To be honest, when Chen Ping saw Jing Hongchen barge in without warning, his first reaction was a jolt of alarm.
There was no helping it. That was how things went when you worked on someone else's turf. If you could cross the river by feeling your way along someone else's backside, you had to be prepared for them to feel you up in return.
What Chen Ping could not understand was why, when Jing Hongchen had clearly only seen his very last hammer strike in the finishing stage, the delight in his eyes was still impossible to suppress.
Fortunately, Jing Hongchen's eyes darted about quickly. He looked at Chen Ping, then at Ji Juechen, whose face was as pale as paper from repeatedly giving blood, and at the pooled bloodstains on the floor. That look of sudden, complete understanding in his eyes made one thing abundantly clear.
Jing Hongchen genuinely thought he had caught a glimpse of some crucial clue.
Chen Ping smacked his lips. Wait, what exactly do you think you've figured out?
You have no idea how I hammered and organized the metal's internal patterns earlier, nor how I achieved Thousand Refinement Spirit Attachment while hammering Hundred Refinement metal. All you saw was the bloodletting at the very end. What good does that do you?
Don't you know that if someone other than the blacksmith wants to use spirit-forged metal, the intended user's blood has to be continuously added during the forging process?
As a Soul Master formally refining spirit-forged metal for the first time, Chen Ping naturally did not know how much blood Ji Juechen needed to sprinkle on at each stage to ensure that this meteoric iron ingot would recognize Ji Juechen as its master after Spirit Forging.
That was precisely why Chen Ping had