"You can already do Fusion Forging, kid?" Cen Yue swallowed hard and stared at Lu Chuan in disbelief.
"Yeah. I've succeeded twice, so I want to give it a try!"
Lu Chuan replied to Cen Yue with a deadpan expression.
At those words,
Cen Yue felt as if the sky had collapsed!
He wanted to call Mang Tian right then and there,
and ask where on earth he'd found this freak!
Was this someone he could actually teach?
A pure talent monster!
Mu Chen and Elder Zhao exchanged a glance,
and both saw the same word in each other's eyes—absurd!
Ignoring their reactions, Lu Chuan calmly walked over to the metal storage cabinet.
Today, he was going to shatter the blacksmith world's records!
So that from now on,
whenever people talked about this,
they would first remember one thing:
Mu Chen was petty, hounding a boy over a drunken remark!
Cen Yue sucked up to the powerful, feared the influential, cast aside a friend of many years, and joined Mu Chen in their foul play!
He opened the cabinet door,
revealing dozens of rare metal samples neatly arranged inside.
Each piece was about the size of a fist,
and its label listed its name, place of origin, and purity grade.
Lu Chuan's gaze swept rapidly across the rows of labels.
He pointed at a few from a distance,
then precisely pulled out five metal ingots.
Clang!
He lined up the five differently colored metals on the forging table.
He took two pieces of each.
But he didn't actually need that many.
A blacksmith could take home the finished product after the assessment.
These rare metals were almost impossible to buy elsewhere.
Might as well take them!
The fact that Lu Chuan hadn't taken seven or eight of each,
just to give himself more room for error in Fusion Forging,
already showed remarkable restraint!
"My teacher said that for Level Six, you pass the assessment if you master either the fusion of more than six pairs of alloys or Fusion Forging with more than three groups of three alloys. Is that right?"
Lu Chuan looked at Mu Chen with a smile that didn't reach his eyes.
Mu Chen sighed at that,
then replied firmly:
"That's right!"
He really did feel awful right now.
Because
they were supposed to explain the passing requirements themselves.
By asking, Lu Chuan was clearly calling them out for lying to him just now!
If the old Lu Chuan hadn't been a genius...
he would've exposed them long ago!
Cen Yue had naturally caught Lu Chuan's implication too.
He looked at Mu Chen with a bitter expression,
then let out a helpless sigh.
Why had he had to help the villain?
A genius! Mang Tian's genius was his genius too, wasn't he?
Of everyone present,
only Elder Zhao's eyes were filled with admiration for Lu Chuan.
Young geniuses were treasured wherever they went!
He stepped closer, wanting to see which metals Lu Chuan had chosen.
As a blacksmith in the East Sea region,
he was familiar with the recipes for Spirit Alloy, which were shared among blacksmiths in the area.
He wanted to judge from the materials which Spirit Alloy Lu Chuan planned to create through Fusion Forging!
But once he took a look,
he was utterly shocked!
The five pieces Lu Chuan had chosen
were all notoriously tough to work with!
The first was Flame Copper!
A rare copper ore found deep inside volcanoes in the far south.
After absorbing volcanic fire essence for years,
its internal thermal energy became extremely active!
It continuously released high temperatures during forging.
For most blacksmiths, forget Spirit Forging—
even Thousand Refinement
could leave them badly burned!
More dangerously,
the metal's molecular structure was extremely unstable.
The slightest mistake in controlling Soul Power
could trigger an immediate thermal explosion.
There would be no time to dodge.
Historically, at least several hundred blacksmiths had been injured by explosions while Spirit Forging Flame Copper!
Its widely recognized Spirit Forging difficulty: ★★★★★,
making it one of the ten most dangerous rare metals!
The second was Frost Meteorite Iron.
A meteorite that had fallen onto the Arctic ice fields from beyond the skies.
Its core temperature stayed below minus a hundred degrees year-round.
This metal had traits diametrically opposed to Flame Copper's.
Its reaction to Soul Power was extremely inert!
Injecting Soul Power into it was like trying to make a mud ox disappear into the sea: it went in and never came back.
Worse still,
during forging, it constantly absorbed heat from its surroundings,
causing the surface of the forging table to ice over.
This made the feel of hammering extremely strange.
A Level Six master blacksmith had once attempted Spirit Forging Frost Meteorite Iron.
He failed nine times in a row.
When he finally succeeded on the tenth try, his lips had turned purple from the cold.
He needed half a month to recover before he could forge again!
Spirit Forging difficulty: ★★★★★,
an extreme material on par with Flame Copper.
The third was Thunderclap Gold.
A rare associated ore whose mining was often accompanied by violent electromagnetic pulses.
It naturally stored a large amount of electric charge inside.
Touching untreated Thunderclap Gold with bare hands could electrocute a person into unconsciousness.
However,
the piece Lu Chuan had chosen had been treated by the association.
After all,
they couldn't ruin a blacksmith
over a single assessment!
The difficulty of Spirit Forging Thunderclap Gold lay in the fact that
the blacksmith had to use his own Soul Power
to guide the electric charges within the metal into an orderly flow.
This consumed a great deal of Soul Power and mental energy.
The slightest mistake,
and a runaway charge could destroy the spiritual structure already created!
Even more terrifyingly,
Thunderclap Gold released a powerful electromagnetic pulse the moment Spirit Forging succeeded.
At best, it burned out nearby electronic devices.
At worst, it attacked the blacksmith's spiritual sea directly.
Spirit Forging difficulty: ★★★★☆. It placed extremely high demands on both mental energy and Soul Power!
The fourth was Shadow Steel.
A special metal produced near the Abyss Rift.
It was extremely light,
with only one-third the density of ordinary steel,
yet five times the strength for the same weight.
Its defining trait was "Devouring."
It had an extraordinarily strong ability to absorb all external energy.
That meant that whether a blacksmith injected Soul Power or mental energy,
the Shadow Steel would quickly absorb it all,
making it difficult to build up enough to trigger its spiritual properties.
To Spirit Forge Shadow Steel,
the blacksmith had to inject a torrent of Soul Power or mental energy in a single instant, exceeding the metal's absorption limit.
This was a hellish test of both explosive power and precision of control.
Spirit Forging difficulty: ★★★★★. It also consumed enormous amounts of Soul Power and mental energy.
The fifth was raw Life Crystal Ore.
Strictly speaking,
it could no longer be considered a metal.
It was simply a mineral crystal.
Or, to put it another way, a rock.
But it had a quality no metal could match:
an exceptionally strong affinity for life energy!
The difficulty of Spirit Forging Life Crystal lay not in technique,
but in timing.
It entered an "activated" state only when subjected to Soul Power vibrations at a specific frequency.
That frequency varied from person to person.
It was different for every blacksmith.
Some blacksmiths spent their entire lives without finding the right frequency.
Others succeeded by accident on their very first attempt.
Spirit Forging difficulty: ★★★★. Its potential was extremely high, but success was entirely a matter of fate.
Five metals, five extremes.
Each one was enough to give an experienced Level Five blacksmith a headache for half a day,
yet Lu Chuan had chosen all five at once!
"He's absolutely insane!" Cen Yue grumbled furiously.
Mu Chen had taken so many blows to his confidence that, for some inexplicable reason, he actually thought Lu Chuan might succeed at Fusion Forging!
Elder Zhao, the blacksmith, was waiting for a miracle!
Lu Chuan wasn't affected by their emotions,
but quickly settled into his own rhythm!
The order in which he spirit-forged the five pieces of metal was crucial.
He had to start with the easiest and work toward the hardest, from the stable to the extreme.
He had to reach his peak condition by the time he tackled the most difficult piece.
He took a deep breath,
then reached out and grasped the first piece of metal.
Flame Copper!
High temperatures and instability
were all relative in his eyes!
No one understood better than he did how to harness the power of destruction!
The instant the Forging Hammer came down,
the temperature in the Evaluation Room suddenly soared to an unimaginable level.
The Flame Copper was like a ferocious beast roused from sleep,
a layer of crimson heat haze instantly rising from its surface!
But Lu Chuan wasn't affected in the slightest.
He swung the hammer in an orderly rhythm,
each strike landing precisely where it needed to,
the force passing through the surface and reaching the metal's core.
Before long,
Lu Chuan's blows had fully awakened the intense heat within the Flame Copper,
and it began to surge outward in a frenzy.
The edges of Lu Chuan's sleeves were scorched and curled,
and the loose hair over his forehead looked as though it might catch fire at any moment,
yet he remained as steady as a mountain.
In just twenty-eight strikes,
Lu Chuan had completely suppressed the Flame Copper's rampaging heat.
Thousand Refinement with spirit—Thousand-Refined Grade One!
Seeing this,
Mu Chen and Cen Yue both felt rather dejected.
It was as if Thousand-Refined Grade One were child's play in Lu Chuan's hands,
something he could produce just by casually swinging the hammer?
Seizing the opportunity,
Lu Chuan began channeling his mental power,
layering his spiritual imprints inside the Flame Copper.
The essence of the Spirit Folding Art lay in concealment.
It wasn't about crudely forcing all his mental power in at once,
but about weaving it in like cloth,
layer upon layer,
with gaps too subtle to notice between each one.
That way,
the metal's own spirituality could breathe freely in those spaces.
Before long,
Lu Chuan had awakened the Flame Copper's spirituality.
At the same time,
the Flame Copper's surface was no longer the aggressive, fiery red it had been before,
but more like a glowing ember atop charcoal—its interior held astonishing heat, yet gave little away.
But the moment Soul Power stirred it,
it would blaze red once more!
The whole process took twenty-four minutes.
He hadn't set a new record,
but Lu Chuan was already very satisfied!
Without pausing,
he placed the Flame Copper in the cooling trough,
then turned and picked up the second piece of metal.
Forging was a blast, and forging nonstop was an even bigger blast!
That phrase could already be his motto!