Inside Lou Gao's exclusive forging chamber, the furnace blazed fiercely. The scorching heat far surpassed that of ordinary workshops, clearly signaling that the materials handled here were anything but mundane.
At this moment, the old divine craftsman was like a furnace that had been fully ignited his eyes shining brightly, his entire body radiating astonishing heat and absolute focus.
Lou Gao grabbed the stack of blueprints Lin Xia had drawn, holding them as if they were peerless treasures, and strode straight toward his massive workbench, which was forged from special heat-resistant metal.
"Begin!"
Lou Gao's voice hummed through the superheated air.
He first selected several high-quality refined iron ingots, along with various special alloy blanks marked on Lin Xia's blueprints for different components.
Then, Lou Gao took a deep breath. Soul power surged through his body like a rising tide.
"Buzz!"
A flash of yellow light appeared as his ancient, heavy weapon soul the Sacred Molding Pen, its tip gleaming with an indestructible cold edge materialized in his hand.
At the same time, his other hand seized a forging hammer that was pitch-black from end to end, neither metal nor stone, its surface engraved with strange, arcane patterns.
This hammer was clearly extraordinary. Both its weight and material far surpassed the one Lin Xia had used earlier.
Lin Xia held his breath, fully aware that he was about to witness the true methods of a divine craftsman of this era.
Lou Gao did not immediately heat the materials. Instead, he gently placed the Sacred Molding Pen against a specific point on the refined iron ingot.
A faint, almost imperceptible glimmer lit up at the chisel's tip.
In the next instant, Lou Gao moved!
Rather than swinging the hammer in wide arcs as Lin Xia had done, his wrist trembled at an indescribably rapid frequency. The black hammerhead transformed into a blur of afterimages, striking the tail of the Sacred Molding Pen with flawless precision.
Clang! Clang! Clangclangclang—!
The sound was dense, like torrential rain pounding on banana leaves, yet it carried a strange rhythmic cadence—completely unlike Lin Xia's earlier heavy, thunderous blows.
Lin Xia could even see that each time the hammer struck the pen's tail, a visible, nearly transparent ripple of vibration surged from the chisel's tip deep into the refined iron ingot!
The ingot seemed to come alive. Under the "guidance" of the Sacred Molding Pen and the "combing" effect of the vibrating ripples, it softened and stretched at a pace visible to the naked eye!
Impurities were squeezed out by an unseen force, peeling away and falling as fine black powder.
A process that normally required thousands of hammer strikes to achieve preliminary refinement was completed, under Lou Gao's seemingly casual yet profoundly skillful and soul-power-infused technique, in barely a dozen breaths!
The refined iron ingot shrank by nearly a third. Its surface shimmered with a restrained metallic luster, its texture uniform and dense to a shocking degree.
"This…"
Lin Xia stared in utter disbelief, waves of shock crashing through his mind.
This completely overturned his understanding of forging!
This wasn't blacksmithing at all.
It was pure art—turning stone into gold, transforming decay into miracle!
Seeing Lin Xia's stunned expression, Lou Gao burst into laughter. His hands never paused as he added violet lightning iron ore and several other alloy materials.
The coordination between hammer and pen grew even more exquisite. Each strike carried a unique, wave-layered force, the power stacking endlessly and penetrating deep into the metal's core.
Under the guidance of the Sacred Molding Pen and the harmonizing vibration waves, metals of different properties fused and layered together like flowing water, perfectly forming the composite material structure required by Lin Xia's blueprints.
During the process, the Sacred Molding Pen flexibly changed angles and force—sometimes carving internal grooves with the precision of an engraving knife, other times polishing critical contact surfaces like a whetstone. The entire sequence flowed seamlessly, radiating the beauty of perfect harmony between power and technique.
"Teacher… th-this technique… what is it called?"
Lin Xia couldn't help but ask, his voice tinged with excitement and yearning.
Lou Gao's hammer and pen never slowed, his voice booming with pride.
"Hahaha, kid, stunned speechless, aren't you? This is the exclusive forging method I developed by combining my Martial Soul's characteristics and decades of painstaking effort, the Thousand-Layer Vibrating Metal Hand!"
"Using the Sacred Molding Pen as the guide and vibrating Soul power as the medium, it transforms immense force into subtle vibrations—restrained yet penetrating, breaking first to rebuild later! It saves effort while driving deep into the material's core, achieving a level of purity and fusion that ordinary forging can never reach! Want to learn it?"
A blazing light burst from Lin Xia's eyes as he nodded vigorously.
"Yes! Teacher, this disciple will definitely study it with full dedication!"
"Good! Once you've thoroughly mastered those foundational texts and your Soul power is more stable, I'll pass the Thousand-Layer Vibrating Metal Hand on to you!"
Lou Gao agreed readily, his hands moving even faster.
Under the miraculous effects of the Thousand-Layer Vibrating Metal Hand, those precision components that Lin Xia believed would require enormous time and effort took shape in Lou Gao's hands as if they had been given life.
Barrels, slides, firing pins, recoil springs, trigger assemblies… even the compact bullet casings were flawlessly forged under the Sacred Molding Pen's precise guidance and the hammer's vibrating support.
The entire process took less than half a day. All the components were soon laid out neatly on the workbench, gleaming with a cold metallic sheen, their dimensional precision astonishing.
Lou Gao set down the hammer and chisel, picked up the components, and without consulting any blueprints, relied solely on his memory from the forging process and his divine craftsman–level spatial perception. His hands danced like butterflies among flowers.
Click, click… Crisp mechanical locking sounds rang out in succession. In less than the time it took to brew a cup of tea, a pistol with smooth lines, a compact structure, and a body entirely forged from rare metals—its surface emitting a dark, muted black glow—appeared in his hands.
The gun felt heavy, icy to the touch, yet it contained a restrained explosive force.
As Lin Xia looked at the finished product—far surpassing any handgun from his previous life in both "appearance" and "texture"—his heart was filled with nothing but shock.
This was simply a killing weapon crafted like a work of art!
Lou Gao toyed with the masterpiece in his hand, satisfaction evident on his face. He then picked up several bullets he had casually forged as well.
Pointing at two clearly different types of ammunition, Lou Gao said to Lin Xia,
"Xiao Xia, look. This first kind is made exactly according to your blueprint—copper casing, lead core, filled with the… gunpowder you formulated."
As he spoke, Lou Gao weighed another, noticeably thicker round in his hand, its bullet tip faintly tinged with a purplish-red hue.
"And this second kind is a little improvement I made based on your idea. I used harder hundred-refined steel for the casing, mixed some violet lightning iron powder into the lead core, and adjusted the gunpowder by adding a bit of crushed fire crystal powder."
"Heh heh, I figured—since this thing relies on whatever's inside to explode it out, wouldn't making it explode harder and adding some special materials make it even more powerful? Well? Dare to give it a try?"
Lin Xia looked at the modified bullet, his eyelids twitching.
Violet lightning iron powder?
Fire crystal powder?
His teacher really dared to think big!
If this thing was fired… could it still be called a bullet?
But it also proved something from another angle, those who made a name for themselves on the continent weren't all like Yu Xiaogang. The vast majority truly possessed real ability of their own!
"Of course we have to try it, Teacher!"
Lin Xia suppressed the storm raging in his heart, replaced instead by intense curiosity and a trace of anticipation.
He was eager to see what would happen when a divine craftsman of Douluo Continent combined fantasy materials with modern firearms.
Lou Gao waved his hand decisively.
"Let's go! To the training ground!"
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