Sixty years of blacksmithing, a single hammer blow forging a celestial being.

The night was deeper.

The abandoned hall fell completely silent, with only the muffled rumble of the churning fire in the fire pit in the backyard faintly audible.

Li Ping'an got up from the bedside, walked to the door, and listened to the sounds outside.

no one.

He then walked towards the houses next door and listened carefully against the wall for a while.

He Lu's snoring was even, and there was no sound from the disciples' rooms; they were truly fast asleep.

After confirming that no one else was awake, Li Pingan turned around and went back into the house.

He first bolted the door shut from the inside, then went to the window and carefully closed the old wooden window tightly, leaving not a single crack.

After doing all that, he was still not satisfied, so he leaned closer to the crack in the door and listened again.

It was quiet outside.

Li Ping'an finally breathed a sigh of relief and reached into his robes.

The two Body Tempering Pills that he had personally refined were lying there peacefully.

He took out the pill and spread it in his palm.

Bathed in the faint moonlight streaming through the window, the two pills gleamed with a pale luster, round and plump, a world apart from the five burnt pills that had exploded in the furnace.

Li Ping'an stared at the pill in his hand for a while.

Without hesitation.

He tilted his head back and poured both Body Tempering Pills into his mouth at once, swallowing them down with a gulp!

After swallowing the two Body Tempering Pills, Li Ping'an sat cross-legged on the bed.

A warm current spread from my stomach, slowly seeping into my limbs and bones.

It felt completely different from when I got hit twice on the mountain road.

It hurt at that time.

The pain was so intense that he almost fell to the ground.

It doesn't hurt anymore. It's warm, like someone is soaking him in warm water. It feels comfortable.

Li Ping'an closed his eyes and looked inward at his own body.

The medicinal power traveled along the meridians, stopping wherever it encountered a blockage, slowly dissolving, and then continuing forward.

slow.

It's really slow.

Compared to the explosive force of a hammer, the power of this pill is rather mild.

Li Ping'an had a better understanding of the situation.

He wasted a lot of energy smashing the Heaven-Forging Hammer directly onto his body, as the poisonous gas and impurities, along with his spiritual energy, all had to pass through his body.

The effect is immediate, achieving two levels with one strike.

As for the pills, if you can absorb them steadily and evenly, it's just slow.

It takes a whole night to equal one blow from someone else.

He wasn't in a hurry.

Anyway, there's plenty of time tonight. The door is bolted shut, the windows are closed tight, and those people outside are sleeping like logs.

Li Ping'an calmed himself down and guided the medicinal power throughout his body little by little.

Time passed little by little.

The moon outside the window slowly moved from one end of the eaves to the other.

The muffled rumble of the surging fire in the fire pit in the backyard of the abandoned hall carried through several walls; it wasn't loud, but it had a hypnotic quality.

Black liquid began to seep from the pores on Li Ping'an's body again.

It was much less than when I was hit, and the seepage was slower, just a little bit, pushing that foul air outwards.

When the sky began to lighten with the first hint of dawn, Li Ping'an opened his eyes.

He let out a long breath.

Body Tempering Level 6.

Li Ping'an stretched his muscles and bones, and a series of crackling sounds came from the gaps between his bones.

Compared to a hammer, it's definitely slower.

Li Ping'an sat on the edge of the bed, pondered for a while, and then looked inward at his body again, his brows slowly furrowing.

wrong.

He discovered something different.

Those two times the hammer struck weren't just about raising one's level of understanding.

Even his old bones, his long-withered and decaying physique, were uprooted along with him.

With one blow, skin, flesh, bone, and blood are all pulled upwards, and everything at its root is changed.

But this elixir...

Li Ping'an went through the lingering medicinal effects once more.

His spiritual realm had improved, but his physical constitution hadn't changed much.

It's like building a house one story higher, but the foundation underneath is still the same original foundation.

Li Ping'an's heart skipped a beat.

That's a huge difference.

The path of cultivation, in the end, is not about the level of one's cultivation at a particular moment, but about the foundation one has.

Those with good innate talent will find things going more smoothly as they progress, while those with poor innate talent will get stuck halfway through.

Countless cultivators have exhausted their entire lives on miraculous pills and spent countless spirit stones, yet they still cannot make up for that slight deficiency in their innate constitution.

With one strike of his Heaven-Forging Hammer, even his very bones were re-tempered.

What does this mean?

Li Ping'an clenched his fists, and that burning passion in his heart surged up again.

This stuff is more precious than any magic pill or elixir.

No wonder it's called the Sky-Forging Hammer.

It's not just your body that's being forged; it's reshaping your very destiny and constitution.

Having figured this out, Li Ping'an felt more at ease.

If you really want to move up the ladder, you'll still have to rely on hard work.

The path of elixirs is slow and cannot repair one's fundamental constitution; it is ultimately a secondary approach.

However... we still need to continue with the alchemy.

It wasn't for my own consumption.

It is because this elixir contains spiritual energy.

The Heaven-Forging Hammer absorbs energy, so it needs something to feed it.

The spiritual essence in waste is scattered; it may be there today but not tomorrow, and it's difficult to accumulate.

But pills are different. The spiritual energy inside a pill is condensed into one block, making it convenient to store and feed to Hammer whenever needed.

More importantly, this thing can be sold for money.

Even low-grade Body Tempering Pills are a valuable commodity within the inner sect.

He has the Heaven-Forging Hammer in his hand, turning waste pills into good pills as easily as playing with them.

Once we've collected a batch, we can find an excuse to sell them, and the spirit stones will come in.

With spirit stones, you can also feed the hammer.

And then it started spinning.

The more Li Ping'an thought about it, the more convinced he became that this path was viable.

Outsiders find the abandoned hall dirty and unlucky, and avoid it like the plague.

In his hands, it became a treasure trove.

Once I understood all this, it was already bright daylight.

Li Ping'an got out of bed and stretched.

There was still no movement from the next room, but He Lu's snoring could be heard intermittently. The rooms of the other disciples were also quiet, and none of them were awake.

Yes, after a long day of hard work, I'm exhausted and sleeping soundly at this hour.

Li Pingan didn't bother them.

He quietly pulled open the latch, pushed the door open, and went out.

The morning mist hadn't completely dissipated in the open space in the front yard, and it was chilly.

Li Ping'an stood in the middle of the courtyard and shook his arms.

He wanted to stretch his muscles and bones.

After a night of rest, I felt stronger, but I still felt like there was some energy trapped inside me with nowhere to go.

What should I practice?

Li Ping'an had been in the outer sect for sixty years and was a master blacksmith, but he had never even touched a proper martial arts technique.

The incantations and techniques for Qi cultivation and foundation building are things that only inner disciples are qualified to learn.

Someone like him, without talent or background, can't even get close to it.

but……

It's not that there's absolutely nothing there.

Li Pingan remembered a set of boxing techniques.

That was decades ago.

At that time, he had only been on the mountain for a few years and met a senior disciple from the outer sect at the errand office.

That senior brother was a good person. Seeing how hard he worked at blacksmithing and how honest he was, he taught him a set of boxing techniques before he left.

It's said to be good for health.

Li Ping'an didn't take it seriously at the time, but he followed along with the gestures a couple of times and memorized them.

This record then lasted for decades.

When he had free time, he would do a couple of rounds of blacksmithing during breaks.

Surprisingly, that punch actually worked.

He was a body-tempering cultivator whose qi and blood were depleted. He had lived to this age. He would have died of exhaustion long ago if he hadn't been working in the menial hut. This set of fist techniques deserves some credit for that.