Within the murky void, a spherical object floated like a bubble in a boundless sea.
It was the Minor Grotto-Heaven Li Chen had opened by condensing the primordial energy of the void with his own magic power, joining it as one with his true core.
This Minor Grotto-Heaven offered vastly greater secrecy and security. It had already replaced the Spirit Ring Beacon and the Magic Cube Maze as his new final bastion.
One of its metal-cast rooms housed the Mother Device workshop.
A brilliant mass of light enveloped the gold suspended in midair. As primordial energy gathered, it continually condensed and compressed the gold, mixing in spiritual essence extracted from other spirit materials to strengthen it. At last, it refined the gold into a piece of supremely hard refined gold, entirely devoid of ordinary gold's softness and ductility.
Li Chen beckoned, drawing it into his hand to appraise it himself, only to discover that it still fell short of the spiritually imbued metal he envisioned.
"Relying purely on mechanical properties, it seems I can only control changes in physical properties, not activate spiritual essence!"
"This has nothing to do with the relative difficulty of the two. The problem lies entirely in the nature of spirituality itself. It seems that to infuse it with spiritual essence, I still need to further improve the core's sentient intelligence."
"And further improving its sentient intelligence will inevitably produce a Five-Star Core!"
Li Chen took matters into his own hands, injecting magic power into it before turning and leaving the workshop.
As his own cultivation advanced, the many workshops and industries under him would inevitably undergo upgrades as well. Things were going splendidly now, but there was no telling when someone might covet the Azure Billow Immortal Abode again. Thus, even in peace, Li Chen