Still Yu Yuanzhen's Son

He scraped his fingernail across the rock, then leaned in to inspect the powder that came away.

The grains had a dark red metallic sheen. He immediately brought his geological hammer down hard.

Clang!

Sparks flew. A chunk of the rock face broke off, exposing a vein of high-purity black-red ore.

"Found it! High-purity hematite!"

Lin Fan roared with excitement, then turned toward a nearby layer of rock with a glossy black sheen. "And there's an exposed deposit of coking coal right beside it! This lousy game's map-generation system is way too considerate! Heaven itself has handed me a heart of steel!"

"Get to work! Dig day and night! Bring in everyone from town!"

Over the next four days, every living creature across the continent outside the Firmament watched Lin Fan throw himself into a frenzy of construction that bordered on self-torture.

To withstand the terrifying heat of steelmaking, Lin Fan did not use ordinary earth. He personally led people to dig high-clay soil from beneath the riverbed, mixed it with quartz sand, and fired one firebrick after another in a makeshift kiln.

Coal dust covered his face. Blisters had risen on his once-clean hands, then burst and hardened into thick calluses.

But he never stopped. He used a branch to work out the chemical formulas for reducing iron in the mud, directing over a thousand ordinary refugees as they raised towering structures from the barren mountains.

"Not enough! The bellows are too weak! We can't get the temperature up! Dam the river upstream, install a large waterwheel, and build an array of air ducts!"

"The carbon content has to be controlled precisely! Too much and it's brittle; too little and it's soft! We need steel—a body that can withstand the chamber pressure of powerful explosives!"

Lin Fan's hoarse shouts echoed through the mountains.

He relied on no divine power. With nothing but the blood and sweat of ordinary people and the knowledge of his former life, he forced the seeds of industry to sprout in this primitive land.

On the sixth night, the blast furnace was completed.

Lin Fan did not rest. With the last batch of firebricks, he led the others in building a crude crucible decarburization furnace beside it.

Molten iron alone was not enough. Now they needed steel.

At last, the morning of the seventh day arrived.

The first ray of sunlight pierced the sky and fell upon the wasteland outside Tack Town.

The view on the Void Firmament slowly drew back, revealing in full to everyone across the real continent a colossal thing that seemed to have risen from hell!

It was a giant modern blast furnace, thirty meters tall and reinforced with countless firebricks and refined iron!

It stood amid the barren mountains like an ancient beast of steel crouched upon the earth.

Its thick chimney thrust into the clouds, belching rolling smoke that blotted out the sky.

The enormous water-powered bellows roared like thunder, and the earth shook along with them.

"Open the gate!"

At Lin Fan's command,

Rumble!

The ordinary workers slowly hauled open the gate at the base of the blast furnace with a massive winch.

A terrifying wave of heat swept out at once.

Glowing red molten iron, radiating fierce heat, surged like lava through channels dug into the refractory clay!

But Lin Fan did not let anyone cast it directly.

"Move the molten iron now! Pour it into the crucibles while it's hot! Start decarburization!"

Dozens of sturdy men pushed specially made refractory crucible carts, guiding the searing molten iron to the crude steelmaking area beside the blast furnace.

There, Lin Fan mixed graphite powder with quartz sand to make a decarburizing agent. Risking burns, he sprinkled it into the crucibles one spoonful at a time.

The molten iron churned and sparks scattered. The air filled with the smell of iron meeting fire, somewhere between an explosion and a blaze.

A day and a night later,

the workers poured the first batch of crude steel ingots from the crucibles. They had been decarburized, their carbon content controlled precisely within the range required for steel.

Gone was the brittleness of pig iron. What remained had toughness and pressure resistance far beyond ordinary ironwork—true steel.

Clang!

Lin Fan stood before the rolling heat and stared at the dazzling molten iron. A chilling smile spread across his dirt-caked face.

"With steel like this, we won't have to worry about the barrel bursting."

Lin Fan muttered, flames of destruction dancing in his eyes. "Martial Soul Avatar, huh? High defense and plenty of health, huh? Seven days. Today, I'm going to show you what it means when the times change!"

Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Sect, Thunder Hall.

Yu Yuanzhen stood outside the hall, looking up at the steel behemoth spewing molten iron and thick smoke on the Firmament. Firelight played across his face, leaving his expression impossible to read.

"Sect Master! We found him!"

A family scout in dark blue armor rushed in from outside the hall and dropped to one knee, speaking urgently. "We found the eldest young master!"

Yu Yuanzhen jolted. "Be clear! Which eldest young master?"

The scout looked up, his face grim. "The one at Notting Academy... Emperor Xue Ye's men have already thrown him into the Imperial City Prison. They've pierced his Pipa Bones and are torturing him day and night."

Thunder Hall fell deathly silent.

A few seconds later, Yu Yuanzhen slowly turned around. Fury erupted in his eyes.

"Xue Ye... So that's how Xue Ye wants to play it!"

"Since when did anyone surnamed Xue have the right to torture a member of my Yu family?"

"Sect Master, then... do we rescue him?" an elder asked quietly, regretting the words the moment they left his mouth.

Yu Yuanzhen did not answer at once.

He turned to Lin Fan on the Firmament, standing before the blast furnace and issuing orders over the churning molten iron.

That face looked exactly like the young man he had driven out of the sect twenty years ago.

But the man on the Firmament had built a blast furnace in seven days, led ordinary people to kill a Soul King, and proclaimed to the entire continent, "Truth lies within firing range."

Meanwhile, the real Yu Xiaogang hung in a prison cell, unable even to hold his piss.

"Is my son truly incapable?" Yu Yuanzhen asked suddenly, his tone strangely calm.

No one dared answer.

"If, twenty years ago, I hadn't forced him down the path of a traditional Soul Master... If I hadn't called him useless in front of the entire sect and swept him out the door because he couldn't advance past level twenty-nine..."

Yu Yuanzhen said no more.

But everyone in Thunder Hall understood what he meant.

If the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Sect had not driven out that "good-for-nothing" twenty years ago, the man building a blast furnace by hand and overturning the continent on the Firmament today would have been their own Holy Son.

"What use is talking about that now?"

Yu Yuanzhen gave a self-mocking smile and turned around. Thunder gathered once more in his eyes. "Xue Ye has already seized him. The Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Sect has already lost face. But Yu Xiaogang's surname is still Yu..."

"Even if he's a fraud, outsiders don't get to whip him!"

He swept out a hand, and the whole of Thunder Hall seemed to shudder.

"Secretly recall every disciple we have outside the sect! Within two days, I want the complete defense layout of the Imperial City Prison, the shift-change times, and the Soul Power Level of every guard!"

"Sect Master! You mean to—" The elder's face went pale.

"I'm going to Heaven Dou City myself!" Yu Yuanzhen's voice struck the center of the hall like thunder. "Xue Ye had better pray his instruments of torture are harder than the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Sect's lightning. Otherwise, I don't mind letting the palace of Heaven Dou learn what the wrath of a family head feels like."

"After all, he is my son..."

Golden light from the Firmament shone through the doors onto Yu Yuanzhen's aged, resolute face.

And on the Firmament, Lin Fan happened to turn toward the view, as though he were looking into some distant, unreachable place.

His eyes looked exactly like Yu Yuanzhen's at that moment.