"Hello, Uncle Feng." Qin Chen stepped forward at just the right moment and offered a junior's bow, neither servile nor arrogant.
Feng Yuzi looked down at Qin Chen and was about to offer a few words of encouragement, telling him to focus on practicing martial arts first. But the next instant, his gaze locked onto Qin Chen as though he had seen a ghost, his refined demeanor collapsing in an instant.
"This... this aura..." Feng Yuzi sucked in a sharp breath, seized Qin Chen's wrist, and sent a thread of true essence into it. Then his eyes, which had seen countless people, went wide as he cried out involuntarily, "Late Xiantian?! Meridians as broad as rivers, true qi condensed almost into substance... Brother Qin, did you feed this nephew of mine some immortal pill ten years ago?!"
Watching his old friend act as though he had never seen the world, Qin De secretly savored the moment, though he feigned breezy indifference. "Calm yourself, Brother Feng. Chen has extraordinary gifts, and a few days ago, an 'expert' taught him a divine art in a dream. As for his cultivation, well, it just rose a little on its own. I called you here today so you could see whether he's good enough material to qualify as your disciple."
Feng Yuzi took several deep breaths before barely managing to suppress his shock.
He reassessed the smiling ten-year-old child before him. His eyes no longer regarded a junior, but a piece of uncut jade of unparalleled rarity.
"Yes! More than good enough!" Feng Yuzi rubbed his hands together in excitement. "Late Xiantian before even turning ten! His reserves of true qi alone already meet the minimum threshold for wielding Xiantian true fire. Brother Qin, you truly have a fine son!"
At once, the apprenticeship tea was set out in Cloudmist Manor's main hall.
Qin Chen respectfully lifted the teacup and performed the formal bow of apprenticeship to Feng Yuzi. "Master, please accept your disciple's bow."
"Good, good, good!" Feng Yuzi took three consecutive sips of the apprenticeship tea, grinning from ear to ear. "Chen, from this day forward, you are my sole personal disciple. I will hold nothing back as I teach you all the supreme artifact-refining arts I have learned in my lifetime!"
As soon as the apprenticeship ceremony ended, Feng Yuzi eagerly took Qin Chen to a secluded chamber in the manor's rear courtyard and formally began his first lesson in artifact refining.
In the center of the chamber, Feng Yuzi swept his broad sleeve and summoned a small, half-man-high copper cauldron from his Storage Ring. Intricate spiritual patterns were carved across its body.
"Chen, the art of artifact refining ultimately consists of three steps: purification, shaping, and spiritual awakening." Feng Yuzi's expression turned solemn as he regained the bearing of a master of his generation.
"The first step, purification, means burning away every impurity in the ore with flame. Ordinary fire is useless. It must be Xiantian true fire driven by your own cultivation. Watch closely!"
With that, Feng Yuzi flicked a finger, and a wisp of deep-blue flame sprang up beneath the cauldron. The surrounding temperature instantly soared. He casually tossed in a fist-sized piece of darksteel ore, and within just a few breaths, the hard ore melted into a pool of crystal-clear black molten iron, its impurities all reduced to drifting ash.
"The second step, shaping, requires you to wrap the molten iron in soul power and temper it into the weapon shape you desire." Feng Yuzi closed his eyes, and an invisible ripple of his soul stirred between his brows. As though it had come alive, the molten iron in the cauldron swiftly stretched and changed shape, becoming the blank of a three-foot longsword in the blink of an eye.
"As for the third step, spiritual awakening, it is also the most crucial step-inscribing a formation!" Feng Yuzi abruptly opened his eyes and pressed two fingers together, forcing a drop of blood essence from their tips. Using true essence as his brush, he swiftly traced several profound runes in the air, then drove them into the sword blank with a palm strike.
"Hum-" The sword blank gave a clear ring, and a cold azure gleam instantly flowed over its formerly dull blade.
"This is a Lower-Grade Magical Artifact." Feng Yuzi handed the longsword to Qin Chen, a trace of pride in his eyes. "Did you understand? In artifact refining, the hardest part isn't controlling fire, but soul perception. When inscribing a formation, even the slightest deviation in your soul power will ruin the entire piece of material."
Feng Yuzi had intended this as a little warning to Qin Chen, to let him know that artifact refining could not be mastered overnight and required him to settle his mind and slowly hone his soul.
Yet Qin Chen took the longsword, gave it only a couple of casual glances, and set it aside. Eager excitement appeared on his young face.
"Master, I think I understand. May I try?"
Feng Yuzi paused, then chuckled despite himself. "You child, you want to try after watching just once? Very well. Artifact refining is all about gathering experience through failure. Go ahead and summon your Xiantian true fire. See if you can melt this piece of red copper."
Feng Yuzi tossed out a piece of red copper ore, ready to watch his genius disciple suffer a setback. After all, on a first attempt at controlling fire, there was an eight- or nine-in-ten chance of burning the ore straight into useless slag.
Qin Chen walked up to the copper cauldron and drew a deep breath. The Primordial Ancestral Dragon Art roared into motion within him, and dark-gold Xiantian true qi surged along his meridians into his palm, becoming a ball of scorching dark-gold flame that he held steadily beneath the cauldron.
"The quality of this true qi..." Feng Yuzi's pupils contracted. He discovered that Qin Chen's true fire was actually a notch hotter than that of an ordinary Xiantian Paragon!
Then came a sight that made Feng Yuzi question his entire life even more.
Qin Chen dropped the red copper ore into the cauldron. As though it had eyes, the dark-gold flame precisely avoided the essential red copper and burned only the impurities. In fewer than ten breaths, the red copper became a pool of incomparably pure red liquid.
Perfect purification? How is that possible? How could he control fire so precisely on his very first try?! Feng Yuzi's heart shook violently.
"Master, shaping comes next, right?" Qin Chen grinned. Vast soul power poured out of his body, directly drawing the molten red copper in the cauldron into the shape of an exquisite throwing knife.
"Wait! You haven't even learned formations yet. You can't awaken its spirit directly..." Feng Yuzi hurriedly spoke up to stop him, afraid that Qin Chen would ruin this exceptionally pure sword blank.
But Qin Chen moved too quickly. He replayed the paths Feng Yuzi had traced while inscribing the formation in his mind. Relying on his freakish soul memory, he held his fingers together like a sword and, with the flowing ease of drifting clouds and running water, traced an identical Sharpness Formation in midair, then drove it into the throwing knife with a palm strike.
"Clang-!"
A dazzling red radiance shot skyward from the copper cauldron. Accompanied by a faint yet intensely penetrating ring, a throwing knife, crimson from end to end with a chilling gleam flowing along its edge, hovered silently before Qin Chen.
The chamber was as silent as death.
Feng Yuzi stared blankly at the throwing knife, stepped forward, and took it in his trembling hand. Feeling the flawless formation pathways in the blade and its sharpness, which far surpassed that of a Lower-Grade Magical Artifact, the foremost artifact-refining master on the Qianlong Continent felt his entire view of the world collapse at that moment.
"He watched once... and refined a Supreme Lower-Grade Magical Artifact infinitely close to a mid-grade magical artifact?" Feng Yuzi murmured, as though questioning Qin Chen, yet also as though questioning the heavens.
Qin Chen scratched his head and gave a harmless smile. "Master, artifact refining... doesn't seem as difficult as I imagined."
The corners of Feng Yuzi's mouth twitched violently twice. He suddenly felt that the greater half of his life spent refining artifacts had all gone to the dogs.
But immediately afterward, wild joy surged into his heart.
"A genius! No, a freak! A true artifact-refining freak!" Feng Yuzi threw back his head and laughed, almost laughing himself to tears. "Brother Qin, oh, Brother Qin, just what kind of monster have you fathered? Within ten years, little Chen will break through to Golden Core, and his artifact-refining skills will surely surpass mine. He'll become a Grandmaster of Artifact Refining capable of crafting supreme-grade spirit artifacts!"
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