Lin Xia wiped the sweat from his forehead. Seeing Lou Gao's face flushed with excitement, he knew this was the perfect moment to bring up that idea.
Taking a deep breath, Lin Xia's eyes flickered with an eager light as he spoke,
"Teacher, don't rush to praise me just yet. Looking at this forging hammer and refined iron just now, I suddenly thought of a… well, an entirely new approach to weapon crafting."
He paused slightly, his tone carrying a trace of barely concealed excitement.
"I want to try making it, but I'm afraid I'll need your full support."
Hearing that Lin Xia had already come up with an idea for a new weapon just after learning forging, Lou Gao's thick brows shot up. His interest was instantly ignited—burning even hotter than the furnace flames. With a broad wave of his hand, his voice rang out powerfully.
"Oh? A new weapon? Hahaha, good lad, plenty of ideas indeed! Speak, speak—what do you want to make? An improvement to blades, spears, swords, or halberds? Or some exotic weapon? Axes, battle-axes, hooks, tridents? As long as you can draw it, this old man will forge it for you!"
Lin Xia, however, shook his head, a mysterious smile curling at the corners of his lips.
"None of those, Teacher. It's a… weapon that's never been seen before."
As he spoke, his thoughts stirred, and he retrieved paper and a pen from the dark-silver spatial soul tool on the ring finger of his left hand.
Under the curious yet reverent gazes of the surrounding blacksmith apprentices and several intermediate blacksmiths, Lin Xia sat down directly on the ground. He spread the paper over a relatively flat section of the floor and immediately began to draw.
His movements were extremely fast, the pen flying like a dragon or serpent, without the slightest hesitation, as though those complex structures had long been engraved deep within his mind.
Lou Gao immediately leaned in. His massive frame nearly enveloped Lin Xia as he crouched down, his burning gaze fixed tightly on the lines forming beneath the pen.
At first, there was still an expectant smile on Lou Gao's face. But as blueprint after blueprint was completed, his expression gradually stiffened. His brows knit tighter and tighter, and even his thick beard bristled upward.
The first drawing depicted a cylindrical main body with a grip. The lines were cold and rigid, and inside were complex grooves and holes.
The second showed a metal block with strange protrusions and notches (the slide/bolt).
The third consisted of tiny springs, catches, and needle-like components (the firing pin)…
The fourth showed several metal tubes of varying thicknesses (the barrels) and a compact trigger mechanism…
Blueprint after blueprint spread out across the floor, leaving Lou Gao increasingly baffled. What on earth were these things?
Strange in shape, fragmented into pieces—none of them resembled any weapon component he knew!
It didn't look like a blade, nor a sword. There wasn't even a proper cutting edge.
No matter how he looked at it, it seemed more like a pile of precision… toy parts? Or perhaps the internal components of some complex mechanical device?
A sense of being toyed with welled up in Lou Gao's heart.
This brat, he'd just praised him, and now he pulls out a bunch of incomprehensible things to fool this old man?
The surrounding craftsmen could only observe the unusual blueprints from a distance, whispering among themselves, their faces equally filled with confusion.
However, as Lin Xia continued refining the drawings—slides, barrels, recoil springs, trigger linkages, and even the rudimentary shape of a magazine—more and more components were revealed.
At this point, Lou Gao's keen eye as a divine craftsman and his spatial imagination began to assert themselves.
He stopped looking at the individual parts in isolation. Instead, subconsciously, he began trying to assemble these scattered components in his mind.
The puzzle spun rapidly within Lou Gao's powerful consciousness, combining and recombining!
Gradually, the outline of a never-before-seen creation—compact in structure, composed of numerous precision parts nested within one another, began to clearly take shape in his mind!
Though he still had no idea how this thing was used, the sheer mechanical elegance—so intricate, so interconnected—sent chills across Lou Gao's scalp!
The confusion and irritation in Lou Gao's eyes vanished without a trace. In their place shone an increasingly brilliant light as he stared fixedly at the final blueprint beneath Lin Xia's pen. His throat bobbed, and his breathing grew noticeably heavier.
When Lin Xia finally set down his pen and placed the last drawing—depicting a small cylindrical object alongside notes reading saltpeter 75, sulfur 10, charcoal 15 (gunpowder ratio)—beside the others, Lou Gao's gaze locked onto it like a hawk.
"Teacher, I'm done drawing,"
Lin Xia said as he looked up at Lou Gao.
Lou Gao did not respond immediately. His eyes swept back and forth between the pile of blueprints and Lin Xia's face. Then, suddenly, he pointed at that peculiar cylinder and the ratio diagram, his voice trembling with barely restrained excitement and urgency.
"Xiao Xia! These… these components—this old man can roughly tell that they can be assembled into a… a very peculiar thing!"
"But! How is this thing used?! How can it be a weapon?! No matter how I look at it, it seems more like an… an extremely exquisite mechanical contraption! A weapon? How would you even use it? It wouldn't even be convenient to smash someone with!"
His tone was brimming with curiosity, the earlier doubt completely replaced by a feverish desire to explore.
Lin Xia smiled faintly. Picking up the blueprint of the bullet and the gunpowder ratio, he began explaining calmly, his voice clear and methodical.
"Teacher, this item is called a handgun. Your earlier thought was correct, its core lies in mechanisms and explosion."
He lifted the bullet blueprint.
"First, we need to forge this special projectile. Inside this small metal casing, we fill it with gunpowder mixed according to the ratio I've marked—saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal."
"This mixture, when exposed to high heat or a violent impact, instantly produces an enormous amount of gas. Then, above the gunpowder, this tiny metal conical head is pressed in."
Next, Lin Xia pointed to the main structure blueprint.
(Some details omitted.)
"The spark generated by the impact instantly ignites the gunpowder inside the casing! The gunpowder detonates violently within the sealed casing and barrel, producing unimaginable air pressure! With nowhere else to escape, this furious force can only drive that tiny metal bullet, at a speed exceeding sound itself, spraying out from the barrel!"
Lin Xia made a forward-shooting gesture with his hand.
"The bullet may be small, but with that terrifying initial velocity, piercing metal and stone, tearing through flesh and blood—it's effortless!"
"Its power far surpasses ordinary bows and crossbows. Moreover, it fires covertly, the recoil is controllable, and with a bit of training, one can fire continuously! This is… the handgun!"
Lin Xia's explanation struck Lou Gao like a thunderbolt!
Gunpowder!
Explosion!
Sealed propulsion!
Ultra-high-speed metal projectiles!
Lou Gao's eyes widened like bronze bells, his pupils contracting violently from the sheer shock!
He stared fixedly at the gunpowder ratio diagram, then abruptly at the tiny bullet blueprint, and finally swept his gaze across all the precision component drawings spread across the ground!
As a supreme divine craftsman who had spent his entire life working with fire and iron, Lou Gao possessed an instinctive, bone-deep understanding of energy, explosions, and the deformation and impact of metals!
Every principle Lin Xia described landed brutally and precisely at the very peak of his understanding and then utterly overturned it!
"Explosive… propulsion?! Gunpowder?! Saltpeter and sulfur… they can actually do this?! Sealed space… projectile… ejection…"
Lou Gao muttered to himself, his voice trembling with excitement.
In his mind, he instantly simulated the terrifying scene: gunpowder detonating in a confined space, high-pressure gas driving a hardened projectile as it scraped and accelerated within a solid barrel, before finally bursting forth!
This kind of instantaneous eruption and precise striking power had completely transcended the realm of blades, axes, hammers, and spears!
"Sometimes I really don't know what your brain is made of," Lou Gao exclaimed in awe. "To think of such a genius idea! If it truly works as you've described, then this weapon… is something that could change the entire balance of the continent!"
After letting out his astonished praise, Lou Gao scooped up all the blueprints at once, carefully stowing them away as though they were priceless treasures.
"Marvelously ingenious! Absolutely inconceivable! This concept… this mechanism… this method of harnessing explosive force! I've lived my whole life and never once imagined weapons could be forged this way!"
Lou Gao's voice boomed like a great bell, filled with the ecstatic joy of discovering a new world and an overwhelming desire to forge. His eyes were bloodshot, blazing with the fire that only ignites in a top-tier craftsman when facing an ultimate challenge.
"Xiao Xia! I'm starting right now! I'll personally forge it for you! Furnace after furnace, trial after trial! I want to see for myself whether this weapon can truly be born in my hands! Hahaha!!"
Lin Xia merely smiled faintly. This was far from over. Firearms were only a transitional step, since he had taken Lou Gao as his teacher, Lin Xia naturally intended to delve deeper into soul tools.
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