Chapter 180

Chapter 180: A Legend from Another World

A Fusang Tree had grown within Lou Yun’s body!

Such a bizarre occurrence wasn’t visible to outsiders, and even Lou Yun himself, being temporarily unconscious, hadn’t seen it. The only person who witnessed it clearly was Chang Xiang.

Yet even the well-informed Chang Xiang couldn’t explain what kind of situation this was. It was something he had never encountered before!

However, one thing was certain: the Fusang Tree emerging from the fire seed and growing within Lou Yun’s body was likely a good thing for him. Chang Xiang could sense the entire Fusang Tree absorbing spiritual energy, and since the Fusang Tree had been completely devoured by Lou Yun, all the spiritual energy it absorbed naturally belonged to Lou Yun.

"The Fusang Tree within the Fusang Fire, this could be seen as the evolution of Fusang Fire. And Fusang Fire is the lowest among the known Eighteen Known Heavenly Fires. So, in other words, could each Heavenly Fire actually possess the function of evolution?" Chang Xiang pondered internally.

As the Fusang Tree absorbed spiritual energy from its trunk to its branches, even every single leaf, Lou Yun gradually regained consciousness. Upon waking, though Lou Yun hadn’t yet seen the Fusang Tree inside his body, he instantly felt the abundant, seemingly inexhaustible spiritual energy within him!

What was going on?

However, time was pressing at that moment. Since so much extra spiritual energy had appeared out of nowhere, Lou Yun had no time to ponder it deeply. The immediate task was to make the Fusang Fire generate a completely different temperature once again.

As this thought flashed through his mind, a small Fusang Tree appeared within the cluster of Fusang Fire burning beneath the Chaos Golden Cauldron, which already had eight distinct flame tendrils. The tree extended eight branches, each one carefully inserting itself into a flame tendril. Immediately after, another shoot sprouted from the Fusang Tree’s trunk, growing vigorously.

As this shoot grew, the Fusang Fire enveloping it slowly extended outward, forming yet another flame tendril!

At this moment, the Fusang Fire finally divided into nine flame tendrils!

The nine flame tendrils each possessed a different temperature – nine distinct temperatures!

Under the scorching of these nine flames, the Nine-temperature Assimilation Stone was almost instantly refined, transforming into a liquid!

Naturally, all the onlookers saw this change. Lei Nu and Xu Yangteng almost simultaneously burst out with cheers of approval. Others followed with jubilant shouts, as if they themselves had overcome this difficult hurdle; most faces were lit with excitement!

Meanwhile, the Nine-temperature Assimilation Stone in Short Winter Melon’s cauldron had only been refined about halfway!

Although Short Winter Melon, aided by medicine, had made his flame emit nine temperatures from the start, he only possessed an ordinary flame with limited heat. It was utterly incomparable to the temperature of Lou Yun’s Heavenly Fire Fusang. This was precisely the reason Xu Baichuan had lost to Lou Yun before.

The expressions of Short Winter Melon and Fan Ruobing both changed drastically. Both men, especially Fan Ruobing, had been absolutely convinced that Lou Yun, regardless of his spiritual sense or spiritual energy strength, absolutely could not refine the Nine-temperature Assimilation Stone. That’s why Fan Ruobing had proposed this suggestion, designed to guarantee Short Winter Melon a victory. Yet Lou Yun had actually managed to do it! This was utterly unacceptable to them!

Beichen Ming also let out a long sigh of relief. His body, which had been leaning forward tensely, finally relaxed and leaned back. A smile broke through the tension on his face.

At the same time, Liu Ruyan quietly unclenched her fists, which she hadn’t realized were tightly clenched. Her palms were slick with sweat.

With the most difficult stage of the entire weapon forging process successfully completed, the remaining tasks were naturally effortless for Lou Yun!

Refining the beast soul and spiritual crystals, then purging impurities, followed by shaping the liquid Nine-temperature Assimilation Stone into the form of a sword – these processes were completed almost instantaneously.

Now, only one hurdle remained for Lou Yun: the Weapon Core.

Although he had witnessed Beichen Ming condense spiritual crystals and a beast soul into a Weapon Core, and he understood the detailed method of condensing a Weapon Core from the knowledge left by his master, he had never actually attempted it himself. So, he was still a bit nervous.

The sword within the Chaos Golden Cauldron had stabilized and didn’t require immediate attention. Lou Yun focused his attention on his right hand, which held the beast soul and spiritual crystals.

With a soft "puff," a flame ignited on his right hand. It quickly refined the beast soul and spiritual crystals into liquid, which naturally merged together. The next step was to condense them into the Weapon Core.

Because common weapons possess different abilities, the shape of the Weapon Core also varies. For instance, the Weapon Core of a high-level common weapon needs to be a relatively complete diamond shape, enabling the weapon to transform into armor. A mystery rank common weapon requires flight capability. Besides needing the Weapon Core to possess the wood attribute, allowing spiritual energy input to harness wind power, the core’s shape must also be a flat diamond to facilitate wind-riding flight.

The method of condensing the Weapon Core is largely similar to forging weapons in general. The key is to ensure the wood-attribute beast soul is evenly distributed at the very center of the core. This way, no matter from which direction spiritual energy enters, it must pass through the beast soul to exert the wind-harnessing effect.

Lou Yun quickly condensed the Weapon Core. Then, the lid of the Chaos Golden Cauldron opened automatically, and Lou Yun threw the Weapon Core inside!

Following the method Beichen Ming had used to fuse the core, Lou Yun directly manipulated the Weapon Core to fly into the center of the liquid Nine-section Stone that had already taken the shape of a sword. He then rapidly cooled it, solidifying the sword into its final form.

For the final step, awakening the spirit, Lou Yun needed to perform the seals for claiming a mystery rank common weapon – the fourth set of seals. After careful consideration, Lou Yun ultimately decided to use the set of seals taught to him by Chang Xiang. After all, the Azure Cloud Seal paired best with the Azure Cloud Cauldron to achieve its maximum effect, whereas Chang Xiang’s seals were universal.

The heavenly and earthly marks; in truth, the higher the level, the harder they were to form. Now, with the Fusang Tree inside him, Lou Yun possessed more than double his previous spiritual energy, so the process of forming the seals wasn’t particularly difficult.

As he formed the seals, Lou Yun’s mind involuntarily recalled the scene when he faced Han Rui of the Han family. That day, Han Rui had formed seals to activate the book mountain and press down on him.

Back then, Lou Yun had clearly sensed the fluctuations of the surrounding heaven and earth energy. Now, while recalling that day, he simultaneously felt the surges of energy gathering before him with each hand seal he performed!

Nine hand seals gathered nine surges of energy fluctuation, coalescing into a single force in the air. With Lou Yun’s forceful exhalation and shout, it descended from the heavens and landed upon the Chaos Golden Cauldron.

The Golden Cauldron emitted a clear, dragon-like chime. It slowly rose into the air, began to rotate, and emitted a light that grew from weak to intense. When the light reached its peak brilliance, the lid automatically lifted. A soft, white light floated out from the cauldron, and within that light was naturally the forged common weapon.

Strangely, right in the center of the white light, there had been a tiny red dot. But it vanished in an instant, so fleeting that one might think it was a trick of the eye, that the red dot never existed at all.

The common weapon flew automatically into Lou Yun’s hand. Instead of immediately inspecting his creation, Lou Yun turned to look at Short Winter Melon.

Short Winter Melon was drenched in sweat at this moment. His common weapon had only just taken shape; the Weapon Core hadn’t even been fused into it yet!

Ignoring the quality of the weapons for now, the outcome of this forging contest between the two was already clear at a glance!

Although Lou Yun had taken a relatively long time initially to catalyze the nine different temperatures, his actual forging speed was incredibly fast. If it had been ordinary materials, the speed would have been even more remarkable.

Some eager onlookers had already begun probing the grade of the common weapon in Lou Yun’s hand with their spiritual sense. However, they discovered they couldn’t discern it at all. Even Beichen Ming couldn’t. This puzzled everyone. Could it be that Lou Yun had forged a common weapon without a grade?

With such a grand spectacle and such a dazzling emergence from the cauldron, if the result was a dud, it would be utterly inexplicable!

Of course, Lou Yun didn’t know others couldn’t perceive his weapon’s grade. He simply chose not to find out himself yet, preferring to wait until Short Winter Melon finished forging before making the final comparison.

Seeing that Short Winter Melon still needed some time, Lou Yun sat cross-legged. He placed the common weapon flat on his knees, closed his eyes, and began to meditate and recover.

This introspection finally allowed him to discover the Fusang Tree inside his body! If Lou Yun hadn’t possessed considerable mental fortitude, he would surely have cried out in shock!

"What… what is this? Brother Chang?"

Although Lou Yun rarely sought Chang Xiang’s help anymore, the sight before him was too bizarre. Who had ever seen a tree growing inside their own body?

However, Chang Xiang did not answer. Lou Yun called out twice more, but Chang Xiang remained silent. Left with no choice, Lou Yun suppressed his inner shock and began to investigate on his own.

After studying it for a while, Lou Yun finally discerned: the roots of this Fusang Tree were within his magical weapon, the Dream Emperor Sword, deeply embedded in it. The canopy stretched directly into his head!

Lou Yun now understood that the period of unconsciousness he had experienced earlier must have coincided with the Fusang Tree’s growth. And the reason for the surge in spiritual energy upon regaining consciousness was naturally due to this Fusang Tree!

Lou Yun tried probing the tree with his spiritual sense but found nothing particularly unusual. After examining it back and forth for a long time, he felt no discomfort anywhere. In short, for now, the appearance of this Fusang Tree seemed to have no effect other than making him feel he had more spiritual energy!

So, this situation should be beneficial to him!

Thinking this, Lou Yun’s heart settled down. He focused fully on activating his magical weapon to absorb spiritual energy.

The reason Chang Xiang ignored Lou Yun was that he was contemplating a problem, one related to Lou Yun’s Forging Skills. Because the moment Lou Yun’s common weapon emerged from the cauldron, Chang Xiang had also clearly seen that tiny red dot within the white light, the one that vanished in a flash!

Of course, Chang Xiang didn’t think it was a trick of the eye. He was certain the red dot had existed. Though it disappeared, there was a reason for that, and that reason touched upon a legend from the world he came from.