Artifact Refining Secret Art 2.0

After successfully cultivating the third level of the Nine Revolutions Mysterious Technique, Zhou Yuan left the training grounds and returned straight to his villa. Thinking of the Universe Crystals he had received, the first thing he needed to do was absorb them with the Hunyuan Dao Seed.

Back in his room, Zhou Yuan first took out the small World Ring that Purple Chen Pavilion had included with the delivery. The Universe Crystals were stored inside. With a thought, his consciousness entered the space within the ring.

The moment he stepped inside, Zhou Yuan was stunned by the sight before him—a massive mountain range piled from Universe Crystals stretched across the space. The Universe Crystals worth one million Hunyuan units occupied a volume of one million cubic kilometers, directly dividing the world inside the ring in half.

The world within this World Ring was only ten thousand kilometers in diameter. The Universe Crystals lay across this miniature world, stretching nearly ten thousand kilometers from left to right and standing around ten kilometers tall.

Zhou Yuan flew to the peak of the Universe Crystal mountain range and summoned the projection of the Hunyuan Dao Seed with a thought. Guided by his consciousness, the Dao Seed instantly erupted with a terrifying suction force. Like a bottomless black hole, it swallowed the entire mountain range of Universe Crystals in an instant.

Looking at the emptied Universe Crystal mountain range and sensing the increase in the Hunyuan Dao Seed's energy, Zhou Yuan nodded in satisfaction. He then sank his consciousness into the Dao Seed and issued the command to deduce an artifact-refining secret art.

For the artifact-refining secret art, Zhou Yuan had specifically set it to deduce only the refining method itself, without including the accompanying equipment secret patterns. This consumed relatively less source energy.

As for the secret patterns, Zhou Yuan could obtain them from equipment. When he had previously secluded himself at the Universe Mercenary Alliance outpost in the Yunyan Secret Realm, he had already thoroughly analyzed the secret-pattern structures of the Zhenkong Blade and the Fifth-Order Force Battle Armor. He had long since resolved the issue of fifth-order secret patterns.

Zhou Yuan had previously attempted to forge a fifth-order Zhenkong Blade, but had failed both in the Virtual Universe and in reality. The core reason was his lack of force energy. If the newly deduced artifact-refining secret art could greatly improve energy efficiency, then he would be confident of succeeding.

Very quickly, in less than a second, the Hunyuan Dao Seed completed its deduction. An enormous stream of information flooded into Zhou Yuan's mind. The sheer volume left him stunned, and it took him a full quarter of an hour to sort through it all.

This brand-new artifact-refining secret art far exceeded Zhou Yuan's expectations. Not only did it increase energy efficiency tenfold, but it also contained a special refining method—by extending the tempering time, it could greatly reduce the peak force energy required at any given moment.

This reduction was enough to allow artifact refiners to recover force energy while refining, giving those with less force energy the possibility of forging higher-level equipment.

Zhou Yuan named this artifact-refining secret art Artifact Refining Secret Art 2.0 to distinguish it from the previous one, which he named Artifact Refining Secret Art 1.0.

According to Zhou Yuan's calculations, with force energy equivalent to the Domain Lord level, he already possessed the foundation to forge an Immortal Divine Weapon. The only bottleneck was whether he could successfully inscribe Immortal Level secret patterns.

Zhou Yuan carefully studied the details of the secret art, memorizing its various secret patterns and precautions. Then, he connected his consciousness to the Virtual Universe and entered his exclusive simulated artifact-refining grounds.

He still planned to familiarize himself with the new secret art in the virtual environment first, avoiding the waste of precious materials in reality.

First came the choice of materials for forging the Zhenkong Blade. As Zhou Yuan's chosen weapon, the Zhenkong Blade was descended from the same lineage as the Breaking Mountain Blade. The Breaking Mountain Blade required D9-level Star Iron and D9-level Void-Pattern Silver, while the Zhenkong Blade required their upgraded forms: E9-level Star Iron Essence and E9-level Void-Pattern Silver Essence.

Star Iron Essence and Void-Pattern Silver Essence were extremely valuable. Even in the Virtual Universe, the cost of a single forging attempt was around one million Universe Coins, nearly the same as the real-world cost of forging a Breaking Mountain Blade.

Simulated forging in the Virtual Universe was extremely convenient as long as one had money. It not only provided all kinds of refining furnaces, but also allowed the purchase of various virtual materials.

"Beibei, prepare the materials and refining furnace for forging the Zhenkong Blade," Zhou Yuan ordered his intelligent assistant.

"Yes, Master." Beibei's voice rang out, and a massive refining furnace instantly appeared in the simulated artifact-refining grounds. On the platform beside it, the required materials were neatly arranged—several hundred tons of Star Iron Essence and one ton of Void-Pattern Silver Essence.

Zhou Yuan had Beibei activate the refining furnace. "Beibei, activate the refining furnace. Raise the temperature to 50,000 K."

"At once, Master." As soon as the words fell, blazing flames burst from beneath the refining furnace. The temperature inside soared instantly and soon reached the designated value.

Zhou Yuan took a deep breath, opened the furnace lid, and first tossed the E9-level Star Iron Essence into the refining furnace. Under the extreme heat, the Star Iron Essence rapidly melted into a mass of scorching molten metal. Once it had fully melted, he added the Void-Pattern Silver Essence.

The silvery-white Void-Pattern Silver Essence turned liquid the instant it touched the high temperature, blending with the molten Star Iron.

After both materials had completely melted, Zhou Yuan followed the steps of Artifact Refining Secret Art 2.0 and activated his spiritual power, constructing a complex "Fusion Secret Pattern" within the refining furnace.

The instant the secret pattern formed, a strange law fluctuation seemed to emerge within the refining furnace. The Star Iron Essence and Void-Pattern Silver Essence were instantly shattered into exceedingly tiny particles. Guided by the secret pattern, these particles rapidly fused, ultimately forming a uniform silver-purple metallic liquid.

This step was far easier than with the old method—previously, he had needed to use spiritual power to shatter the molten metal directly, which consumed an enormous amount of energy. Now, he only needed to construct a secret pattern to achieve the same result, reducing spiritual-power consumption by ninety percent.

Next came the core stage of artifact refining: tempering and inscription. These had to be carried out simultaneously; once the rhythm fell into disorder, all previous effort would be wasted.

Zhou Yuan drew upon the force energy within his body and slowly injected it into the refining furnace. His spiritual power was highly focused. On one side, he used force energy to construct a "Tempering Secret Pattern" within the furnace. On the other, he divided his attention in two—one part controlled the force energy to form a synchronized energy cycle within the molten metal, while the other began inscribing the Zhenkong Blade's secret patterns.

The secret pattern inside the refining furnace resonated with the special flow within the molten metal, and the molten metal was gradually tempered.

Under the guidance of Secret Art 2.0, the secret pattern within the refining furnace resonated with the energy cycle in the molten metal. The molten metal slowly began to temper, and its structure transformed.

At the same time, the Zhenkong Blade's secret patterns gradually took shape within the molten metal like a dense spiderweb, perfectly blending with the continuously tempered liquid metal.

Second by second, time passed. Fine beads of sweat seeped from Zhou Yuan's forehead. Although the secret art had reduced force-energy consumption, the expenditure of spiritual power remained immense. In particular, controlling multiple energy flows at once left no room for carelessness.

Bang!

With one slight lapse, a ripple appeared in Zhou Yuan's spiritual power. The energy-flow path in the molten metal failed to keep pace with the tempering rhythm, and the molten metal instantly exploded like a punctured bubble, splattering scorching silver-purple liquid across the inner walls of the refining furnace.

"Failed." Zhou Yuan let out a breath, but there was not much frustration on his face. The purpose of virtual simulation was to discover problems. It was far more cost-effective to uncover them in the Virtual Universe with a small amount of money than to directly consume materials in reality.