novelraw Chapter 118 - 117 - Core Creation
Chapter 118 - 117 - Core Creation
Lind woke up to a face he had not seen in over 2 weeks. Sapphire and gold hair draped over his right arm as a cute face drooled onto his skin. Her soft breathing was as adorable as ever but Lind used his left hand to pat her head gently.
This movement woke her up as she wiped her mouth and looked around groggily before seeing Lind looking at her with a smile. Her eyes snapped open and then embraced him in a bone crushing hug.
"LIND!" He laughed and patted her on the back. He had just exhausted himself but he froze as he realized his elemental cores had progressed significantly. His 6 cores were now solidly in the mid-9th tier of Soul Realm! How?!
"I am ok, Annabelle, I am perfectly ok." Lind felt her arms tighten, which he did not think was possible before a woman came in from the curtain around his bed. She had sparkling white hair with elfin features on her pale skin. Her eyes were a vibrant pink but she was not an albino from what Lind could tell.
Her lithe body was not hidden by the white robes she wore but the emblem told Lind where he was, he just did not know why. He was in the Heavenly Maiden Sect, so what had happened after he passed out?
"I am glad you are finally awake, young man. Our young acolyte here would not leave no matter how I asked her to until you woke up." Lind felt Annabelle crying but looked confused up at the woman. "You have been out for 3 days."
Shock flooded his body. Why was he out for 3 days? If he had exhausted himself, then he definitely would be out for a night, but that did not explain why he was out for so long. He went into his memory and found it was very fuzzy.
He vaguely remembered that after he lost his temper, he allowed his Qi to do what it wanted and felt victory. Had he truly completed the sword? Lind kept reassuring Annabelle who refused to let him go as he kept examining his memory.
"I am not normally assigned to the patients here, but you are a special case. I am Elder Lee. I am in charge of the healing arts in this branch." Lind bowed low and was heartened that they made an elder take care of him but he still wanted to know why his tempering had moved but his foundation did not.
"May I know what happened to me?" Lind's words only made Annabelle cry some more but she was calming down. He felt her loosen a bit but she did not let go of him. Lind looked to the elder and awaited some answers.
"At first, it was believed you had just exhausted yourself, but Master Cain had World Eyes and saw your cores were advancing while you recovered. As he could not explain it and knew you had brought this young lass here, he took a chance to reach out to us." Lind was now fully confused. He had advanced before but as he reached the latter tiers of the Soul Realm, a massive amount of elemental Qi was needed.
Even when he was fighting for his very existence in the trap Ruin, he had barely advanced from tier 8 to 9 in tempering. It had been insane circumstances but he knew for sure he had come nowhere near such a massive amount of Qi. So what had pushed him that far?
He had no answers but he was interested in comparing notes with Master Cain on his Eyes. Lind had pushed his to the Sky Realm. While his Eyes did not suffer damage looking at Grade 4 formations, his mind still hurt as he could not fully comprehend what he was seeing.
He wondered if being in the same realm for foundation and Eyes made a different result. Lind pushed it back for now and focused on what he had heard. He had done something when working on the sword that channeled all the Qi in his body to exhaustion but then also tempered his cores to mid-9th tier of the Soul Realm.
"Was there any strange incidents 3 days ago around the time I passed out?" Lind needed more data and he was surprised to see both Annabelle and the elder nod.
"I felt something pull me, Lind. I felt like my dantian was singing and it felt wonderful!" Annabelle smiled as it was clearly a pleasant memory.
"She was not the only one. Everyone in something like a day's walk experienced something similar. Many felt like their bottlenecks loosened or something they were stuck on was suddenly simple." Lind recognized the description. It was a much larger scale, but he had heard that when his harmony was let loose, it seemed to invigorate other cultivators.
If he was controlling the process, Lind had seen the results as Bord in the Divine Sword Sect had benefited as their 2 harmonies seemed to encourage each other. Lind knew one thing though, was that he still needed power. His capacity was nowhere near enough to reach that kind of distance.
Lind summoned his emerald flame. It was vibrant and danced happily yet did not burn. It was the mystery that tripped up every 6 elemental cultivators but his harmony was different. His harmony seems to encourage or help guide others on their path but he had never been able to understand how.
The study of the flames created by 6 elemental cultivators was spotty, if he was being generous, and his color was not recorded anywhere. Lind knew it had to do with his harmony that his tempering sometimes increased unexpectedly during the creation of elixirs or the other adventures he had been through.
His talent as an innate cultivator was always a game of tug of war of repressing its intent to progress his foundation as quickly as possible once it stabilized and his need to keep it below his elemental tempering.
Lind laid back and tried to trace his memory to what had supplied such a result but nothing made sense.
"If you feel better tomorrow, you are free to return to your work." Lind nodded but felt he would have greater trouble leaving than he did before as Annabelle held onto his arm like steel. He smiled as he patted her head to comfort her as he caught up with her.
****
Lind stretched as he came back to the Sunlit Forge but noticed the apprentices looking at him oddly. It was not disdain or any degrading kind of look, more like awe. He did not like it but since no one did more than look, he stopped worrying about it.
He ascended up to the 2nd floor of the forge and found Master Cain guiding a flow of molten metal into a glowing mold. Lind saw it was a halberd or maybe a spear shaft from what he could see. A glaive was designed to be swung around more while the other two or meant to pierce more so had a more sturdy shaft versus the flexible glaive.
Lind waited until Master Cain had finished the current step and the distribution to fill the mold fully. He coughed and Cain waved at him with a smile. An elder took over the purifying step as the metal cooled.
"Welcome back lad! How are you feeling?" Lind smiled and shrugged. He showed his elemental Qi easily flowing but all that showed was he was back in control. "Good, I am glad there was no issue. Those women in the sect are miracle workers."
Lind did not bother commenting as he knew many cultivators underestimated the Heavenly Maidens even if they do not intend to. Such a compliment was far better to Lind's mind but he was more interested in the sword he worked on.
"How was the sword?" Lind asked and saw a strange look pass over Cain's face. He waved him to follow and they ascended all the way to the 4th floor. The 3rd floor was the supply floor where ores, beast parts, and any unique ingredients were stored safely for use in forging.
The 4th floor was the living quarters of Master Cain and his personal apprentices. A few elders also held rooms here if they were in the middle of a project.
Inside a rather cluttered room, Lind smiled at the homey feel as he saw several scrolls laid out near sparkling ores to weapons partially disassembled. There were jade slips on some shelves but they were clearly in a 'special' organization as they were simply piled together.
Lind noticed the large stone desk had a broadsword laid on it that he recognized. He was confused as the commission should have long come to pick up the sword if it worked. Did that mean he had been wrong? He resisted reaching out with his senses but Cain picked up the sword to hand to him.
"See for yourself." Lind infused his Qi into the blade carefully to avoid any backlash but felt nothing. His Qi freely flowed into the blade as easily as his staff! He was stunned as he saw each element seem to mimic the effects of inscriptions but he also noted it exceeded the capacity of inscriptions possible on a simple grade 2 blade.
"How is this possible?" Lind saw Cain shrug but then beckon him to follow.
"We made a new blade and gave that to the commission and I swore all the apprentices to secrecy. I want you to try something else based on what Poe said." Cain led him back to the 3rd floor where beast cores were kept. After collecting a few, he had Lind follow him down to the 2nd floor.
There was a different kind of forge on that floor. Instead of the metal ore side and weapon purifying side, this one had intricate formations around what seemed to be almost a cauldron like his mother used but was very different.
A pill cauldron was similar to a pasta pan on Earth in size while allowing for steam to escape via the lid. This cauldron was open and had the interior mostly full with slots for the cores Cain had brought. In the center was a spherical hollow that looked very familiar.
"This, lad, is how to make a weapon core. You need a beast core of similar elements or if necessary, a shard of elements but that can be harder to forge." Cain dropped the 3 cores, that were mono-elemental, into slots and then added some powders to the remaining slots. Lind recognized crystal powder but not the source.
Lind then saw Cain put a small array plate in the spherical hollow. He recognized it as the array that connected the elements to the inscriptions. He had assumed the refiners inscribed it later but now he realized it was part of the core creation from the start.
"Watch me." Cain fired the forge to life as heat rose but Lind saw it was not simply melting the ingredients. The crystal powder liquified, but the cores simply cracked and the heart of each core was pulled out to follow the channels towards the hollow.
It was very delicate Qi manipulation and Lind could see the cauldron was doing most of the work. Lind was stunned that the core of the artifacts and weapons he had seen over the course of his life was so delicate and complicated to create.
Hours passed until a bright flash went off and a pale sphere was happily flowing with 3 elements the size of a large marble. Lind looked at it and again instantly understood the core as he had the first.
"The sword up there, despite fully working, has no core lad." Lind froze. What?! The sword that now had 6 aspects added to it by him no longer had a core? Where did it go? "I have seen a lot of amazing creations over 3 centuries but I have never seen a grade 2 blade that had no core work before. I want you to work here for the next week and see if you can make cores."
Lind understood. Cain wanted to see what would happen if Lind worked on cores. He nodded and began to listen as Cain described the process for grade 2 cores. He was curious how the future would go as he kept looking at the freshly completed core.