But there was no point in such speculation. All Zhang Xiaohua needed to do was refine the small shield. The Immortal Dao had vanished ten thousand years ago; even if he knew who had forged it, was he supposed to make a perfect return to Zhao?
Yet refining the shield was not as easy as Zhang Xiaohua had imagined. It seemed only the opening few incantation gestures had any effect; beyond that, they barely worked at all. The pale red radiance emitted by the shield also vanished. Zhang Xiaohua had wanted to stop, but the more he thought about it, the more unwilling he felt. So he decided to treat a dead horse as if it were alive. In any case, the True Qi in his meridians was enough to support the entire set of gestures. Without caring whether they were suitable or not, he poured every incantation gesture for refining the Eight Trigrams Purple Gold Furnace onto the shield in one go.
This method did have some effect. Whenever a few gestures struck the shield, it reacted somewhat, and its faint radiance gradually strengthened. When the final gesture entered, the shield's glow flickered once before extinguishing. Zhang Xiaohua's divine sense, which covered the shield, immediately sensed a tiny crack splitting open in its restriction. With a sweep of his divine sense inside, Zhang Xiaohua was overjoyed. The method for refining the shield flowed into his mind.
After Zhang Xiaohua finished reading the refining method, he could not help but feel discouraged. This tiny shield had a fine-sounding name, the Crimson Spirit Guard, and its effects were extraordinarily formidable. Yet refining it was no easy matter. Not only was the refinement of the Crimson Spirit Guard divided into different stages, with each stage requiring different incantation gestures, but even the