Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

Alex watched from the side as Shen Yaojia hit the scale with her crystal hammer in a rhythmic beating.

Now that the scale could be dealt with even by a Divinity, she began forging the scale to make it change its shape to what she desired. She wanted to turn the scale into a round shield. The shape it was now was far from it, so she needed to hammer it until the shape was the same.

It wasn’t just the shape that she needed to worry about. She also had to take care of the thickness, the concentration, and the size of the artifact that she was going to make.

As it was now, the dragon scale was of a slightly oblong shape, with a sharper end on one side and a flatter edge on the other. The flatter side was also slightly thicker since it was the part that was attached to the dragon.

The Artifact God needed to fix it all before she could do anything with it. She hammered away at it for a long time as Alex watched, slowly bringing it to its desired state. She even made the scale compound upon itself, making it smaller than its actual size.

By the time she was done with it, the scale was now fully circular in shape, slightly concave, and no more than a meter in diameter. It was perfect. Not a single aspect of it was an issue from what Alex could see, which was obvious given that the Artifact God was the one making it.

She let go of her hammer and took in a deep breath, letting out a tired sigh. She moved her arms around a little, as though massaging herself.

Alex looked at the shield. ”Are you going to add some straps now?” he asked.

”No, that comes afterward. First, I need to finish the main shield itself,” she said, sounding a little annoyed at just how much work she still had to do. But since it was her work, she couldn’t argue much at all.

With the physical makeup of the shield done, she needed to refine it and improve it. First came the Fire Water that cleansed the shield.

The Artifact God slowly applied the water to various parts of the shield, using it sparingly to remove the undesired aura from the shield. Auras such as Rain, Liquid, Drying, Cloud, and such were removed from the scale as they were far from necessary in a shield.

The auras that remained were the Dao of Water, Freezing, Cold, Softness, Refraction, and Cleansing. Doing so gave the shield a bigger purpose than anything else. Not only that, it also emptied the shield a lot, which allowed the Artifact God to move on to the next material.

The crystal with the refractive aura could now be refined directly into the shield in order to improve that specific property of the shield. She brought out her hammer again and started hitting the crystal into the artifact, slowly pulverizing parts of it with each hit and placing them into the shield.

That took some time longer than the cleansing water, as she had to be careful not to overdo it in one region and underdo it in another. Everything needed to be uniform, which took a little more time than what Alex could imagine being needed.

Once the crystal was completely added to the shield, the refractive property of the artifact became so much better, making it a much stronger defensive artifact in general.

Finally, once she was done with it, the last of the three materials she had prepared in advance came into play. The amber, which could help with transferring Qi to each region of the shield in an instant, was applied throughout the artifact in a light coat while also being silently heated so that it would be more or less absorbed directly into the shield.

Alex silently watched her do all three of those before the main shield was physically ready for more external augmentation.

Leather straps had already been prepared in advance, which the Artifact God added to the shield quite easily. She didn’t use anything external to combine the two at all. She simply hammered the strap into the shield such that the shield itself grabbed onto the leather, never letting go of it.

The shield was now more or less complete.

”What’s left?” Alex asked. He didn’t know the Artifact God’s process, but he could swear there was only one more thing left to do.

”I need to add the Qi lines,” the Artifact God said, though she didn’t start right away. She was tired from working on it for a while, so she rested for a bit. The artifact hadn’t yet been set, so she could take her time.

Alex waited around for her to get back up again, which took a little over half a day. When the Artifact God was finally ready, she took the shield and held it from the outside, her palms at the center of the shield.

Then, slowly, she poured her Qi into the shield.

Forming Qi lines was a delicate business. Not only did one need to be incredibly proficient at moving Qi through a material, hard or soft, without letting the difficulty of the task cause them to make a mistake, but they also needed to understand what Qi lines they needed to make.

There were certainly various Qi line methods that were passed around, but for an artifact as unique as this, the Artifact God had already prepared the Qi lines long ago inside her mind. And now that she had the opportunity for it, she made them.

Alex could hardly sense anything from the shield or the Artifact God, so he had nothing but his trust in her that she wasn’t making any mistakes. He knew that she understood better than anyone else that she could not afford to make mistakes.

After a long while, the shield suddenly let out a slight buzz, and the Artifact God stepped back.

”It’s done,” she said. ”The shield is complete.”