Standing on the spot, he went quiet and calmed himself. Despite this being an extremely simple task, Tang Wulin still took it seriously because of the respect he had for forging.
The best forging table would not take long to heat up metal. When the gun barrel rose once again to the top of the forging table, it was burning red, raising the temperature in the forging room by a few celsius.
Tang Wulin spread his arms out from his body, and his pair of soul-forged heavy silver hammers appeared in his hands. Without any preparation, his right hand raised the hammer and pounded onto the gun barrel.
"Bang!"
One side of the gun barrel was flattened…
"Oh!" Long Yuxue could not stop herself from shouting while in her heart she screamed, 'It's ruined!'.
This time, even Lu Ni could not help frowning.
She had already repaired her gun barrel by forging more than just once or twice. The process was not considered overly complicated as the blacksmith would only need to fire the metal at a high temperature and make adjustments to the out of shape spots using some molding tools, followed by stabilizing, solidifying and cooling the gun barrel. The Purple Iron was very strong on its own, so it would not be an issue to smelt it repeatedly.
Yet Tang Wulin flattened the gun barrel with one strike. His strength was rather impressive, but was he really attempting to restore the gun barrel? Could it be that he was destroying it? It was not that easy to fix the gun barrel once it was flattened. The boy's actions made no sense!
"Wulin, what are you doing?" Long Yuxue could not stop herself from scolding him softly.
Tang Wulin behaved as if he had not heard anything while his pair of heavy silver hammers dropped swiftly. With a few clashes of metal, the originally cylindrical gun barrel was completely flattened.
Long Yuxue could not stand it anymore. She covered her face because she could not bear watching.
"Sister Lu Ni, I'm so sorry. I'll compensate you later. I truly didn't know this was going to happen…" She deeply regretted that she trusted Tang Wulin's forging ability out of some curious coincidence.
A bitter smile appeared on Lu Ni's face. Even though the gun barrel was not considered especially costly, she still felt attached to it after using it for so long. She was feeling slightly uneasy when she saw it being ruined by Tang Wulin. Despite her easy-going attitude, she was also utterly disappointed in Tang Wulin given her initial impression.
He was obviously pretending to know about forging when he was in fact clueless! Why did he even bother to make up three methods? Everything seemed like a joke now.
"Bang, bang, bang!" Tang Wulin's pair of hammers struck with a continuous rhythm. The hammers pounded so swiftly that the entire gun barrel had been turned into a piece of sheet metal while Long Yuxue and Lu Ni were still engaged in a conversation.
Then, the iron sheet gradually turned into an iron block under the two hammers' guidance. The process was very fast. While Long Yuxue was still apologizing to Lu Ni, the gun barrel had become an iron lump.
Long Yuxue could not refrain herself from going forward to stop Tang Wulin from continuing to embarrass himself, but she was grabbed by Lu Ni. "Let's see how far he can go."
"Bang, bang, bang!" The series of banging sounds suddenly got louder like raindrops splattering against tree leaves. The noise was overwhelming.
All of a sudden, a radiant beam with flickering lights abruptly burst out and swayed in the air. The radiance rose over six feet high while a faint dragon's roar echoed softly through the room.
"What is that…?"
Long Yuxue and Lu Ni's pupils simultaneously constricted. Even though they were not blacksmiths, they still had a relatively wide range of experiences in the world.
"Is that grade 1 thousand refined?" the two women asked almost in unison.
Lu Ni fancied her gun barrel precisely because the gun barrel was thousand refined, but it was only ordinary thousand refined. This was just a soul device after all. It was already very uncommon for the metal to be at thousand refined level.
Yet she had never heard that a blacksmith would be capable of performing a second elevation for a thousand refined metal. Moreover, it was immediately elevated to a grade-1 thousand refined level.
No, this was not ordinary grade 1 thousand refined! The best condition of a grade 1 thousand refined metal would only conjure a five-foot beam, but the radiance arising from the Purple Iron lump at present was definitely more than six feet. Also, what was that dragon's roar?
Tang Wulin was incapable of advancing a piece of thousand refined metal by himself, but the situation was different when he was paired with his soul-forged forging hammers.
The most distinguishing feature of soul forging was intelligence. A metal bestowed with intelligence could completely fuse with its master as one with mutual understanding and mutual empathy.
The process may have looked easy, but Tang Wulin had linked himself up with his heavy silver hammers so that he could deftly improve the internal structure of Purple Iron. He managed to increase its quality without reducing its volume.
In reality, this method was akin to using a cannon to blast a mosquito away. It was an exhausting process and far more complicated than simply adjusting the gun barrel again. The fact was his forging workshop had just opened so he could only use such a method to make headway as soon as possible and accumulate adequate merit points for himself.
The radiance lasted for a total of ten seconds before it slowly faded. Tang Wulin's pair of heavy silver hammers were now pounding less forcefully but at higher speed. The metal began to change its form rapidly and gradually flattened before it slowly took form under the heavy silver hammer's influence.
Long Yuxue could even see that one of Tang Wulin's forging hammers had gradually changed into a long rod to work in tandem with the other hammer. The sheet of Purple Iron was quickly rolled up and formed into a gun barrel once again.
Tang Wulin's movements were so fast that they had not recovered from the shock of seeing a grade 1 thousand refined metal before the gun barrel had already regained its original form.
"Hiss..." The barrel was plunged into the water to cool it down. Tang Wulin's took it out again and dropped it into his hands.
"Sir, it's done." Tang Wulin passed it to Lu Ni.
Lu Ni lowered her head to take a look and discovered that the gun barrel had the exact same size as before, but its deformities had completely vanished and it looked just like a brand-new gun barrel. The only difference was the addition of a dense cloud pattern on its surface that made it appear to be textured.
This was…
The gun barrel was still warm to the touch when she received it. She took a glance at its interior and found it to be as smooth as a mirror. It felt entirely different in her hand. She pinched lightly and, though this was not a formal assessment, she felt that the gun barrel had been strengthened by at least thirty percent. Tang Wulin was just being modest when he had promised only a ten percent increase!
"I'm sorry for making you worry, but it's very difficult to improve its quality without adding anything if I don't forge it again. It should be fine now. I think that it won't be damaged for a while at least. It will last longer than before for sure," Tang Wulin said with a smile.
Lu Ni let out a sigh of relief. She looked at Tang Wulin's hands and found that his pair of forging hammers had already vanished.
She turned her head to the side and looked toward Long Yuxue. "Little Xue, you've truly found yourself an extraordinary business partner! Lucky you. I'm jealous. Tang Wulin, are you still looking for investors?"
Tang Wulin shook his head. "I'm sorry, sir. We're not in need of any more investment at this point." What a joke. Tang Wulin bore the pain of counting Long Yuxue in as a partner because she offered timely assistance. How could he possibly allow someone else to invest?!
Lu Ni held the gun barrel and spoke, "Now I regret not asking you to forge using the second method at least. I'm very curious as to how would it turn out if it's forged with the third method?"
Tang Wulin spoke, "As a gun barrel, the metal needs to work under constant high temperatures. In order to ensure indefinite usage, then it would need to possess self-repairing abilities and the metal would need to be strengthened. For the third method, I'd add two types of rare metal and perform fuse forging, then elevate it to spirit forging. This way, it would be capable of self-repair even without inscribing a soul circuit. It wouldn't be damaged even after prolonged usage. It would also make it possible to engrave a soul circuit so the artillery power can be amplified. Even though it is slightly more costly, I think it's worth the price. Of course, this is on the premise that your ultra quick-firing gun is powerful enough as such an investment is only worthwhile if you plan to use it long term."
Astonished by Tang Wulin's words, Lu Ni could not help asking, "Fuse forging? Fuse forging. You...you're a rank-5 blacksmith? Oh no, you ought to be close to rank-6 to be able to perform fuse forging, right?"
Tang Wulin beamed with joy. "I can do some simple soul forging too." He had already given enough hints, so it was time for him to reveal his abilities.
"Soul forging? You're a Saint Craftsman?"
Both Lu Ni and Long Yuxue were so overwhelmed by the amount of information that they felt like their brains were useless now.
A Saint Craftsman-ranked blacksmith? There were none in the entire Blood God Army. There could only be so many Saint Craftsman-ranked blacksmiths on the entire continent. All of them together still made up less than twenty people. The Blood God Army was so secluded that even if the army was willing, no Saint Craftsman would come over here willingly. Who could make them come then?
Thus, the highest ranked blacksmith in the Blood God Army was only rank-6.