The Heavenly Forge Division did not hand out resources for free.
While inner disciples were granted generous stipends of refined spirit metals and rare beast cores to practice their craft, outer disciples were treated as little more than glorified laborers. If an outer disciple wanted high-grade materials to forge with, they either had to purchase them with exorbitant amounts of merit points or earn them through the division's mission board.
Fang Lin stood before the massive, iron-wood mission board in the lower plaza.
He didn't want to spend his hard-earned merit points on raw materials, nor did he want to draw attention to himself by requesting rare, exotic metals. He needed something incredibly durable to test the theories he had learned in the Scripture Pavilion, but it had to be a material that wouldn't raise any eyebrows.
His eyes settled on a backlog contract that had been pinned to the board for months.
*[Refinement Request: Star-Steel Quota.]*
*[Task: Refine one hundred raw ingots of deep-vein Star-Steel. Purity must exceed sixty percent.]*
*[Reward: 500 Merit Points. Refiner is permitted to keep any excess slag or off-cuts.]*
Star-Steel was a notoriously stubborn material. It was incredibly hard, making it excellent for heavy weapons and defensive plating, but it was riddled with dense, earthen impurities. Refining it required a tremendous amount of heat and an exhausting amount of physical hammering. A normal outer disciple would ruin three hammers and spend an entire month just to meet the sixty percent purity requirement.
Fang Lin took the contract off the board. It was exactly what he needed.
***
An hour later, Fang Lin unlocked the heavy stone door to Private Forge Number Forty-Two.
It was a standard, lower-tier workspace. The room was perfectly square, lined with heat-resistant obsidian tiles, and dominated by a heavy iron anvil in the center. At the back of the room sat a standard earth-fire furnace, powered by a localized heat-gathering array that drew directly from the peak's subterranean magma veins.
Fang Lin emptied the contents of the spatial bag he had been given by the logistics hall.
A massive pile of raw, jagged Star-Steel ore crashed onto the stone floor. It glittered faintly in the dim light, the black iron heavily marbled with dull, grey impurities.
Fang Lin stripped off his outer robe, leaving only a thin linen tunic. He walked over to the furnace and channeled a small pulse of Qi into the activation array.
With a low, rushing *wumph*, the furnace roared to life. Thick, yellow earth-fire curled around the inner grating, raising the ambient temperature of the room in seconds.
Fang Lin picked up a heavy forging hammer from the rack. He grabbed a raw chunk of Star-Steel with his tongs and thrust it into the yellow flames.
He closed his eyes, visualizing the texts from *The Thousand-Fold Spiritual Iron Record*. He was going to use his Asura Flesh to deliver perfectly precise strikes, folding the metal to force out the grey impurities while simultaneously structuring the microscopic spiritual veins within the iron.
But just as the Star-Steel began to glow a dull, stubborn red, a presence stirred deep within his glabella.
Inside the Ancient Spatial Furnace resting within his Spiritual Sea, the Dark Flame Spirit awakened fully.
*You call this fire?* the ancient, arrogant voice echoed directly into Fang Lin's mind, dripping with absolute contempt. *This is not fire. This is a warm breeze.*
Before Fang Lin could respond, the Dark Flame Spirit acted.
It did not physically manifest outside of Fang Lin's body. It didn't need to. As a primordial spirit born from the absolute essence of fire, it simply extended its domain.
The activation array on the furnace suddenly glowed a blinding, blinding white.
The standard yellow earth-fire violently shifted. It didn't grow larger or explode outward; instead, it compressed inward, turning into a searing, hyper-focused beam of white-hot intensity. The ambient heat in the room skyrocketed to a terrifying degree, instantly turning the obsidian tiles on the floor red-hot.
Fang Lin's eyes snapped open. *What are you doing?*
*I am showing you the foundation of the Dao,* the Dark Flame Spirit sneered. *Your pathetic human manuals tell you to soften the metal to strike it. That is the method of a child playing in the mud. Watch.*
The white-hot flame wrapped around the chunk of Star-Steel in Fang Lin's tongs.
The spirit didn't just heat the metal; it performed an act of absolute, terrifying thermal isolation. It bypassed the iron entirely and focused purely on the grey impurities laced within the ore. In a matter of seconds, the stubborn impurities melted into a viscous liquid, while the core lattice of the Star-Steel remained solid and stable.
*Strike it now, Loud-Boy!* the spirit roared in his mind. *The window is exactly three breaths before the structural integrity collapses! If your physical control is as perfect as you think it is, prove it!*
Fang Lin didn't hesitate.
He pulled the blindingly bright ore from the furnace and slammed it onto the anvil. He didn't have time to carefully measure his strikes. He had to rely entirely on instinct and the absolute, terrifying precision of his Asura Flesh.
*Clang!*
The hammer came down with a deafening crack.
The strike was flawless. The impact rippled through the core lattice of the Star-Steel, forcing the liquefied impurities out of the metal like water squeezed from a sponge.
*Faster!* the spirit mocked.
Fang Lin's muscles coiled and snapped. His hammer became a blur.
*Clang-clang-clang-clang!*
He struck the metal fifty times in three breaths. Every single blow was mathematically perfect, striking the exact stress points needed to fold the iron and forge the microscopic spiritual veins into place. He didn't waste a single fraction of an ounce of kinetic energy.
When he finally stopped, the piece of Star-Steel rested on the anvil, cooling rapidly.
It was no longer marbled with grey. It was a block of pure, deep midnight black, faintly humming with latent spiritual capacity.
*Hmph. Acceptable,* the Dark Flame Spirit muttered in his glabella, though Fang Lin could detect a faint trace of genuine surprise in the ancient voice. *Your physical control is... adequate. Let us see how long you can maintain it.*
A cold, competitive light sparked in Fang Lin's eyes.
"Don't burn yourself out, Little spirit," Fang Lin said aloud, grabbing the next chunk of raw ore.
For the next few nights, Private Forge Number Forty-Two became a crucible of extreme, brutal synergy.
The Dark Flame Spirit continuously hijacked the earth-fire, perfectly isolating and melting the impurities with absolute thermal control. In response, Fang Lin pushed his Asura Flesh to its absolute limit, raining down thousands of flawless, lightning-fast strikes to structure the spiritual veins before the metal could collapse.
It was a frantic, hypnotic rhythm of perfect physical precision and absolute fire control.
When dawn finally broke, casting a pale grey light through the small ventilation grate near the ceiling, Fang Lin slowly lowered his hammer.
He was drenched in sweat, his lungs burning from the sheer physical exertion of keeping up with the spirit's brutal timing.
But resting on the floor before him was not a pile of raw ore.
It was a perfectly stacked mountain of deep black Star-Steel ingots. He had processed the entire month's quota—one hundred blocks—in a few days.
Fang Lin picked up one of the cooled ingots.
The contract required a purity of sixty percent. A skilled inner sect refiner might achieve eighty percent on a good day.
The ingot in Fang Lin's hand was flawlessly, terrifyingly pure. It was easily over ninety-eight percent.
Fang Lin stared at the flawless metal, a deep, predatory realization settling into his mind. With his absolute physical control to forge the veins, and the Dark Flame Spirit's absolute thermal control to isolate the impurities, he didn't just have the ability to fulfill basic contracts.
He had the foundation to forge something monstrous.