"What are you waiting for, Junior Brother?! Sect Contribution Points don't grow on trees—get moving, the longer you wait the harder it'll be to temper!"
Zhao Ziwei was already raring to go beside him. He shot Mo Fan a conspiratorial look, eyes gleaming with excitement in the crimson glow of the earth-fire below.
Before the words had even finished leaving his mouth, the fire-attribute Mana inside Zhao Ziwei's body surged to life with a deep thrum.
Hum—!
A layer of pale red spiritual fire wrapped around both his hands and wrists in an instant—like a pair of invisible flame gauntlets.
"Up!"
Zhao Ziwei let out a sharp shout. That hundred-jin hammer of refined black iron, in his grip, moved like a toy—he swung it in a wide arc that set the air howling with heat.
CLANG——!!
The hammer crashed into the dark-red raw sword blank. Sparks erupted in all directions. The deep, bone-rattling impact mixed with a sharp metallic ring, and the temperature inside the inner hall seemed to climb another few degrees.
Strike after strike, without pause.
Watching Zhao Ziwei's practiced, fluid technique, Mo Fan quietly swallowed.
No wonder he used to run with the Main Peak crowd. That's genuine forging skill.
"Alright... I need to actually do something. Can't just stand here watching."
Mo Fan drew a breath, stepped forward, and closed one hand around the handle of the refined iron hammer at his station.
The moment he lifted it, his brow furrowed slightly.
Something's off.
The hammer was heavier than it should have been—unusually so. And it wasn't just the weight. The thing was radiating a faint but remarkably concentrated pulse of energy.
The dark-red ore mass in front of him had something similar—a strange pull, like a subtle gravity.
There's more to this hammer and this ore than meets the eye.
Mo Fan's mind stirred. He stood before the towering ore mass, used the motion of wiping sweat from his brow as cover, and quietly narrowed his eyes.
"[ Death Vision ]. On."
Hum.
The world drained of color, shifting into the familiar monochrome of his undead sight.
But this time—now that he'd crossed into Tier-2—the data floating in his field of vision was completely different from anything he'd seen before.
Mo Fan's pupils contracted to pinpoints.
There, hovering over the black iron hammer in his hand and the raw ore mass before him, were lines of System text that had never appeared before:
[ Refined Ore — Quality: Excellent ]
[ Tier-2 Weapon: Star-Shattering Hammer ]
[ Quality: Good ]
[ Skill Slot: Empty ]
[ Passive: Unactivated ]
And below those base attributes—in the exact same position that had shown nothing but garbled characters and black boxes when he'd inspected the [ Pale Bone Scepter ] back at Tier-1—the upgraded Tier-2 access permissions now rendered a few perfectly legible words:
[ Unactivated Set Attribute: Heavenly Works Tempering ]
"A SET?!"
The silent shout nearly escaped his throat. The hand gripping the Star-Shattering Hammer trembled violently.
The System had unlocked an Equipment Panel and Set Attributes upon reaching Tier-2!
His mind immediately leapt to the Pale Bone Scepter sitting in his storage bag—the one he'd assembled himself from a giant bear's femur. He remembered it clearly: at the very bottom of the scepter's attribute list, there had been a line of flickering garbled text. [ Unactivated █████ ].
Which means... the Pale Bone Scepter I built also has a Set Attribute?!
The discovery hit him like a wave—elation and shock crashing over him simultaneously.
Breathe. Stay calm.
Mo Fan forcefully pushed the surge of thoughts back down. He glanced around the hall. No one had noticed his momentary lapse.
This was not the time to dig into System mechanics and Set Attributes. He was standing right under the Forging Hall's nose on the Main Peak. One slip and the consequences would be severe.
If you're going to play a role, play it all the way through.
"Up."
Mo Fan flicked his wrist. The Star-Shattering Hammer rose in one hand.
To avoid drawing suspicion, he kept it simple—silently circulated his body-forging technique, driving his blood energy into a roaring surge throughout his body.
At the same time, hidden beneath the wide sleeve of his robe, a thin but incredibly dense layer of [ Bone Armament LV. 2 ] wrapped silently around the bones of both hands and wrists.
His strength multiplied geometrically in that instant.
Mo Fan planted his feet, twisted from the waist, and raised the Star-Shattering Hammer high.
CLANG——!!!
The impact was several times heavier than Zhao Ziwei's—the kind of blow that nearly shook the dust loose from the rafters of the inner hall.
The hammer came down on the five-cubic-meter ore mass like a verdict.
That's solid.
The shockwave that traveled back through the handle into Mo Fan's palms was intense. But brute force was the ultimate equalizer—one overwhelming strike to break all techniques!
With the Bone Armament reinforcing his skeleton and his peak Copper Skin physique behind every blow, Mo Fan's arms became a merciless, precision pile-driver.
His movements weren't large. They were almost mechanical. But the speed and force behind each strike left dark afterimages trailing through the air.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
A relentless, torrential barrage of metallic thunder filled the deepest corner of the Forging Hall, building into a deafening storm of sound.
Impurities and waste material were blasted free from the ore body under Mo Fan's unreasonable, purely physical force—shaken loose like fine sand, sent flying in all directions.
The temperature inside the hall kept climbing. Earth-fire blazed. Heat rolled in waves.
The hammering went on from noon straight until the sun touched the western horizon.
When the last sliver of evening light fell across the threshold of the hall—
"Hah—"
Mo Fan let out a long breath of hot, heavy air. His clothes were soaked through with sweat. He set the Star-Shattering Hammer down against the platform with a dull thud.
On the forging platform before him—
The dark-red ore mass that had stood over ten feet tall and filled five cubic meters of space was gone.
In its place, resting quietly on the platform surface, was a flying sword blank—roughly three feet in length, translucent dark red throughout, without a single impurity.
It lay there like a piece of natural crystal, catching the last of the sunset and refracting it into a halo of dizzying light.
Mission accomplished.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
The Forging Hall Deacon arrived right on schedule, roster in hand, and strolled over to the two forging stations.
He looked at Zhao Ziwei's sword blank first, stroking his beard with approval. He knew Zhao Ziwei's work—the technique was solid, the heat control precise. Nothing to complain about.
Then he stepped over to Mo Fan's station and looked at the sword blank there.
His old face went completely still.
"This... this..."
The Deacon rubbed his eyes. He stared at the three-foot sword blank, not even noticing when the roster slipped from his fingers and hit the floor.
"This level of purity... this density... you didn't use any spiritual energy?"
He snapped his head up and stared at Mo Fan—drenched in sweat, but standing perfectly straight—like a man looking at something that shouldn't exist.
He could see it clearly. This sword blank had been produced through nothing but sheer, terrifying physical force pushed to the extreme—every gap, every impurity squeezed out like water being wrung from a cloth!
This was the true meaning of great skill requiring no artifice.
The Deacon wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. He looked at Mo Fan's sweat-soaked frame, the hard-cut bronze muscle defined sharply in the heat haze, and felt something in his worldview quietly crack.
Could it be... that the crude path of body cultivation, when pushed to the extreme, truly possesses such terrifying potential?!
"Deacon, can we settle up?" Mo Fan wiped the sweat from his face, revealing a smile that was thoroughly honest, even a little naive.
"Y-yes! We can!"
The Deacon wiped his own forehead and hurriedly drew two large red circles next to both names on the roster.
"One hundred Sect Contribution Points each—that's your reward! Furthermore..."
He looked at Mo Fan's guileless face, his mood considerably elevated. A sword blank of this top quality would greatly improve the Forging Hall's performance metrics next quarter.
Mo Fan's eyeballs, however, had already drifted—quietly, quickly—to the edge of the forging platform.
To those small piles of ore fragments and waste material waiting to be disposed of.
"Deacon." Mo Fan scratched the back of his head with a slightly sheepish air. "These scraps that got knocked off..."
He pointed at the small heap of broken ore—material that, by regulation, would be tossed into the earth-fire for disposal.
"Could I... take a little bit back? As a souvenir?"
"The waste material?"
The Deacon froze for a moment, then glanced at the pile and burst into hearty laughter.
"I thought you were going to ask for something serious! These are just the shattered depletions anyway—since you two did such outstanding work today, take these things to play with!"
With a grand wave of his hand, the old man was extremely generous. In fact, to demonstrate the sect's magnanimity, he had someone from the back storehouse pack a full one hundred kilograms of raw waste material for each of them!
"Thank you, Deacon! Many thanks!"
Mo Fan cradled the heavy bundle of material, his eyes nearly squeezed shut with the force of his smile.
Broken ore it might be—but to him, this was priceless research material!
Free loot secured!
Night fell. Stars filled the sky.
The great red flying sword powered up again at the edge of the Main Peak's outer plaza.
"Get on, Xiaoqi! Big brother's taking you—oh HELL——!!"
Zhao Ziwei had barely stepped onto the sword when Mo Fan climbed on behind him.
CREAK——!!
The sword lurched violently, blade shuddering several times in midair, nearly stalling out on the spot.
Zhao Ziwei's face went as pale as paper. He gripped the hilt for dear life, feeling as though he'd just taken on a cargo truck loaded with solid lead bricks.
Mo Fan had both arms locked around Zhao Ziwei's waist, clutching the hundred-kilogram bundle of premium black iron ore fragments against his chest, a deeply satisfied smile on his face.
He was already highly dense on his own. Now he'd added two hundred jin of raw black iron on top of that.
Putt... putt-putt-putt...
The great red flying sword wobbled through the night sky at less than a tenth of its earlier speed—like a severely overloaded second-hand vehicle grinding forward through a cold headwind, barely staying airborne.
In the freezing night wind—
Came the sound of Zhao Ziwei's grief-stricken voice, raw with the agony of a man burning through his True Yuan at a catastrophic rate:
"XIAOQI——!!"
"ARE YOU MADE OF FUCKING LEAD WEIGHTS?!"