Chapter 247: Wood Spirit Returning Nest Ring
Down in the second basement level, a crimson fire roared within the forging room’s furnace.
Jiang Chen placed the raw emerald jade on his workbench. With smooth, precise strokes of a green jade carving knife, he sectioned the stone into three pieces. Their uneven sizes hardly mattered. He reached for his next tool: a heavy file.
Scrape. Scrape. Scrape. The rhythmic rasping echoed through the quiet room. A fine jade dust coated the table as Jiang Chen meticulously filed down the rough edges, rapidly shaping the uneven chunks into three perfectly identical rings. The Wood Spirit Returning to Nest Rings were a set; combining all three multiplied their power, while separating them diminished their overall impact.
Satisfied with the polished surfaces, Jiang Chen brought over the century-old wood spirit marrow. Taking a slender green bamboo tube, he gently pierced the marrow’s lower center.
Drip. Drip. Pure white liquid slowly oozed from the puncture, accumulating drop by drop into a waiting vial. As the minutes ticked by, the material pre-processing drew to a close.
Jiang Chen arranged the three jade rings inside a large, circular Spirit Weapon mold and poured the extracted marrow over them. Leaving the mold open, he hoisted it over the crimson flames. Soon, the white marrow boiled, transforming into a bubbling, luminescent green slurry. Seizing the perfect moment, Jiang Chen extracted the searing hot rings with tongs and plunged them into a basin of pure spring water.
Hiss! A plume of steam carrying the crisp scent of fresh grass rushed into the air.
He repeated this grueling process. Once, twice… all the way to fourteen times. Finally, delicate spirit patterns surfaced on the emerald jade. He ran his thumb over the grooves, counting exactly five lines. One to three patterns denoted a Low-grade Spirit Weapon, while four to six marked a High-grade. Five patterns placed this set firmly in the High-grade tier, granting him the capacity to engrave five distinct runes.
The weapon’s namesake dictated the first two slots: the Wood Spirit Pattern, forging a deep psychic link with the user, and the Returning to Nest Pattern, enabling the rings to fly out and return to his wrist with a mere thought.