When the final hammer blow fell, Jiang Jiu looked at the tungsten steel that could no longer shrink and chose to call it a day.
The whole piece of tungsten steel had shrunk by about ten percent. It was not that it could not be shrunk further through deeper purification, but that Jiang Jiu's current "understanding" could probably only take him this far.
Unlike ordinary metals such as Pig Iron and Pure Silver, Jiang Jiu had no way to hammer tungsten steel into Tungsten Steel Essence.
The reduction in the tungsten steel's volume was purely impurity removal and purification. Since it could not be transformed into Tungsten Steel Essence, shrinking it to this degree was already an extremely impressive technique.
For now, however, this was indeed as far as he could go.
In fact, it was not just the final hammer blow. There had already been no changes for the dozen or so blows before that. Continuing to increase his strength was useless. Unless his strength reached an extremely exaggerated level, he would still have to rely on his understanding of the metal's properties to keep going.
And if his strength really reached that extremely exaggerated critical point, perhaps even tungsten steel's toughness would not be able to withstand it. It might simply collapse outright.
It was better to keep studying and feeling his way forward slowly.
Although he had not managed to "reach the heavens in a single step" and directly break through to the miraculous realm of Thousand Refinement, Jiang Jiu had never truly believed he could achieve Thousand Refinement just by getting his hands on a rare metal. He was not arrogant to that extent.
Overall, for a first attempt, being able to shrink tungsten steel to its current state already left him very satisfied.
Aside from