Chapter 14: The Three Types of Sword Artifacts - Giant Sword Forging Heart (Part 1)

  Rushing to the new person chart, urgently seeking recommendation votes and collections, hoping everyone will generously assist, let Ten Steps truly take ten steps to kill one person, a thousand miles without leaving a trail, killing all the way to the top ten!

  Heaven is vigorous, the gentleman constantly strengthens himself without respite! The earth is receptive, the gentleman cultivates virtue to carry all things.

  Lu Qing muttered these two sentences non-stop, and with each mutter, the blood color in his eyes receded a bit, and his resentful expression gradually calmed down. In the end, he regained his usual calmness, but the determination in his eyes was like heaven and earth compared to before, heavy as a mountain. Supporting himself on the door frame, Lu Qing stood up and turned around to bow to Yu Jihua, but was stopped by Yu's two hands. "Since you understand now, that's good. However, the one you should thank is not me, but Third Master. I hope you can understand his kindness."

  Lu Qing heard the words without speaking, now thinking that what Zhao Qianye had done before was indeed to make him stand up again, but he used the method of stimulation, and even ruthlessly struck Lu Qing's already wounded dignity. The current Lu Qing still doesn't have the capacity to completely forgive him.

  Seeing Lu Qing not speaking, Yu Ji sighed softly and said: "Some things you will naturally understand slowly in the future, but you can rest assured that we three have no intentions or bad hearts towards you. We just hope to have one more friend who shares our heart in the long pursuit of swordsmanship on Chaoyang Peak. You, take care of yourself." After finishing speaking, he turned around and left, leaving Lu Qing alone, staring blankly at the purple bamboo standing upright in the courtyard, as well as the mottled bamboo shadows falling on the ground, swaying quietly under the moonlight.

  Three days later, in front of the Sword Casting House at the back of Chaoyang Palace, Lu Qing stood for a long time wearing a black martial uniform before finally pushing open the door and entering. At this point, he had fully recovered from his injuries, which had been healed by Duan Qingyun's medicine baths over the past few days. Having gone through this ordeal, his mental state had also undergone extraordinary tempering, and although it couldn't be said that he was as stable as Mount Tai, he was almost as firm as a rock. Even the second layer of the Xuanyuan Heart Sutra's sword energy within him had advanced several degrees after his recovery. According to Lu Qing's estimates, in about half a year, he would likely break through to the third layer and formally establish his foundation as a swordsman, at which point he would be able to keep up with most people on Chaoyang Peak.

  Upon entering the sword casting house, it was filled with various materials for casting, including black iron, bronze, gold, tungsten iron, and white gold. There were even a small piece of purple gold the size of a fist and a foot-long strip of refined iron placed separately on a wooden board. In the center of the room stood a large, majestic purple-colored casting furnace, emitting a fiery aura, with its mouth covered by a block of cold ice stone. Through the gap, one could see the fierce flames inside. Next to the casting furnace was a large wooden basket containing dozens of refined black iron swords. To Lu Qing's eyes, they seemed to be crafted by the same person as the broken black iron sword he had used before.

  "What brings you here, kid? The sword is in the basket over there. Take it and leave quickly, don't disturb my peace." Just as Lu Qing was observing, a slightly hoarse voice came from behind the casting furnace. Because of the obstruction of the casting furnace, Lu Qing initially thought no one was there.

  At this time, Lu Qing knew that the voice he heard was the old man who cast swords on Chaoyang Peak, Huang Lao, an eighth-grade sword casting master. Sword Casting Master, because it is too difficult to enter the four levels of Qingfan, Jintian, Baoling and Zihuang, so in the current Sword God Continent, there are less than a hundred people, so people add nine grades before these four levels to distinguish the casting ability of the sword casting master, with first grade being the lowest and ninth grade being the highest. At this moment, Lu Qing saw that the only eighth-grade sword casting master on Chaoyang Peak was the one he saw now.

  Lu Qing cupped his hands and bowed, saying: "I report to senior, I want to borrow the furnace fire here to cast a sword, and hope senior will allow it."

  "Cast a sword?" As if he had heard something interesting, the owner of the voice got up with a thud. This was probably the weakest old man Lu Qing had ever seen since he grew up. He was less than five feet tall, with disheveled white hair and an extremely thin face that even had some unerased ash marks on it. Although he didn't say he was as thin as a stick, in Lu Qing's eyes, he was almost the same. It was really unknown how he could hold the casting hammer.

  The old man had already arrived in front of him, circling around Lu Qing several times and sizing him up from head to toe. "Forging swords? You're just a young kid, I can see you haven't even built your foundation yet. What's wrong, isn't the hundred-refined black iron sword I made for you enough? It's not that I'm saying this to scold you, but relying too much on external objects is no good."

  Being called "young master" by the old man, Lu Qing's calmness was also somewhat flushed with heat, although in the Sword God Continent, twelve years old is already considered a clear thing, and sixteen years old is formally crowned as an adult. However, it is also impossible for Lu Qing to refute being called so by the old man. Moreover, what the old man said also made sense, for a person who didn't know him at all, such a reminder was already rare and precious.

  "It's not what the senior thought, but rather that my cultivation environment is a bit special, so I have some special requirements for swords. That's why I wanted to borrow the furnace to forge a suitable sword."

  "Alright," the old man stroked his sparse beard, "but I'll be watching the process. And those refined iron and purple gold, don't even think about using them without a written order from Old Man Xuanqing, I don't have much of it here either."

  Without hesitation, Lu Qing agreed immediately. He wasn't afraid that the old man would steal his family's sword-casting techniques. If the thousand-year-old legacy of his family could be easily imitated and stolen, then it wouldn't have any necessary existence.

  He walked to the middle of the smelting furnace, carrying a nearly hundred-pound black iron ore, a white gold nugget the size of an adult's fist, and a small piece of refined bronze. Although this smelting furnace was not as good as the one his father, Lu Yun, had used - the thousand-year-old Qinghuo Jingjin furnace that had been passed down through their family for generations - it would do. From its surface, you could see some shadows of the thousand-year-old fire copper, but what other materials were melted into it required a deeper analysis, which was not something Lu Qing needed to worry about.

  He picked up the tongs beside the stove and lifted the ice stone on top, a fierce red flame suddenly rose, and the high temperature in an instant forced Lu Qing to retreat two steps.

  "How's this flame? Not bad, huh?" The old man's face revealed a hint of a teasing smile.

  Lu Qing's expression turned solemn, and he grasped a large black hammer the size of a human head that was leaning against the stove. His entire demeanor suddenly became stern, and he recalled Lu Yun's teachings from the past, each sentence vivid in his mind.

  The sword maker said: "It is your heart, its heart is not sinking, its intention is not peaceful, don't let it start!"

  This is the overall plan of Lu's family sword casting that has been passed down to this day, and it is also the overall plan of the 36 hammers of the Lu family's ultimate skill in sword casting. Since he was three years old and came into contact with sword casting, Lu Qing had always remembered it in his heart. With eight years of experience from trying to cast a sword until now, at this time, he naturally entered the state of "ancient well without waves".

  He felt the change in Lu Qing's temperament, and a look of surprise appeared on the old man's face. His gaze at Lu Qing also became more careful, and at this moment, Lu Qing gave him an inexplicable sense of expectation.

  Lu Qing weighed the heavy hammer in his hand, which was about fifty kilograms or so. Although it was a bit heavy, he could still use it with his current cultivation. With a lift of his left arm, the black iron ore clamped by the tongs suddenly flew into the air and fell right into the furnace fire. The familiar movement and power control made the old man's eyes widen in surprise even more.

  The internal Qi of the sword rapidly surged towards his right hand according to the Thirty-Fist Heart Method, and when it reached the Tianquan acupoint on his upper arm, it began to rotate in a strange trajectory. Lu Qing only felt that the strength of his right arm suddenly increased, and his entire arm was filled with a fiery sensation. When the sword Qi reached the Laogong acupoint on his palm according to this strange trajectory, it became even more scorching hot, and in an instant, a faint purple-red light began to emanate from the surface of the big hammer.

  "Drink——" With a loud whoosh, Lu Qing swung his massive hammer in a circular arc, striking the black iron with a deafening crash. The tremendous force sent the hammer flying back, but Lu Qing's body rotated smoothly, his feet firmly planted on the ground. In an instant, his entire body bent into a magnificent bow shape, the bowstring taut and quivering. With a swift whoosh, the hammer came crashing down once more, striking with a resounding crash.

  On the other side, the old man's face changed greatly when Lu Qing swung his first hammer. Now, seeing Lu Qing's second hammer, he was even more shocked and exclaimed, "It's definitely the Great Evolution of Thirty-Six Hammers!" As a high-ranking eighth-grade swordsmith of the Purple Mist Sect, although he couldn't bear to ask for guidance himself, he had heard about the sect's first-rate swordsmithing techniques. Even though he hadn't seen them in person, he had learned about them through his daily exchanges with other swordsmiths from the Purple Mist Sect's various peaks.

  After a brief shock, the old man's complexion recovered its calmness, but his two eyeballs began to turn around incessantly, as if thinking of something.

  On the other hand, Lu Qing's big hammer was getting faster and faster with each strike. By the fourth strike, his entire body had almost transformed into a whirlwind of speed. The recoil force of each strike was converted by the unique heart method of Da Yuan's 36 hammers and re-applied to the hammerhead, so Lu Qing's speed was increasing with each strike, and the power of each strike was also continuously superimposed. A fierce gust of wind howled through the Foundry House.

  As the large hammer continued to strike, the scarlet flame in the black iron ore gradually subsided, and from time to time, a burst of black smoke rose from the ore, which was the impurities contained in the ore that were being removed through continuous pounding and high-temperature roasting.

  After swinging the sixth hammer, Lu Qing's body swayed and then stopped, his knees bent in a sitting position, starting to meditate. After all, he only had the cultivation of a Sword Servant, and the thin sword energy could only support him until the sixth hammer before becoming powerless. However, this already made him very satisfied, as before going up the mountain, he could at most swing five hammers before exhausting his energy, and now he was able to make it to the sixth hammer before stopping, which clearly showed that his cultivation had made significant progress.