[You spent a month organizing your artifact refining knowledge into nine portions, from first grade to ninth grade.
After organizing your artifact refining knowledge, you felt something was still missing. Rather than immediately leaving your legacy behind, you gathered materials and began refining artifacts.]
[Year 143: You gathered some of the materials yourself and had Xiao Yan and Xiao Yan help you gather the rest. Once you had everything, you began refining the artifact.
The refinement did not succeed on the first attempt. You failed.
Helpless, you could only start gathering materials again. To help you collect them, Xiao Yan even refined a Ninth Grade Golden Pill to trade with other factions.
With the materials in hand, you began your second attempt and successfully refined a Ninth-Grade Gold Artifact.
This Ninth-Grade Gold Artifact had a simple function: anyone who left a strand of their soul upon it had to abide by its contract, or their life would be in jeopardy. Only you could alter the contract's contents.
You named this Ninth-Grade Gold Artifact the Soul Contract Stele.
You placed the nine portions of your artifact refiner legacy, which you had long since prepared, ranging from first grade to ninth grade, in the Artifact Refiner Alliance's headquarters.
Obtaining your legacy was very simple. Anyone who separated a strand of their soul and signed a contract on the Soul Contract Stele could receive the corresponding grade of legacy based on their artifact refining proficiency.
The contract's terms were not harsh: never betray the Artifact Refiner Alliance, never attack it, never leak its legacy, and protect it at critical moments. These were basic obligations they should have fulfilled anyway.
Upon learning that obtaining your legacy required only these undemanding conditions, many artifact refiners were tempted.
Yet precisely because of this, they feared it