Spirit Awakening

This.

Qian Chaoguang had no idea what was going on, so he could only try it first and see.

He raised the hammer and tapped the piece of metal before him with the right hammer.

Ding.

A soft, lingering note echoed out, clearly reaching his ears.

Qian Chaoguang's eyes sharpened. His right arm swung around, and he struck the metal hard.

Clang.

Another long, resonant echo rang out.

What happened?

There was no teacher to guide him. Everything depended entirely on himself.

The Mental Power cultivated through the Spirit Connection Art spread outward under his control, constantly sensing the state of the metal before him amid the scorching heat.

The emotional force fed back from inside it seemed to have grown stronger?

It was much more obvious than before.

After a moment of hesitation, Qian Chaoguang swung his hammer again and continued forging. The ringing clangs went on inside the Forging Room like rain drumming against plantain leaves.

As he continued forging, something inside Qian Chaoguang seemed to awaken.

The Extreme Ice Light Martial Soul released a faint glow over his chest.

The Cold Ice Power seemed to have weakened?

Was it my imagination?

Focused on forging, Qian Chaoguang had no time to delve into the mysteries of his Martial Soul. Instead, he poured all his energy into forging the piece of metal before him.

With each strike of his hammer, the metal block kept shrinking. Specks of light actually appeared across its surface, as if something within it was about to be nurtured into being.

At the same time, Qian Chaoguang clearly sensed that the feedback force had grown increasingly distinct. The emotions bursting from the metal were incomparably vivid, like a real person conversing with him.

Buzz.

With hammer blow after hammer blow, the light on the metal gradually connected into a single whole, giving off a humming vibration.

What was being forged was a piece of Flame Iron. It had excellent thermal conductivity and was often used to make fire-attribute Soul Tools.

After it was completely covered in light, an even more powerful heat erupted from within the Flame Iron, almost melting the anvil.

If a craftsman wanted to do good work, he must first sharpen his tools.

With the two Thousand Refined Lapis Lazuli Hammers, Qian Chaoguang easily entered the Fusion State and formed a wondrous fused state with the Flame Iron.

In this state, the metal absorbed the blacksmith's emotions and ideas, often giving birth to fine products.

Boom!

As the next hammer fell, the Flame Iron burst with unprecedented radiance, and the temperature inside the Forging Room also rose sharply at that instant.

Qian Chaoguang quickly grabbed a glass bottle filled with blood from his left-hand side and threw it toward the Flame Iron.

Glass collided with metal and shattered into countless fragments.

The blood inside splashed over the metal, bringing up a new wave of heat.

Blood Sacrifice Thousand Refinements, completed.

He hurriedly opened the Forging Room door and released the Extreme Ice Light to cool it down.

If he had delayed any longer, some of the dry furniture would definitely have caught fire.

Hm?

When the Extreme Ice Light illuminated the entire Forging Room, Qian Chaoguang keenly discovered something was off.

The Cold Ice Power contained within it really was a little weaker than before, and the temperature was not as low as it had been.

This.

All he could say was that this Martial Soul was truly strange.

He looked at the Thousand Refinements Flame Iron in the Forging Room, still continuously radiating intense heat, and decided to set the matter of his Martial Soul aside as he had before and ignore it.

Still, he had to say, the sublimation special effect after the blood sacrifice of this Lapis Lazuli Iron was something else!

With its support, completing these Thousand Refinements this time had been quite easy. It had saved him at least half the hard labor.

In that case, he might as well call this sublimation special effect Spirit Awakening.

Perhaps ten thousand years later, this Spirit Awakening special effect would not count as especially outstanding and could only be considered mid-tier among Top Quality Special Effects.

But in the present era, when Spirit Forging had only just begun to take shape, this was absolutely a top-tier special effect.

Blacksmiths of this era did not lack rare metals, nor did they lack time. The only thing they lacked was a line of thought for how to ascend again during forging.

With this pair of Lapis Lazuli Spirit Awakening Hammers, Qian Chaoguang's difficulty in exploring Spirit Forging in the future would be greatly reduced.

To him, this was the best Top Quality Special Effect.

Qian Chaoguang let his mind wander over the path ahead, then slowly walked back into the Forging Room.

The scorching orange-red glow on the Flame Iron had already gone out. Now it looked like a piece of top-grade red agate, quietly waiting for a master to carve it.

Mm.

He wondered what the Flame Iron's sublimation effect was.

For his second piece of Thousand Refined work, he couldn't afford to waste it.

Three days later, on her birthday, Huo Yutong received a dark-red barbecue grill, a dark-red pot, and a set of silver-glinting knives.

Feeling the faint sense of connection coming from them, Huo Yutong couldn't put them down. She loved them to bits.

If the Spirit Masters of later generations saw this scene, they would definitely cough blood three times and cry out that it was a criminal waste of precious materials.

Such precious Thousand Refined Metal, and you actually used it to make kitchenware?

That was right. These two pieces of kitchenware were made from the Flame Iron Qian Chaoguang had forged three days ago.

Originally, he had wanted to use its extremely powerful flame resistance to forge a piece of protective gear and give it to Huo Yutong for self-defense.

But he had never expected that after undergoing Thousand Refinements, the sublimation effects that appeared in the Flame Iron would actually be flame attachment and improved heat resistance.

Simply put, this thing could withstand extremely high temperatures without being damaged, conducted heat excellently and evenly, and, when activated by Soul Power, even had the functions of self-heating and heat preservation. It was an excellent raw material for making kitchenware.

After thinking it over, Qian Chaoguang still decided to make better use of its strengths and simply turn it into two pieces of kitchenware.

As it happened, Huo Yutong herself loved cooking, and wasn't gift-giving all about catering to someone's interests?

After that, he used high-grade Hundred Refined Sky Star Steel and forged more than ten sturdy knives based on various advanced designs from Blue Star, making them into a complete set.

He hadn't used them himself, but according to Huo Yutong, they were quite handy.

Late at night, for once, Qian Chaoguang did not continue cultivating. Instead, he picked up a brush and wrote something on a sheet of paper.

Looking closely, it was actually a Douluo Calendar marked with Arabic numerals and Chinese.

His and Huo Yutong's birthdays were both in January, which meant that there were still twelve months and a few days until Shrek started school.

The entire holiday was Shrek's recruitment period, lasting all the way until the night before school began.

Old Butler had once told him that Shrek went on vacation for one month every January and officially began school on February 1st.

Using this as a basis, Qian Chaoguang bought a commonly used continental calendar and worked backward according to the time descriptions in the original work.

Subtracting six days of travel, subtracting the short period of time spent fusing with Sky Dream Ice Silkworm, subtracting the unknown amount of time spent exploring and fighting the Mandala Snake, subtracting the more than two hours Tang Ya spent absorbing her Spirit Ring, then subtracting the five days spent heading to Shrek, and then subtracting the three days spent waiting in Shrek, Qian Chaoguang had a rough estimate of when the original story's events erupted.

In the original work, Huo Yuhao should have set off around the 16th or 17th, then encountered Sky Dream Ice Silkworm around noon on the 21st at the southern edge of the Star Dou Great Forest.

He rubbed his temples and sighed softly.

Most of the time descriptions in the text were vague and unclear. Being able to narrow the margin of error to within three days was already the limit.

In the time to come, he would continue to bitterly cultivate the Spirit Connection Art.

If he could advance to the next stage ahead of time and condense his Divine Sense, the possibility of attracting Sky Dream Ice Silkworm would increase by another small margin.

If Sky Dream Ice Silkworm really ignored him, then when the time came, he could only stand at the edge of the Star Dou Great Forest like a complete idiot and shout, "With sun and moon in hand, I pluck the stars; in all the world, none are my equal," using that to attract Electrolux's attention.

He hoped...

Everything would go smoothly. After all, this Plan B was way too stupid.