Dark Demon Evil God Tiger!

"Stupid senior brother, always showing off!"

Na'er inwardly cursed him. Motherfucker.

Despite her short stature, she finished a design drawing larger than herself, then quickly picked up an engraving knife and began carving the core arrays.

Compared with the stillness of Li Zha's superego state,

Na'er was rather tense.

Sweat had already appeared on her delicate little face. Her damp bangs clung to her skin, and beads of sweat gathered on the tip of her dainty nose.

Ignoring all that, Na'er bent over, pressed her lips together, and nervously carved the cores of the arrays, stroke by stroke.

Leng Yaozhu had asked her to make a large component for a mecha.

Without a second thought, Na'er chose the hand armor.

Hand armor did not need to be very large, nor did it require flexible joints. It only needed to be sturdy and attachable to the mecha.

It was the simplest component of all.

Still, Na'er did not dare turn in something too shoddy. She planned to carve three arrays.

One would regulate changes in the hand armor, and another would amplify soul power at the palm. Both were also required for battle armor.

Besides those,

Na'er had added a retractable hand blade to the design, so she needed a sharpness array to increase its attack power.

Over the past three years,

Leng Yaozhu had put Na'er through hell.

She knew very well

that simply making an ordinary piece of hand armor would never meet this teacher's standards.

So Na'er had racked her brains, copied a design from the internet, and added modifications of her own.

She was just like the college students in Li Zha's previous life trying to lower their theses' plagiarism scores.

Once she began engraving the arrays, Na'er gradually found her rhythm. She was the Silver Dragon King, after all. Even if she had inherited only her appetite and thirty percent of her strength, Na'er's spiritual power was beyond that of ordinary soul masters at her level.

In fact, her spiritual power had already entered the upper stage of the spirit connection realm.

Thus, despite her nerves, Na'er successfully finished engraving the first array.

Meanwhile,

only a little over thirty minutes into the exam,

Li Zha was already preparing to wrap things up.

By dividing his attention between two tasks,

he shortened the Thousand Refinement process even further. One piece was brittle titanium gold, which could easily be ruined by a hammer blow during forging.

The other was incomparably hard nether iron, which required tremendous force to hammer.

Yet beneath Li Zha's hands, both were finished, each forged in its own distinct and perfectly suited way.

They even blossomed with metallic spiritual radiance at almost the same instant.

"Thousand-refined titanium gold. Its property is resonance, allowing it to fuse the power of different elements."

"Thousand-refined nether iron. Its property is gravity suppression, allowing it to inflict a Gravity Enhancement effect on any target it comes into contact with."

Li Zha examined them curiously,

then set them down.

Next, he wiped his pair of forging hammers clean and put them into his storage bracelet.

After tidying the workbench as well,

Li Zha raised his hand to signal that he was finished.

Leng Yaozhu glanced at the timer and discovered that not even forty minutes had passed.

Uncle Niu hurried inside to inspect his work.

Picking up the three pieces of metal from the workbench, Uncle Niu clicked his tongue in wonder.

"Little Know-It-All, when did you learn to perform Thousand Refinement on two pieces at once?"

After examining them for a while,

Uncle Niu looked at Leng Yaozhu and nodded.

"Three thousand-refined metals: blue-bearing copper, titanium gold, and nether iron."

"All of them have reached the standard of first-grade thousand refinement!"

"And that's not all. This blue-bearing copper amplifies soul power by a full thirteen percent. It's already super first-grade!"

Uncle Niu grinned and roared with laughter.

Thousand Refinement was divided into different grades, too.

There were five in total, with fifth grade the lowest and first grade the highest.

Taking a soul-power-amplifying metal like blue-bearing copper as an example, fifth-grade Thousand Refinement might provide only around a five-percent increase.

First grade, however, could reach a full twelve percent!

The difference was more than twofold.

Spirit-forged blue-bearing copper offered a fifteen-percent increase.

That was three times the effect of fifth grade!

The gap in price would only be greater.

Li Zha's piece amplified soul power by thirteen percent, exceeding the bounds of first grade and edging toward Spirit Forging.

Spirit Forging was a technique available only to rank-five blacksmiths, otherwise known as master blacksmiths.

The rank-four blacksmith assessment required successfully spirit-forging two different metals.

Alternatively, one could spirit-forge a single metal of exceptionally high difficulty.

Tang Wulin had become a rank-four blacksmith through second-grade thousand refinement of blue-bearing copper.

Now, however, Li Zha

had consecutively spirit-forged three exceptionally difficult pieces of metal.

"Little Know-It-All, you're freaking incredible!"

"Your awesomeness shoots straight into the heavens! A true man!"

Laughing, Uncle Niu gave Li Zha's head a vigorous rub.

Li Zha chuckled. "Uncle Niu, I just got lucky."

Leng Yaozhu came over to inspect and confirm the results, then nodded. "Zha'er, you've passed your secondary profession assessment."

Li Zha smiled, unsurprised.

For other blacksmiths, the success rate of Thousand Refinement might vary across a whole range of levels.

For Li Zha,

it was either zero or one hundred percent.

Having finished his assessment, Li Zha sat off to the side to wait for Na'er.

By comparison,

Uncle Niu was even more excited than Li Zha, repeatedly turning the three pieces of metal over in his hands.

As a blacksmith,

Uncle Niu was utterly fascinated by perfect works.

He always told Li Zha that every forged work, good or bad, was a blacksmith's child.

Uncle Niu quietly put the three pieces of metal away.

He intended to bring them out when teaching his other students later, to give them a demonstration and encourage them to follow Li Zha's example.

After putting the metals away,

Uncle Niu gazed at Li Zha's profile with a touch of reluctance.

Three years had passed.

He had told Tower Master Leng right from the start that he could only teach Li Zha as far as Thousand Refinement.

Time flies. Three years already. Na'er has grown so tall, but somehow Little Know-It-All... why has he stopped growing?

Uncle Niu thought to himself.

Although strength reigns supreme in the world of soul masters, appearance still matters.

Little Know-It-All is a boy, too. If he ends up short, he'll be at a disadvantage when looking for a partner.

Tower Master Leng is so busy, she's probably only been paying attention to Little Know-It-All's strength. When I have time, I should go into town and see whether there are any remedies for growing taller...

Two hours soon passed.

Just as Li Zha was about to fall asleep from waiting,

Na'er finally completed every part of the hand armor with ten minutes to spare.

"Finished!"

Na'er let out a long breath.

Leng Yaozhu stepped forward, picked it up, and inspected it. She soon offered her guidance. "It's acceptable overall, but there are still plenty of areas for improvement."

Na'er gazed at Leng Yaozhu with pleading eyes.

"Teacher, did I pass?"

Seeing Na'er's expression, Leng Yaozhu could not help smiling and stroked her little face.

"I'll count this as a pass, but you'll need to work even harder from now on."

"Yay! Long live Teacher!"

Na'er jumped up and kissed Leng Yaozhu, then bounded over to Li Zha. "Senior brother, I passed! Eee!"

Leng Yaozhu shook her head helplessly.

Na'er still fell short of Li Zha in both temperament and talent.

Their work made that clear.

Li Zha had chosen the most difficult metals for Thousand Refinement, whereas Na'er had taken something of a shortcut by choosing the easiest component.

Still, despite those thoughts,

Leng Yaozhu carefully put Na'er's hand armor away, then opened the door.

"All right. Next comes the practical combat assessment."

"You'll enter the Spirit Ascension Platform together. I've prepared a soul beast especially for you."

Soon,

Na'er and Li Zha entered the Spirit Ascension Platform once more.

When it came to actual combat, though, Na'er was much more confident.

After all, studying soul guidance technology was truly exhausting for a reincarnated soul beast like her.

Super strength suited her constitution much better.

Upon entering the Spirit Ascension Platform, Li Zha found himself surrounded by a forest once again.

A special soul beast? What special soul beast could Teacher have prepared?

Li Zha waited calmly. He knew it certainly would not be a dragon-type soul beast.

After all, his power countered those creatures, and his teacher knew it.

Then, a moment later,

a pitch-black tiger with black wings on its back emerged. A pure-black scorpion tail extended from its rear.

Li Zha's eyes widened.

"This is... a Dark Demon Evil God Tiger?!"

What shocked Li Zha even more was

that his Karma Fire System, which had remained inactive for three years, actually issued a notification!

[Evil creature detected: Millennium Dark Demon Evil God Tiger! Kill it to gain 500 karma fire points!]