Divine Smith

Heaven Dou City.

The soul car cut through the morning mist like a black fish swimming into this ancient city steeped in history.

The elongated vehicle glided along the asphalt road, its wheels rolling over pebbles at the roadside while the shock absorbers filtered out the bumps.

Heaven Dou City had existed as early as twenty thousand years ago. During the era of Spirit Hall, it had been one of the continent's foremost great cities, even becoming the number one city on the continent for a time. Back then, it had been the capital of the Heaven Dou Empire.

Only after the Sun Moon Empire, the predecessor of the Federation, annexed the Heaven Dou Empire did this place become an ordinary city.

Ziyang leaned against the leather seat and looked out the window. The buildings lining both sides of the road all appeared ancient. As far as the eye could see, there was not a single skyscraper in all of Heaven Dou City. The tallest things in sight were merely ancient trees.

To preserve Heaven Dou City in its original state as much as possible, the Federation had decreed that none of the buildings within the city could exceed fifty meters.

Gu Yue looked at everything around her with a calm expression. Na'er, meanwhile, quietly asked Ziyang, "Ziyang, when will we get to see the Divine Smith?"

Ziyang said speechlessly, "I don't even know where the end of the universe is. How would I know that?"

At those words, Na'er's little head filled with question marks.

Very soon, the driver answered the question for the two of them.

"See that black building up ahead? That's the place."

They turned their gazes and saw a pitch-black building with a conspicuous hammer emblem on it.

When the four arrived at the headquarters of the Blacksmith Association, the first-floor lobby was unexpectedly packed to the brim.

The staff had cordoned off an area in the center of the lobby, roughly twenty meters in diameter, where a forging platform had already been set up.

"What is going on?" Na'er asked as she looked at the surging crowd.

"Today should be the day the Divine Smith gives a lecture." Leng Yaoyu had roughly learned about the Divine Smith's daily routine and explained it to the three of them.

"None of you three know how to forge, but you can still listen. Maybe you have talent for forging."

"Really? I also think I have the makings of a Divine Smith," Ziyang said as if it were obvious.

At those words, a large number of blacksmiths turned to look at Ziyang. But when they saw that he was just a little kid, they lost any urge to mock him.

In their eyes, he was just a smug little brat.

There was nothing wrong with being confident.

Just then, the crowd on one side of the lobby parted, and a man entered the inner circle surrounded by a group of staff members.

Ziyang focused his eyes on him. The man was a middle-aged man with black hair and black eyes, and he was exceptionally handsome.

He looked to be only in his thirties, yet his eyes were filled with vicissitudes and depth that someone of his age could not possibly possess. His sideburns were completely white, standing in stark contrast to the black hair atop his head.

The most eye-catching thing was his pair of hands. They were much larger than an ordinary person's, yet without prominent knuckles, and were fair and slender.

They looked just like a woman's hands.

At first glance, they were exactly the type that would catch some office worker's eye. Unfortunately, that was only at first glance.

Zhen Hua walked up to the forging platform and looked at the crowd. The entire hall instantly fell silent.

Ziyang took the opportunity to squeeze into the crowd as well.

Zhen Hua's lesson that day was not obscure. It concerned something most blacksmiths would encounter.

Ziyang's understanding of blacksmiths was still limited to Hundred Refinement, Thousand Refinement, Spirit Refinement, Soul Refinement, and the Heaven Refinement that almost everyone could only gaze upon from afar.

"Time is limited. What we will discuss today is Heart Refinement, an extremely important point in breaking through to Spirit Refinement..."

Zhen Hua began his explanation. His voice was calm and rich, allowing every blacksmith present to hear him clearly.

Ziyang did not learn Heart Refinement. Instead, he was thinking about something even stranger: engraving. Carving hundreds or even thousands of soul-conduit arrays into an area just a few millimeters wide.

He began considering the possibility of a soul-conduit photolithography machine. As for a stable light source, he could try to build a good relationship with Gu Yue and first test whether his hypothesis was feasible.

Thinking about it this way, the Silver Dragon King might not only possess talent in forging due to the Genesis Godhead, but also talent in manufacturing.

She was even studying mecha design now.

Mecha repair was also a combination of mecha design and mecha manufacturing.

So Gu Yue was an all-round monster too.

At that moment, Austin Griffin, who was slacking off, suddenly felt that someone else was just as miserable as it was.

It did not know whether it should be happy, or happy.

But the next moment, it was no longer happy.

Ziyang suddenly remembered that Austin Griffin's third head possessed the light element. Exploiting it would be far easier than exploiting Gu Yue.

After the Divine Smith finished speaking, there were hundreds of people in the hall, yet they had remained silent the entire time, their eyes even filled with reverence.

The Divine Smith's gaze fell upon Ziyang. Seeing the thoughtful expression on his face, he could not help asking, "Little friend, do you have any questions?"

He felt that the child before him must understand forging. Otherwise, why would he be deep in thought?

Ziyang blinked, glanced around, and discovered that he was the only one. Inwardly, he complained that he should have dragged Na'er, with all that wisdom in her eyes, in with him earlier.

He said awkwardly, "President, I've never studied forging."

At those words, everyone fell silent.

"Would you like to come up and give it a try?" Zhen Hua asked with a smile, easing the awkwardness. He had actually misjudged the boy.

"Can I?" Ziyang asked, taking the offered way out.

"Of course. No matter what, we cannot snuff out a child's love for forging."

Zhen Hua smiled, believing Ziyang to be promising material for forging.

Ziyang took two standard forging hammers and stepped up directly, without the slightest sign of stage fright.

One sentence echoed through his mind: I have the makings of a Divine Smith!

Back then, he had watched forging competitions.

Just because he had never seen a pig run did not mean he had never eaten pork.

Zhen Hua also selected a metal that was not too difficult for Ziyang: Blacksteel.

Once the metal had finished heating, Ziyang began the first forging of his life.

Zhen Hua's gaze fell upon Ziyang's hands. His skin was fair, and his grip on the forging hammers was exceptionally steady. Every strike was firmly controlled.

If this truly was his first time forging, then such talent was genuinely rare—a good seed seen only once in a century.

As the metal was struck again and again.

The Blacksteel actually began to shrink, all impurities within the metal being removed.

That signified one thing: Hundred Refinement was complete.

"Hundred Refinement?" Leng Yaoyu saw the scene from afar and felt that, setting aside Ziyang's other talents, was forging actually this child's greatest talent?

This was the field with the highest demands for talent. Even at rank five, one had to choose a specialization.

She could see it, and naturally Zhen Hua could see it too. His eyes burned with excitement. Hundred Refinement was the mark of a second-rank blacksmith.

The third rank was Thousand Refinement of metal. If he kept forging like this, he truly had a chance of achieving Thousand Refinement.

The next moment, the Blacksteel shrank by another thirty percent.

Ziyang's breathing gradually synchronized with the metal, while a faint pink light shone from his eyes.