Chapter 796: Heavenly Reward, Battle Of Three Hammers (2)

At the same time.

Inside the Source Qi Secret Grotto, Su Yu switched back to his willpower and continued hammering the weapon. His body constantly trembled and tears were starting to appear on his skin.

The recoil was getting stronger and stronger. As the weapon reached the peak profound grade, its recoil had surpassed the level of what Su Yu's body could handle. But he pressed on.

Slowly, a new character took form in his sea of willpower: vibrate.

The moment the new character appeared, the vibrations spreading all over his body weakened slightly.

"..."

Zhao Li's hand shook slightly in shock as he cursed inwardly. Screw this kid! Wasn't he forging a weapon? Wasn't he forging his body? What the fuck was this? Why had he formed a natural character after experiencing some vibrations?

"Kid!"

"Hmm?"

Su Yu raised his head and looked at Zhao Li blankly even as his hands continued working hard. Why was his teacher calling him out of nowhere?

"Didn't you notice that character?"

"Oh."

Su Yu nodded. Yeah. He noticed that character. What about it? He had experienced the vibrations from the weapon nearly ten thousand times. His understanding of the concept of vibration had increased slightly than before. Was it so surprising for him to form a natural character after that?

Zhao Li was left completely speechless. He started madly hammering the weapon. He decided that he should stop comparing himself against the kid for the sake of his mental health.

But this time, Su Yu was no longer feeling as bad. With his new vibrate character, he was able to weaken the vibrations coming from the weapon. Additionally, doing this was a form of cultivation for that character. Slowly, Su Yu found the vibrations enjoyable.

It felt more and more comfortable. The vibrate character sure was great. He reckoned that with this character, he could apply vibrations to his hammer strikes and increase its might by at least thirty percent.

Of course, this character was still too weak at the first tier. At the third tier, a stacked hammer strike of his could probably kill even Cloudbreach cultural researcher. The forging session had yet to end, but Su Yu felt like he had grown much stronger than before.

He had finished his ninth body forging, learned the technique of stacking his hammer strikes, and formed the vibrate character. So one could actually gain so much benefit from weapon forging!

Meanwhile, Zhao Li was silently sulking to himself. He had been a weaponsmith for so many years, but he had yet to form even a single natural character. What the fuck was wrong with this kid?

Meanwhile, Su Yu was completely unaware of what Old Zhao was thinking. He was too busy enjoying the process.

He focused on sensing the rhythm of the vibrations and the changes as he weakened them. At the same time, his fire of inheritance remained active. Thanks to that, Zhao Li had actually comprehended a lot of new concepts as well. The fire of inheritance had also benefited him greatly.

In fact, his rate of exhaustion was much lower than his initial estimate. The fire of inheritance was the main reason for that. The two started hammering the weapon in silence. With his new character, the vibrations no longer troubled Su Yu as much, allowing him to last much longer.

The second day was slowly coming to an end. Zhao Li had been hammering this weapon for nearly five consecutively days without a break in between. Even a regular Mountainsea would be fully drained at this point. One could see that Zhao Li wasn't bluffing when he spoke about his endurance.

All the cultivators outside the grotto were watching with admiration. The booming sounds had persisted for five consecutive days. Was something like that even possible?

"Is Master Zhao really a Cloudbreach?" Someone asked doubtfully. Could a Cloudbreach last five days of continuous weapon forging?

Most of the people here didn't know how much energy one required exactly for weapon forging, but they only needed to imagine releasing their source qi and willpower for five days in a row. For most people, that was impossible.

Thus, a lot of people were overwhelmed with shock and admiration toward Zhao Li. Meanwhile, some of the earth weaponsmiths present were more impressed about Cui Lang instead of Zhao Li.

"Has Cui Lang...learned the Soul Expanding Art?"

"He might have entered the Cloudbreach Realm."

"Old Zhao sure has stumbled upon a piece of treasure. Cui Lang has been forging for an entire day, but he is still able to keep going."

"Is it possible that he is sustaining himself with some precious herbs?"

The earth weaponsmiths started discussing among themselves. It wasn't too surprising that Zhao Li had such a high level of endurance. Back then, his father had fought an enemy in the Allheaven Battlefield for three days in a row. As for Zhao Li, his endurance level was higher thanks to his Soul Expanding Art.

But it was very surprising that Cui Lang could follow Zhao Li's rhythm and last for an entire day. Some speculated that he might have advanced into the Cloudbreach and learned the Soul Expanding Art. Additionally, he must have consumed some precious herbs as well. That was how he had lasted so long.

Among the crowd, Hu Qi indifferently said, "It's not too surprising that Cui Lang is able to last this long. He might not know the Soul Expanding Art before this, but he has learned the Heavenly Forge Art, a special art of weaponsmithing. Our Heavenly Forge Art is no weaker than any other weaponsmithing arts."

The others nodded when they heard that. One of them said, "If the kid has learned the Heavenly Forge Art from Senior Hu, then this won't be that surprising anymore. This Cui Lang sure is a lucky kid. After receiving your teachings, he has also received the teachings of Old Zhao. I reckon the earth grade is really possible for him."

"Yeah. The earth grade won't be that far away for him."

"How enviable."

Even the earth weaponsmiths were envious of Cui Lang's good luck. It wasn't easy to learn the secrets of these two lineages. Sure, the foundation teachings of the two lines could be learned easily, but their secret teachings would only be taught to direct students.

Hu Qi said, "Cui Lang is a talented weaponsmith, so that's not too surprising. What a pity that Senior Heavenly Forge has been away for so long. If he's here, he might accept Cui Lang as his student as well."

"Heavenly Forge King...sigh. Only Great Ming has received a tiny bit of his teachings. None of us is lucky enough to receive any teachings from him."

Hu Qi's line, or to be precise, Great Ming's line, had produced a large number of earth weaponsmiths. That was due to the Hundred Dao Pagoda. And the weaponsmithing teachings in the Hundred Dao Pagoda had originated from Heavenly Forge King. Thus, one could say that Great Ming's weaponsmithing teachings were the teachings of Heavenly Forge King.

Of course, as far as Zhao Li was concerned, those teachings were only useful for mass-manufacturing weapons. He looked down on them. It was worth noting that he only looked down on the teachings but not Heavenly Forge King himself. That was the founder of those teachings. For Zhao Li, apart from the founder, the others were all produced from the same mold. These people lacked creativity and ingenuity in their creations.

While these people were speaking, the sixty-eighth golden stripe appeared.

At this point, the vibrations were once again bothering Su Yu.

His skin started tearing apart again.

He madly absorbed heavenly source qi, but not even that was enough to keep up with the damage. Zhao Li solemnly said, "Withdraw when we reach the seventy-second golden stripe. The recoil will grow even stronger. Your new character is good and your body is strong, but you're still lacking."

"I-I understand..."

No. He wouldn't withdraw so easily. He still had some other trump cards. He could crush his Sunmoon characters and absorb the character intent to upgrade his vibrate character. Upon advancement, he would be able to further weaken the vibrations. If he could also complete his tenth body forging, his body would also grow stronger.

He would not give up! What was this? He would never shirk from this challenge! His willpower and sea of willpower were vibrating. Wasn't this the same as the sensation he felt when he was killed in his dreams? In fact, being killed in his dreams felt even worse than this. It had been quite a while since he last experienced this sensation, so he was not used to suddenly feeling it again. He had actually been missing that feeling.

Su Yu told himself that this wasn't a bad thing. It could let him walk down the memory lane. He would rarely dream nowadays. It would only happen around once per month. And perhaps due to the growth of his willpower, he would no longer feel that much pain after being killed in his dreams nowadays. Thus, these vibrations greatly reminded him of the sensation when he was still weak.

Old Zhao said nothing else. He knew Su Yu could keep going. Back when the kid was still very weak, he was already capable of resisting so many hammer strikes. Now that the kid had grown much stronger, he should be able to last until the seventy-second golden stripe. A regular profound weaponsmith would have reached their limit at this point.

Zhao Li could feel that his weapon was already as strong as a regular earth weapon. It had also grown stronger. At sixty-eight golden stripes, it was comparable to its previous strength at seventy-two and a half stripes.

If he stopped now, he was confident he could perfectly complete the forging and use it as an earth weapon. That was actually a pretty good option. It had the strength of an earth weapon yet it would only drain as much energy as a profound weapon. It would be similar to the weapon he gave Su Yu previously, a weapon with reduced usage requirements.

This normally only existed for yellow and profound cultural weapons. It had never appeared before for earth weapons. But now, something like that had appeared. But this was not Zhao Li's goal. He was pursuing an advancement.

If he could advance successfully into the Mountainsea Realm and push his cultural weapon to the earth grade, he would be able to become a middle earth weaponsmith. His bottleneck would also be nonexistent, allowing him to rapidly reach the level of a peak earth weaponsmith like this senior brother.

For him, it didn't matter if he could complete this weapon safely at a lower grade if he couldn't meet his ultimate goal.

His words would have no weight as a pseudo earth weaponsmith at the Cloudbreach Realm? Was he supposed to keep relying on the reputation of his dead father and departed senior brother? Zhao Li continued hammering the weapon as he thought about all that.

𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

Sixty-ninth golden stripe.

And after half an hour, the seventieth golden stripe appeared.

At that point, Su Yu was already looking very miserable. He nearly made a mistake when slamming his hammer down. Fortunately, he was able to correct himself before the hammer strike landed.

It was bad enough that he was being less and less helpful. He couldn't allow himself to further drag Zhao Li down. And at the seventy-first golden stripe, he finally reached his limit.

When he saw that even Zhao Li was turning slightly pale, he gnashed his teeth and said, "T-teacher, l-let's recover!"

Zhao Li rolled his eyes. Recover his mother. The kid was better off withdrawing. Zhao Li himself was a Cloudbreach with a willpower capacity surpassing that of a Mountainsea, but even someone like him was already greatly exhausted. How was he supposed to recover?

If a treasure that could help him in this situation really existed, he would have gathered it long ago. That thought had barely crossed his mind when Su Yu took out a character wrapped in a barrier of energy out of his storage ring.

With a trembling voice, Su Yu said, "C-crush this c-character...T-the people o-outside c-can't s-sense anything, r-right?"

"..."

Zhao Li stared blankly at the hovering character. He wanted to scold someone. But he could no longer find the word to appropriately describe what he was feeling. Was this a Sunmoon character? That was the break character of the devil race.

"You're planning to recover by crushing this character?"

"Y-yes!"

"..."