Hundred Refinement · Heavy Silver

The Heavy Silver lay still in the center of the forge, its color as dark as the night of a lunar eclipse.

It did not gleam like ordinary metal. Instead, it resembled a stone forgotten in the deep sea for a thousand years, its surface covered in a faint, ashen air of decay.

Yet hidden beneath that unassuming exterior was the finest ore the Sun Moon Empire could currently find-the density of Heavy Silver was several times that of gold, its melting point was extremely high, and its toughness was more than three times that of ordinary refined steel.

If it could be forged into shape, it would be able to withstand an infusion of Soul Power at the level of a Level 9 Soul Engineer without cracking.

But first, it had to clear the hurdle of Hundred Refinement.

Xiao Hongchen stood before the forge, gripping his two hammers tightly.

His expression was as resolute as a cast statue as he brought the hammers down, blow after blow.

The crisp clang of metal rang out again and again, echoing between the four walls of the workshop and forming a muffled yet sonorous drumbeat.

With every blow, he used his Martial Soul to sense the changes in the Heavy Silver-to hear the sound it made and feel every grain within it.

The Three-Legged Golden Toad's affinity with metal was fully unleashed at that moment. It was as if countless invisible threads had grown from his fingertips, plunging deep between the metal's crystal lattices to touch a microscopic world that others could never perceive.

Bao Liang had once said that the most important thing in forging a piece of metal well was to understand it. He had even put forward a bold hypothesis: when you could resonate with metal, you would not even have to deliberately sense it. The metal itself would tell you how to finish forging it.

At the time, those words had sounded like a fool talking in his sleep.

But now, as blow after blow fell, Xiao Hongchen truly experienced that feeling-

Gradually, he immersed himself in forging once again.

The sounds in his ears no longer seemed to be mere metallic clamor. The metal was cheering, leaping for joy, waiting in anticipation.

It was as if the Heavy Silver itself were a long-slumbering life, awakening bit by bit beneath his hammers.

With every blow, a spray of iron slag fell from the Heavy Silver's surface. These were impurities forced out from within it-under the heat and pressure, and Xiao Hongchen's rhythmic hammering, the Heavy Silver's structure grew denser and its volume smaller.

Large amounts of impurities turned into fine fragments of iron slag, falling on both sides of the workbench and piling up into little hills.

Of course, it was impossible to do everything perfectly on a first forging.

Even though Xiao Hongchen had practiced many times before the actual forging and made extensive preparations before starting, this was still his first time forging.

Some of the natural grains inside the Heavy Silver were still snapped and shattered during his inexperienced forging.

But with his Three-Legged Golden Toad Martial Soul, he could sense these shortcomings accurately and improve his forging method again and again, keeping his subsequent blows from further damaging the Heavy Silver's structure.

That was his natural affinity with metal, and the uniquely blessed advantage he had in forging.

Kong Deming and the others had originally been standing quietly in the forging workshop, watching.

But as Xiao Hongchen kept hammering, the stirring that welled up from deep within the metal seemed to become contagious. Sensing the metal leaping with joy beneath Xiao Hongchen's hammers, they unconsciously took one step forward after another, only coming to their senses when they were standing beside Bao Liang.

They were annoyed with themselves for failing to resist the temptation, yet their bodies were perfectly honest, their eyes fixed on Xiao Hongchen's forging. Not one of them made a sound.

Xiao Hongchen, meanwhile, was completely immersed in forging, oblivious to everything around him.

In his world, all that remained was the Heavy Silver, his two hammers, and the sighs and songs of joy the metal gave with every blow.

At last, the final blow fell.

Xiao Hongchen stepped back and gently set his hammers on the workbench. His mind suddenly felt clear, his thoughts flowing more smoothly than ever before.

Looking again at the Heavy Silver on the workbench, he saw that its volume had shrunk by a third.

Because of the heat, it still glowed crimson, like a gem just taken from a furnace.

"It's finished..."

Hundred Refinement · Heavy Silver!

Xiao Hongchen looked at the Heavy Silver slowly cooling before him, a smile appearing on his face.

Although the Heavy Silver still had a few flaws and was a considerable way from Thousand Refinement, its overall quality was already very high. Even among Hundred Refinement metals, it could be considered a fine specimen.

Judged by the scoring standards of The Legend of the Dragon King era, this Heavy Silver would probably score between eighty-five and eighty-nine points.

"Well done! As expected of my grandson!" Jing Hongchen hurried forward two steps in excitement and clapped Xiao Hongchen hard on the shoulder, the excitement on his face impossible to conceal.

Even without testing the Heavy Silver directly, Jing Hongchen could tell that its strength had definitely improved enormously. This was the most immediately apparent improvement in materials science, and also the simplest, most brute-force breakthrough.

Even with only Hundred Refinement, many Soul Tools that had once been impossible to make due to limitations in material strength could now potentially be manufactured.

This was an unprecedented breakthrough!

What was more, according to the theoretical possibility Bao Liang had proposed, Hundred Refinement was only the starting point of forging, far from its main focus.

As they ventured farther down the path of forging, the strength of metals would only increase in the future. At the same time, Soul Tools would rise with the tide!

In that case, as long as Xiao Hongchen continued to advance the realm of forging and forge higher-quality metals, he really could become the second Father of Soul Tool after Teacher Kong.

No, his prestige would only be higher than Teacher Kong's, never lower. After all, he represented an entirely new era.

"Thanks, Bao Liang." Xiao Hongchen smiled at his grandfather, then turned to Bao Liang and thanked him earnestly. "Grandmaster, I, Xiao, have not failed you."

Although he was the one who had done the forging, Xiao Hongchen understood that both the ideas and the theory had come from Bao Liang. He was only acting on his behalf.

Bao Liang merely waved a hand. "We're brothers."

Kong Deming, too, was so excited that he burst out laughing. "Good, good, good! Good children, all of you!"

"Now that you've proven forging is viable, what you need to do next is keep devising forging methods to make metals purer and tougher.

"The task is arduous, so you'll need to put more thought into it," Kong Deming said.

Bao Liang and Xiao Hongchen exchanged a glance, then nodded at the same time.

For the development of Soul Tools, to advance forging, and also to develop Battle Armor later, Bao Liang was now sparing no effort to promote forging.

The minimum requirement for making Battle Armor was Thousand Refinement metal-only one step above Hundred Refinement.

At this rate, although it would be difficult to produce Battle Armor for this tournament, they could definitely do it for the next one.

As for linking the arrays in Battle Armor...

That was not impossible to achieve during the Peerless Tang Sect era.

In fact, the set of Level 6 Soul Tool Armor Meng Hongchen had brought out in the original story was already an early form of a Battle Armor array, not to mention that Kong Deming also had array data for Humanoid Soul Tools.

Later in the original story, the Sun Moon Empire had explicitly equipped the Royal Soul Engineer Corps with Humanoid Soul Tools-those Humanoid Soul Tools were all capable of boosting a Soul Master's Soul Power by two or three realms.

That was already an early form of Battle Armor.

Or rather, Humanoid Soul Tools were the ancestors of Battle Armor.

Naturally, Bao Liang also had to start preparing to make Battle Armor for himself.

If it could make him stronger, why not?