I pulled out several more homemade jars and placed two drops of Red Titanium Lime Juice in each one. Next I slid pieces of paper under each, labeled Control, Water, and Fire. I also specified the glass I’d recently experimented on as Spiritual Spring Water.

Obviously, the control would be left alone. Since it was just two drops in a hot forge, it shouldn’t take too long to evaporate. In the jar labeled water, I placed a bit of mundane water. Next, I took out my alchemy pedestal and waved the fire glass over the earthen flame until the liquid evaporated. A sticky substance remained at the bottom.

The kid stared at the fake beaker as I returned it. Then he looked at each one.

“The regular water did nothing.”

I tapped the glass, causing the liquid to ripple. “It diluted it more, so these two drops will take far longer to sublimate than just leaving it alone would have, and make the particles harder to find.”

“That one kind of makes sense. But why did the fire turn it into that? With the extra heat, shouldn’t it take less time to separate instead of turn into a paste?”

I shrugged. “Since I had to move onto a more important project, I didn’t look into it for long, but I did discover…”

Once again, I grabbed another pseudo-beaker, added two drops, and roasted them over the fire to make the paste. Then I poured in a couple drops of regular water and let it sit there for a minute.

After the water reconstituted the lime juice, metal powder was left at the bottom of the jar. I labeled this one Fire + Water.

“So this was what you did before having my lake’s water?”

I grinned. “No! I did not use this method. Examine the color of the dust!” I pointed to the Fire + Water jar.

“It’s black?” He frowned.

“And the color of this dust?” I tapped on the Spiritual Spring Water glass.

The Kid stared at the dark crimson particles.

“Red.”

“And why do you think they’re different?”

“When you heat the liquid with fire, it pulls the energy out of the titanium and into the lime juice? It’s kinda similar to when we use flames in alchemy to pull the energy out of a plant and into the solution, then burn away the unnecessary parts of the plant.”

Fuck. How did he come up with the right answer so fast? It took me a quarter hour to figure that one out after testing it multiple times in frustration. Goddamn protagonist halo.

“Yes,” I said, a bit strained.

In the jar labeled Control, the juice finished evaporating, leaving a few flakes of Red Titanium.

I held up both the Control and the Spiritual Spring Water.

After a quick scan of the experiments, I smiled. “Which liquid has more titanium?”

The kid scowled. “I don’t have divine sense yet.”

“Think about that question and make a hypothesis.”

He pointed to the Spring Water label. “It has to be this one. It will purify the solution more than waiting.”

I glanced down at him and smirked evilly. “Actually, it’s the control.”

His dumbfounded look was priceless.

“It has ten percent more titanium.”

He gripped my sleeve. “Does that mean that the spiritual spring water ate some of the titanium?!”

I shrugged. “We’d have to do this experiment a few more times to check. It could just be that the drops of liquid I snagged the first time around had less metal.”

The kid stared into the depths of the solution. His jaw clenched. “Then let’s do it!”

***

“And the final result is?”

“Anywhere from 12 to 8 percent more in the control,” Little Spring said while staring at a jar like he couldn’t accept reality.

“It’s a very disturbing conclusion, isn’t it?”

“I thought for sure that…” As he trailed off, he looked into the distance.

“This is why we test things.”

He nodded seriously.

“So, we know that there is less Red Titanium when we use spiritual spring water. Does that mean it’s the worse of the two options and that we should wait a couple days for it to settle?”

He scowled. “Obviously.”

“Then, what if I asked you which jar had the highest quality?”

His eyes slowly grew wide. “You mean, the spring water decreases the amount, but increases the quality?!”

“And it’s faster.” It also sounded like magic, but I’d seen weirder, more over-powered things in this Xianxia universe. “Let’s use it to purify a larger portion. Not the whole thing, though.”

“Wait! Why not?”

“Have you considered that the reactions might be different with a greater volume?”

“I… didn’t.”

“And since we’re here, we could do a few more tests. Muahahaha!” My mind burned with all the various possibilities.

He scowled at me and pulled on my sleeve.

I blinked.

“Sister Lin, you can’t! We need to go to sleep soon. And it seems like this isn’t a good way to use the precious metal that you require for your armor.”

Damn it. The kid was right. I rubbed the back of my neck.

There would be time to experiment later.

I took out a jade slip and quickly recorded my conclusions along with the experiments I planned to do in the future and the hypothesis that I had.

Once finished, I needed to test our findings on larger amounts.

I wasn’t entirely positive that adding a metric fuck ton of spiritual spring water wouldn’t clean away the titanium altogether so, after moving a quarter of the juice into the last of my fresh jars, I sent spoonfuls of the spiritual spring water into it, until the liquid cleared, leaving the bottom of the glass filled with red dust.

Little Spring looked at me like I was crazy. Whatever. I was used to it by now.

Knowing about what percentage of Spiritual Spring water to Lime solution was safe, I added that much to the large jar.

The kid poked at the glass. “How do we get the titanium out of there and into metal form?”

I rolled my eyes. “We want the powder.”

After sending a majority of the now purified juice to my Stone Hole for Dangerous Forge Trash, I washed the powder a few times with regular water and used my alchemy flame to dry it out. Since the spring water purified the lime extract, I no longer had to worry about it removing its precious spiritual properties.

Now, it was time to make some metal… alloy! Which was a sentence that called for a guitar solo. Too bad those didn’t exist in this era.

Wait... didn’t I invent those in my last life?! Oops. I needed to remember to not do that. The Four Arts Cultivator seniors never forgave me.

***

“Are you sure this is going to work?” Little Spring looked at me like I was insane.

“Did you practice those hand seals I gave you?”

The kid scowled. “Of course I did!”

“And did you perfect them?”

“Have I ever not perfected anything you’ve given me?”

I ignored that snark and pointed to the pile of dark, silvery-gray metal balls that I’d measured out earlier. “This is Spiritual Iron.”

“You made my kitchen tools out of it.”

“That’s right.” I rested my hand against the large pile. “It was a good idea to pick up so much for cheap back when we were in Verdant Hidden Cavern City.”

The kid didn’t look like he appreciated it as much as I did. “It’s one of the lower ranked spiritual metals.”

I nodded. “True, but it is the easiest to manipulate at our current realm. And we can add things to it to improve its rank.”

“Like the Red Titanium?”

“That’s one.”

I pulled out a bowl of black sand and another of the golden flakes.

The kid pointed to the sand. “Ah!”

I almost jumped. “What?!”

“During the Crab Mission you were bent over at the beach cackling and going on and on about this sand being ‘free for the taking.’”

I cleared my throat. “Well, it was just laying there, you know? And don’t talk about the Crab Mission!”

He gave me a look that told me he’d already judged me, then gestured to the gold-like powder. “What’s that?”

I winced. “This is something I used most of my contribution points on.” And why I was so desperate to find Red Titanium in another way. It wasn’t like I knew off the top of my head where all the mines were so I could go collect it myself. “It’s a strengthening metal that works to increase the effectiveness of enchantments.”

My mind was filled with techniques, research, and cultivation, not places.

“Normally, you’d want to use as few metals as possible when creating armor. There are a few options. I could create two alloys and braid them together to make a unique armor — which is annoying and takes too much time. Or I could produce one very strong alloy using a special technique and—”

“I thought you couldn’t melt the Red Titanium?”

I coughed. “Normally, I wouldn’t be able to. Fortunately, we have it in powder form, so it’s easier.”

“Oh! So, even if you were given a brick of Red Titanium, you still would have had to turn it into powder.”

Yeah, no shit.

I continued, “Forge work is as much about timing as it is about art and enchantments. And making armor is a complex task that requires a lot of my spiritual energy, so I’ll need you to help me with the furnace.”

He nodded seriously.

Having him support me was also a gamble. Every time the brat and I worked together, the things we created came out better than they should have. I didn’t know if this was the power of being the universe’s favorite or our inverted cultivation techniques. Regardless, I was betting on it!

Of course, it was always possible that my gamble could completely fail. Then I’d have to take another year or so to search for the materials again. But pushing back my tribulation wasn’t the worst thing in the world. It wasn’t like I didn’t have the time. My body was only 11.

“Alright, let’s do this.”

I pulled out the second largest crucible from the shelf.

“While our techniques make things easier, we have to conserve our limited energy. This means working smarter and doing what we can physically.”

He nodded.

“So, we’re going to layer in each ingredient to make it easier. This way, we’ll spend less of our power mixing it all together. We’ll also only melt a small amount at a time.”

It wasn’t like I had a strange flame that could easily melt things to the perfect temperature while adding its unique spiritual signature into the metal to strengthen it.

Shit. Now I missed Bob. Bob was the very last strange flame that I had collected. It was a good flame for forging.

I starting setting the crucible up into layers by adding twenty percent of the iron balls. Then I filled in the gaps with twenty percent of the spiritual black carbon powder. Lastly, I threw in five percent of the Red Titanium and Gold flakes.

Then I sent the whole thing into the furnace.

The first hand seal I flicked out increased the temperature to its maximum. Then I twisted my fingers into another. This one used a significant amount of spiritual energy and fed a formation inside the furnace that made metals melt at a lower temperature.

After a few minutes, the iron balls liquified around the powder and other ores. Sweat beaded on my forehead as I waited for it all to liquify. I was practically drained by the time I said…

“Now!”

Little Spring created the hand seal that would help the metal and energies mix evenly.

While he took over, I drank down several cups of spiritual spring water and used a handful of spirit stones to recover.

“Sister!”

When I looked over, sweat also beaded on the kid’s brow. He struggled to hold the hand seal.

I used my spiritual energy to grab another portion of the materials and set them into the furnace to land on top of the others.

“Move!”

He dropped his hands and stepped aside, and I immediately took over.

While he recovered, I utilized the same seal as earlier to melt the new portion. By the time I’d practically emptied again, he took back over and started mixing them together.

We repeated this process several times until all the metal I'd measured had finished melting, aside from about forty percent of the gold flakes and red powder. Those would be used in the next part.

Because of the lack of titanium and the further purification of it, I had to use less iron than I had originally planned. This meant that I did not have as much to work with as I’d wanted. However, making fewer higher quality pieces was better, since this spiritual armor didn’t have to rely on coverage when there was a good enchantment. Especially when I had the Spiritual Polymer to make up the coverage.

I mean, this Xianxia universe had been a harem story. The author couldn't have the wives going around in normal looking armor. So the author must have added enchantments to it to explain all the extravagant outfits.

Now It was time to separate and form the different parts. Frankly, this was the most challenging part of creating armor. And it was going to take all of my spiritual energy and concentration. If things were going to go south, it would be somewhere in the next part.