The office was large, but it was piled full of things. Various metal samples sat on shelves against the wall,
and a burly middle-aged man sat behind the desk.
When Tang Wulin entered, the man lifted his eyelids.
"You're Tang Wulin?"
"Hello, Grandmaster Cen." Tang Wulin bowed politely.
"Uncle Mang Tian asked me to give you his regards."
Cen Yue snorted.
"That fellow Mang Tian looks down his nose at everyone. He won't even spare ordinary people a glance. I didn't expect him to go out of his way to give me a heads-up."
He looked Tang Wulin up and down.
"I wonder what level you're at?"
Cen Yue stood up, came around the desk, and patted Tang Wulin on the shoulder. "Come on. I'll take you to your blacksmith rank assessment."
The three of them left the office together and took the elevator down.
When they reached the third floor,
Cen Yue led Tang Wulin out of the elevator.
Yun Xiaoling waved at Tang Wulin. "Good luck, little brother!"
Then she continued down in the elevator, returning to the front desk.
The staff on the third floor immediately straightened up when they saw Cen Yue.
"Grandmaster Cen, you're here."
Cen Yue nodded. "Open a forging assessment room and ask an assessor to come over."
"Yes!"
Cen Yue took the form and handed it to Tang Wulin. "Fill in your personal information."
"Okay."
Tang Wulin took it and leaned over the table, filling it out carefully.
"Do you know roughly what rank you are now?"
Tang Wulin thought for a moment and answered honestly, "I don't know. Uncle Mang Tian said that back at his place, I was the best blacksmith after him."
Cen Yue burst out laughing.
He shook his head, his tone tinged with amusement and helplessness.
"That old bastard Mang Tian sure knows how to fool children. His shop only had two people to begin with: himself and an assistant. Even counting you, that only makes three."
"Second only to him?"
"That guy, honestly."
Tang Wulin froze for a moment, then laughed too. That did seem to be the case.
After Tang Wulin finished filling in his information, Cen Yue took the form and glanced at it.
His eyes widened.
"Wait, you didn't write your age wrong, did you?"
Tang Wulin shook his head. "No."
"If you can earn a blacksmith rank badge today, you'll really break a record!"
Soon, a forging assessment room was ready.
Cen Yue led Tang Wulin over and pushed the door open.
The forging room was fully equipped, with a furnace, an anvil, a quenching pool, and hammers of every size.
A middle-aged man in his forties was sitting behind a desk in the corner, looking through some files. When he saw Cen Yue enter, he stood up with a smile.
"Grandmaster Cen, for you to bring him here personally, you must have quite a connection." He glanced at Tang Wulin. "Is he going to break a record?"
Cen Yue waved a hand. "Let's test him first."
The assessor nodded, picked up a clipboard from the desk, and walked over to Tang Wulin.
"There are fifteen kinds of metal here. Choose one to forge and purify."
"I'll score you based on the metal you choose and the difficulty of forging it. If you score over sixty points, you'll become a First-Rank Blacksmith."
He pointed to a row of display racks in the corner.
Fifteen different metal ingots were neatly arranged on them, ranging from ordinary iron and copper ingots to refined steel and heavy silver, each progressively harder to forge.
Tang Wulin glanced at them and asked, "Are there any requirements for purification? For example, how pure does it have to be?"
The assessor smiled. "Naturally, the purer, the better."
A kid barely bigger than a fart would be doing well to manage Hundred Refinement purification. How far could he possibly get?
Tang Wulin nodded, walked over to the racks, and glanced over them.
He reached out and picked up the heavy silver.
The assessor's smile froze.
Heavy silver?
It was one of the hardest metals to purify out of the fifteen. People taking the First-Rank Blacksmith assessment usually chose refined steel or tungsten steel to secure a safe passing score.
Those who chose heavy silver were either experts or didn't know how high the heavens were or how deep the earth was.
He glanced at Cen Yue, whose face was expressionless as he stared at Tang Wulin.
Tang Wulin put the rough heavy silver blank into the furnace and waited for it to reach the right temperature.
The forging room fell silent, save for the roar of the furnace and the creak of the bellows.
Soon, the heavy silver reached forging temperature and landed on the anvil.
Tang Wulin turned his right hand over, and the Clear Sky Hammer emerged from his palm.
The assessor nodded slightly.
A Tool Martial Soul? A hammer?
Most blacksmiths' Martial Souls were hammers or something similar, which could provide a considerable boost to their forging proficiency.
Before he could think any further, Tang Wulin's hammer came down.
Clang!
The first blow. A layer of gray-black impurities was shaken out of the heavy silver's surface.
Clang!
The second blow. Impurities scattered, revealing a silvery-gray metallic sheen.
Clang!
The third blow. The surface was spotless. Hundred Refinement was complete.
The pen in the assessor's hand stopped.
He looked down at the heavy silver on the anvil, then up at Tang Wulin, then back down at the heavy silver.
Three blows. Hundred Refinement.
In twenty years as an assessor, he had never seen Hundred Refinement completed in three blows, and now he was seeing it from a child taking the First-Rank Blacksmith assessment?
Cen Yue stood to the side without a word, but the fingers of his folded arms tightened involuntarily.
Mang Tian, you fucking idiot!
That son of a bitch sent Tang Wulin here to show off in front of me!
Fuck you, you really deserve to die!
Tang Wulin didn't stop. He had just asked, and the purer the metal, the better, so he would do his absolute best!
The Clear Sky Hammer fell again.
The fourth blow, the fifth, the sixth... The hammer blows rang out without pause, growing faster and heavier.
He used the Disorder Splitting Wind Hammer's principle of borrowing force to strike with force to its utmost, each blow adding power to the one before it. Hammer shadows flew, and sparks scattered.
The assessor finally recovered his senses.
He glanced down at the scoring column on his clipboard. He had still been writing something carefully, but the next second he tossed his pen onto the desk and flung the clipboard aside, paying it no further attention.
"Grandmaster Cen..."
He leaned close to Cen Yue's ear and lowered his voice, unable to hide the shock in his tone.
"This isn't a First-Rank Blacksmith assessment anymore. At this rate, he's already reached rank two, and right now he..."
He swallowed.
"He's performing Thousand Refinement."
Cen Yue said nothing. In his mind, he was already putting together the words he would use to curse someone out later.
He had agreed to meet Tang Wulin partly to give Mang Tian face, and partly to see for himself just what the boy was made of.
Now he had seen it.
Tang Wulin's hammer blows grew more and more rapid, and the heavy silver on the anvil began to change under the repeated strikes.
Fine golden patterns gradually appeared on the silvery-gray surface, as though something inside the metal was being forced out bit by bit.
These were the hallmark of Thousand Refinement, patterns produced when intent was infused into the metal. The clearer and more even the patterns, the higher the quality of the Thousand Refinement.