Chapter 16: Forging Concepts, Bloodbath in the Small Town
Gengxin City truly lived up to its name as the Holy Land of Blacksmiths; the air was perennially filled with the scent of metal and charcoal fire. Towering chimneys, like the arms of giants, tirelessly spewed black smoke into the gray sky day and night. The clanging of hammers was the city's eternal background music, from the largest forging workshops to the smallest street-side blacksmith shops, where countless craftsmen shed sweat between fire and iron.
Chen Yuan (Yu Yuanchen) checked into a fairly clean and tidy inn. After settling in, he began to stroll through this city of steel, his gaze lingering mostly on the forging sites.
In his past Life, he had been quite interested in the process of tempering stubborn iron into steel and imbuing it with form and power, but he had no way to access it due to limited conditions. In this Life, although he focused on his cultivation as a Soul Master, seeing the unique forging culture of the Douluo Continent—especially recalling the miraculous forging skills of that 'Tangs eldest son' from his memories—he couldn't help but feel a sense of yearning. Since he was staying here temporarily, why not give it a try? Perhaps he could gain some new insights into power control.
He found a forging workshop with a good reputation that also recruited short-term apprentices—the "Black Rock Workshop." The owner of the workshop was a muscular man in his fifties named Shi Tie, a Soul Master at the Soul King level and a Grandmaster-rank blacksmith. His Martial Soul was the "Melting Geng Iron Hammer," which was closely related to forging. After paying a significant tuition fee, Chen Yuan became a temporary apprentice at the workshop.
Initially, Shi Tie and the other craftsmen in the workshop saw Chen Yuan's extraordinary temperament (even though he deliberately restrained it, his composure and faint air of nobility were hard to completely hide) and thought he was a scion of some great Family out to experience Life, so they didn't have high expectations. However, Chen Yuan's learning ability and the speed at which he picked up the craft left them utterly shocked.
His powerful Spiritual Power allowed him to control his strength with meticulous precision, while his robust blood vitality and Soul Power gave him endurance and explosive power far beyond ordinary people. Swinging the hammer, controlling the fire, identifying Materials... these basic skills that required years for ordinary apprentices to master were things he could do decently in just a few days. Especially regarding the control of force, every strike of the hammer was perfectly timed and weighted; he seemed to be a natural-born blacksmith.
Shi Tie watched in amazement, privately sighing to his assistant, "This kid, if he focuses solely on the path of forging, his future achievements will likely far exceed mine. Becoming a Divine Craftsman would be no problem at all."
Chen Yuan immersed himself in the World of forging, feeling the extension and changes of the metal under the hammer strikes, his mind exceptionally focused. This process of concentrating his entire strength into a single point and changing the form of matter through thousands of strikes was subtly similar to the way he refined Soul Power and compressed lightning during cultivation, giving him another layer of understanding regarding the application of power.
In the workshop, he also heard many rumors from the Spirit Master's world. The craftsmen were well-informed; merchants and Soul Masters traveling from north to south would customize or repair weapons and armor here, bringing news from all over.
One day, while he was helping Shi Tie pull the bellows, he listened to several Soul Masters waiting for their goods as they chatted.
"Have you heard? That kid Tang Chen from the Clear Sky Sect forged another divine weapon recently! It's said that the President of the Blacksmith Association personally praised him as the 'youngest Divine Craftsman on the continent'!" a Soul Master said with envy in his tone.
"Tang Chen of the Clear Sky Sect? Incredible! His innate talent is already terrifying, and his forging skills are so amazing; there will definitely be a place for him among the continent's top powerhouses in the future!"
"Divine Craftsman..." Chen Yuan's heart stirred. He not only knew the name Tang Chen from the original story but had also learned from Family intelligence and his grandfather's mouth that he was already a famous top-tier Genius of the current generation. It was just that he had been kept hidden by the Clear Sky Sect, and it seemed he had now been released for experience. He hadn't expected him to have such amazing attainments in forging as well. The title of "youngest Divine Craftsman" carried immense weight.
This further stimulated his interest in forging. He began to ask Shi Tie for more profound techniques and tried to forge some simple weapons. Seeing his extraordinarily high Comprehension Ability, Shi Tie was also happy to guide him.
However, as his studies deepened, Chen Yuan gradually discovered some problems.
The forging technology of this era seemed to have entered a misunderstanding. Craftsmen overly pursued the rarity of Materials, the ultimate quenching techniques, and the exquisite design of form, toughness, and sharpness in the finished product. They viewed the metal itself as a "dead object."
They used thousands of strikes to remove Impurities, making the metal purer and tougher, but they never thought about whether they could use some special method to make the metal "come alive" during the hammering and nurture its own "spirituality."
Chen Yuan recalled the descriptions of "Thousand Refinings," "Spirit Forging," and even "Soul Forging" in his memories. That was a completely different path—not treating metal as a tool, but as a living embryo that could grow, using the blacksmith's Soul Power, blood vitality, and even Spiritual will to nourish and awaken its inner spirituality, causing a qualitative leap.
When communicating with Shi Tie, he tried to subtly propose some ideas about "metal spirituality" and "guiding the internal."
After hearing this, Shi Tie was stunned for a moment, then laughed loudly and patted Chen Yuan's shoulder. "Kid Chen, good idea! But that is a realm that only legendary Divine Craftsmen can touch! For us mortals, being able to process Materials well and engrave Martial Soul Tool circuits smoothly to create powerful weapons and armor is already a great skill! Making metal come alive? That's just too mystical!"
Most of the other craftsmen in the workshop also agreed, thinking Chen Yuan was being whimsical.
Chen Yuan fell silent. He realized that the forging System of this era had solidified; craftsmen had walked the existing path of pursuing "utility" for too long and lacked that mindset of "enlightening Life." Perhaps a few top craftsmen had touched the threshold, but they had not formed a systematic theory or method. The current highest skill was roughly equivalent to the level of "Thousand Refinings" in later generations; perhaps more exquisite and complex in technique, but the essence remained unchanged.
"Perhaps... this path is the correct one? It's just that no one has successfully walked it yet?" Chen Yuan thought to himself. But he soon shook his head, suppressing this tempting thought.
He wasn't Tang Chen; he didn't have that much energy to be distracted by other things. His Foundation was the path of a Soul Master, the power of lightning, and Bloodline evolution. Forging, to him, was currently just an interest, an auxiliary training for power control. Perhaps in the future, when his cultivation reached a Bottleneck and he possessed a long lifespan, he could try to research and open this new path, but for now, he must not neglect the essentials for the sake of the trivial.
Having thought this through, his enthusiasm for forging cooled down a bit. Continuing to stay in the workshop would only be repetitive technical practice, which offered limited help to his core cultivation.
A few days later, he bid farewell to Shi Tie and thanked him for his teaching. Although Shi Tie felt it was a pity, he did not force him to stay.
Leaving the workshop, Chen Yuan began to inquire about places suitable for training. He quickly locked onto his target—the Savage Beast Hills.
According to the gathered information, the Savage Beast Hills were located in the west-central part of the Star Luo Empire and were a vast area with an extremely high density of Soul Beasts. The most prominent feature was that the Soul Beasts there generally had low intelligence; even Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts mostly acted on instinct, lacking the wisdom a normal Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beast should have. Furthermore, the Soul Beasts there increased their cultivation extremely quickly before reaching adulthood, but once they matured, their cultivation speed would plummet, becoming more than ten times slower than Soul Beasts outside. This resulted in a significant number of Thousand-Year and Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts in the hills, but almost no Soul Beasts with top-tier Bloodlines or Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts; it seemed that those top-tier Soul Beasts with wisdom actively left the area. Moreover, they were extremely vengeful; if you hunted a Soul Beast and ran away quickly, it was fine, but once they entangled you, it was extremely difficult to escape.
The Spirit Master's world had various speculations about this. Some believed there was a natural force field that suppressed intelligence, while others guessed that rare minerals affecting the minds of Soul Beasts were buried underground. Even Titled Douluos had explored deep within but found nothing. Regardless, this place had become an excellent training ground—the quality of Soul Beasts was not low, the quantity was sufficient, and they lacked wisdom, making the danger controllable. It could be called a "high-end version of the Spirit Hunting Forest."
"It's perfect for me to consolidate my cultivation, temper my combat skills, and collect some Soul Beast Materials," Chen Yuan made his decision.
He delayed no longer, and after replenishing his supplies, he left Gengxin City and headed toward the Savage Beast Hills.
Leaving the city and stepping into the wilderness again, Chen Yuan felt a familiar sense of freedom. He still maintained his vigilance, his electric field perception acting like an invisible radar, scanning everything around him.
A few days later, he passed through a small town located on the edge of the Savage Beast Hills. Looking from afar, the town was dead silent; he couldn't even see the usual cooking smoke. In the air, a faint, elusive scent of blood wafted over.
Chen Yuan's heart tightened; he slowed his pace and quietly approached.
When he stepped into the town entrance, the scene before him made his pupils shrink, and a surge of cold fury instantly rose from the bottom of his heart!
Broken walls and debris, charred wooden beams still smoldering with blue smoke. On the streets and inside the houses, solidified dark red bloodstains and scattered, fragmented corpses could be seen everywhere. Men, women, the elderly, children... no one was spared. The entire town, not even a chicken or dog left, had been slaughtered clean!
The intense silence and the smell of blood were almost nauseating.
Chen Yuan suppressed his anger and carefully examined the scene. Most of the wounds on the corpses were hideous and terrifying, looking as if they had been torn by sharp claws and fangs, while some bore obvious marks of blunt force trauma and biting. On some of the claw marks, he felt a faint residue of sinister Soul Power.
"This was not done by human Soul Masters..." Chen Yuan's gaze was cold as he searched for more clues. Soon, on the muddy ground at the outskirts of the town, he found some peculiar footprints—neither wolf nor human, with deep claw marks, carrying a violent aura.
At the same time, a disgusting fluctuation of Soul Power, mixed with a rank and evil scent, still lingered in the air.
A term instantly jumped into Chen Yuan's mind—Wolftaken!
He had seen records of Wolftaken in the Family archives. These were half-human, half-wolf monsters produced by the union of certain evil Soul Masters and the Soul Beast "Storm Devil Wolf." They inherited the speed and strength of the Storm Devil Wolf, as well as the cunning and cruelty of humans. They were bloodthirsty by nature and took pleasure in slaughter and plunder; wherever they went, not a blade of grass would remain. Wolftaken usually acted in groups, led by the strongest "Wolf Bandit Leader," and their strength was not to be underestimated.
Looking at this hellish tragedy and imagining the fear and despair of those innocent civilians before they died, the anger in Chen Yuan's chest could no longer be suppressed. Although he practiced hiding his brilliance for self-preservation, the pride of the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan flowing in his bones and the sense of justice in his heart made it impossible for him to turn a blind eye to such atrocities!
"Beasts!" he cursed in a low voice, purple lightning flickering in his eyes.
He closed his eyes, combining his powerful Spiritual Power and electric field perception to carefully distinguish the evil aura remaining in the air and the direction of those Wolftaken footprints on the ground.
The traces were still fresh; they couldn't have left very long ago!
Without any hesitation, Chen Yuan moved, turning into a blurred gray shadow. Following the traces left by the Wolftaken, he sped away like the most sensitive hunter!
A cold killing intent permeated around him. This sudden encounter had to end in the most brutal way.