The words of Sect Master Xuan Yuan hung suspended in the afternoon air like heavy, unyielding iron:
*"The Judgment Council has reached its verdict!"*
Yet, before the final decree could roll across the three leagues of the Grand Exhibition Plaza, a sharp, furious voice shattered the silence of the White Basalt Terrace.
"Wait!"
Grand Elder Yan Lie of the Scarlet Sun Palace surged forward, his crimson robes whipping wildly in a tempest of suppressed Solar True Fire. His face was dark with veins of rage, his finger trembling as he pointed down at the quiet, grey-robed figure of Mu Tie standing upon the frosted stage.
"Sect Master Xuan Yuan! Brother Duan! How can you declare a verdict based on an analysis that is visibly flawed?!" Yan Lie demanded, his voice thick with desperate venom. "The boy claimed that the mace requires a twelve-breath cooling threshold! Yet, every grandmaster on this terrace saw Grandmaster Viserion unleash three consecutive volcanic domain eruptions at the auction without a single breath of thermal lag! His deduction of the cooling mechanism is objectively wrong! How can an incomplete, erroneous treatise be crowned the champion of the Demon Immortal Continent?!"
Several conservative elders from the neutral guest sects began to murmur among themselves, casting uncertain glances between the two projection screens.
Beside Xuan Yuan, Grand Domain Smith Elder Duan took a slow step forward, his silver eyes flashing with cold, sovereign disdain.
"Grand Elder Yan Lie," Elder Duan's voice rumbled like grinding tectonic plates, "you speak of incompleteness. But let me ask you: what was the purpose of this gathering?"
Elder Duan gestured toward the fifty thousand cultivators watching from the rising basalt tiers.
"Was the test to see if a young Core Smith could write an omniscient manual and reproduce a Peak Domain Forging masterwork with his bare hands? No! The test was to see if anyone among the younger generation possessed the vision to understand enough of its foundational principles to advance the forging Dao of our continent!"
"Even so, his understanding is not complete!" Yan Lie barked back, his chest heaving. "A Master Smith must possess absolute mastery! If his treatise cannot explain the weapon in its entirety, he does not deserve the title!"
"Silence."
The single word fell upon the terrace with the crushing, inescapable weight of an ancient mountain range.
Sect Master Xuan Yuan turned his towering, molten gaze upon Grand Elder Yan Lie. The terrifying domain aura of a Rank 4 Grandmaster rippled through the air, forcing the raging solar fire around Yan Lie to contract instantly back into his meridians.
Xuan Yuan looked around the Judgment Council, his dark eyes sweeping over the seven Master Smiths of Black Tortoise Mountain, the Star River appraisers, the foreign grandmasters, and finally resting upon Yan Lie's pale, furious face.
"Grand Elder Yan Lie," Xuan Yuan spoke, his voice quiet, steady, and devastatingly clear.
"Can you reproduce this weapon? Or at least explain it in its entirety?"
The entire White Basalt Terrace froze.
Yan Lie's mouth opened slightly, but not a single sound emerged from his throat.
"Can Grandmaster Chi of your Scarlet Sun Palace reproduce it?" Xuan Yuan pressed, his gaze unyielding. "Can the Grand Domain Smiths of Heavenly Sword Lake reproduce it? Can Elder Duan or I reproduce it?"
A suffocating, dead silence gripped the council.
"None of us can," Xuan Yuan declared, turning toward the vast amphitheater. "For thirty days, the finest minds across ten thousand leagues have scrutinized this mace, yet none among us could explain why its domain breathed without runes. It was an enigma that defied continental orthodoxy."
Xuan Yuan looked down at Fang Lin standing calmly beneath the four Frost Jade pillars.
"And yet, this young Core Smith stepped onto the stage, discarded ten thousand years of flawed dualistic assumptions, and gave us the three pillars of structural domain genesis. He showed us that the physical forging itself created the vessel for the law. That insight alone advances our continental craft by a thousand years."
Xuan Yuan raised his right hand, silencing any further dispute before it could even form.
"To demand that a young craftsman solve every microscopic variable of a masterwork that the living grandmasters cannot even replicate is not rigor—it is cowardice. His analysis is incomplete because the craft is infinite. But his vision is peerless."
***
Turning toward the fifty thousand spectators packed into the caldera tiers, Sect Master Xuan Yuan drew upon the vast spiritual ley lines of Sacred Flame Peak.
*BOOM——!*
His voice boomed across the sky like rolling celestial thunder, vibrating through the bones of every cultivator present:
"By the unanimous ruling of the Judgment Council, Core Smith Mu Tie of Black Tortoise Mountain's Ironblood Faction is declared the Champion of The Annihilation Analysis Gathering!"
*DONG——!*
The ancient Ancestral Forge Bell tolled with a deep, reverberating chime that echoed across the thirty-four counties!
"Furthermore," Xuan Yuan's voice rose to an earth-shaking crescendo, "in accordance with the sacred covenant of our mountain, Black Tortoise Mountain hereby officially elevates and recognizes Mu Tie as a true **Rank 3 Master Smith** of the Demon Immortal Continent, regardless of his cultivation realm!"
*DONG——! DONG——! DONG——!*
The Ancestral Forge Bell chimed eight more times in rapid succession—nine monumental tolls in total, a sacred rite reserved exclusively for the birth of a new Master Smith!
*ROAAARRRR——!*
The entire three leagues of Sacred Flame Peak exploded into an earth-shattering roar of fifty thousand voices!
Disciples wept with delirium, master craftsmen slammed their heavy iron hammers against stone seats in rhythmic salute, and golden spirit fireworks detonated across the heavens, painting the clouds above the caldera in dazzling hues of black and gold!
A Master Smith!
On the Demon Immortal Continent, the rank of Master Smith was an almost mythical threshold, traditionally attained only by late Core Formation elders or Spirit Manifestation grandmasters after a century of grueling accumulation. To confer the title upon a young, soot-stained disciple whose profound understanding of the forging Dao completely transcended his mortal cultivation realm was an unprecedented event in the ten-thousand-year history of the continent!
"Mu Tie! Master Mu! Master Mu!"
The chants rolled across the volcanic basin like a tidal wave of thunder, shaking the very foundations of the caldera.
***
Down on the frosted platform, Fang Lin smoothed his faded grey sleeves, tucked his hands loosely before his chest, and began walking up the wide white-jade staircase toward the White Basalt Terrace.
Every eye in the continent followed his slow, unhurried ascent.
When Fang Lin reached the summit of the terrace, Sect Master Xuan Yuan and Grand Domain Smith Elder Duan stood waiting for him.
Beside them, Elder Huo stood with his massive hands trembling, tears of fierce, uncontainable pride rolling down his weathered cheeks into his thick beard. His aged chest heaved with heavy, ragged breaths. For centuries, the Ironblood Faction had been treated as the rough, unrefined brutes of the Heavenly Forge Division—capable only of crude heavy-hammering.
And now, for the first time in three hundred years, the Ironblood Faction possessed a second Master Smith alongside Elder Huo himself!
"Mu Tie," Sect Master Xuan Yuan spoke solemnly, stepping forward with an embroidered velvet tray floating upon a cushion of golden spiritual energy.
"For your peerless contribution to the forging Dao, Black Tortoise Mountain bestows upon you the victor's purse of three thousand High-Grade Spirit Stones."
Xuan Yuan gestured, and a heavy, silver-embroidered spatial storage pouch drifted gently into Fang Lin's hands.
"Second," Xuan Yuan continued, lifting a heavy medallion forged from deep-sea dark iron and thousand-year volcanic jade, inlaid with the sacred four-clawed black tortoise and nine interlocking hammers, "you are hereby granted the Master Smith Token of Black Tortoise Mountain."
Xuan Yuan placed the cold, heavy medallion into Fang Lin's palm.
"With this token, you answer only to the Sect Master and the Grand Domain Smiths. You are granted full forge sovereignty over an independent private caldera upon Sacred Flame Peak, with complete autonomy and zero division deacon oversight."
The surrounding division elders nodded in reverent agreement.
"And finally," Xuan Yuan's molten eyes gleamed with deep significance, "as a recognized Master Smith of our sect, you are granted an unrestricted annual quota to draw directly from the Deep Ancestral Resource Vaults. The ancient ore reserves, the spatial mineral veins, the sacred forging codices, and the ancient heritage archives are open to your hammer."
Fang Lin bowed his head respectfully, cupping his hands around the heavy iron medallion.
"Disciple Mu Tie thanks the Sect Master and the Grand Domain Smiths for their benevolence," Fang Lin replied, his voice calm, humble, and perfectly steady. "I will not fail the forge."
***
In the southern VIP lodge, Grand Elder Yan Lie stood in suffocating, humiliated silence.
Beside him, Huo Zhen stared down at Fang Lin holding the Master Smith token, his face the color of cold ash, his trembling hands bleeding where his fingernails had gouged his palms. The supreme glory that Scarlet Sun Palace had traveled thousands of leagues to claim had been completely seized by an ordinary, grey-robed youth from a smelting cave.
Without speaking a single word, Yan Lie swept his wide crimson sleeves, turned on his heel, and led the silent, defeated delegation of the Scarlet Sun Palace away from the balconies into the shadows of the departure arrays.
Meanwhile, on the White Basalt Terrace, Elder Huo could no longer contain himself.
The burly, iron-jawed elder lunged forward and slammed a massive, calloused hand onto Fang Lin's shoulder, shaking him with bone-rattling force as tears of triumphant laughter burst from his throat.
"Brat!" Elder Huo roared, his booming voice echoing across the terrace. "You did it! You glorious, stubborn little monster, you did it! Two Master Smiths in one faction! Let those pompous array-carvers from the Mountain-Core Division try to look down on our heavy hammers now! Hahahahaha!"
Beside him, Senior Brother Ma Teng had rushed up the terrace steps, tears streaming down his face as he bowed repeatedly to Fang Lin, stammering with incoherent joy.
Standing amidst the roaring cheers of fifty thousand cultivators, the thunderous celebrations of his faction, and the shower of golden spirit fireworks, Fang Lin held the cold Master Smith token against his chest.
Inside his soul sea, the Dark Flame Spirit was rolling atop its throne of black fire, holding its spectral ribs and howling with wild, uncontrollable laughter.
*Hahahahahahaha!* the spirit shrieked in delight, wiping tears of black flame from its eyes. *Kid, I have lived for three thousand years, but I have NEVER seen a scam as glorious as this! You forged a mace in your hole, sold it to these fools for nineteen thousand high-grade stones, entered their junior gathering, and they just handed you another three thousand stones, made you a Master Smith, and gave you the keys to their deepest ancestral vaults just for explaining your own damn hammer strikes!*
*Hahahahaha! If that old turtle Xuan Yuan ever finds out you are Senior Ashen Anvil, he might cough up three liters of blood and die on the spot!*
Fang Lin looked down at the gleaming medallion in his hand, a faint, imperceptible smile tugging at the corner of his lips.
*Let him keep his blood,* Fang Lin murmured inwardly with icy, crystalline focus. *The Master Smith token is in our hands. The private caldera is secured. And the ancestral vaults are open.*
He looked up toward the distant, smoking peaks of the ancestral mountain range.
*The spatial ores for the boat... and the secrets of the Old Vitality leaf... are finally within reach.*
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