Longzang

Chapter 166 There's no reason why it can't be done.
At this moment, Ji Liuli was in Zhang Sheng's room. The table in front of them was filled with parts of all sizes, and boxes of gunpowder were placed next to them.

The parts on the table came in all shapes and sizes, some as large as watermelons, others so small that it took a dozen or so tied together to be as thin as a hair. Wei Yuan didn't recognize any of these parts, let alone know their purpose.

Zhang Sheng and Ji Liuli each held a piece of jade paper and were reading it carefully. Both of them had their brows furrowed as they read and pondered.

Wei Yuan dared not disturb him, and quietly entered the room. He scanned the jade paper with his divine sense and discovered that it contained Xu Wenwu's writings about his experiences. Wei Yuan had long since read these things thoroughly, and considered most of them to be rubbish.

What is so difficult about these things that requires the eldest sister and master to ponder them so deeply?
Wei Yuan stood quietly to the side, waiting for his senior sister to have a moment to herself.

Ji Liuli suddenly shook his head vigorously and said, "Forget it, let's think about what we can do right now. Um, Xiao Weiyuan, what's up?"

Wei Yuan then explained his plan to exchange for Thunder Crystal Wood and ask his senior sister to set up an array. Ji Liuli said, "Then I'll go help little Wei Yuan plant trees first to clear his mind. You take your time thinking about it."

Zhang Sheng nodded, his consciousness remaining fixed on the jade paper.

Wei Yuan naturally knew his teacher's nature; once he started studying something, he would forget to eat and sleep.

The two flew to the northeast of the realm and chose a small hill with many rocks. Wei Yuan then inserted the Thunder Crystal Wood sapling into the soil. As soon as the Thunder Crystal Wood entered the ground, a small arc of electricity instantly lit up inside the tree trunk, and then several thin roots extended from below, beginning to grow deeper into the earth.

Ji Liuli then determined the location, arranged the spiritual objects, and began to set up the lightning-attracting and lightning-binding formation.

This kind of work was something Ji Liuli was extremely familiar with, requiring no thought whatsoever. Wei Yuan took this opportunity to ask Ji Liuli and Zhang Sheng what they had just been studying.

Ji Liuli said, “We are researching the method of refining steel. The mortals in that world can refine thousands of stones of refined steel in one furnace, without spiritual power or the assistance of formations. It’s truly unbelievable. Oh, let me demonstrate it for you and you’ll understand.”

Ji Liuli casually picked up a few stones, grabbed them in the air, and the stones instantly turned into powder. Then, the different powders gathered into clumps, and more than a dozen stone clumps of varying sizes appeared in the air.

“There are iron and copper veins underground here. There is a lot of iron in these stones. I have already sieved out the raw iron.”

Ji Liuli scattered the other stone lumps, leaving only one iron lump. Wei Yuan scanned it with his divine sense and felt that it was almost entirely iron, with impurities accounting for less than 10%.

The ball of iron powder floated above Ji Liuli's palm, and then a flame shot out from his palm. In an instant, the ball of iron powder turned red and then melted into a soft ball.

With a flick of his left hand, Ji Liuli extracted a significant amount of impurities from the molten iron, leaving only a mass of highly refined molten iron, completely free of impurities.

"This is iron. We cultivators can identify the properties of things and directly adjust them with our divine sense and Dao power."

Then Ji Liuli had several more powders in his left hand. With a gentle blow, the powders were sent into the molten iron and evenly distributed in various places. Then the color of the flame changed from red to blue, and then to pure white. The molten iron completely turned into iron and was gathered into a ball by the power of the Dao.

"This is steel." The temperature of the molten iron ball rose and fell sharply. Ji Liuli added a little powder, and after repeating this several times, the temperature dropped straight down to room temperature, turning into a steel ball that shone with a faint blue light.

"This is high-quality steel."

Wei Yuan nodded. These principles were all learned in the art theory class, but back then the students' cultivation was still shallow, and they had to rely on the furnace fire to heat up the furnace. When adjusting the properties of the material, they could only process a little bit at a time. Wei Yuan worked hard for half a day and finally produced two ounces of refined steel, which was still of average quality. How could he compare to Ji Liuli, who could produce hundreds of pounds of refined steel with a wave of his hand?

Fine steel is the pinnacle of materials, but it is far from the end of this path.

If other celestial materials are added and refined with Daoist power, refined steel can be transformed into spiritual materials, just like the difference between celestial silver and mortal silver.

Ji Liuli said, "With my cultivation level, I can only refine a thousand catties of refined steel at a time, which is less than ten shi. But the mortals in that world can refine over a thousand shi of refined steel in one furnace. Doesn't that mean that after many years of cultivation, I am still inferior to some mortals?"

“This… of course, can’t be compared like that,” Wei Yuan said.

However, after Ji Liuli's demonstration, Wei Yuan gradually understood and pondered, "We all use our divine sense to distinguish the properties of things, and then use our Dao power to adjust the composition of the materials according to those properties. There is a limit to the amount of material that can be processed at one time. If there is too much, we cannot guarantee that the materials will be evenly distributed and that their properties will be balanced. Those mortals refine a thousand stones of refined steel in one furnace, so wouldn't they need two thousand stones of various ores to put into the furnace? How do they ensure the balance of the internal properties of the materials?"

Ji Liuli said, "That's one reason. The second is temperature. It's difficult for any fire to melt iron, let alone fine steel. We use earth fire, heaven fire, Dao fire, and spiritual fire to forge weapons. Apart from some special uses, many flames can naturally melt metals and stones, and fine steel is no problem at all. But these flames all require divine sense to control and Dao power to support them. That world is just inhabited by mortals. How do they control the temperature of the fire?"

The difficulty varies depending on the amount of raw materials used in a single batch. Refining ten catties at a time versus a thousand catties is worlds apart in difficulty, let alone a thousand stones or even more. Following this line of thought, Wei Yuan grew increasingly alarmed.

Wei Yuan slowly said, "The mortals in that world can produce a thousand stones of refined steel in every furnace, with consistent quality. It seems that they should be able to accurately know the furnace temperature and have the means to ensure that the furnace temperature rises or falls to a certain range, while ensuring that the temperature inside the furnace material remains constant and the physical properties are balanced. There are too many things involved here."

Ji Liuli nodded: "Yes, if each item is broken down further, it would probably be enough to become a field of research. That world must have reached a certain level in every aspect to produce this final batch of 1,000-stone refined steel."

Wei Yuan said, "Xu Wenwu is ignorant and incompetent in that world, and there are probably many areas that he has never even heard of."

Ji Liuli said, "It's alright. We only need to know what mortals in that world have accomplished. Our divine senses operate a thousand times faster than mortals'. What mortals can do, we can do too."

Wei Yuan agreed. Just like producing a furnace of a thousand stones of refined steel, now that they knew about it, they could study it slowly and eventually achieve it. Let alone a furnace of a thousand stones, even ten thousand or a hundred thousand stones, if mortals could do it, there was no reason why cultivators couldn't.

As they talked, Wei Yuan recalled something else: the amount of Dao power required to upgrade a thousand stones of raw materials to the point of melting them into molten iron was extraordinary. And it seemed that many mortals in that world used electricity.

At this point, Ji Liuli said, "We also have many methods that are beyond the reach of ordinary people, such as feng shui and luck. You already have luck on your side, and with the feng shui array I set up, many things will naturally fall into place. You see, no one told you that you just exchanged a piece of thunderwood for it?"

(End of this chapter)