Douluo Dragon King: I'm creating a golden age behind the scenes!

Top floor of the Blacksmiths' Association, Donghai City

A handsome young man, with a powerful and imposing presence like the blazing sun, pushed open the office door and strode in, still brimming with the energy of finishing work.

"Master, you wanted to see me?"

Looking at his most prized disciple, Mu Chen said, "Ziming, your master has made arrangements. Someone will come to pick you up and take you to Tiandou City in a few days."

Now that your soul forging skills are already quite advanced, there's nothing more I can guide you on in soul forging.

Next, as long as you properly refine and improve your experience and health, you can prepare to attempt to become an eight-star master craftsman.

"Are you ready for the trip to the Heaven Dou City Forging Association for further training?"

"Everything is ready, but Master, my senior master has just become a master craftsman, and many people have asked him to forge four-word battle armor. He's very busy right now. Do you really have time to guide me?"

"Don't worry, he's more than willing. And this time, sending you to his side is not only for your further studies, but also for your safety."

After all, you are now the youngest Seven-Star Saint Craftsman in the history of our Blacksmith Association.

Yes, Li Ziming's forging skills have reached the level of a seventh-level forger, directly breaking the record of the Forger Association.

Whenever Mu Chen recalls the day a year ago when Li Ziming successfully broke through to the seventh level of blacksmithing, he feels a surge of pride. For the next month, he talked about it to everyone he met in the blacksmithing world.

"Huh? What? How did you know my apprentice became a Seven-Star Saint Craftsman?!"

In response, His Excellency Zhen Hua, the President of the Douluo Continent Blacksmith Association and a Nine-Star Divine Craftsman, sent his warmest congratulations.

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"Gold! I am the master craftsman! Does Mu Chen deserve it?!"

Huh?! You think you can teach a genius like that?! You're going to take him on anyway!

"If you don't know how to teach, give it to me and I'll teach you!"

According to an unnamed staff member, during that month at the headquarters of the Blacksmiths' Association, one could often hear the pig-like screams of many young blacksmith geniuses.

In the past six years, Li Ziming has made great progress. Under Mu Chen's full guidance, his soul power has reached level 73 Soul Saint, his soul rings are three purple and four black, his blood and qi are comparable to those of an ordinary Title Douluo, his spiritual power has reached the peak of the Spirit Sea Realm, and he has also created a two-word battle armor for himself - "Blazing Sun".

Although Liu Tianran could turn Li Ziming into a Soul Douluo at any time, he chose to wait a little longer.

After all, the sudden emergence of a 20-year-old Seven-Star Saint Craftsman had already caused countless blacksmiths to have their Dao hearts shattered.

This not only made him stand head and shoulders above the most outstanding talents in the forging world, but also attracted the attention of many powerful forces.

Many people believe that he will be the most likely person to become a master craftsman after Zhenhua.

But this touched a nerve with many people, especially those from the Star Luo and Heavenly Soul continents.

After all, the Federation had just produced a master craftsman, which had already given them a lot of headaches, and now the candidate for the next master craftsman was almost chosen.

At that time, the Federation's combat power will be enhanced in an unimaginable way.

Faced with this terrifying future, they were forced to take risks and choose some radical methods.

In the past three months, Li Ziming has survived no fewer than twenty assassination attempts, and he himself has killed no fewer than eight assassins below the level of Contra.

As for those above the Soul Douluo level, they were dealt with by Mu Chen and his friends who were Title Douluo level.

However, for safety reasons, Mu Chen decided to send Li Ziming to Zhen Hua's side. After all, Tian Dou City is one of the central cities of the Federation and the headquarters of the Blacksmith Association, where powerful people abound.

Moreover, Zhenhua is closely protected by Mu Ye, the sect leader of the Body Sect. Unless the Limit Douluo personally takes action, anyone who comes will be sent to their doom.

Of course, behind Li Ziming's amazing achievements, in addition to Mu Chen's dedicated training, Liu Tianran's generous sponsorship is also indispensable.

However, due to his age and status, Liu Tianran could not focus on collecting energy all the time. But in order to help Li Ziming develop as soon as possible and to collect more energy as quickly as possible, he had to work on other things.

Thus, Liu Tianran conceived a second clone—"Xie Jiayun".

To gather energy, one must inevitably pursue killing and death, and if we're talking about where the most killing and death occurs, it's only in the military.

Under the arrangement of Li Ziming and Liu Tianran, Xie Jiayun entered the Federal Army, specifically the Western Legion, which had the highest intensity of combat.

Moreover, in order to ensure that Xie Jiayun has a high enough starting point so that he can obtain energy in the army in a long-term, stable and safe manner and gain the attention and training of the military's high-ranking officials, Liu Tianran specially arranged for him an extremely rare healing-type super martial soul - "Tree of Life".

This martial soul is extremely rare and has powerful healing abilities. Li Ziming put in a lot of effort to obtain it.

After attending numerous auctions by major powers, he finally managed to collect a branch of the Tree of Life, which he used as material to create his clone.

Next, Liu Tianran directly invested the energy reserves he had collected over two years, giving him a starting point as a five-ring Soul King and equipping him with a one-word battle armor.

As it turned out, Liu Tianran was not disappointed. Xie Jiayun, with the powerful healing ability of the Tree of Life, thrived in the army, made many military achievements, and received strong support from the military leadership due to her outstanding talent.

At the age of 20, he has become a glorious federal colonel thanks to his level 72 healing-type soul saint cultivation.

It was also thanks to Xie Jiayun's hard work in collecting information that Li Ziming was able to make such rapid progress.

-------

The matter of the first and second clones can be put to rest for now, but Liu Tianran's arrangements for Li Ziming and Xie Jiayun are mostly to be responsible for the positioning of logistics and equipment.

Regarding their combat capabilities, Liu Tianran will not deliberately demand that they have outstanding combat abilities at present. He may enhance them in the future, but right now, with resources and energy reserves in their initial stages, there is no need for that.

Therefore, Liu Tianran now needs a powerful combat clone to ensure his safety in the initial stage.

Let him use his talent to truly enter the sights of those powerful forces, so that he can gain enough status and power in the future to deal with some identity and background issues for his future clones.

After all, Liu Tianran can't possibly choose dead people to replace every clone. He can't guarantee that everyone is as narrow-minded as Li Ziming, and problems will inevitably arise sooner or later.

If someone notices something's wrong one day, it'll be troublesome.

Otherwise, even if they are exceptionally talented, they might be excluded from the core ranks by those powerful figures due to their unclear identities.

The cemetery is a better place for Liu Tianran to collect the energy needed to nurture his clone. Of course, some of the corpses in these cemeteries have been there for too long and not much energy can be extracted from them, but there are still a lot of them.

After collecting energy for four hours, Liu Tianran left the East Sea Cemetery when he realized he could no longer gather any more energy.

. . . . . .

Three days later,

It's that time of year again for the Martial Soul Awakening, and Spirit Pagodas all over the Federation are busy with their work.

Inside the Tianhai Spirit Transmission Tower, an orphan named Zhou Mingyu entered the tower's public Martial Soul Awakening Room alone, without anyone accompanying him.

The staff led Zhou Mingyu to a small room. Upon entering, he saw that the floor, walls, and even the ceiling were covered with dense patterns.

As soon as Zhou Mingyu stepped into the room, a strange feeling quickly spread through his heart. It was as if a hidden power was surging deep within his body, as if something was urgently calling to him, causing his heart to beat faster involuntarily.

The staff member stood in the center of the room and released his soul power.

"Kids, get ready, I'm about to begin!"

"Yes, I'm ready, Uncle."

As soon as Zhou Mingyu finished speaking, a cold, blue light rose from his body and transformed into a white longsword. The cold aura emanating from it enveloped the entire room, and even the hair and eyebrows of the Spirit Pagoda staff were covered in frost.

The Xuanbing Sword, a top-tier weapon spirit, possesses extremely pure ice attributes, only a hair's breadth away from ultimate ice, enough to attract the attention and cultivation of the higher-ups of the Spirit Pagoda.

This was also the martial soul that Liu Tianran prepared for this clone. In order to improve his talent and combat power, Liu Tianyi not only made a special trip to Donghai Academy to obtain Wu Changkong's sample, but also used a hundred-year-old Xuanbing Grass to purify and strengthen his martial soul attributes.

Choosing Wu Changkong as the clone template was a last resort. There was no other way; among the top geniuses Liu Tianran knew, Wu Changkong was the only one who was relatively easy to contact.

After all, although he was only a Soul Emperor at nearly thirty, that was purely a psychological issue. His talent was undeniable, as he was able to cultivate from level 70 to level 98 in just a few years.

As Zhou Mingyu watched this scene, he couldn't help but sigh in admiration. He really wished that his own martial soul was also a sword. After all, no matter how strong a martial soul is, at least it looks cool!

After all, being strong or not is a temporary thing, but being handsome or not is a lifelong thing!

"Little friend, how are you feeling now?"

At some point, a middle-aged deacon from the Spirit Pagoda appeared in the Awakening Room. He discarded his unrealistic ideas, looked at Zhou Mingyu, and said with a smile, "Young brother, congratulations on awakening a powerful martial soul."

"Your martial soul is an extremely powerful ice-attribute weapon martial soul, which is already very close to the pinnacle of ice attributes."

"This quality of ice-attribute martial soul has not appeared many times in history, but every one of them who has awakened this martial soul has been a super genius who has shocked the world."

"Basically, almost every Soul Master with this kind of Martial Soul quality has cultivated to the level of Super Douluo."

The steward smiled and said to Zhou Mingyu, "Little friend, your martial soul has been fully awakened. Now let's test your innate soul power."

Zhou Mingyu nodded and stepped forward to press his hand on the compass for testing soul power.

"ten!"

His gaze flickered slightly, but he wasn't particularly surprised.

The Spirit Pagoda steward's reaction this time was quite calm. After all, such a top-tier martial soul would normally have full innate soul power. After telling Zhou Mingyu about his full innate soul power, he began to invite him to join the Spirit Pagoda.

After pretending to think for a moment, Zhou Mingyu decided to join.

In this era, joining a powerful force is inevitable. Joining a powerful force makes everything much easier. When choosing between Shrek Academy, Tang Sect, Spirit Pagoda, and War God Temple, Liu Tianyi assigned Zhou Mingyu to Spirit Pagoda.

"Your talent is quite good, and the tower master of our Tianhai Spirit Transmission Tower has high hopes for you." After completing Zhou Mingyu's entry procedures, the steward encouraged him, "Keep it up. If you perform well, the tower master will most likely accept you as his disciple."

Zhou Mingyu nodded.

Each city has a manager for the Spirit Pagoda, and only larger cities have branch masters. Tianhai City, as the largest coastal city on the eastern coast of the Federation, has a developed economy.

Meanwhile, in recent years, the coastal areas have developed rapidly, and Tianhai City's Spirit Tower, as one of the eighteen Heavenly Pillars, has been equipped with a branch tower master directly appointed by the headquarters.

Those qualified to serve as branch tower masters of the Eighteen Heavenly Pillars are all super strong individuals within the Spirit Pagoda, and none other than a Super Douluo.

Those who can become branch tower masters are not only talented and strong, but also have their own unique methods, and the forces behind them are complex and intertwined.

[Being able to become a disciple of a branch tower master is already quite good; at least the resources needed for early development will be plentiful.]

Zhou Mingyu was self-aware enough that in this era, innate full soul power was no longer an outrageous talent. Not to mention that it was commonplace, the number of people who awakened it each year had exceeded the number of Limit Douluo. With just one top-level martial soul, he probably couldn't attract Limit Douluo to compete to take him as a disciple. Being noticed by a Super Douluo was already a perfect start.

"Let's go, the tower master is already waiting for you."

The deacon led Zhou Mingyu to the upper level of the Spirit Pagoda and into one of the rooms.

The room is incredibly high-tech, with many egg-shaped glass spheres containing various rare spirits.

"Tower Master, Zhou Mingyu has been brought here."

"Okay, you can go now."

Zhou Mingyu shifted his gaze from the various strange soul eggs to the man in the room whose back was to him.

The man turned around.

His face was very dignified, exuding authority without anger, and he looked very serious. Although he did not use his soul power, the surrounding天地元气 (heaven and earth energy) naturally swirled around him.

"Greetings, Tower Master."

"Oh, you must be Zhou Mingyu?"

Wang Yupeng looked Zhou Mingyu up and down and nodded.

Zhou Mingyu stood respectfully in place, without making any overly outrageous moves.

"You possess innate full soul power, and are already capable of fusing with your first soul spirit," Wang Yupeng said. "Could you show me your martial soul?"

Following Wang Yupeng's instructions, Zhou Mingyu summoned his martial spirit.

A chilling aura surged forth around him, and ice crystals began to condense around his body, while sharp sword energy swirled around him.

After carefully sensing the aura, Wang Yupeng's pupils contracted slightly.

It is indeed a very pure ice attribute, almost comparable to the ultimate ice.

If he cultivates to the level of a Title Douluo and is equipped with a 100,000-year-old ice-attribute spirit, with the quality of that spirit, it might automatically sublimate into ultimate ice, with the ultimate potential within reach.

It's a pity it doesn't quite match my attributes. Should I accept it or not?

After thinking it over, Wang Yupeng decided to establish a master-disciple relationship first. Zhou Mingyu was very talented, and it was hard to guarantee that he wouldn't be snatched away while he hesitated.

After all, the flower language of genius is "first come, first served."

"Zhou Mingyu, would you be willing to become my disciple?"

"I do," Zhou Mingyu said.

He bowed respectfully and knelt before Wang Yupeng.

Wang Yupeng smiled broadly.

"I, Wang Yupeng, have taken in a total of five disciples. You are the fifth, and most likely the last."

Zhou Mingyu listened quietly.

"From today onwards, you will cultivate alongside your master. Your master is Wang Yupeng, titled 'Thunder Bear,' and my cultivation level is already a level 96 Super Douluo, a three-word Battle Armor Master. I have some reputation on this continent."

"In the future, if anyone dares to bully you, just say your master's name."

. . . .

"Very good, the initial layout is complete. Let time take its course."