"Hmm..."
Su Min narrowed her eyes at the pile of raw materials spread out across the table before her. The flickering torchlight caught the dull sheen of unrefined spirit iron and the faint, rhythmic pulse of deep-sea silver. Her gaze lingered on the various ores as she silently calculated the various ores' market worth and refinement potential.
"It isn't enough to refine my weapon to the next tier," she murmured to herself, her voice a soft rasp in the quiet room.
A small sigh, barely audible in the room's stillness, escaped her lips. She traced a finger over the jagged edge of a copper-colored rock, feeling the cold, inert energy within. "A high-grade Yellow-tier life-bound spirit treasure would still be a significant boost to my combat power, though."
Two or three days had passed since the grand war council. The tension within the estate's walls was palpable; every servant and soldier moved with a hurried, nervous energy, knowing the nomads' vast host was already marching south. But the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of men wasn't something that happened overnight. The logistics of the grasslands' massive army required time, and it would be a while before the storm finally arrived at their gates. For now, the battle wasn't imminent.
Still, Su Min was preparing herself. In a fight against two opponents as formidable as the Flame and Earth Elders, she knew that the more trump cards she had, the better her odds would be. She had turned her focus toward refining her own life-bound spirit treasure, the heavy staff she always carried. Unfortunately, the Glazed Ice Azure Armor she had forged earlier had consumed a staggering amount of resources, nearly exhausting her entire personal supply of spiritual metals. The materials she had used to craft the weapons for the three youngsters had all been provided by Prince Yong.
She knew the young prince had even led a specialized hunting party into the wilderness to slay a Qi Refining stage demon beast just to gather more rare materials for her use. Yet despite all that effort, she still didn't have enough to advance her own weapon to the desired grade. Her life-bound spirit treasure possessed a unique and demanding trait: it could continuously evolve in grade.
The good news was that it wasn't picky about what it consumed. It would accept almost any spiritual metal or ore that she fed into its structure. The bad news was that the sheer quantity it demanded for each evolution was utterly absurd.
"Should I go out and search for more materials myself?" she wondered, staring at the incomplete pile of ores in her hand. The armor had definitely been worth the high cost, but the gnawing feeling of needing just a little more was persistent. "If I can refine my weapon to the level I need, my chances of victory against those elders will be much higher."
Knock, knock, knock—
A sudden, sharp rapping at the door interrupted her thoughts.
"Come in."
She casually waved her hand, storing the materials away into her spatial ring with a flash of light before speaking. The door opened, revealing Sect Leader Mo standing somewhat awkwardly in the doorway. He hesitated for a moment, his hand resting on the frame. Stepping into a young woman's private quarters felt inappropriate for a man of his standing, but when he finally entered, he froze.
Su Min's room was startlingly bare and utilitarian. No colorful tapestries hung on the walls, and no decorative ornaments sat on the shelves to soften the cold stone. There were no personal trinkets and no comforts that suggested a woman lived there. It was a space designed for work and cultivation, nothing more.
In truth, this wasn't unusual for her. Considering the damp caves, simple stilt houses, and harsh deserts she had lived in before, she had long since stopped caring about superficial comfort. When she saw him enter, she poured a cup of tea from a simple ceramic pot and gestured for him to sit in one of the plain wooden chairs. The steam rose in a thin, fragrant curl.
"Danxianzi," he began, getting straight to his visit's point. "I would like to request a weapon, one suited to my hand."
Sect Leader Mo didn't waste words. Over the past few days, he had sparred with the three youngsters. Under equal conditions, his decades of combat experience allowed him to overpower any one of them with ease. But the moment they wielded their spiritual weapons, the fight's dynamic shifted completely. He had been forced to retreat from their strikes; there was simply no contest.
Now that he had reached the Qi Refining stage, every ordinary sword he owned shattered the moment he channeled his spiritual energy into the steel. His entire swordsmanship was rendered useless without a proper conduit. So he had gone to Prince Yong, hoping to commission a weapon from the only person who could make one.
Unfortunately, Prince Yong couldn't help him this time. The Prince made it clear that Su Min's services were expensive, and the three weapons she had forged earlier had already drained a significant portion of his own material reserves. Besides, this was Sect Leader Mo's personal matter.
Prince Yong wasn't going to pay for it out of his own pocket. He had already given the man a priceless pill, and anything more would be excessive. Still, since he needed Sect Leader Mo's loyalty for the coming war, he had offered a simple piece of advice: "Don't waste time with negotiations. Just present her with the materials."
"Did Prince Yong not explain my terms?" Su Min asked, her tone neutral as she watched him. "Also, I don't have materials on hand right now."
She wasn't refusing him outright, nor was she lying about her situation. Her remaining stockpile was a jumble of random parts that couldn't form a complete weapon. What she could make for him depended entirely on what he could provide for the forging.
"Of course, I understand," Sect Leader Mo said quickly. "Over the years, our humble sect has managed to accumulate some reserves. Please, take a look, Danxianzi."
With that, he carefully removed a simple, dull metallic ring from his finger and placed it on the wooden table before her.
"Oh?"
Su Min's lips curled into a slight smile at the object's sight.
A spatial ring.
Unlike complex artifacts, these storage items weren't particularly difficult to forge, and she have made quite a few herself in the past. Still, it was mildly surprising to see one in a common Jianghu sect leader's possession.
"Tsk. Prince Yong must have treated you well," she remarked, picking up the ring to examine the ring's craftsmanship. "This is one of my two-meter cube models, crafted in the past few months."
She sent a wisp of spiritual sense inside to inventory the ring's contents before continuing, "Now, let's see what you have brought. First, tell me your elemental affinity and preferred weapon type. I need to know if anything is missing."
"Sword," he answered immediately, his voice firm. "Lightning attribute."
"Mn. Alright."
After a brief mental calculation, matching the materials she had seen inside the ring to his request, she nodded. "Come back in three days."
"Thank you, my lady!"
Sect Leader Mo's face lit up with pure excitement. He bowed deeply, his relief evident, before hastily taking his leave from the room, though not without a slight, painful twitch in his cheek. That was the sect's entire savings over the past few years, he thought with a wince as he walked down the hall.
Unlike Prince Yong, who controlled vast merchant networks and territories, his sect's resources were limited. But he consoled himself with a simple truth: materials were just materials. Without a skilled craftsman, they were just useless rocks and metal.
"Now I have got enough."
Once he was gone, a satisfied smirk spread across Su Min's face.
"I will forge his weapon first. The rest of the materials will go toward refining my own." She laid out her plan in her mind. "A high-grade Yellow-tier should last me until the Golden Core stage. Earth-tier weapons require far rarer ores and much greater quantities of them. Even with my Nanming Lihuo, my current cultivation wouldn't be enough to smelt those."
This was the core difference between alchemy and artifact forging. Alchemy was about precision, control, and complex spiritual formulas. Artifact forging demanded raw, sustained power. Without sufficiently potent flames, a blacksmith had to rely on brute cultivation strength to get the job done. A Golden Core cultivator could forge a Yellow-tier artifact, but by the time they reached that level, such a weapon would be nearly useless to them. Fortunately, forging wasn't as meticulous as alchemy. Any fire-aligned cultivator with decent control could manage the basic process.
"Time to get to work."
She closed her eyes, centering herself and focusing her energy. "For his weapon, I will only need about thirty percent of these. The rest are mine."
She summoned her Nanming Lihuo, the vivid crimson flames dancing across her palm. The temperature in the small room rose sharply, the air itself wavering and distorting with the intense heat. She began tossing the various ores into the conjured flames one by one. The common spirit iron melted first into a glowing orange liquid, followed quickly by the rarer, crystalline thunderclap ore which crackled with miniature sparks.
She guided the entire process with her steady spiritual will, molding the glowing molten mixture together and shaping it into a straight sword's distinct form. It was a simple, almost crude design, but she knew it would be brutally effective in a real fight.
As for its special effect? It would be pure, unadulterated elemental enhancement for his techniques.
Soon, the process was complete. A new sword lay on the table before her, the blade humming with a faint, electric energy that vibrated against the wood.
[Thunderbrand Sword (Mid Yellow-tier): Enhances lightning-based techniques.]
"Reaching the late Qi Refining stage really speeds things up," she noted with no small amount of pride as she looked at the finished blade. "Well, I have still got two days left. I might as well refine my own weapon now."
Su Min smirked again. The cultivation path was an expensive one. Her current equipment have already drained a prince's and a major Jianghu sect's resources. Not that she would never tell them the whole truth, that for every weapon she forged for others, she kept a solid seventy percent of the materials for herself. They probably suspected she took more than was strictly necessary for the work.
But how much more? That, they would never know.
And the excess? Well. Consider it her fee.