The rear courtyard of the Anping County Yamen.
This had once been an abandoned courtyard where successive county magistrates piled obsolete records, broken furniture, and assorted junk. Weeds overran it year-round, and it was dark and damp.
Now, however, Chu Bai had ordered this spacious area, covering several acres, completely leveled.
Amid a frenzy of construction, it had undergone a complete transformation into an enormous Artifact-Refining Workshop!
It was noon, with the blazing sun directly overhead. Yet the temperature inside the workshop was ten times more terrifying than the sun above.
More than a dozen immense furnaces, each thirty feet tall and built from superior fire-resistant blue bricks, spewed crimson earthfire dozens of feet high like enraged fire dragons.
Ferocious heat distorted the air. Flames and thick smoke shot skyward, painting the sky above half the Anping County Yamen red, as though sunset had arrived early.
"Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!"
Deafening hammer blows fell as densely as a raging storm, intertwining into a feverish heavy-metal symphony steeped in the rugged beauty of violence.
Over a hundred carefully selected mortal blacksmiths, bare-chested with knotted muscles exposed, had gathered here alongside clerks from the county yamen's six departments who knew a little artifact refining and the rudiments of formations.
Sweat poured from them as they swung iron hammers weighing hundreds of pounds, furiously pounding their work amid showers of sparks.
Into this terrifying heat, enough to dehydrate an ordinary person and leave them unconscious, two figures walked slowly into the workshop.
The man in front wore a spotless blue robe. His features were handsome, his expression composed.
Even the rolling heat, hot enough to melt ordinary iron, seemed to encounter an insurmountable barrier when it came within three feet of him.
His [Glazed Flawless Bone], immune to all poisons and