After refining thousands of swords with the Ice-Fire Divine Forging Art, Heifeng Jiansui understood some of its profundities. The two most important were: 1) Prior knowledge and experience with manual forging equipment would certainly help with forging with the Divine technique.

2) Compatibility with ice and fire along with resistance was an important indicator of the technique’s effectiveness in forging.

Knowing this, he realized that his chance of refining a top-grade Mortal sword was quite low, since he had never refined a top-grade Mortal sword before. In any case, he had received and memorized many forging arts from both the Castle library and Elder Shenhai, so it wasn’t a bad idea to practice for a while.

All the forging arts focused on forging weapons with the minimum level of mid-grade Mortal Rank. Low-grade Mortal rank was something that achievable by even the basic foundational refining arts! All the forging arts had their own specialties: some arts could refine lightning elemental weapons, fire elemental weapons, sword array weapons, single use explosive weapons…

Like this, Heifeng Jiansui decided to concentrate on training his forging arts.

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Another two months passed. Including the month spent forging weapons and the three months spent reading in the library, half a year had passed. In these three months, other than eating and sleeping, all Heifeng Jiansui concentrated on was forging!

To keep up his efficiency, he even moved the Black Phoenix Allbeast Rule Formation to the forge. After setting up the formation, he could use the Ice-Fire Divine Forging Art without pause! While training various forging arts, he also trained the Ice-Fire Divine Forging Art, training himself to meld the various forging arts and use them together.

As a sword cultivator, he achieved the Dao of the sword by comprehending various sword arts right to their core essences and then fusing them together! The cores of countless supreme sword techniques joined to create the peerless sword art, famous even in this new era: Quintessence Sword Codex!

In his previous life, his understanding of blacksmithing was only average. In truth, while he forged an Eternal weapon, its forging was mostly due to the unique Sword Dao he followed, his comprehension of the Nine Elements and the refining material itself being something unearthly. His refining technique was not too heaven defying.

In this life, he decided to go all out and reach the apex in forging! Be it auxiliary arts like refining, alchemy, formations, his innate bloodline divine abilities, elemental cultivation arts… If it was worth learning, he would learn it, embarking on the road to reach the apex in that field!

Just then, he heard the sound an alarm ringing. A guest had knocked on his door! Immediately, he put away the nine pillars in his spatial ring, connected to the formations, reactivating the deactivated formations and went to greet his guest.

When he opened the door, he was greeted by the sight of a silver-haired beauty. She seemed to be around 13 years in age, and looked similar to Heifeng Jiansui’s current appearance. The sword on her hip had only its sheath revealed, but he could identify it. Wearing a knight’s armor modified for her sizeable bust and a gown that covered her feet, her appearance was remarkable. Her armor had a sigil on the breast, a sigil that he had only seen on Elder Shenhai, a sword curved like a crescent moon.

This sigil signified that she was an official disciple of Ten Thousand Swords Paradise! The age of 13 was the appropriate age for beginning cultivation. This girl already had reached the peak of the First Layer in the Body Refining realm, signifying her talent in cultivation.

“Heifeng Jiansui, my Master Elder Shenhai sent me to verify your mission completion rate and bestow appropriate rewards based on your success! Take out all the swords you have forged.” Hearing her commanding imperious voice, Heifeng Jiansui took out four spatial rings and passed them to the girl.

A sword glow flashed in the girl’s eyes and the shadow of a golden sword flashed over her head for a moment as spirit sense shot into the rings. Verifying the contents, she withdrew all the swords and put them away into her own ring. The arrogance in her gaze lessened as she spoke, “Good job, you managed to complete 4 of the missions early. According to the rewards that Master Shenhai designated, you may receive a Silver Paradise Seal. It allows you the status and resources of an inner disciple, gives you clearance to browse Grade C archives of our Sword Paradise Scripture hall and allows you access to the Paradisiacal Swordworld!”

“If you had managed to complete all the missions, you could have received a Golden Paradise Seal! In truth, your work is on the level of a Bronze-level outer disciple swordsmith, but you received the privilege of a Silver-level inner disciple! If only your work was on the level of a Silver-level and you had completed the A and S-rank missions, you could have received the privilege of a Gold-level core disciple!” Hearing the girl’s words, Heifeng Jiansui hesitated, before removing 90 swords from his ring.

“Inspect them.” A moment after his words, spirit sense once again shot out to examine the swords. “A-all of them are top-grade Mortal Rank swords! You have perfectly completed the A & S-rank missions! Why did you not reveal them before?” The girl had a surprised expression on her face.

“These swords are not my absolute apex… Selling something other than my best work is a bit embarrassing.” Heifeng Jiansui was not being humble; all these top-grade swords were forged from top-grade materials. Only when he could forge top-grade weapons from high-grade materials would he have reached the apex in manual forging!

After inspecting the weapons twice, the girl could not find out any flaws. ‘Is this the arrogance of a craftsman, or are my eyes not enough to see the flaws?’ Seeing the boy who looked to be of similar age to her, yet dwarfed her in talent and skill, she couldn’t help but sigh again.

She took out a sword talisman and a vial of golden liquid from her ring and carefully poured the liquid into the talisman. The talisman shone with golden light, radiating divine splendor. Handing over the talisman to Heifeng Jiansui, she gave him instructions on binding it.

“To easily bind the talisman, the best way is to fuse a Sword battle spirit into the talisman. If you don’t possess a sword spirit, I have a booklet showing a spirit sense fusing art…” At that moment, the boy clasped the talisman, summoning his battle spirit to fuse into it. The battle spirit appeared and disappeared so quickly, the silver girl couldn’t even get a glimpse of it!

Suddenly, information flashed in Heifeng Jiansui’s mind.

Name: Heifeng Jiansui

Age: 1 year 6 months

Cultivation: NIL

Status: Gold-level/ Core disciple

Please choose the art you are majoring in:

A small group of arts to specialize in (sword cultivation, elemental arts, etc.) appeared in front of him. After carefully scanning the arts, Heifeng Jiansui finally chose ‘Bloodline and Battle Spirit’ Arts.

Please choose the art you are minoring in:

In this column, he put in ‘Auxiliary Refining’ Arts.

After this, his ‘registration’ seemed to have completed. The girl once again appeared in front of him, a gold coin in hand. “Now that you’ve completed registration, I can finally award you your rewards! Tap this coin with your Identity Seal!”

After doing as she told, a robotic female voice emitted in his ears, “Platinum-level disciple Ganwu Aina awarded you 50,000 merit points in Senior Elder Shenhai’s stead! You have a total of 60,000 merit points!”