Blessing or misfortune in disguise

"I told you his grade as a blacksmith in the spirit of transparency and also for your sakes, so you wouldn't doubt what he says next. And if doubt still lingers after you hear his report, I'm willing to write you an introductory note to some of the independent blacksmith shops we occasionally deal with.

With my referral, the consultation fee will most likely be waived, or at the very least, offered at a discounted rate. The shops have skilled craftsmen, most of whom are at the blue grade, so they too would be able to assess the saber's issue if you want a second opinion.

It's all up to you, Cultivator Wen Yingjie," Yang Qing said with a gentle smile.

"It's okay, Judge Yang Qing. My coming here means I trust in the Order's judgment—though I wouldn't mind the contacts for those blacksmith shops. Having access to a few shops the Order deems trustworthy wouldn't be a bad thing, especially in my line of work, where every bit of information matters," Wen Yingjie said with an awkward smile.

He had decided to thicken his skin and ask for that letter. He knew that for those shops to have caught the Order's eye, they had to be at the top of their craft, and for someone like him, it would take an astronomical amount of luck—or power—just to get through their doors. Yang Qing's letter would be a cheat of sorts, and he was more than willing to shamelessly accept it.

"Hahahaha, sure, that works too," Yang Qing said in amusement.

"Yi Jie, if you would please," he added, disrupting Yi Jie's more-than-normal examination of the saber.

It took a moment before Yi Jie returned to reality and began sharing his insights.

"From the craftsmanship, I can tell the blacksmith did an excellent job achieving material balance. Every material used in making this saber was seamlessly meshed together to create a subtle harmony, ensuring their individual characteristics enhanced each other rather than one or two outshining and suppressing the rest.

One of the primary goals of a great craftsman is to bring out the best in every ingredient used in an artifact, no matter how seemingly insignificant it may be. A well-made artifact is one where all its components meld together, their attributes complementing rather than overshadowing or restraining one another.

Judging by the craftsmanship of this saber, the blacksmith managed to achieve that balance, even if he just barely touched his feet on that threshold," Yi Jie said as he brought the saber closer to his eyes, even though there was no need for it as his spiritual sense would capture more than the eyes could.

He nodded appreciatively as he turned the saber at several angles. "But even reaching this level means he has taken a step onto a path that millions of craftsmen may never get the chance to tread in their entire lives.

Truly a work of beauty. I remember when I took my first step on this journey, how the world seemed to change…." he added in admiration.

"Ahem, Yi Jie, we're not here to hear you regale us with your journey as a blacksmith. Focus on the matter at hand," Yang Qing chastised as he clicked his tongue.

"Tsk, what a slimy hypocrite. Whenever I try to talk about my heroic tales, he's the first one to interrupt me, and now here he is, doing the exact same thing. How thick must one's face be to pull something like this after endlessly mocking someone else for it? Some people…." Yang Qing softly muttered as he shook his head.

He threw a mocking look at Yi Jie, leaving him both embarrassed and fuming as he shot a vengeful glare in return.

"Fine," Yi Jie muttered through gritted teeth.

"Umm, cultivator Wen Yingjie… I don't quite know how to put this, but the judgment of your situation depends entirely on perspective. From my standpoint, I'd say it's a positive. But to others… well, you either have the worst luck imaginable or the best luck out there," Yi Jie said, eyeing Wen Yingjie as if he were an intriguing specimen.

"Huh? What?" Wen Yingjie frowned, struggling to follow Yi Jie's words.

"How do I explain this?... As you know, to be recognized as a blue-grade craftsman, one must either be capable of creating a monarch-rank artifact or craft an artifact that holds the potential to become one.

When refining an artifact, even with subpar materials, a craftsman can be so gifted in their craft that they manage to elevate the artifact's potential through sheer skill alone. In such cases, the artifact typically needs only a single high-grade material to realize that potential.

When creating such an artifact, the craftsman would have already made it with those future upgrades in mind, thus prompting them to leave behind necessary allowances and structural considerations for that material. In simpler terms, it's crafted as an unfinished product that only lacks one final piece to complete it. But even as an unfinished piece, it still functions like a completed artifact," Yi Jie explained.

"But there's another, more unique kind of artifact potential, and that's the one your saber falls under. It doesn't need a high-grade material to evolve.

Your saber currently sits at the absolute peak of high-grade sky-rank weapons. However, it's different from other weapons in that rank. That difference is what gives it monarch-rank potential," Yi Jie said, thoroughly piquing Wen Yingjie and Tan Delun's curiosity as their eyes fell on the saber in his hand.

"Your saber has birthed a pseudo-sentience. It's trying to break out of its cocoon as a mere weapon and give birth to a natal spirit.

That's why I said you either have the worst luck… or the best. For some strange twist of fate, you've kept finding yourself in places where people were just about to undergo their tribulations," Yi Jie slowly explained.

"Every artifact that gains sentience must undergo a lightning tribulation. However, your saber is in a unique state where its sentience exists and does not. It's trapped in some kind of limbo, uncertain of how to move forward," Yi Jie said before moving on to expound on his statement, given the growing look of confusion on Wen Yingjie's face.

"Normally, an artifact can birth a spirit the moment it's completed, but this only happens when it has been crafted by a blue-grade, gold-grade, or purple-grade craftsman.

Then there are artifacts with the potential to awaken that spirit, though their journey to sentience is a slow and gradual one, similar to how cultivators improve through gradual accumulation of insights and experience. Most artifacts that gain intelligence do so through this gradual process.

Your saber should have fallen into that category," Yi Jie said as he gazed at Wen Yingjie.

"But you interfered with the process," he added with a faint smile.

Wen Yingjie blinked in confusion, his brows furrowing. How did I interfere with something I didn't even know was happening?

What did interfering even mean in this situation?

As if reading his mind, Yi Jie answered,"I don't know if it was deliberate on your part or not, but some of the places you passed through had just been baptized by tribulations. The ambient remnant energy left behind was what stirred your saber's pseudo spirit awake."

"You could think of that effect as premature labor," Yi Jie said slowly.

"Those energies accelerated your saber's awakening process. And during that process, because the spirit wasn't fully formed—and due to the uniqueness of the situation—it kept drawing pseudo tribulations."

"That's why the lightning was weak at the beginning. It grew stronger as the spirit became more and more solid," he continued.

"Had you avoided areas filled with that residual energy, your saber would have gone back to sleep, so to speak. But instead, most of the places you traveled through just so happened to have recently experienced tribulations.

The repeated exposure to that environment agitated the saber's pseudo spirit to the point it could no longer restrain itself, leading to the moment it forcefully anchored itself to the ground and summoned an even more powerful lightning strike."

"Wen Yingjie, you must have quite the 'peculiar' luck," Yi Jie said with a wry smile, shaking his head at the rogue cultivator's absurd fortune.

While tribulations were often dramatic and impossible to ignore when they occurred—thanks to the suffocating pressure and terrifying presence they exuded—once they had served their purpose, every trace of them vanished almost instantly. That made them nearly impossible to detect after the fact.

Unless you were present to witness it fall, there would be no way to tell a tribulation had ever occurred in an area. They left no traces behind.

By design, a tribulation targeted only the cultivator. Its destructive power was focused entirely on that one person, rarely spilling out to affect the surroundings unless there was outside interference that provoked its wrath or if the cultivator failed their breakthrough and the resulting destruction of their body and soul unleashed collateral damage to the surroundings.

But even then, unless you saw it with your own eyes, you'd never know it was the aftermath of a failed tribulation since destroyed surroundings were a staple food of cultivator warfare.

"Through those strikes, it instinctively realized that the lightning was making it stronger— which is why it forcefully anchored itself before. It doesn't know any better and is acting purely on instinct, like a baby learning to crawl.

However, because those weren't its true tribulation trials and it was merely leeching off the remnant ambient tribulation energy, the lethality wasn't as high, nor did it gain the full benefits of a proper tribulation. Even though it has undergone gradual changes as a result of those false tribulations, it still hasn't fully awakened, and that is the real danger," Yi Jie somberly said.

"You were lucky to have triggered a part of its sentience prematurely… but also unfortunate. Because the next time it gets caught in another one of those scenarios, it will no longer just be leeching off the remnants but will instead trigger its own true tribulation. And in its current excitable state, that will be its undoing.

A real tribulation will obliterate it before it ever has the chance to grow in the state that it's in. It's simply not strong enough to withstand a true trial, not as a pseudo spirit barely a year old," Yi Jie said with a sigh.

Wen Yingjie's eyes widened in shock. He had never imagined that all his recent experiences were tied to the awakening of his saber. He had assumed one of the materials used in its forging was what attracted those lightnings.

His heart soared when Yi Jie spoke of its awakening—only to plummet an instant later into despair at the looming catastrophe.

"So… Dad was able to…" Tears welled up in Tan Delun's eyes as he repeated the words over and over in his mind. It had been the lifelong ambition of the Tan generational masters to one day forge a weapon that could birth a spirit. In over 10,000 years, not a single attempt had succeeded. But today…

In his excitement, everything else Yi Jie had said after that moment became a blur. His mind drowned out the details, fixating solely on the revelation that his father's craftsmanship had awakened a spirit.

He could almost hear the roaring laughter of the fifteen generations of masters before him, see them clapping his father on the back in celebration. This was not just his dream, not just his father's dream; it was the dream of every Falling Meteor Shop head that came before them. His father had been so consumed by this pursuit that he never even started a family until much later, only having Tan Delun when he was already a Core Formation expert and over a thousand years old.

"Is there anything we can do to save it?" Wen Yingjie's voice cut through the moment, pleading as he clung to the last embers of hope, looking to the Order for a solution.