chapter 12, Trying out forging

The gray lightning strands in my dantian swallowed the stray lightning strands I absorbed.They started changing to getting darker in colour some directly turning black. I could also feel my comprehension increase a little after absorbing the lightning.

Wow no wonder those guys are tanking that much lightning the rewards are worth it. I continued my cultivation at a the same pace and 40minutes later I got hit again a little ready I didn't get buried this time my t-shirt got ripped again and I started absorbing the stray lightning running in my body and ate a healing pill .

I used my Qi to guide the lightning strands into my dantian and they ran wild inside it hitting the walls causing me pain. I clenched my teeth enduring the pain and the gray lightning strands absorbed it.

I kept cultivating at the Thunderstorm room for 4 hours and tanked 6 more lightning strikes.

After the sixth lightning strike I felt like my body would get serious internal injuries so I left the room, to go and absorb today's effort.

On my way back I got went past some guys talking about betting in the sects battle arena .If only I was strong enough I could get in to fight ,I'd make a lot of points by winning one of them said .

Mhh so you can fight and bet in the arena sounds like a good way to add points I'll have to look at it sometime later . When I got to my house I lay down and started expelling the residual lightning energy in my body and healing my internals ,When by the time I finished I was coughing out black blood with organ pieces .

When I was done healing, I recovered my Qi and meditated on the black lightning manual .With the lightning I absorbed I made it to 16% comprehension. When I was done I took out the basic forging materials I have on me and placed them down . Browsing through their names in my mind I decided to start with the basic spirit iron.

I wanted to get the basics first and build up a proper foundation. I also don't want to waste the precious materials on trails so early on. Looking at the instructions in my head I found the first process.

I have to heat up the ore with spiritual fire then send my in the ore to push out the impurities from inside .

Which is the hard part while removing the impurities you have to make sure to avoid damaging the spirit veins in the metal. Damaging the veins can will degrade the quality of the metal and make it close to mortal metals just being stronger. This part I know will cost me a lot resources and needed great Qi control .

I was just about to start when I realized I don't have fire Qi so how will I heat up the ores. Thinking about a solution, cultivating a fire manual won't be good but i can't rely on others too. Thinking for a while I remembered how I used lightning to cook meat ,maybe that can work too i thought to myself.

I took out the furnace I bought in the city and put the ore inside .

Circulating my lightning Qi I sent the normal lightning into the furnace

and tried to heat the ore inside It took 4hours to get the ore hot and when I tried purifying I messed up damaging the ore. The normal lightning was good but not enough.

I kept on trying and after a while Increased the intensity of the lightning melting the ore faster but it made purifying harder with lightnings wild properties. It took two weeks and half of my spirit iron supply for me to figure out the right method. Wished I had a technique but probably being the only man using lightning to forge I doubt I'll find one.

I tried to forge with low level tritanium, being a harder metal tritanium took longer to melt, tried adding Grey coloured lightning to the mix making it faster but I couldn't control it precisely inside the furnace.

So I used the small holes in it to send lightning directly to the ore

First tries ended with me destroying the ore again .

And So I spent the next 5 months in seclusion learning more on forging and purifying the metals developing my techniques .

During the months I developed a success rate of 60% ,in purifying low grade metals with a average 80% purity. Might as well be a genius in this thing .

With forging and the constant use of my lightning and Qi I was close to breaking through to middle Qi absorbing stage. my comprehension also reached 20% of the second stage during the time.

I still had to try forging the full weapon but I was running low on materials.

I needed to take the compulsory mission and take a break from forging to hone my battle skills before loosing myself in forging. So I left the house and headed to the mission hall .Arriving there I found it with a several outer sect disciples and 3 inner sect disciples looking at the mission boards ,look at the boards I found the one for outer sect.

Looking at the missions for Qi absorbing stage cultivators, I saw the were stars next to them indicating difficulty of the mission.

The mission structure is as so ,there are 5 stars for difficulty. One star for errands and herb gathering within the sect .Two star and 3 star are for battles but can be done by one man confident.

4 Star missions are the hardest with most needing teams to finish while 5 stars are rare and include hunting down and killing criminals to fighting high level beasts or stealing from them. Investigations and suppression missions are likely to be 5 star missions .

Looking through the 3 star missions, I passed one to hunt down certain beasts in the island . Looking I found a mission to eliminate mountain bandits back in mainland, the leader is said to be high Qi absorbing stage and with around 3 at mid stage and dozens early stage Qi absorbing stage cultivators as subordinates.

They reside in they Rob in areas around the redwood forest on the paths between Jeppes Reef city and buffel city inland .Mission rewards are 400 points. i looked for another lower level mission and there was one for the horns and beast core of of a redhorn bull at high stage yellow core. reward was 220 points .

I took the two papers and went to the admission desk. I want to take these two missions .The elder looked at the missions then me ,are you sure about this kid .I'm not being noisy but with your cultivation levels this looks like suicide to me , especially the bandit mission ,the elder said to me .