Vessel of Worlds

According to what Andy had gleaned from the texts, better raw materials meant the possibility of forging higher-grade artifacts—but also a significantly higher chance of failure.

As a complete novice who had never forged a single artifact, common sense dictated that he should start with low-grade artifacts, gradually improve his skills, and only then attempt to use premium materials for higher-grade work.

But he had less than two years. There was no time to start from scratch, and he didn't care about wasting materials. So he decided to begin learning with the best materials he had on hand.

He discovered that the bowl could, in the span of a single day and night, enhance a block of refined copper to an extraordinarily high quality—several times the spiritual energy of ordinary refined copper. Naturally, he would never dare let anyone see this supreme-grade refined copper, nor any artifact forged from it.

Instead, he would use slightly lesser premium-grade refined copper as his primary forging material. For him, producing this grade of copper required only an hour or two in the bowl—trivially easy. For any other artifact forger, it would take dozens of meticulous purification attempts to produce a single comparable block.

The first artifact Andy planned to forge was a refined copper flying sword. Bladed weapons were the most common offensive artifacts, and for good reason: besides their considerable power and ease of handling, they were also the simplest to forge.

The process, in broad strokes, was this: melt the raw material into liquid using Earth Lung Fire or Innate True Fire, then use spiritual sense to draw the molten mass into the shape of a blade, rapidly cool it in spirit spring water, and obtain a rough blank.

Next, embed appropriate spirit stones, diamond sand, and other auxiliary materials into the blank, and lay down one or two simple small-scale formations to enhance its power, infusing the spirit stones' energy into the piece.

Finally, inscribe runic patterns onto the blade and seal in several minor auxiliary spells—Sharpness, Swiftness, Durability, and the like—and the bladed artifact was complete.

The expensive forging texts Andy had purchased contained detailed instructions for crafting several common, straightforward artifact types: blades, rings, small shields, bows, and more. He was fairly confident he could produce a refined copper small sword.

Day after day, month after month, Andy threw himself into the grueling, monotonous work of learning to forge.

Apart from occasional departures of an hour or two each month, and two visits to the Guling Street trading meet, he barely left his mid-tier forging chamber at all.

Artifact Master Kuang proved true to his word. After Andy had turned in a total of over a hundred blocks of ordinary refined copper and more than ten blocks of premium-grade copper, the delighted artifact master rewarded him with a jade slip containing a portion of his personal forging insights. Though incomplete, the slip was filled with hard-won practical experience, some of it entirely unique to Artifact Master Kuang and recorded nowhere else. For Andy, still in the midst of learning his craft, it was an invaluable gift.

The price for this jade slip was an agreement to help Artifact Master Kuang forge a batch of low-grade artifacts after studying its contents. Though this consumed a good deal of Andy's time, it also greatly enriched his forging experience.

Over the course of a year and a half of relentless practice, Andy forged several dozen artifacts for himself, every one of them made primarily from refined copper. Sticking to a single material was a deliberate choice to maximize his success rate.

Among these several dozen refined copper artifacts, seven or eight were pieces he was genuinely proud of—upper-grade artifacts of a quality rarely seen even at the trading meets.

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The amount of material he had burned through in the process could only be described as staggering. Setting aside the relatively cheap refined copper ore, the number of mid-grade metal-attribute spirit stones he had consumed during forging alone exceeded six or seven hundred.

No other artifact forger could have done this. When crafting mid-grade and upper-grade artifacts, other smiths would never dream of using multiple mid-grade spirit stones at once—they used low-grade stones exclusively. A mid-grade spirit stone was worth as much as a decent mid-grade artifact on its own. Apart from Andy, no one else in the world would be foolish enough to use mid-grade spirit stones to forge refined copper artifacts.

One thing did frustrate him, however. Without supreme-grade pills to assist him, even with an unlimited supply of high-grade spirit stones, his cultivation had stalled at the very peak of the eleventh layer. He could not cross that bottleneck into the twelfth layer.

Cultivation was never entirely within one's control—if it were, high-stage cultivators wouldn't be so rare and precious. Once Andy accepted this, he let go of his frustration. After several failed attempts at breaking through the bottleneck, he stopped wasting time on it. He left the forging chamber, summoned his Flying Plume, and headed for Tiechuan Peak.

The last time he had been out, he had heard that Jian Xin'er had recently broken through to the twelfth layer of Qi Refinement, aided by several pills bestowed by her Senior Uncle Sun. Andy was genuinely happy for her.

He sent a Message Talisman into the barrier formation halfway up Tiechuan Peak, then waited quietly in the air nearby. Before long, two young women flew out from within the barrier. One wore the familiar mischievous expression that always made him want to pinch her cheeks—Jian Xin'er, of course. The other was a slender, dignified young woman with a hint of authority in her gaze, someone Andy had never seen before.

"This is Senior Sister Jin Ye. Senior Sister Jin, this is the forging prodigy I told you about—Andy." Jian Xin'er made introductions before Andy could even ask.

"A pleasure, Lady Jin Ye." Andy offered a bow.

"No need for formalities, Junior Brother Zhao." The young woman returned the greeting. She might not have been older than Andy in years, but her cultivation had reached the thirteenth layer of Qi Refinement. In the cultivation world, where seniority was determined by realm, addressing Andy as "Junior Brother" was perfectly natural.

Jian Xin'er, seeing the two of them locked in stiff pleasantries, cut in: "Senior Sister Jin and I are practically sisters, and Brother Wugen grew up with me from childhood. We're all family here—no need to stand on ceremony."

"Indeed. Junior Brother Zhao clearly has business with Xin'er, so I'll take my leave—I was heading back to Longshou Cliff anyway." The young woman raised a hand in farewell.

"Safe travels, Lady Jin Ye."

"Senior Sister, remember to come visit me!"

After watching the young woman depart, Jian Xin'er suddenly said: "Senior Sister Jin is a wonderful person. She's helped me several times, and made quite a few enemies in the sect because of it."

"Oh? What happened? You've never mentioned this before. But let's not talk here—let's go to Gulian Spring. It's quieter, and I do have something to discuss with you." Andy said, and the two flew off toward Gulian Peak.

Along the way, Jian Xin'er explained how she and Senior Sister Jin Ye had come to know each other.

It all came back to Bai Chuli—the pale-faced senior brother Andy had met before. In the past two years, Bai Chuli had broken through to the thirteenth layer of Qi Refinement, just one step from Foundation Establishment. Whether it was the surge in cultivation that had gone to his head or something else, his behavior had grown increasingly arrogant and overbearing, and his pursuit of Jian Xin'er had become brazen.

Jian Xin'er mostly stayed within Senior Uncle Sun's medicinal garden on Tiechuan Peak, rarely venturing out, and Bai Chuli didn't dare force his way in. But one day, when Jian Xin'er had left the peak briefly to run an errand for Senior Uncle Sun, she ran straight into him. He insisted she accompany him on a trip to some scenic valley called Brocade Valley. No matter how many times she refused, he wouldn't relent—and had very nearly resorted to dragging her away by force. Fortunately, Jin Ye happened to pass by at that moment, saw the confrontation, intervened on Jian Xin'er's behalf, and drove Bai Chuli off.

The two young women had become friends after that incident. Living so close together—Tiechuan Peak and Longshou Cliff were separated by nothing more than a narrow gorge—they visited each other frequently and quickly became close confidants. Jin Ye often came to chat with Jian Xin'er, and whenever Jian Xin'er needed to leave the peak, she made a point of bringing Jin Ye along. With Jin Ye at her side, even running into Bai Chuli was no longer something to fear.

Listening to all of this, Andy felt a slow anger building inside him. Bai Chuli had gone too far. Jian Xin'er had rejected him repeatedly, and still the man persisted—going so far as to try to take her by force.

Quietly, Andy began turning over in his mind how to make this Senior Brother Bai disappear from the Taixu Sect permanently.