The heavy stone doors of the cave mansion on Peak Seventy-Four sealed shut, sliding perfectly into place with a dull thud.
Fang Lin stood in the center of the silent cavern. The air was cool, untouched by the blistering heat that defined the Heavenly Forge Division outside. A high-level concealing formation, painstakingly inscribed by the Dark Flame Spirit in the days prior, immediately hummed to life. Invisible currents of Qi locked the space down. No divine sense could pierce the walls. No stray aura could leak out. He was completely, unequivocally isolated.
He flipped his palm. A perfectly round, unremarkable glass marble rolled into the center of his palm—the Ashen Crucible.
It looked like a toy discarded by a mortal child. But holding it, Fang Lin felt the terrifying, tesseract-like spatial compression within its core. This was the true inheritance of Divine Artificer Ou Yezi, a spatial artifact containing an entire world.
With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the marble into the air.
It hung suspended in the center of the cave. Fang Lin closed his eyes, extending his Peak Mortal Will. He wrapped his formidable willpower around the marble, locking onto its spatial coordinates and initiating the entry mechanism.
The space around him folded inward. Viscous grey light swallowed his figure. In the span of a single breath, Fang Lin vanished from the physical world. The only thing left behind in the silent cave mansion was the tiny glass marble, drifting harmlessly in the air.
***
He materialized onto an obsidian platform.
The interior of the Ashen Crucible was a sprawling, desolate domain painted in shades of charcoal and ember. Below him, a colossal fire spiritual vein roared like a captive dragon, its magma-blood illuminating the jagged walls of the spatial realm. Ancient forging chambers, carved directly into the floating basalt cliffs, stood silent and imposing.
There was no sun. No sky. Only the eternal, oppressive weight of ash and flame. He had a mountain of resources, a supreme inheritance, and a path to forge. He would not leave until his foundation was absolute. And the foundation this time he meant was....
***
Fang Lin walked into the central chamber and sat cross-legged upon a crystalline array pad. He closed his eyes.
The seclusion began.
"Alright, genius. Let's see if you blow yourself up," a young, sassy voice echoed in his mind.
Within his spiritual sea, the Ancient Spatial Furnace hovered silently. The Dark Flame Spirit, a nascent female entity, peered out from the furnace. She sounded almost bored, though an undercurrent of playful curiosity laced her words.
Fang Lin ignored the taunt. He focused his mind inward, initiating the *Furnace of the World-Pillar*.
The supreme fire-type core art roared to life, acting as the ultimate engine to drive his Dark Flame Core. Immediately, Fang Lin began to actively comprehend his new cultivation technique: the *Ashen Heaven Sutra*.
Agony, sharp and unyielding, tore through his meridian pathways.
Dense, scorching dark flame force surged from his core. Driven by the *Furnace of the World-Pillar*, it cycled mercilessly through his body as he attempted to decipher the complex, destructive pathways dictated by the Sutra. The dark flame force was extraordinarily volatile, tearing at the fragile mortal linings of his essence pathways as he forced it into unnatural circulation routes.
"Oh, look at you," the Dark Flame Spirit mocked, her laughter tinkling like breaking glass in his mind as she watched the raw heat ravage his insides. "You look like a steamed bun that's been left in the steamer too long. Try not to pop, would you? I don't want to clean up the mess."
Fang Lin gritted his teeth, his jaw locking so tight his gums bled. Sweat instantly vaporized off his skin, turning into foul-smelling white steam. He did not stop. He accelerated the cycling, his mind furiously decoding the profound truths hidden within the *Ashen Heaven Sutra*.
He endured the agonizing refinement, circulating the dark flame force relentlessly. The Dark Flame Spirit's mocking gradually faded, replaced by quiet, begrudging respect as she watched his impossible tolerance for pain and his unyielding dedication to comprehending the technique.
One fine day, a sharp, crystalline crack echoed from Fang Lin's body. His eyes snapped open. The irises glowed with a terrifying, fiery luminescence.
He had broken through to Smaller Mastery in the *Ashen Heaven Sutra*.
Information flooded his sea of consciousness. The chaotic fragments of Ou Yezi's legacy aligned. A profound understanding bloomed in his mind, carrying the conceptual weight of absolute destruction.
*The Divine Glaze Spear.*
It was the ultimate attack technique unlocked by his Smaller Mastery. It was not a physical weapon to be held, but rather an ethereal Qi construct born from the terrifying *Law of Eradication*. By perfectly condensing his dark flame force through the specific meridians mapped by the Sutra, he could manifest a spear of pure, destructive energy. It did not just pierce flesh; it was designed to annihilate the very concept of the target's existence.
The realization of such power settled heavily in his mind. His foundation was set. His core was an inferno.
Fang Lin stood up, his gaze locking onto the massive array-controlled anvil in the center of the chamber.
With a wave of his hand, a massive mountain of high-grade fire-copper ore and obsidian sand crashed onto the basalt floor. This was a tiny part of the massive haul he had taken from the outer ruins alongside Lin Wan. It wasn't the supreme material of Ou Yezi's inner vault, but it was incredibly solid, high-grade spiritual material. It was perfect for practice.
He extended a hand.
He initiated his attempt to comprehend the *Myriad Origin Artifice*.
This was not a technique he could master in a day. It was the pinnacle of forging. A burst of elemental flame erupted from his palm, wrapping around a massive chunk of fire-copper. Telekinesis suspended it over the glowing anvil. He formed a hammer of pure, highly condensed Qi in his right hand.
*CLANG!*
The first strike was heavy, clumsy. The fire-copper compressed unevenly, impurities vaporizing under the extreme heat, but the structure warped.
*CLANG! CLANG!*
The *Myriad Origin Artifice* demanded absolute, terrifying perfection. Every single strike had to resonate with the exact frequency of the metal's internal spiritual structure. It was an agonizing tightrope walk of creation and destruction, one that Fang Lin had to slowly, painstakingly learn.
One year passed.
The floor of the chamber became littered with twisted, rejected blades and shattered spearheads. Fang Lin consumed high-grade fasting pills and drew upon the raw energy of the fire spiritual vein to sustain his life force. He melted the failures down and started again.
Two years passed.
His strikes lost their frantic edge. They became hypnotic. Using his *Peak Mortal Will* and the *Tetra-Elemental Harmonization Technique*, he sustained an impossible level of focus. He stopped looking at the metal with his physical eyes, feeling its structural integrity through his divine sense.
"Not bad," the Dark Flame Spirit chimed in occasionally, her tone losing its earlier sarcasm. "A little too much force on the left flank, meatbag. You're crushing the spiritual nodes. Lighten up."
He adjusted perfectly, his comprehension of the *Myriad Origin Artifice* deepening with every single swing of his Qi hammer.
Three years. Four years.
The mountain of fire-copper and obsidian sand dwindled. The grueling grind fundamentally changed his approach to creation. He wasn't just hitting metal; he was learning the language of the materials themselves.
Four and a half years of endless, suffocating heat.
*CLANG!*
Fang Lin brought down the Qi hammer one final time.
The last chunk of fire-copper and obsidian sand merged perfectly on the anvil. The elemental flame dissipated, leaving behind a flawlessly smooth, pitch-black longsword.
It was perfect. The spiritual structure of the high-grade material had been aligned to an impossible, flawless degree, pushed to the absolute limits of its worldly potential by his mastery of the *Myriad Origin Artifice*.
Fang Lin exhaled a long breath of white steam. The Qi hammer dissolved from his grip.
He looked at the empty corner of the chamber where the massive mountain of ore had once sat. Five full years had passed inside the Ashen Crucible.
Five years in the outside world.
During these five quiet years, his Death Core had never ceased its perpetual cycling. Over eighteen thousand fresh drops of shadow essence had quietly accumulated drop by drop, blooming his seventh Midnight Lotus and elevating his reservoir to a staggering seventy-nine thousand five hundred drops.
"Holy shit..."
The Dark Flame Spirit's voice drifted out from the Ancient Spatial Furnace in his spiritual sea. She didn't sound sassy. She didn't sound playful. She sounded genuinely, profoundly stunned.
"You really did it," she murmured, her flames flickering wildly in awe. "Do you even realize what you just did? You didn't just perfect that material. You bent its internal laws."
Fang Lin looked down at the pitch-black blade resting on the anvil.
"I can see the gaps," Fang Lin replied softly. "I can see the exact flow of energy required to carve a domain into its core. I see how the metal breathes. I see the laws it can hold."
A heavy silence followed.
"A Grand Domain Smith," the Dark Flame Spirit said, bursting into a manic, disbelieving laugh. "Five years of bashing metals, and you actually crossed the threshold. You're a Grand Domain Smith! If those old farts outside knew about this, they'd kidnap you and lock you in a basement to forge for them forever!"
Fang Lin's pupils contracted. A Grand Domain Smith. Even within the vast hierarchy of the Black Tortoise Mountain, such figures were legendary. To reach this rank solely through exhaustive, unyielding repetition on lesser materials was monstrous.
"No one can ever know," Fang Lin stated, his voice devoid of emotion. "This rank remains an absolute secret. I am a Rank 2 Core Smith of the Ironblood Faction. Nothing more."
"Duh," the Spirit scoffed, returning to her usual sassy tone. "A genius gets pampered. A monster gets chained up. Keep your head down, boss."
Fang Lin nodded. He waved his hand, sending the flawlessly forged sword flying into a corner of the chamber. He no longer needed practice.
He was ready.
He swept his hand across his spatial ring. The supreme wealth he had inherited from Ou Yezi materialized in the air. Chunks of ancient, star-forged metals. Cores of extinct beasts. Vials of blood from entities that had not walked the earth in ten thousand years. The raw materials radiated a terrifying, pressure.
Fang Lin stepped up to the array-controlled anvil. His fiery eyes locked onto the supreme materials.
The *Furnace of the World-Pillar* roared to life, syncing perfectly with his now-mastered *Myriad Origin Artifice*. He raised his right hand. A massive hammer of highly compressed Qi formed in his grip.
He brought the hammer down.
The forging of the obsidian mace had begun.
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