In the Illustrious Virtue Hall, Xiao Li stood covered in golden light. Six black stones were placed in a hexagon on the floor around her.
Jing Hongchen, Xiao Hongchen and Meng Hongchen all watched as Xiao Li was bathed in golden light.
She suddenly raised her right hand and a flame that resembled a blooming red plum blossom appeared.
With the appearance of the flame, the temperature in the hall also rose sharply.
"The Ultimate Fire?!" Jing Hongchen's eyes widened in surprise before his expression became ecstatic.
"No. My Red Plum Meteor Flame is a mid-class flame. But it has a higher burning temperature than other mid-class flames. If I can find a way to promote it to a high-class flame, the temperature will be even higher. At that time, my martial spirit won't be worse than the Ultimate Fire."
"Since you've awakened your martial spirit, why don't you try to make a spirit guidance device."
"Okay." Xiao Li nodded eagerly and skipped over to Jing Hongchen's metal collection.
"Flaming Sun Iron?" Jing Hongchen raised an eyebrow when he saw Xiao Li pick a piece of dark-red rare metal and with a scorching aura.
Flaming Sun Iron was a metal that was only produced deep within volcanoes. It's ranked as one of the top five rarest metals.
The Red Plum Meteor Flame displayed its might by quickly calcining a small strip of the Flaming Sun Iron.
Instead of swinging the forging hammers down like normal blacksmiths, the two hammers hung above the piece of Flaming Sun Iron and she was using only her wrists to control them, striking the piece of heavy silver with one delicate hammer blow after another.
Xiao Li's hammers drummed against the piece of Flaming Sun Iron in a light yet consistent manner.
Jing Hongchen watched in puzzlement as he watched Xiao Li forge. This was the first time he saw someone use two hammers to forge metal.
Xiao Li's wrists were moving extremely quickly, resulting in a rapid string of light clangs that almost stretched into a single continuous sound. What was even more remarkable was that this drumming was extremely rhythmic and pleasing to the ears, as if she were playing a musical instrument.
Her hammers were moving so quickly that a series of afterimages were being left in their wake, completely enshrouding the piece of Flaming Sun Iron. At this moment, Xiao Li resembled a sculptor more than a blacksmith and she seemed to be carefully carving the piece of metal into her masterpiece.
If she wanted to bring out all of the true characteristics in a piece of metal, or in other words, to elevate it and bestow upon it life, then she had to retain its original unique characteristics and ensure that she didn't damage it.
When she first began forging in her past life, she would always forge metals by directly purifying them before refining them. However, Xiao Li realized that metals themselves possessed souls, even prior to undergoing spirit refinement. Each and every piece of uncommon metal was like a living creature, and if excessively heavy hammer blows were used during the purification process, that would inevitably inflict damage to the body of the piece of metal. Different methods could be used to strengthen the piece of metal later on, but irreversible damage had already been done at that point, and there was no way to forge the piece of metal to the extreme.
As such, if one wanted to forge a piece of uncommon metal to perfection, then they had to carefully and delicately refine it in the beginning.
An analogy could be drawn here to the human body. If a person had impurities in one of their meridians, that meridian could be compressed vigorously to expel the impurities by force. However, doing so would inevitably damage the meridian to a certain extent. If a more gentle and subtle method were to be used instead to gradually clear out the meridian, then the impurities could be refined, thereby clearing the meridian, while the meridian itself remained completely unscathed.
During the forging process, she took extreme care in controlling her forging hammers, almost caressing the piece of Flaming Sun Iron rather than striking it. Furthermore, with each hammer blow that struck the piece of heavy silver, she injected a wisp of her Red Plum Meteor Flame aura into the metal so it could develop a better sense of her aura.
During the purification process, it was often the case that some good things would also be expelled along with the impurities, but she had been able to completely avoid that.
Around 15 minutes later, a burst of dazzling red light suddenly erupted upward, and the sound of a gentle breeze also rang out with the emergence of that light.
That streak of red light was like a small seed sprouting and growing rapidly into a towering tree, rising up into the heavens.
Xiao Li's face was pale after forging for an hour. Her spirit power had also depleted during the process.
Taking a milk bottle, she quietly absorbed the spirit power stored inside.
After recovering, Xiao Li began to carve the formation on a small piece of the Flaming Sun Iron. With the rest of the metal, a small pendant in the shape of a rising phoenix was created.
"Wow. So pretty." Meng Hongchen stared at the pendant with starry eyes.
"I carved a level 3 formation on it. It can be used to defend and unleash a counterattack." Xiao Li studied the pendant in her hands. Perhaps it was because of the delicate forging process, the Flaming Sun Iron was no longer dark red but a golden red color.