Chapter 3872: Intense Heat

A Celestial capable of using fire would’ve been incredibly helpful at that very moment, and with Sunflare standing right outside, Alex did consider him for a split second.

But considering the secrets that would have to be exposed for him to do that, he chose to go with a different option.

Shen Yaojia momentarily stepped back as a fiery bird appeared from within Alex, emerging into the room with a bright yellow glow. As soon as it arrived, it settled down to the side, looking through the area with a quick glance before turning its head down toward the sword.

"How may I assist you, Master?" Ray asked.

"Fire. I need fire."

The Artifact God stepped back, adding heat to the sword. She looked toward the bird. "You need to help him heat up this sword so that he can refine it."

Ray said nothing else and did as asked. Massive amounts of Sunfire burst out in front of him, striking the sword and heating it up even more. The temperature in the room intensified to the point that even the Artifact God had to use defensive techniques to protect herself.

While Ray wasn’t stronger than her, the fire was strong enough that if she wasn’t careful, she could get hurt.

Alex wasn’t that strong. He did his best to ignore the pain entirely, but the heat still got to him. His skin charred, his flesh burned, and worst of all, his eyes melted inside his skull. But even with all that, Alex continued striking his hammer against the sword, working his way through the refinement process.

The Artifact God was stunned by the fact that Alex was still so focused on creating the sword despite everything that was happening to him. She could see his body being destroyed so much, and even though it was regenerating right away, the pain had to still be there.

How was he able to ignore the pain to this degree? How had he learned to ignore such pain in the first place?

She could only watch him in silence.

Alex continued striking the crystal hammer against the sword and slowly gauged the new situation. As he did, he could tell that things had improved, but not by much. With Ray’s mere Divine Manifestation realm strength, the sword hadn’t been heated enough.

He tried to say as much, but he found himself unable to speak. He didn’t have vocal cords to even make a sound, as his throat dried and burned the moment he opened his mouth to try and do so. Since he couldn’t speak, he spoke to Ray directly through their bond.

"It’s not working. The flames aren’t hot enough."

"This material is something else," Ray said. "I would need my real power to do anything to this sword, Master. Please take it back into your Soul Space. I will deal with it there."

"I can’t," Alex said. "At this temperature, it will burn everything the moment it arrives."

"I’ll be there. I’ll be waiting for it and protect everything from being burned," Ray said.

"You might, but you can’t protect me," Alex said. "This sword is currently far too strong for me to dare take it into my Soul Space. I fear I cannot handle its presence in my Soul Space."

There was no way of telling how anything would go with the sword, so Alex didn’t dare take that risk until all other avenues had been explored.

"Is there anything else you can do?" Alex asked.

"Without my powers? Nothing at all," Ray said. "Although... you could help me, Master. You could give me access to energy I can use."

Alex frowned slightly. "The degraded aura of the Primordial?" he asked. "How do I give that to you? I can’t bring out that aura at all."

"Not the aura, but you can bring out something else," Ray said. "My body."

Alex nearly stopped hitting the sword for a moment.

"Your body?"

"Yes!" Ray said. "Bring it out, Master. I will use the aura coming out of it to empower myself."

Alex hesitated a little. "Will that work? Can you even convert the aura at all?"

"I can," Ray said. "It’s my body, after all."

Alex hesitated no further. Instantly, the featherless corpse of the Three-Legged Crow appeared to his left, massive and pressing against the barrier as though threatening to destroy it. The moment it arrived, Sunfire burned around the corpse, and tiny amounts of the aura inside the body began degrading from God-grade down to Celestial grade.

The moment it happened, Ray immediately used that to empower himself and increase the degradation rate even further. Slowly, the body began leaking more than enough aura to empower Ray to the point where, if a Celestial did come here at this moment, he could likely kill them.

Once Ray took control of the aura, Alex felt the heat pressing against him lessen by a significant degree. At the same time, the heat on the sword itself increased tenfold, and it continued increasing. Soon, the sword became so soft that each strike refined it more than the last.

The Artifact God jumped a little each time Alex hit the sword, and he realized that the pain she felt due to the hammer being her Soul was much greater now than he had expected.

However, he couldn’t do much about it at all. There was a need to create the sword, and he was going to do this one way or another, even if it meant that the Artifact God was going to be wounded as a result.

"Hold strong, senior. This isn’t going to take much longer now," Alex said and continued hammering the sword, slowly morphing it enough that the Qi lines inside were completely destroyed during the refinement.

Then, for about 10 more minutes, Alex struck the sword in order to bring it back to its proper shape again. Once the sword reached the shape he desired, he put the hammer down.

Still, he was far from done.