Chapter 392: Smelting
Chapter 392: Smelting
“Well, even if we tell her about the Calamity right now, I am not sure if that will even help her.” Andromeda said as she gave a helpless gaze to Genie.
“Even if Fang Yu knows, can she even prepare for something like that?”
Genie was about to answer when someone else with Genie and Andromeda let out a complaint.
“Quiet! Tang Li ish meditatiting!” Out of nowhere, Tang Li interrupted their conversation.
The current Tang Li was assuming the pose of a monk, as if she was attempting to unravel the mysteries of the Universe.
But both Genie and Andromeda knew that Tang Li was just playing. Well, calling her out will just make Tang Li mad so they just played along with her.
“Oh, so Tang Li, have you deciphered anything about the mysteries you were talking about? It seems like you were very engrossed in it.” Genie said as she tried to make herself look serious. “Surely you have found something now right?”
“Hmph!” Tang Li puffed her cheeks proudly as she said,
“With Tang Li’sh advanced mental prowessh, anything ish posshible!”
“Oh, then tell me one thing that you can do now.” Genie said as gave a teasing gaze to Tang Li. “You can show us something right?”
“Hmph! You two are teashing Tang Li!” Tang Li pouted, realizing what Andromeda and Genie are doing to her. She then crossed her arms as she said.
“Shince you want to shee shomething, then Tang Li will show you!”
“Hong!”
Andromeda and Genie’s eyes then widened as they saw Tang Li doing something that rattled both of them.
“Ho- ho- How it that possible?”
“Hmm?” While Fang Yu was busy on Knocking her cores, she suddenly felt a strange sensation, and its source came outside Genie’s Mist Room.
“That means... something weird is happening in the spaceship right now.” Fang Yu muttered as she began to be slightly worried.
But then she stopped worrying, as she realized that the weird thing she felt in the spaceship was something that’s actually not bad.
It really just feels strange...
“Hmph, after dealing with my cores here, I will go and see what the fuss is about.” Fang Yu thought as she observed her 13 cores once more.
Due to Knocking, all her cores looked way different than before.
If before, her cores all looked like just rocks made up of agglomeration of other rocks, her cores now looked like crystalline spheres, all lined up perfectly in her dantian.
Even her main core which looked like a star changed too, now looking more like a solid star than a gaseous one.
“My planetary system design... Will it evolve into something new in the future?” Fang Yu muttered as she continued bombarding her projectiles.
Many more minutes later...
“Here it is!” Fang Yu’s eyes gleamed as she felt the two of her smallest cores suddenly resisting the bombardments.
All the pressure applied by the bombardments were bouncing off, as if there is nothing more inside the smallest cores that can be affected by the pressure.
“This kind of rejection... this just shows that these cores already reached a perfect crystalline arrangement!” Instead of inspecting her newly crystallized cores, Fang Yu ignored them first as she waited for the remaining 11 cores to crystallize too.
“There, there, there!” Comparable to a cascade of sprouting beans, the remaining cores of Fang Yu consecutively reached the crystallized state, filling Fang Yu with an intense sensation.
For Fang Yu, this sensation felt like as if her foundation was fixed from the inside, which led to a feeling of fullness and satisfaction.
“Glint glint glint...” Just like real-life crystals, all of Fang Yu’s 13 cores were glowing now, with each core having colors related to their attribute.
They all looked dazzling, with her Rainbow Dragon Godly Divine Beast Core letting out a 7-colored glow, representing the rainbow.
There’s also her Heaven Grade Duality Core, whose color was changing every second, resulting in a kaleidoscope of interesting color.
But aside from looking pretty, Fang Yu felt another benefit that she obtained from Knocking.
Fang Yu realized that after all of her cores reached the perfect crystalline arrangement, her power increased by two-folds!
Two folds! That may be just normal power-up to a normal practitioner, but Fang Yu was no normal practitioner.
Every increase of Fang Yu’s power was notable, as her battle prowess was powerful enough to skip stages.
Every increase in Fang Yu’s power will just serve to increase the limit of her battle prowess.
“Boom!” Fang Yu gripped her fists, as she felt power flowing inside her body.
But even with this increase in power, Fang Yu’s face did not hold any kind of satisfaction.
“I just used around an hour to complete Knocking.... But I must not be satisfied on just this. Since I still have more time remaining, then I will now perform Smelting!”
Smelting was the 3rd Sub-Realm that a practitioner must undergo.
Combined with Grinding and Knocking, these three sub-realms were all under the Tempering Major Realm.
Once a practitioner completes Smelting, he was also considered to have completed the Tempering Major Realm, granting this practitioner another great boost to his/her abilities!
If Fang Yu succeeds in smelting her cores, then she will have successfully reached 1/3rd of her completion of the 3rd Stage.
“Yosh, time to start then.” Fang Yu chose to not rest as she thought that she will use the momentum she had in Knocking her cores to start the Smelting process.
“.....”
Out of all the Sub-Realms under the Tempering Major Realm, Smelting is the most difficult one.
After all this sub-realm relies on melting and refreezing the core of a practitioner!
Why was this done? It was done because only through Smelting that all the impurities inside the cores can be removed.
Grinding and Knocking only polishes the surface of the core and the arrangement of its components respectively.
But these methods won’t be able to do anything to remove the impurities that were inevitably formed in a core.
Only Smelting is the way to remove the impurities of the core.
The process was called Smelting, as this method was somewhat similar to the way metals like iron or gold were smelted.
A metal like gold was smelted to increase its purity, while iron was smelted to increase its quality.
In both cases, these metals were melted at high temperatures, and at this state, all the unwanted impurities will be easily removed.
These metals will be then subjected to low temperatures to bring them back to their solid state.
In iron’s case, materials like carbon could be added in, improving the quality of iron as it became solid again.
Just like the mentioned metals, a core that will undergo Smelting will be also melted until they turn into a puddle of liquid core inside the person’s dantian.
At this point, all the impurities of the core will appear floating at the liquefied core.
Once this happens, the smelting practitioner will then use his/her mental power to throw out the impurities inside his/her body.
Once the impurities were removed, the practitioner has to revert his/her core back to its solid state, ending the smelting process.
This may sound simple in paper, but there are countless complications involved in Smelting.
First, an object with extremely high temperature is needed to melt the core, and an extremely cold object is also needed to turn then molted core back to solid.
Say that the practitioner manages to get hold of these two required objects. There are still problems that he/she will face.
First of all, the core must be melted at the correct temperature.
If the heat was lacking, the core won’t even melt.
If the heat was too much, the core might not liquefy at all. It might directly turn into a vapor and dissipate away!
If this happens, the poor practitioner will be done for already, as his/her foundation had just evaporated into oblivion.
But solidifying/freezing a molten core is just as dangerous as melting one!
The danger with freezing a molten core was associated with the temperature used in freezing one.
If the temperature used to freeze the core was high, the molten core will not budge and will stay in its liquid form.
But if the temperature used was too low, the molten core will quickly freeze, and this is not good.
Quick-freezing a core will result in its components quickly bonding together, not allowing these components to arrange themselves in an orderly crystalline way.
In short, quick-freezing will turn the core back to solid so quick that its components will have not enough time to arrange themselves.
This, in the end, will result in a core with its internal arrangement back to an amorphous arrangement.
This kind of end was counter-intuitive, as the final state of the core must be crystalline.
This means that only the right amount of temperature was also needed to freeze a core.
This temperature must be cold enough to freeze the molten core but not that cold so that the internal components of the core can arrange themselves back in a crystalline way.
If a practitioner manages to surpass these problems, then he/she can succeed in Smelting!
“Well...” Fang Yu cupped her chin as she began to ponder.
“An extremely hot object to melt my cores and an extremely cold object to freeze my core? Well lucky me, I have both of these objects!”
Fang Yu grinned as she opened her right palm.
“Fwoosh...” A flame suddenly appeared, flickering and swaying merrily above Fang Yu’s right palm. This flame was golden yellow in color, and the blazing heat that it was letting out produced a slight flush on Fang Yu’s skin.
This flame was the Pure Yang Universe Flame, the product of the ☉ symbol!
Meanwhile in Fang Yu’s left palm, a white orb was floating above it. It was the opposite of the flame in Fang Yu’s right hand, as it managed to plunge the temperature around Fang Yu’s left side.
This white orb was the Pure Yin Cosmic Ice, the product of the ? symbol.
“Hehehe, with these with me, I do not have to worry about heating or cooling anymore!” Fang Yu whistled merrily as she let the two objects float in front of her.
“But even if I can control these two objects perfectly, smelting will still be difficult for me.” Fang Yu muttered as she looked at the 13 cores inside her.
Just like what happened at the Grinding and Knocking Sub-Realm, Fang Yu has to perform Smelting on all her 13 cores all at the same time!
Even if Fang Yu has complete control over her flame and ice, it will still be extremely difficult for her to manage melting 13 cores and freezing them without any hitch.
“Oh please, let me be lucky this time once more.” Fang Yu muttered as she discreetly activated her Lucky Cat Ability.
Since Fang Yu can manipulate her luck, then she will use it to make sure her luck was always high!
“Hehehe, there is no problem if I just make myself always lucky, right? Because from what I know, nothing bad happens to an extremely lucky person...” Fang Yu snickered as she closed her eyes in concentration.
“......”
That damned Wang Hao, he did not tell Fang Yu anything about the Calamity of Fortune!