Chapter 76

Bang!

As Ban Yilou finished speaking, a ring of black smoke suddenly rose from the Qingyu Furnace.

"Cough, cough, cough, cough, cough..." Ban Yilou was choked to tears, but fortunately, Zhang Xing didn't make any mistakes.

"Steady, steady, Old Ban, steady!"

"Damn it, I'll end up dying in your hands!" Ban Yilou took a deep breath and steadied the Qingyu Furnace in his hands.

However, in the next moment, Ban Yilou felt his star power become chaotic...

The Qingyu Furnace in his hands suddenly developed a crack right down the middle.

"Trouble!" Ban Yilou exclaimed.

"Can we finish it..." Tang Zheng hurriedly sped up.

Bang, bang.

Another two wisps of black smoke rose, covering Tang Zheng and Ban Yilou in ash.

Ban Yilou, seeing the situation was wrong, shouted, "Danger! Get out of the way, you're just making things worse with your fumbling..."

Tang Zheng looked up and corrected him, "This is called being flustered! I can't fumble with just one pair of hands!"

"The point is not that!" Ban Yilou roared.

The crack made a creaking sound and split crookedly up and down.

Tang Zheng complained, "I spent over twenty taels of purple gold on this famous furnace, how can the quality be so poor?"

Ban Yilou rolled his eyes at him, "Do you even know what materials you threw in there and messed around with?"

"Blame the materials because the furnace is bad?"

"Would you die if a normal person ate a ton of restorative pills every day?"

"..." Tang Zheng pouted, "Forget it, let's try again later."

"There's none left to sell!" Ban Yilou tried his best to steady the casting furnace, "The Qingyu Furnace is already the best furnace in the inner cabinet. Other furnaces would be even more fragile in the face of your materials."

Boom, bang, bang, bang, bang...

Just as he was speaking, a sound like firecrackers exploded from the furnace!

"Be careful." Tang Zheng didn't care about the finished product anymore, he directly pushed Ban Yilou away and covered the entire furnace with star power.

The power of the sun extended into the furnace.

The power of the moon, Zhang Xing!

"Temper." Tang Zheng had already cast the handle and the blade of the dagger, only the final step—tempering—was left.

In the notebook Ban Yilou took out, it was clear that the tempering step was the most difficult!

Because tempering required maintaining the semi-finished product at a constant temperature with star power for a certain period of time before slowly cooling it down. Any slight mistake in controlling the star power would result in a failed tempering.

Ban Yilou had already stepped back, watching the crack in the furnace gradually widen, his breathing becoming heavier.

If Tang Zheng had three stars, with the power of the sun and the moon from his first life palace, he might have been able to complete this casting.

Unfortunately, Tang Zheng only had one star.

Bang, bang, bang.

Clang... Clang...

Tang Zheng couldn't support it for long.

Sure enough, not long after, the Qingyu Furnace in his hands finally broke free from the constraints of his star power and split into two halves!

The two components inside the Qingyu Furnace also fell to the ground.

A high-quality casting furnace, famous and named, was thus directly ruined in one go.

Tang Zheng, with a dark face, picked up the two components from the ground.

Both items were black and unappealing.

"Give them to me quickly!" Ban Yilou quickly snatched the two components from Tang Zheng's hands, "Tsk..."

"Charred?" Tang Zheng's imagination started to run wild, "Could I have accidentally developed a new material?"

Ban Yilou glared at him angrily.

Using a furnace worth twenty-five taels of purple gold and materials worth a hundred taels of purple gold, even if a new material was really developed, who could afford it?

Ban Yilou took a basin of ice water from the ice cellar and cleaned the two components of the dagger.

Tang Zheng looked closely, and his heartbeat slowed for a moment.

The handle had a varied depth and color, like a leaf in the forest, darker in the dark and glowing softly under the light. The blade was as thin as a cicada's wing, reflecting a cold and sharp killing intent...

Ban Yilou took Tang Zheng back to the outer cabinet, feeling around under the counter for a while before pulling out a glove-like object.

The glove was only one, but it was a half-fingered glove with extremely intricate line patterns. Even at a glance, Tang Zheng couldn't find where the lines started or ended.

After Ban Yilou put on the glove, his star power flowed, and he held the handle component, the star power spreading out...

The array patterns on the glove lit up in circles, and Ban Yilou's eyes widened more and more as he watched: "Seventy... Eighty... Ninety, it actually went over ninety!"

"..." Although Tang Zheng didn't know what he was doing, he roughly understood that this might be a method to measure star power resonance.

"Ninety-four!" Ban Yilou finally shouted, "Star power resonance of ninety-four! This is... a full resonance handle!"

Tang Zheng looked at him curiously, "Full resonance handle?"

"Full resonance handle!" Ban Yilou excitedly waved the handle around like a three-year-old.

"Full resonance... doesn't that mean the star power resonance should be one hundred?"

"Star power resonance of one hundred?" Ban Yilou looked at him as if he were a primary school student, "You really think that's possible?"

"Is it impossible?" Tang Zheng asked.

"Of course it's impossible!" Ban Yilou said, "A star power resonance of over ninety basically means no delay in star power extension, so it's called a 'full resonance component.' Using full resonance components makes it easy to cast high-resonance finished products!"

Ban Yilou was a bit surprised by the result, but he was also somewhat prepared.

After all, he saw not just this dagger!

But also the money invested in this dagger!

After all, this was just a one-star dagger, yet the cost was already in the hundreds of taels of purple gold.

Ban Yilou estimated that the people at the Hundred Refinements Workshop would spit blood when they saw the finished product of this dagger.

Those were all precious, rare, and expensive materials!

Most of the casters in the Hundred Refinements Workshop in Wulong Town might never have even touched such materials, let alone used them.

"Hehe, hehehe." Ban Yilou couldn't help but laugh.

The handle was a relatively easy component to cast successfully.

Although the furnace couldn't quite handle it, they managed to cast a full resonance handle, which wasn't a waste of all the money and the days of guidance he gave to Tang Zheng!

Ban Yilou, full of anticipation, picked up the other component, the blade.

...

Star power flowed.

The array patterns on Ban Yilou's glove lit up in circles again.

However, this time his expression was far from as relaxed as before.

The more he urged the star power, the slower the array patterns lit up, and they finally stopped.

Ban Yilou took off the glove, "Star power resonance of sixty-eight... actually, it's already a very good blade..."

After casting the components, there was only one final step left—fitting.

Once all the components of a weapon were fitted, it could be used directly.

However, Ban Yilou didn't start fitting the two components.

A star power resonance of over sixty was already very good, at least good enough to enter the inner cabinet of the Treasure Gathering Pavilion!

However, the dagger cast by Master Lu Huang of the Hundred Refinements Workshop had a star power resonance of eighty-two, and the bet between Tang Zheng and the Hundred Refinements Workshop was based on eighty-two.

Sixty-eight was indeed very good.

But it wasn't enough...

Far from enough!

Tang Zheng felt he had underestimated the Hundred Refinements Workshop.

The Hundred Refinements Workshop used materials worth less than one tael of purple gold to cast the dagger with a star power resonance of sixty-nine—Yinxixi—in the inner cabinet of the Treasure Gathering Pavilion.

But he used materials worth over a hundred taels of purple gold and could only get the blade to a star power resonance of sixty-eight!

Moreover, the highest rank in the Hundred Refinements Workshop in Wulong Town was a two-star warrior.

He, however, had a three-star warrior, Ban Yilou, almost fully helping him control the star power!

"Should we try fitting them?" Tang Zheng shook his head, thinking about the final step, "One component at sixty-eight, the other at ninety-four... the average seems about the same..."

"Average?" Ban Yilou looked at him suspiciously.

"Add sixty-eight and ninety-four together, then divide by two."

"You're overthinking it." Ban Yilou didn't want to look at him anymore, "Try fitting? Did you even listen carefully to my lectures?"

"Uh, cough, cough, cough..." Tang Zheng rubbed his nose; he did sometimes get a bit distracted during his martial arts practice.

"How can you fit components with a star power resonance difference of over twenty? Tell me, how is that even possible?"

The reason all components of a weapon must be cast in the same furnace is to consider the fitting process. Components cast in the same furnace have a closer star power resonance, making the fitting process easier.

So, the final step seemed impossible to complete?

Tang Zheng thought, he couldn't just hand over the handle to the Hundred Refinements Workshop...

Their bet was for "a dagger," not "half a dagger," so a handle that only met the bet conditions would definitely not be enough!

"Ah, no way." Ban Yilou shook his head. They had used such an extreme money-piling strategy, mobilized three-star star power, and even ruined the best Qingyu Furnace in the inner cabinet, yet they still couldn't match the work of a one-star craftsman from the Hundred Refinements Workshop, which was indeed a bit disheartening.

"Don't worry, don't worry, let me think some more." Tang Zheng was not giving up.

This dagger determined his secondary equipment, and he couldn't easily give up on getting Master Lu Huang to personally cast it for him.

Tang Zheng sat by the counter, one hand holding the two cast components, the other holding the casting notebook with the word "Lu" written at the bottom of the cover, and carefully compared them...

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There are only 36 hours left until the release on March 1st at 0:00. Please check the monthly ticket section in your personal center to see if you have received the prompt "You will receive a guaranteed monthly ticket next month"~

Well, after 36 hours, we can happily ask for monthly tickets again, which is a bit exciting...

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