The reparation of a soul armament differed greatly to the crafting process of one. In some cases, repairing a soul armament was even harder than crafting a soul armament of the same grade.
Bai Yunfei wasn't all too experienced with repairing soul armaments, for he had very little reason to be. All of the equipment he had—especially the earth-tier ones—were just fodder for him to upgrade and see. If they failed, they exploded into dust, and there was no repairing that.
But this time, Bai Yunfei was truly excited to tackle this issue of repairing the soul armament. The item in question was a heaven-tier soul armament.
If he could pull this off, then he'd earn yet another powerful equipment with an effect already on it.
As mentioned before, the stats of equipment that might've been broken wouldn't lose its stats. For example, if a sword has an attack of 100 and was broken in half, both parts of the sword would still have the same attack of 100 since the sharpness was still the same. At most, the biggest change was that the sword no longer had a tip to attack with. Defensive equipment were the same, no matter how defensive an armor was, it'd have the same defensive strength even after being split into several pieces.
Of course, this was in the case of a regular situation of 'damage'. If an upgrade failed and turned everything to dust, that was a different story.
In the case that a +10 piece of equipment broke, one of the two pieces would inherit the additional effect while the other part wouldn't.
First, Bai Yunfei tried to line up the two segments of the chain together. As it was right now, they were just two soul armaments. Using the Upgrade Technique to get them to +10, Bai Yunfei would try and see if either of the two pieces would have an additional effect and then try to repair it from there. If both pieces had an additional effect and then were melded into one, it might mean that one of the two effects would disappear when it was put back together.
But the most important thing was that repairing it this way was a lot harder than usual!
So Bai Yunfei wasn't in much of a rush to try and upgrade the two parts of the Devouring Chain. He'd rather first repair the chains and then upgrade the finished product.
……
Holding the Devouring Chains in his hands, Bai Yunfei took careful notice of each and every detail on the chain. Sending his soulforce into it to better his understanding, Bai Yunfei began to analyze its composition, structure, and break marks to ensure nothing was missed.
"These chains are a little….weird…."
There was a hint of confusion in Bai Yunfei's eyes the more he looked at the chains. Something to this soul armament was different to any other soul armament he had felt before.
But what was it?
It felt like…..the 'aura' was different, firstly.
Perhaps it was because of this equipment having the very rare element of 'darkness'. But that didn't seem to be the reason either. Dark-type soul armaments gave a person a 'shadowy' sensation, but these chains weren't giving off that aura. It was more like a….
"A bloodthirsty aura?!"
It took a moment for Bai Yunfei to find the right word to describe the aura he was feeling.
From this chain, Bai Yunfei could indeed sense an abnormally bloodthirsty aura!
It would appear that the chains had already claimed the lives of many, hence the aura it had to it now. Just touching the links would render any person uncomfortable. A deeper scan of the chains would reveal its bloodthirsty nature, and if an ordinary commoner would be be hit by this aura, they would go mad.
But there was something else strange to the Devouring Chains. As he was scanning the entirety of it, Bai Yunfei came across yet another peculiarity to the object.
The interior of the chains wasn't completely solid. There was some liquid in it that ran through a small 'passageway' inside of the chains.
Never met with such a case before, Bai Yunfei was surprised.
"What kind of liquid is this? What's it for?" Bai Yunfei asked himself. Thinking back to his battle with Wu Shang, Bai Yunfei remembered there had been a little detail he saw when he broke the chain….
"I remember at that time…." He started slowly, eyes inching open with surprise, "There was….blood?!
"Is that possible? Isn't it too weird?" Bai Yunfei tried to clear his mind with a shake of his head, "Blood as a material in a soul armament—is this a method of crafting I've never heard before?"Is there a usage for blood in a soul armament? Or is this a type of liquid material that I've never heard before?"
He sighed after a while to think. "Forget it, if this really is a rare material I've never seen before, I can't just break it open to research, that'd break the entire soul armament, it's just not worth it…..might as well try and repair it first. If I can't, then I can break it open."
……
With a plan now in mind, Bai Yunfei called out his Cataclysmic Seal. The fireseed inside of it came out of it to go into his chest and replace the one with the companion lightningseed, which went into the Lightningfire Cauldron.
"Boom!!"
The Lightningfire Cauldron lit up almost instantly to bask the entire cave with a moderate wave of heat.
A string of materials came flowing out from the Violet Soul Ring next. One by one, Bai Yunfei picked out the ones to be used for this reparation and had them thrown into the cauldron.
Just the mere preparations of knowing which material to use or not took nearly an hour. Feeling that he had more or less prepared everything, Bai Yunfei threw in both segments of the chain into the cauldron.
"Clack! Boom….."
There was a loud bang from the cauldron. Several of the supplementary materials he had in there had immediately gone up in smoke.
Bai Yunfei raised an eyebrow. Waving his hand, another pile of materials were thrown in—this time plenty of refined stones were thrown in and a single dark-type primal stone. Circulating his soulforce into the cauldron, he heated the flames a bit higher.
Time slowly ticked on by. Zheng Kai and Tang Xinyun came up to the mountains to call him out for lunch, but they were stopped by Xiao Qi right outside the cave, who told them that Bai Yunfei was in the middle of crafting and was not to be disturbed.
From there, time went on by again to become evening….
"Tsk!! It still doesn't work? As expected from a heaven-tier soul armament…..repairing one is just too hard!"
Bai Yunfei cursed to himself in front of the the Lightningfire Cauldron, a bitter smile on his face. Beads of sweat were forming on his forehead and dripping down from his nose. Even with the spirit-increasing accessories and the Yun's Soul Ring to provide extra soulforce regeneration, Bai Yunfei was essentially out of soulforce almost. Everything he tried had already failed, and it seemed like an overall failure was all but imminent.
The chains were still in the cauldron. Upon first appearance, the two segments were connected without even a scar to be seen, but Bai Yunfei knew that once the fires went out, the two chains would break apart again. Trying to hold them together was essentially useless, and no amount of soulforce was enough to meld them together.
"It was going so well before, so why….why can't I get it to perfectly meld together now? Feels like I'm missing something…."
He was persistent on succeeding here. Reluctant to give up, Bai Yunfei knew that if he could just resolve this issue, then the chains would be fully repaired.
"What am I missing….just what am I missing….?" He bit his bottom lip in bitter annoyance.
A single sweat drop dripped from his eyelid and over his eye.
And when it passed, Bai Yunfei's eyes shined with realization!
"I've got it!! It's got to be…."