This kid, honestly… Ling Xia shed silent tears. His monthly pay compared to Yu ZhiJue’s was probably like the difference between a village teacher’s and a city official’s, huh… …
“Since I’ve handed the things over, I’m leaving.” Yu ZhiJue glanced at Ling Xia and directly headed outside.
Ling Xia hurriedly called out, “Wait, I’ll send you back.” He fished out a paper lantern from the corner and carefully lighted it up. Every time he went to find these two kids, they were both either busy cultivating or completing various assignments with basically no free time at all. After the boy returned, there were definitely more tasks waiting. His heart ached quite a bit that a child this young had to walk back alone at night.
Yu ZhiJue looked at the dusty lantern with scorn, took out an artifact for illumination from inside his sleeve, pulled open the door, and refused, “No need. I just learned the Flash Step Technique, so I can go back very quickly.”
Although he feigned a calm composure, his tone still faintly divulged his happiness. After saying so, he vanished from his original spot without a trace.
Watching the small body that momentarily disappeared and then reappeared ten meters away, Ling Xia inwardly sighed; as expected, a genius was a genius! He waited until Yu ZhiJue’s silhouette faded into the distance before closing the door and opening his new book, diligently thumbing through its contents.
Earlier today, for the sake of completing the masked man‘s assignment, he had just given this a cursory read. Only now did he discover that this book was very unique, quite unlike those cryptic and difficult to understand tomes that populated the library. The layout was considerably lively and fascinating, and it included detailed descriptions on various types of artifact refinement equipment, materials, and other related subjects.
Moreover, what pleasantly surprised him the most was that on every page, possibly because some magic was applied, pictures of energy stones that were nearly as clear and detailed as photos would replace the text that it corresponded to, and after he finished viewing them, the images would morph back into words.
Dipping his own specially created quill pen in ink, Ling Xia took notes in a journal while he read.
With regards to refining magical artifacts, aside from the matter of gathering materials, the elements that were equally indispensable were luck, one’s innate talent, and the artificer’s proficiency and experience.
Refining artifacts could be considered a magical art. Choosing different types of energy stones, varying the degrees of heat, and even how one was introduced to the field were all factors that could change an artifact’s capabilities during its refinement. A single magical artifact could even simultaneously possess multiple functional orientations, like offensive, defensive, support-based, etc. The Shang Yan they met before had used a lightning attribute offensive artifact. Lightning offensive types were formidable in their power, but the success rate of their refinement was extremely low. The one that boy had could be considered a masterpiece.
When refining, high-level artificers were capable of carving their own divine sense onto their creations, using psychical energy to mold the artifact into any shape they wanted, and even designate user limitations.
Ling Xia became completely absorbed in soaking up this knowledge. In middle school, chemistry was his best subject, and he liked hands-on experiments the most. Observing how the combination of different reagents caused varying chemical reactions to occur always gave him a heartfelt sense of thrill. Due to his grades in high school, he studied computer programming instead of chemistry in college, and always found that regrettable. He felt that artifact refinement and chemistry experiments actually had certain minute points of similarity.
It wasn’t until the sky started to brighten and the familiar sound of a bell chimed outside that Ling Xia finally became aware that he had ended up pulling an unexpected all-nighter.
Without his notice, Ling Xia’s impression of the masked man had once again increased by an unknown percentage. In the short 6 hours he spent there, the other was able to determine which areas were best suited for him to pursue. Compared to those ancient, fogey guys who solely relied on the results of an exam, he was indeed a lot more reliable and could absolutely be praised as a teacher who taught to his student’s strengths.
Ling Xia massaged his tired eyes, stretched his body, and rotated his stiff neck a couple of times. Afterwards, he properly put away the book and his notes, washed up, and ate a light breakfast before proceeding to his job of tilling soil for spiritual herbs.
Of course, he didn’t spend his days here exclusively repeating such monotonous and routine physical labor. He also did a lot of thinking, observed his surroundings, and often went to look up relevant reference material. He pretty much already grasped the properties, preferences, and planting methods of all the types of spiritual herbs that Immortal Welcoming Pavilion grew. However, the spiritual herbs here were only the tip of the iceberg when compared to the varieties recorded and known, thus he still had to find an opportunity to learn more about those others.
It’s said that ShaoYang Sect’s best spiritual herbs were not at Immortal Welcoming Pavilion, but with a high-level wood attribute divergent-skill elder called Mu QingHe. Ling Xia decided that if he ever got the chance, he must go there to study.
If he became a famous artificer or a wood attribute divergent-skill cultivator in the future, then he wouldn’t need to worry about dragging those two kids down. Haha, those kids can be in charge of laughing hand-in-hand across the lands, and as for him, he’d be their personal artificer slash horticulturist that hid behind the scenes, and maybe even double as an alchemist. Just the money he’d make from selling his creations would be enough build an entire country!
The little guy inside him was already howling with delirious laughter in a hands-on-hips pose. The more he fantasized, the giddier he became, full of energy despite not having slept last night.
The three day deadline quickly arrived. Ling Xia went to the riverside with the book, and as usual, brought Ah'Li a lotus wrapped chicken.
One man and one beast hadn't seen each other for three days, and to his surprise, for the first time ever, Ah'Li didn't rush to eat. Instead, it loftily jumped on Ling Xia's shoulder, then rubbed up affectionately against his cheek. Ling Xia was beside himself with joy; his position in Ah'Li's heart had finally surpassed that of a chicken!
Ah'Li ate his fill, and then resumed his original form once more, the white as snow, powerful, and vigorous magical beast, the Snow Flamma. Carrying Ling Xia, it swiftly ran towards the masked man's place.
Thsi time, the masked man was lying on the roof sunbathing. Previiously, Ling Xia's image of him was solely based on the novel's flimsy descriptions, but now, he genuinely and wholeheartedly admired this man. He knew the other hated convoluted etiquette with smile, ''This disciple has already finished reading your book. Snior is an unbelievably amazing author!''
Hearing his sincere preise, the masked man immediately sat up cross-legged and boasted with pride, ''As if there was any doubt! Back in my day, i was called the- ...Cough, let's test you a bit then.''
Ling Xia was in the middle of straining his ears in anticipation of hearing the masked man reveal his true identity, so seeing the he stopped, inevitably felt somewhat disappointed at the beginning, and while Song XiaoHu had a total of five teachers, this first one that gave him his primer into cultivation wasn't described in much detail. He assumed the masked man was one of ShaoYang Sect's elders, since after all, he was living on ShaoYang Sect's private property.
Ling Xia had thought that the masked man would drill him on the book’s contents, but who knew the other would directly take out a jumbled pile of disorganized energy stones from his space and dump it on a table instead.
He smiled and instructed, “Since you said you’ve finished reading, then come differentiate what attribute these energy stones are, and which ones can be used together in refining.”
Now this was a hard test. Ignoring that Ling Xia only had three days to read, even if he did memorize the info of every energy stone in the book, accurately telling them apart would be difficult to achieve without at least a year of practice.
Ling Xia only blanked out for a second before meticulously starting to inspect the heap. He’s a quite optimistic person, so he’d just have to try his best regardless.
Soon, he picked out four pieces of energy stones that he felt confident about, and one by one, introduced their origins.
Ling Xia cautiously reported, “This one is called Flaming Cloud Rock, a level-2 fire attribute energy stone. That one is a Merry Gate Stone, a level-1 earth attribute energy stone… …” After that, he picked out five or six more stones, ones his memory was a bit fuzzy on, and following the differentiation method presented in the book, did a few simple tests to determine their attributes. Nevertheless, by the end, he still failed to identify over half of the stones.
Fortunately, the masked man didn’t reprimand him and only smiled, “You’ve already done quite well. Now tell me, of the energy stones you sorted out, which ones can be combined together to refine into a magical artifact?”
Ling Xia gingerly placed two stones together and responded with a grin, “If you put this piece of level-2 water attribute energy stone into a characteristically mild beryl, then you can refine a support-type artifact for water attribute divergent-skill cultivators.”
Due to Yu ZhiJue’s attribute being water, plus wanting to give the boy something of his personal creation, he had reread the section on water attribute energy stones a few extra times, thus his memory on it was particularly vivid.
The masked man leisurely lied back down again. “Yep yep, not too bad of an answer. Since it’s like this, why don’t you go and refine it.”
Incredibly stunned, Ling Xia blurted out, “Right now?”
Currently, he couldn’t even be called a novice low-level artificer yet, and without any psychical energy, he have no other choice but to depend on manual heat control and fire attribute artifacts. However, without a shred of experience, how should he start? One should know, disciples taken in by ordinary artificers generally spent at least 3 years doing odd jobs.
The masked man shot him a glance, closed his eyes once more, and supplemented while rocking his leg, “The tools I used in my youth for artifact refining are placed in the third room from the left. You can use those. Studying theory without actual practice is useless, so go try it out for yourself!”
Before Ling Xia could voice the rest of his misgivings, a familiar crack appeared below and down he fell. He helplessly shook his head; was this master not afraid of him wasting precious energy stones… …It should be noted that some natural materials couldn’t bought no matter how high a price one offered.
He opened that room’s door, the inside indeed full of books, equipment, and materials related to refining artifacts, and from the shelf with energy stones, found the two kinds he needed. Although these two types weren’t considered valuable, but if he had to buy it himself, he reckoned that one piece alone would burn through half his monthly salary…
Ling Xia bitterly wept inside. Looking at it this way, the masked man was really a generous and big-hearted master!
He carefully weighed the two stones, often consulting the artifact refinement book, and following the ratios given, used a small knife to scrape off the extras. He placed them inside the refining furnace and lit a small flame, then slowly and mindfully increased its heat in accordance to the method recorded in the book.
Except, he tried three times and failed them all. Not only did the end result not have a recognizable shape, it was defective to the extent that not a spec of the stones’ original colors remained. In his hand, there was just a lump of black, indistinct, garbage-like…thing.
Having been next to the refining furnace for half a day, Ling Xia was left sweltering and drenched in sweat.
The masked man strolled inside, and sighed, ''How dumb can you get! Artifact refining is the same as cooking, where using a recipe is just conforming to the norm. If you want to create something new and innovative, there's no way you'll succeed by blindly following instructions.''
He casually use his fingers and picked up two stones, assessed their weight in his hand, then threw them into the furnace. He closed his eyes, and using psychical energy, decomposed the two stones' energy, fused them together, and little by little, separated and removed their impurities.
After that, an object that seemed to be made of stained glass came out, and Ling Xia dumbly gaped in awe. It was just too beautiful!
The masked man carelessly threw it into a corner and smirked, ''Do you comprehend now?''
What a complete and utter waste! Ling Xia’s heart was in anguish seeing that water attribute support-type artifact being treated like trash, and answered with a nod, “Just a little bit… …However, this disciple does not yet possess psychical energy.”
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