundwork.
The problem was materials.
Where on Earth could he find the cultivation world's refining materials—geng metal, mithril, Star Iron, and the like?
He would have to find substitutes.
He set his sights on the materials warehouse at Bulma's house. One day, he went to see her while she was adjusting the pill-packaging machine.
"Bulma, do you have... a metal that's especially hard, conducts energy especially well, and is especially light?"
Lin Fan tried to describe it in terms she could understand.
Bulma crawled out from under the machine, a little machine oil smudged on her face. "Huh? Starting another project? Hard, energy-conductive, lightweight?" Her eyes lit up. "Do you mean vibranium? No, no, that's from comics... Wait!"
She slapped her forehead. "I remember! A few years ago, Dad and I developed a new type of spaceship hull alongside the Gravity Room. We synthesized a superalloy! Its codename is Z-1! It's incredibly strong, has the best energy conductivity I've ever seen, and weighs only a third as much as titanium alloy of the same volume! It's just ridiculously expensive, and a little brittle..."
"A little brittle?"
Lin Fan frowned. That wasn't a good quality.
"Yeah, it doesn't hold up to impacts and cracks easily. So we shelved the spaceship hull project." Bulma shrugged. "There should still be a few test rods in the warehouse, piled up like junk."
"Take me to see them."
Lin Fan was intrigued.
Deep in the materials warehouse, which was as large as a supermarket, Bulma pointed to several dusty silver metal rods in a corner. "There, that's the stuff."
Lin Fan walked over and gently touched the cold metal surface with his fingertips.
A trace of True Qi flowed from his fingertip into it.
Humm...
The metal rod gave off an almost imperceptible resonance!
True Qi traveled through its interior extremely quickly, with minimal loss!
But, just as Bulma had said, there seemed to be some kind of stress defect in the metal's internal structure, leaving it short on toughness.
"This is the one!"
Lin Fan felt certain. Not tough enough?
Perhaps he could make up for that and strengthen it with refining techniques!
"What do you want this junk for?" Bulma asked curiously.
Lin Fan pondered for a moment, then decided to tell her the truth. "I want to try... making a 'sword.'"
"A sword?"
Bulma paused, then burst out laughing. "Who still uses cold weapons these days? If you want a weapon, my family's latest Impact Gun..."
"It's no ordinary weapon."
Lin Fan interrupted her, his expression serious. "It's controlled by the mind, can fly through the air, and can cleave metal and jade... a 'flying sword.'"
"F-fly through the air? Like the Flight Technique? With a sword?"
Bulma's eyes went wide, and her mouth formed an O. In an instant, she pictured Lin Fan standing on a sword, zipping through the sky and directing it to slash at things...
"That's so freaking cool!!!"
The next second, she shrieked and grabbed Lin Fan's arm, trembling with excitement. "It's a million times cooler than the Flight Technique! Why didn't you say so earlier? We're building it! We have to! What do you need me to do?! Wait! Should we add a plasma thruster to the hilt? How about a high-frequency particle-vibration blade for the edge? Should we give it an automatic targeting and navigation system?!"
Lin Fan: "..."
He finally managed to calm Bulma down before she could get so excited she took off. "...There's no need to make it so complicated. At first, I only need a sword prototype. What matters is the material itself and... well, 'energy resonance.'"
He had no idea how to explain "nurturing it with spiritual sense" and "refining arrays" to Bulma.
"Energy resonance? Got it! Leave it to me!"
Bulma clearly had her own interpretation.
She immediately sprang into action.
"Robots! Move the Z-1 rods to the high-energy laser cutting table!"
"Start the 3D modeling! Lin Fan, what style of sword do you want? Chinese? Western? Katana? Give me the specs!"
"Not strong enough? Easy! Ever heard of molecular rearrangement under high-temperature, high-pressure conditions? I'll also coat it with a carbon-nanotube reinforcement layer!"
Watching Bulma spring into action and the giant machines roar to life, Lin Fan suddenly felt that... he might have opened some kind of Pandora's box.
He had only meant to hand-grind a crude sword prototype...
Several hours later.
After precise high-energy laser cutting, repeated hammering under an ultra-high-pressure forging press, and the "little bit" of advanced technology Bulma had insisted on adding, a sword prototype lay quietly on the cooling table.
It was about three feet long and two fingers wide, with a streamlined shape and a muted silver-gray finish. Fine geometric patterns formed by its nanocoating covered the surface, and its edge gleamed with a cold light.
Rather than a flying sword, it looked more like a piece of conceptual art from the far future.
"How is it? Cool, right?"
Bulma showed it off proudly. "It's definitely tough enough, and it conducts energy like a dream! I also secretly embedded a miniature power core and signal receiver in the guard. Maybe you'll be able to control it remotely someday!"
Lin Fan didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
He gripped the hilt—which felt excellent, ergonomically designed, and had also been Bulma's idea—and slowly fed it a trace of True Qi.
Humm—!
The sword gave off a much clearer ring!
True Qi flowed through its interior with astonishing ease, hardly meeting any resistance! The nanocoating and molecular rearrangement seemed to have strengthened the structure by chance, making up for its brittleness and even improving its affinity for energy!
It was still a hundred thousand miles away from being a true magical artifact, but its foundation was far better than he had expected!
"Very good."
Lin Fan nodded with satisfaction. "Next, I need to nurture it with my own energy every day, so that it gradually develops spirituality and responds as if it were an extension of my arm."
"Nurture it? Give it spirituality?"
Bulma blinked, then hurried back to the control panel. "Easy! I'll design a constant-energy-field cultivation chamber! Then I'll write a program to stimulate it with different energy-wave frequencies..."
Lin Fan: "...This has to be done personally, through a union of mind and spirit."
He quickly stopped Bulma from stuffing the sword prototype into a machine and powering it up.
He sat cross-legged, laid the sword prototype across his knees, and held his hands over it. Closing his eyes, he followed the simplest nurturing method in the Great Dao Source Scripture and slowly sank his spiritual sense into the blade. At the same time, threads of pure True Qi flowed into it without pause, like a gentle stream.
This was a slow, steady process. There was no rushing it.
Bulma watched curiously from the side, bringing out all sorts of instruments to try to measure the energy data from their "union of mind and spirit." Naturally, she got nothing.
But seeing Lin Fan's focused expression and the sword prototype, which seemed to grow quieter and more profound as the faint energy flowed through it, her eyes shone with tremendous excitement.
A technological flying sword?
It seemed... like it might actually work!
She had already started designing a matching flight-control system and laser targeting sight in her head...
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