"Y-your Martial Soul..." Lin Mu stammered, retreating two steps until his back pressed against the wall.
Lu Guan opened all six hands at once and urged, "Teacher Lin, the hammers."
Lin Mu swallowed, turned mechanically, and took five more fifteen-pound fine iron hammers from the rack, handing them over with care.
Lu Guan reached out with all six hands and caught them securely.
He bounced the six black forging hammers in his hands as though they weighed nothing.
"Teacher Lin, heat that piece of pig iron until it's red-hot. I want to try something."
Lin Mu's mind was a tangled mess. Instinctively, he worked the bellows. The furnace flames surged, and the fist-sized piece of pig iron soon glowed red.
He lifted the pig iron with tongs and set it on the forging bench.
Lu Guan drew a deep breath, and the "War Lord Heart Method" roared into motion within him.
Soul Power flowed along his meridians, branching into his six arms.
Clang!
The first hammer fell.
The fine iron hammer in his upper right hand slammed into the pig iron.
The force was immense. A section of the red-hot pig iron caved in under the blow, sending sparks flying.
His upper left, middle right, and middle left hands followed in swift succession.
Clang, clang, clang, clang!
The chaotic noise was deafening.
The pig iron bounced violently on the forging bench. In the blink of an eye, its square shape was beaten into a twisted knot.
Lin Mu covered his ears and shouted, "Stop! Stop! This isn't forging-it's destruction! You're using too much force! You've smashed the metal's entire internal structure!"
Lu Guan heard him, but did not stop.
He stared at the twisted piece of pig iron, his mind racing.
It wasn't about shaping.
Forging meant expelling impurities, bringing order, giving metal new life.
The force couldn't just drive straight through. It had to penetrate.
"Again!"
Lu Guan sank into his stance, and the rhythm of his six hammering hands changed.
A deft touch entered Lu Guan's forging movements!
Soul Power flowed through the hammer handles. Each time a hammerhead touched the metal, the force briefly contracted before bursting outward.
Clang-clang-clang-
The sound of the forging changed.
The piercing impacts were gone, replaced by a hint of a dull resonance.
Six hammers, six points of impact.
Their interwoven blows spread the vibrations evenly into every corner of the metal.
The rhythm grew faster and faster.
Lin Mu slowly lowered the hands covering his ears.
He stared blankly at the six-armed child sweating rivers before the forging bench, looking as though he had seen a ghost.
The boy was using an entirely different way of delivering force.
With every blow, impurities seeped out of the metal.
More outrageous still, the six hammers had nearly sealed off every direction in which the metal could deform, forcibly beating that twisted knot back into a square!
"Hello, President!"
A man entered the blacksmith hall, and the staff stopped to greet him.
He was none other than Mu Chen, president of the Eastsea City Blacksmith Association and an eight-star Saint Craftsman.
Mu Chen returned their greetings with a smile.
He spread his Soul Douluo-level Soul Power outward, listening to the sounds of metal being struck in the various forging rooms.
They were exquisite.
It was something of a peculiar hobby of his as president.
One sound caught his attention.
Mu Chen's brow furrowed slightly.
Its rhythm was strange.
"Clang, clang, clang... clang, clang, clang..."
It was neither two hammers alternating nor a single hammer striking repeatedly.
Judging by the points of impact and the echoes, it sounded more like... several people striking the same piece of metal at once?
"Nonsense." Mu Chen set down his plans and picked up his teacup.
Collaborative forging required extraordinary coordination. The slightest mistake would ruin the metal. Which beginner forging room downstairs was making such a mess?
He took a sip of tea, ready to send someone to give them a warning.
But just then, the hammering suddenly changed.
The chaotic sounds instantly came together, becoming an extraordinarily tight rhythm.
Clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang!
Six strikes rang out, completed within almost a single second.
Immediately afterward came another round of six strikes.
The force increased with each blow, yet the echoes grew clearer and clearer.
"This is..." Mu Chen's hand froze in midair, still holding the cup. "The internal vibration impurity-expulsion method!"
He shot to his feet, utterly oblivious to the tea splashing onto the back of his hand.
Brilliant!
Strike different parts of the metal continuously at an extremely high frequency, making the vibrations resonate within it and squeezing out impurities with maximum efficiency.
He had considered such an idea before, but he had never been able to accomplish it.
Human hands had their limits. No matter how fast someone swung a hammer, they could not cover every direction before the vibrations in the metal faded.
Who was this? How had they actually managed it?
The longer Mu Chen listened, the more excited he became. He strode toward the door.
But after taking just one step, he stopped again.
"Clang... crack."
A faint, discordant noise mingled with the clear hammering.
Mu Chen keenly caught that detail.
"A break in the force? A blow in the wrong place?"
He tilted his head and listened closely.
Sure enough, one or two extremely elementary mistakes appeared in the tight rhythm from time to time.
Either a blow was too heavy, nearly breaking the metal's grain, or it landed off target and interrupted the resonance.
This was the balance Lu Guan was searching for between the forging arts of the "War Lord Heart Method" and the forging methods of the Douluo Continent.
"This isn't a veteran experimenting with a new approach at all." Mu Chen's expression turned strange. "These mistakes are far too clumsy. Even a second-rank blacksmith wouldn't make them."
A beginner?
A beginner could actually produce such a miraculous rhythm of resonance?
Mu Chen hurried toward the sound and reached the door of the beginner forging room.
He did not enter. Instead, he stood beside the door and peered through the observation window.
One glance was all it took for the widely experienced eighth-rank Saint Craftsman to draw a sharp breath.
There was only one child, six or seven years old, standing before the forging bench.
Four eyes were fixed on the bench. Six arms swung in full arcs, the six fine iron hammers blurring into afterimages as they battered a piece of pig iron.
Sparks flew everywhere. The pig iron had already shrunk by a full size.
"A Body Martial Soul..." Mu Chen murmured.
At last, he understood where those six consecutive strikes had come from.
This boy was practically a born forging machine!
But he could also tell that Lu Guan had hit a bottleneck.
The metal's impurities had been almost completely expelled, and it was about to reach the threshold of Hundred Refinement.
But Lu Guan's force was too fierce. Fast as the six hammers' rhythm was, it ignored what the metal itself could withstand.
If he kept hammering like this, the piece of pig iron would shatter.
Mu Chen pushed open the door and strode inside.
Lin Mu had been watching in a daze. He turned at the sound, shuddered in fright, and hurriedly straightened up.
"Pres..."
Mu Chen waved a hand, signaling him to be quiet.
He walked up beside the forging bench, clasped his hands behind his back, and sent his voice booming directly beside Lu Guan's ears.
"Metal has life."
Lu Guan's movements stopped abruptly, all six hammers suspended in midair.
He turned his head, looking at Mu Chen with all four eyes.
Mu Chen pointed at the piece of pig iron, which had begun to give off a faint white glow.
"You've treated it as a lifeless object, knowing only how to crush it with brute force. Listen to its voice. Feel its grain. Once its impurities have been expelled, what it needs is fusion and shaping."
"Slow your rhythm. Let your upper left and lower right hands hold it steady. Ease the force in the other four hands and strike along its grain."
"Don't use brute force. Guide it with your heart."
Lu Guan narrowed all four eyes.
The metal's life? Its grain?
The teachings on weapon forging in the "War Lord Heart Method" flashed through his mind.
Weapons were extensions of the body.
Wasn't forging simply shaping the metal's bones?
"I understand."
Lu Guan drew a deep breath, and his six arms moved again.
This time, the wind of his hammers changed.
It was no longer a raging storm, but an unbroken, gentle flow.
"Clang... clang... clang..."
The hammers in his upper left and lower right hands fell steadily, anchoring the two ends of the pig iron.
His other four hands held their hammers and tapped lightly across its surface.
Every blow seemed to land upon a particular vein.
Under the soothing touch of the six hammers, the formerly unruly pig iron miraculously settled down.
The dark red of its surface gradually faded, replaced by a faint silvery-white sheen.
Humm-
With the fall of the final hammer.
The pig iron gave a clear, ringing hum, and light flooded the entire forging room.
A fist-sized piece of silvery-white metal lay quietly on the forging bench, its surface covered in fine cloud patterns.
Hundred Refinement!
Achieved!
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