Chapter 259: An Unprecedented Artifact!

Great Shun, on the Eastern Sea Coast.

Wang Ping looked up. Before him sat a city on the edge of the coast. The city itself wasn't large, capable of holding perhaps ten thousand people.

Steep cliffs flanked its left and right. The inland-facing side featured towering walls faintly dotted with garrisoned soldiers, while the side facing the Eastern Sea opened into a crescent-shaped harbor, where ships moored and countless fishermen and boatmen went about their business.

Guanchao City.

"Among the Four Great Martial Dao Sects of the present age, Guanchao City is the most unique. They haven't had any miraculous encounters fall from the sky, nor do they possess any extraordinary treasures," the woman beside Wang Ping said leisurely. "The so-called World's Foremost Artifact Casting Furnace relies entirely on geographical advantage, drawing the waters of the Eastern Sea to assist in forging. There's nothing truly special about it."

"The name 'Guanchao' means watching the tide. It signifies that they do not involve themselves in the martial world."

"No matter how many heroes emerge to ride the waves of the martial world, it has nothing to do with them. They only watch the tide; they do not enter it, nor do they entangle themselves in martial disputes."

"Of course, that is only their philosophy."

"What truly made them world-renowned—and elevated them into the Four Great Martial Dao Sects—is the greatest spectacle in the world, one that can only be witnessed here."

"It is known as the Flood Dragon Ascending Tide."

"Every year around this time, a disturbance stirs in the depths of the Eastern Sea, triggering a heaven-reaching tide that crashes against the land. It is suspected to be related to the demon race in the sea."

Wang Ping's eyes flickered slightly at her words. "The demon race in the sea?"

Now that he thought about it, the Central Divine Land ruled by Great Shun was the Immortal Gate's Eight Trigrams Furnace, and the Northern Plains to the north were the Brahma Nation's Eight Treasure Table. What about other places?

The Eastern Sea, the Western Regions, the Southern Borders.

Could these territories bordering Great Shun all have their own hidden backers as well?

As they spoke, Wang Ping followed the woman to the gates of Guanchao City. The heavy doors rumbled open, and a middle-aged man in luxurious robes led a group outside.

"Greetings, First Seat."

The middle-aged man looked invigorated. "The forging furnace is ready, and all eight watergates in the city are open," he said respectfully. "We only await the First Seat to personally preside over it."

"Thank you for your trouble," she replied.

The woman nodded slightly, then signaled for Wang Ping to follow her inside. The moment he stepped through the gates, a blast of scorching wind hit Wang Ping in the face.

"Right now, Guanchao City contains only the active forging furnace and Martial Masters capable of resisting the heat poison with their Internal Force. Even they must be rotated in shifts. If an ordinary person entered the city now, they would die within moments."

the middle-aged man explained.

Meanwhile, Wang Ping swept his spiritual sense across the city, roughly grasping the mechanics of the World's Foremost Artifact Casting Furnace.

Water was channeled in from all eight directions, using hydraulic power to pump the bellows and raise the temperature of the flames for casting. Once the artifact was forged, seawater would be used to quench and cool it.

Wang Ping frowned slightly. The effect of water quenching was far inferior to oil quenching. Using seawater to cool the metal sounded grand, but in reality, it was flashy and impractical.

However, a second later, realization dawned on him.

As his spiritual sense swept outward, it locked onto another building in the city, where a large group of martial artists were dumping sack after sack of powder into a reservoir of seawater.

So they use a secret medicine, Wang Ping realized.

He stroked his chin. His spiritual sense analyzed the mixture and quickly provided an answer: the secret medicine combined with the seawater to turn the mundane into the miraculous. This was their true foundation.

It made sense. If Guanchao City had no real skill and relied purely on geographical advantage, they could never have maintained their position as one of the Four Great Martial Dao Sects for thousands of years.

Soon, Wang Ping saw the forging furnace in the center of the city. It was a massive structure resembling a volcanic crater. As the city's watergates opened, seawater poured in, driving fierce, howling winds into the furnace and vaporizing into billowing heat waves. Beside him, the woman rolled up her sleeves and strode over to the edge of the furnace.

"The rest of you, step back for now," she ordered. "Wang Ping, come here."

The woman beckoned for Wang Ping to stand beside her. "Cast your Divine Intent into it," she said. "You are the weapon's master; only you can perform this step."

Wang Ping nodded.

He focused his gaze. In the unseen depths, his Divine Intent condensed. It no longer took the form of the Mind Monkey, but rather a stubborn, unyielding boulder that resisted blade and ax alike.

In an instant, he felt as if he were inside the forging furnace himself. Rolling waves of heat washed over his face, and the roaring flames began to calcine the boulder of his intent.

The so-called "casting Divine Intent into the furnace" naturally didn't mean anything physical was dropping into the flames. It simply allowed Wang Ping's mind to perfectly sense the changes inside the furnace. This way, he could precisely grasp the artifact's forging process and fuse his own spiritual will into the finished weapon.

A moment later, a voice echoed by his ear. "Hold your breath. Focus your mind."

The moment she spoke, a deafening blast rang in his ears, crashing into his boulder-like Divine Intent like a clap of thunder.

Boom!

Like the heartbeat of heaven and earth, the heavy sound rang out as the First Seat brought her fist slamming down. Her target was none other than the Sixteen-Foot Golden Buddha taken from Shenlong Temple.

Simultaneously, a spiritual flame interwoven with purple and azure ignited within the furnace. This spiritual fire had originally been coiled around Wang Ping's Divine Intent; now that his Divine Intent had entered the furnace, the flame manifested from the void. It merged with the mundane fire within, driving the already extreme temperature even higher.

Boom!

At the second deafening strike, the entirety of Guanchao City seemed to tremble. The ground rolled slightly, nearly causing the middle-aged man in the distance to lose his footing.

Yet the First Seat's movements did not stop.

The intense heat, the heat poison, the roaring flames in the furnace—these external forces seemed nonexistent to her. They couldn't even force a single drop of sweat from her.

Using her bare hands as hammers, she smashed into the Sixteen-Foot Golden Buddha over and over again. Her slender fingers pressed together, carrying a force capable of toppling mountains and overturning seas. Under the extreme heat and relentless forging, the outer shell of the golden Buddha—the embryo of the artifact—was stripped away inch by inch, reshaped into a new form.

Wang Ping felt the entire process as if it were happening to him.

To him, every palm strike and every blow from the First Seat wasn't just hammering the Sixteen-Foot Golden Buddha; it was also smashing directly into his boulder-like Divine Intent.

As the golden Buddha's outer shell was stripped away, the strikes simultaneously shattered all the distracting thoughts, hesitations, and doubts in his heart, melting them down into the boiling flames.

Eighty-one days.

For a full eighty-one days, Guanchao City was enveloped by the endless sound of hammering, and Wang Ping's Divine Intent was similarly hammered for eighty-one days.

At first, it still looked like a mundane forging process. As time went on, however, the unnatural phenomena intensified. The thousands of years of incense energy gathered upon the Sixteen-Foot Golden Buddha by Shenlong Temple manifested as a visible golden light. It shrouded the entire forging furnace, transforming it into a dazzling, brilliant ocean.

Next came the changes outside the furnace.

Dark clouds gathered overhead. Yin and Yang collided, sparking bursts of lightning as if the heavens had encountered something utterly intolerable. The tribulation locked straight onto the First Seat inside.

"This is..."

In the distance, Xianfu and Kunlun parted their escape lights and looked over. Kunlun's face was filled with astonishment. "Heavenly Thunder? Is Dousheng undergoing his lightning tribulation?"

"It isn't him."

Xianfu shook their head, eyes burning bright. "It's that Martial Dao First Seat... She is forging an artifact. The artifact she is forging is undergoing tribulation. A weapon the heavens will not tolerate?"

Rumble!

Finally, the gathering dark clouds released the first bolt of lightning. However, it failed to cleave into the forging furnace, blocked instead by the vast ocean of incense energy blanketing the air above.

The thousands of years of accumulation from Shenlong Temple, and the millions of strands of incense energy gathered by the living Buddhas of the Chanzhou Circuit over millennia, became the forging furnace's protective umbrella. Every strike of Heavenly Thunder was neutralized and dissolved into nothingness. Throughout this process, the weapon inside the furnace was gradually hammered into shape.

It was a suit of armor.

Only then did the woman finally cease her movements and look up at the sky. Almost simultaneously, Xianfu and Kunlun in the distance also gazed at the heavens.

Which stream of qi will it be?

Kunlun speculated in his heart. Since it was forged within the Eight Trigrams Furnace, there was a high probability it would be the 'Profound Halberd Transforming the New Beginning.' That would fall well within common sense.

However, this Martial Dao First Seat was extraordinary, capable of even wrestling with Senior Brother Gan. Since she had stirred up such a massive commotion, perhaps it wouldn't follow the common logic of cultivation.

Kunlun changed his line of thought. A qi superior to the 'Profound Halberd Transforming the New Beginning' and related to furnace smelting could only be the 'Tiangong Ultimate Yang Nine Smelting Qi'. Could it be this one?

Numerous guesses surged into his mind. Yet, as time passed, his expression gradually froze. Beside him, Xianfu's expression also grew increasingly solemn. Conversely, the woman looking up at the sky curled her lips into a slight smile, seeming deeply satisfied with her masterpiece.

There was only one reason: heaven and earth gave no response.

Not a single one of the twenty-four qi of heaven and earth descended in resonance. There was no sharp ringing of metal, no blazing intensity of fire, and no crashing tide of water.

The earth and wood qi were similarly dead silent.

"Intolerable by heaven and earth..."

Xianfu murmured in a low voice, an irrepressible look of awe finally surfacing in their eyes. "The first variable. This truly is the first variable."

All things in the universe and every manifestation inherently relied on the qi of heaven and earth. This was the supreme principle of the Immortal Gate's cultivation, whether it came to forging artifacts or consuming elixirs.

Therefore, if a magical artifact possessed profound properties, it was inevitably governed by a certain stream of heaven and earth's qi, and its profound nature would definitely relate to that qi.

This was simply common sense in immortal cultivation.

But now, this common sense had been broken.

Within Guanchao City, inside the forging furnace, the newly formed suit of armor wasn't favored by the twenty-four qi, yet it still displayed profound properties, radiating boundless golden light.

It did not belong to the qi of heaven and earth, nor did it exist within the Immortal or Brahma systems. Its profound properties were entirely self-generated. If one absolutely had to name what granted its miraculous nature, it could only be the Martial Dao.

Unprecedented!