I have added this story to my Patreon. You can support me and read the latest chapters there. It also fed and motivate me to write more chapters!
Patreon Link: Patreon.com/NineClouds69
--- Chapter 490 ---
Han Yuan brought the dark-gold Meteor hammer down one last time, the heavy impact ringing out with a final, definitive thud.
He squinted his eyes as the compressed, visibly smaller Heavy Silver let out a weird, harmonic cry, releasing a brilliant surge of pure silver light that illuminated the entire room.
He knew exactly what this signified. In a single, brief, interrupted session, he had successfully pushed the Heavy Silver past its limits to achieve an excellent Thousand Refinements.
At this exact moment, his practical capability was already no less than that of an official Rank 2 Blacksmith.
Zhen Hua stood frozen, his mind still shocked from the sheer absurdity of the sight. Hurriedly shaking off his trance, he stepped forward, grabbing Han Yuan's small hands before turning his intense gaze onto the finished piece resting on the anvil.
"Xiao Yuan... You... Do you even realize what you've done? You genuinely have the potential to become a Divine Craftsman. A peak master, just like me!"
"Hmm, really?" Han Yuan tilted his head to the side, blinking innocently as he effortlessly put on the facade of a naive, clueless child. "I am actually so awesome?!"
Zhen Hua nodded with brimming fervor. "Yes! On your very first attempt at forging, you didn't just succeed in a basic Hundred Refinements. You also pushed straight through to a flawless Thousand Refinements."
"Without a doubt, you are now the youngest Rank 2 Blacksmith to ever exist in the history of the continent!"
Pausing, the Divine Craftsman took a deep breath, deliberately hardening his wild excitement to adopt a stern, mentoring tone. "But... you must not allow yourself to grow arrogant, Xiao Yuan."
"Remember, the path of a Blacksmith is truly limitless. Every single strike of the hammer is a sacred act of molding the ordinary into something far greater... Do you understand this well?"
Han Yuan nodded obediently, his face a picture of pure docility. "Mhm, I will remember it, Grandpa Zhen."
Sighing in immense relief, Zhen Hua carefully picked up the still-radiant, warm block of Heavy Silver. He extended his sensitive physical touch, his refined spirit energy, and his vast spiritual power into the silver metal's structure.
To his utter puzzlement, the internal structure was completely, flawlessly free of a single impurity.
'Such immaculate purity... such a high Spirit Energy conductivity.' If Zhen Hua hadn't watched the entire process happen right before his own eyes, nothing on the Douluo Continent could have convinced him that a six-year-old child had forged this.
Han Yuan, however, was merely looking at the metal with a side-eye. With the vast knowledge embedded in his mind, he knew he could improve the process further.
Looking up at the old master, he asked, "Grandpa Zhen, can you teach me how to forge an alloy next?"
"Ah, well... yes, let me show you, Xiao Yuan," Zhen Hua replied, composing his shattered dignity and offering a warm smile.
"First, you must read the elemental temperaments of the metal. You need to align them like this..."
"And then... seamlessly fuse them under the hammer like this."
Han Yuan listened with firm attention. Sure enough, a mere five minutes later, he was already standing before the dark anvil again, working with a freshly heated, glowing mass.
It was a compound of the Heavy Silver he had forged earlier and a dense, volatile ore known as Star Sinking Copper.
Zhen Hua watched in breathless anticipation, unconsciously tugging at his chin as Han Yuan began executing the steps for the next major milestone: Spirit Forging.
It was a stage typically reserved exclusively for elite Rank 3 and Rank 4 Grandmaster Blacksmiths. Furthermore, this specific phase served as an insurmountable bottleneck for the vast majority of professionals across the Federation.
Spirit Forging, often profoundly referred to as Spirit Bestowal, didn't just require a blacksmith to 'physically' refine a metal. Yes, it also demanded that they extend their own mental consciousness into the material to awaken a dormant, living spirit within its core.
Fortunately, Han Yuan was prepared for this. When Zhen Hua, Mu Ye, and Han Tianyi had tested the boy's spiritual power the day before, they had been utterly dumbfounded to find that his mental strength had already broken into the Spiritual Sea Realm with a numerical value of 567.
In truth, Han Yuan had severely suppressed his true spiritual power. His actual spiritual power was already hovering a mere step away from the terrifying thresholds of the Spiritual Abyss Realm.
A spiritual power so monstrous that it would have completely broken the elders' sanity had they known, because even with his own extremely suppressed spiritual power, a spiritual capacity of 567 meant that a six-year-old child could contract a formidable ten-thousand-year-old Spirit Soul as his very first companion.
Ultimately, with that immense reservoir of mental power backing him, Han Yuan initiated the Spirit Forging process.
However, instead of taking the orthodox route, which involved hammering out the impurities over hours of grueling, continuous labor, he decided to use one of his talents.
His innate talent: Devouring All Things!
A power capable of conceptually consuming anything in existence could, naturally, devour the impurities within a metal.
Right before Zhen Hua's widening eyes, a bizarre, microscopic, brownish-black spatial distortion manifested tightly around Han Yuan's left hand.
As the boy swung the dark-gold hammer, the small distortion seamlessly swallowed the tiny 'dust' and flaws rising from the alloy. With every single strike, the metal grew rapidly purer and denser at a speed that defied the laws of forging.
"W-What in the world..." Zhen Hua stuttered, his professional composure shattering for the second time today.
"Is that... the power of Devouring?! Xiao Yuan is actually devouring the alloy's impurities directly! He's maximizing the refinement speed and efficiency with it!"
"And look at that... the devouring force is actually drawing the two distinct elemental frequencies together, forcing the alloy to undergo Spirit Forging at a faster rate!"
Within moments, the two entirely different metals merged into a flawless, unified metal. The resulting alloy transformed into a beautiful, starry silver metal with a clean, mirror-like finish, launching a towering pillar of radiant spiritual light that shot upward, nearly touching the reinforced ceiling of the workshop.
As the forging reached its peak, Han Yuan concluded the ritual by biting his finger and letting a single, potent drop of his own blood fall onto the glowing surface.
However, due to the unique, god-blessed nature of his physical lineage, the moment his blood touched the metal, the silver alloy underwent a secondary, spontaneous evolution that also bound him.
"..."
Zhen Hua could only stare blankly at the glowing metal as his mind was completely blank. Han Yuan had not only achieved a Spirit Forging on his first attempt, but the spiritual energy radiating from the final product was stronger than some Spirit-Forged metals Zhen Hua himself had created during his younger years.
He wasn't just or anything. He was simply dumbfounded.
"Wait... something is extremely wrong about this..." The Divine Craftsman murmured, his legs moving on instinct as he approached the starry silver block.
Expanding his immense spiritual power, Zhen Hua carefully scanned the internal composition of the freshly forged metal. The moment his spiritual energy pierced the surface, his eyes almost popped out of his skull. The spirit energy conductivity was entirely off the charts.
100% efficiency? No. That was the maximum limit for standard perfection.
This impossible alloy had actually achieved the impossible 105% Spirit Energy Conductivity!
It was a completely flawless, perfect material for the making of two-word, no, even three-word Battle Armor and advanced Mechas.
To people with no knowledge, a mere five-percent increase beyond 100% might have seemed trivial. But in the high-stakes reality of combat, that 5% was a fatal, life-shifting difference.
It didn't just ensure a perfectly frictionless flow of soul power through the armor or mecha. It actively amplified the raw potency of the user's soul skills, martial soul attributes, and bloodline energy.
If two Spirit Masters having nearly identical martial souls, spirit skills, and cultivation bases engaged in a duel to the death.
One wore Battle Armor forged from typical 100% Spirit-Forged Metal, no, even less than 100% nowadays, and the other wore armor composed from Han Yuan's 105% alloy, the latter would utterly destroy the former with overwhelming, effortless superiority.
Looking at the glowing, starry metal, Zhen Hua turned his gaze toward the innocent-looking six-year-old boy. For the first time in his life, the Divine Craftsman felt a spine-chilling sense of wonder toward a member of the younger generation.
This boy wasn't just a genius. He was a monster!
"Um, Xiao Yuan... remember, do not tell others about this achievement of yours... A 105% conductive spirit energy metal is just too shocking," Zhen Hua warned sternly, his tone dead serious.
"Oh, okay!" Han Yuan nodded with knowing gravity.
Zhen Hua let out a low chuckle that rapidly developed into a heavy burst of ecstatic laughter. "Haha... Hahaha... The world is about to give birth to another Divine Craftsman!"
"Shut the fuck up! What the hell are you laughing about, Old Metal?!" Mu Ye stormed into the workshop, looking annoyed.
Zhen Hua merely grinned widely at the newcomer. "Old Mu, let me tell you about Han Yuan... He has the potential to become a Divine Craftsman! No, he might even completely surpass me in the future!"
"W-What... the fuck? Are you serious?!" Mu Ye froze upon hearing Zhen Hua's comment.
He then listened intently to Zhen Hua's frantic explanation before gazing at Han Yuan as if he were looking at a terrifying little monster in the making. "You kid... why the hell are you making us so shocked and worried all the fucking time?!"
Han Yuan casually scratched his cheek, looking totally innocent. "Uh... I don't know. I just felt like I could do it."
"..."
Zhen Hua and Mu Ye could only gaze at him in speechlessness.