Han Tianyi smiled. "Stay here, then. But you can ease up on the forging for now. Next, your focus will be mecha design and mecha manufacturing."
"You didn't think your master was the only one who could teach you mecha design and mecha manufacturing, did you?"
Jiang Xia instinctively looked at Mu Ye.
He seemed to be a mecha pilot.
If the secondary profession he had chosen wasn't forging, then it had to be mecha design or mecha manufacturing. Most likely, he practiced both.
Sure enough, meeting Jiang Xia's gaze, Mu Ye nodded frankly.
"I do count as a rank-nine mecha designer and a rank-nine mecha manufacturer."
There was no pride in his tone as he said this, as though he were saying something utterly ordinary.
Han Tianyi said, "Xiao Ye could be called a one-of-a-kind genius in the field of mechas."
Although mechas had held back his cultivation, Han Tianyi would not deny Mu Ye's achievements in that field.
And so, Jiang Xia continued to stay at the Blacksmith's Association headquarters.
Mecha design and mecha manufacturing were both entirely new fields to him.
By comparison, forging was actually easier to understand.
After all, Jiang Xia could imagine the process of forging and the hardships involved.
He knew what it entailed.
But much of what mecha design and mecha manufacturing involved was something he had never even heard of before.
How were the patterns of a core formation designed?
This involved not only the simplest matter of memorization, but also breaking down, understanding, and reconstructing core formations.
Building a complete core formation often required an extremely complicated process.
In their instruction, neither Han Tianyi nor Mu Ye had Jiang Xia rush to memorize large numbers of complex core formations. Instead, they taught him how to identify problems in constructing them.
Build an incorrect core formation, then find its errors.
How should it be broken down?
All of this was solid theoretical material. Even though Jiang Xia's way of thinking was already quite mature, and he was making a very serious effort to understand, he still found it incredibly taxing.
"Teacher, I'd like to try in a dream-"
Before Jiang Xia could finish, Han Tianyi stopped him.
"Not yet. This material has nothing to do with dreams. Breaking it down in a dream would be just the same."
"All a dream can help you with is giving you a more direct view of the core formations you've constructed."
Amid this painful torment, Jiang Xia spent his days in a daze.
Every day, he woke up to mecha design, followed by mecha manufacturing in the afternoon.
At night, he meditated.
Mixed in between were three meals and forging to aid digestion.
When he ate too much, he forged for a while to work it off.
Once he had digested his food, it was back to mecha design and mecha manufacturing...
Another three months passed.
Han Tianyi received a message from the laboratory.
After spending several hours on a video call with them and learning about the proxy-farming process for the supreme-grade Ice Silkworm Soul Spirit, he came back to find Jiang Xia.
Jiang Xia had finished lunch and was still working off his meal.
After forging for over half an hour, he emerged from the forging room drenched in sweat and saw Han Tianyi.
"Teacher, is there news about the Soul Spirit?"
Jiang Xia's cultivation had been fulfilling these days. He could feel that his Soul Power was definitely growing at an incredibly fast rate as well.
It was certainly no slower than cultivating after absorbing a Soul Spirit normally.
It was just that the Soul Power he was gaining could not manifest yet.
But even though he knew his cultivation speed had not dropped, he still wanted his own Soul Ring.
Being stuck at a bottleneck did not feel good.
"The Soul Spirit's proxy farming is going smoothly. But there's one key issue now."
Han Tianyi's expression was rather grave.
Seeing this, Jiang Xia grew serious as well. He knew his teacher would not make an error in judgment on something like this.
"Please tell me, Teacher."
Han Tianyi said, "The key question now is whether we should take this Ice Silkworm Soul Spirit of yours in an artificial direction."
"Don't get anxious. Artificial here doesn't mean what you think. It isn't completely artificial, but rather cross-species breeding under human intervention."
"I hadn't originally planned to use this technology on your first Soul Spirit. After all, the technology itself isn't fully developed, and it can only be implemented with certain low-level soul beasts. Your Ice Silkworm Soul Spirit just happens to fall into that category."
"Not only that, during their research, the institute discovered that the Ice Silkworm's spiritual attribute is extremely pure."
"So pure that it can serve as the spiritual origin of certain soul beasts, providing them with a superior spiritual attribute."
"And there's one kind of soul beast that can fuse perfectly with the Ice Silkworm's spiritual attribute."
At this, Jiang Xia's breathing quickened.
The product of fusing two species?
"What soul beast?"
Han Tianyi stopped keeping him in suspense and enunciated each word. "Evil Eye!"
The Evil Eye race?
Jiang Xia froze on the spot.
He rapidly recalled what he knew about the Evil Eye race.
These were unusual soul beasts whose bodies were eyeballs with tentacles.
The Evil Emperor, once ranked second among the Ten Great Fierce Beasts, behind only Di Tian, had belonged to this race.
The Evil Emperor's combat strength was beyond question. His Light of Space and Time and Light of Destruction could even pose a lethal threat to Huo Yuhao at rank ninety-eight while he was using a one-hundred-percent Martial Soul fusion skill.
Even the Auspicious Beast skull bone's passive immunity to spiritual attacks had nearly been broken.
Or rather, its effect had been broken, and Huo Yuhao had barely withstood the weakened Light of Space and Time.
That was the Evil Emperor!
"The Evil Eye race can possess multiple attributes, but the purer their attributes, the stronger their talent. Only those with the spiritual attribute alone are true Evil Eyes."
"Because additional attributes only dilute their aptitude in the spiritual attribute."
"And the Ice Silkworm's spiritual attribute is quite pure."
"To use an analogy, the Ice Silkworm's spiritual origin is a fragrant, soft cake, born to be food for others."
"It's at the very bottom of the food chain, having evolved itself to be pure and rich in nutrients."
Hearing Han Tianyi relay the institute researchers' descriptions of these two soul beasts, Jiang Xia did not know whether to laugh or cry.
Especially at the analogy for the Ice Silkworm.
It did seem to be the case.
As far as Jiang Xia knew, apart from gods, only Tianmeng could freely adjust the age of Soul Rings.
He had thought that was an ability of a million-year soul beast. But now, it seemed to be an innate talent the Ice Silkworm race had gained by evolving itself to the extreme as food?
Its spiritual origin could serve as nourishment for any soul beast, so it could be used to increase the age of other Soul Rings...
"So the institute wants to try fusing the Evil Eye and Ice Silkworm races, right?"
"That's right!" Han Tianyi nodded. "I suggest you agree."
Jiang Xia nodded as well.
How could he refuse?
The Ice Silkworm's greatest weakness might be resolved through this project.
Of course, the key still lay with Han Tianyi.
He had already spent several hours communicating with them. Since this was his recommendation, then even if the technology was incomplete, it was clearly an absolute fit for the Ice Silkworm and Evil Eye races.
The bad news: the technology was incomplete.
The good news: the portion of the technology they had mastered was already enough to complete this project.