Looking at the silver-white behemoth of a structure in front of him, Chen Daoxuan felt an indescribable sense of satisfaction.
"It doesn't seem appropriate to call it a spirit ore furnace anymore. From now on, I'll call you... Spirit Smelting Furnace!"
Chen Daoxuan looked at the furnace in front of him and gave it a new name.
The spiritual artifact that he had poured his blood, sweat and tears into for five years had finally come to fruition.
The first thing Chen Daoxuan had to do was to try out the spirit smelting furnace.
He wanted to see if the spirit smelting furnace functioned in the way he had imagined. It did not require the use of true Qi and spiritual sense. He only needed to manually manipulate the two control levers on the furnace's control system to operate the spiritual artifact.
With this in mind, Chen Daoxuan became even more impatient.
He hurriedly took out two pieces of red copper ore from his storage bag and threw them into the mouth of the spirit smelting furnace.
This time, Chen Daoxuan did not use any of his true Qi. He operated the furnace manually.
He gently manipulated the second control lever of the furnace. As Chen Daoxuan controlled the lever, the array was slowly activated by the spirit stones. The floating array on the furnace was activated.
After the two pieces of red copper ore entered the furnace from the intake port, they were controlled by the floating array and hovered in the middle of the furnace.
"The first step is complete!"
Seeing that the furnace was operating as he imagined, Chen Daoxuan was greatly encouraged.
"Next, it's time to heat up the furnace to smelt the spirit ore."
He continued to manipulate the first control lever. By controlling the distance between the spirit stones and the driving array, he controlled the spiritual essence input level, and thus controlled the operation of the heat-gathering array.
Chen Daoxuan slowly pushed the control lever. Under the effect of the heat gathering array, the temperature inside the furnace rose rapidly.
Soon, the furnace reached the same temperature that the heat gathering array would normally reach when Chen Daoxuan was manually refining an artifact.
"That's it?"
As he looked at the spirit smelting furnace running quietly, Chen Daoxuan felt unprecedentedly relaxed.
He felt like he was watching the production line of automated machinery from his previous life.
Of course, Chen Daoxuan knew that the real test had yet to come.
The most difficult problem to resolve for the spirit smelting furnace was the fusion of spiritual essence. Although he came up with the spirit smelting array on the spirit smelting furnace during his epiphany, he could not guarantee that it worked.
As time passed, even the red copper ore could not withstand the continuous high temperature inside the spirit smelting furnace.
Four hours later, the two pieces of red copper ore finally melted.
Seeing this, Chen Daoxuan could not help but raise his hopes in anticipation. He knew that the most critical moment had arrived.
Under the keen observation of his spiritual sense, Chen Daoxuan discovered that, within the spirit smelting furnace, the two blobs of red liquid were slowly fusing together under the effect of the floating array.
Not only that, the spiritual essence of these two blobs of liquid was also slowly fusing together.
He was not using his spiritual sense to suppress and fuse the spiritual essence. In fact, other than observing the interior of the furnace, his spiritual sense did not come into contact with the spiritual essence in the red copper ores, much less suppress and fuse the two.
Clearly, this was taking place due to the effect of the spirit fusion array.
"Wu Wu Wu…"
The moment the spiritual essence fused, a flash of white light was emitted from the top of the spirit smelting furnace, which was accompanied by a rapid burst of what sounded like the release of high-pressure steam.
This was a design choice that Chen Daoxuan had implemented based on the changes in the spiritual pressure caused by the fusion of the spiritual essence of the spirit ores. It was equivalent to a feedback system used to remind the operator that the spirit ores had been successfully refined.
Without it, how could mortals without spiritual sense know when the spirit ore had been successfully refined?
When Chen Daoxuan heard this brief whining noise, he became even happier. To him, this sound was even more pleasing than celestial music.
He quickly manipulated the control lever, and the refined liquified spirit ore slowly floated out from the discharge port.
"Good!"
Chen Daoxuan was extremely excited.
He used his true Qi to drag the refined red copper liquid in front of him, after which he used his spiritual sense to examine it carefully and found that there was no difference between it and the red copper ore that he had refined previously.
He could not help but exclaim, "Great! With this, as long as I have enough spirit smelting furnaces, my refining efficiency will increase by at least dozens of times."
For example, to refine the Red Shadow flying sword, Chen Daoxuan had to refine the materials for three days and three nights. Now, he only needed to complete the shaping and fusing arrays stages of the spiritual artifact refining process.
However, the process of shaping and fusing arrays of a first-grade spiritual artifact was relatively simple. Even if the fusing arrays stage was a little more difficult, it would only take him an hour at most.
In other words, the process that would normally take him three days and three nights had now been compressed to two hours, increasing his work efficiency by thirty-six times.
Now, Chen Daoxuan alone was equivalent to thirty-six artifact refiners in the outside world.
What was even more terrifying was the fact that this efficiency could be replicated.
Once this revolutionary spiritual artifact was popularized, as long as the clan gave birth to one artifact refiner in the future, it would be equivalent to giving birth to thirty-six artifact refiners in the outside world.
With this thing, would he still be worried about not having any spirit stones? Would he still be worried about not having any cultivation resources?
At this moment, Chen Daoxuan felt unprecedentedly relaxed.
The clan had declined and the cultivators in the clan had withered away. This situation was like a huge mountain pressing down on his heart, creating a situation where he did not dare to relax for even a moment.
However, at this moment, he finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel, and all the pressure was washed away.
"However, in order for the spirit smelting furnace to work, the earth fire chamber's connection to the earth fire vein is essential. Otherwise, the heat gathering array will not work properly."
After saying that, he looked around at the "small" earth fire chamber and shook his head. "This earth fire chamber definitely isn't the best. Moreover, the terrain here is not suitable to construct a refining workshop."
After thinking carefully, he still felt that Changping County's location was not too bad.
Changping County was located on a plain, and it had immense room for development. Even if he wanted to expand the size and scale of the refining workshop in the future, he would only need to say a few words.
However...
The prerequisite for all of this was the fact that he needed money!
However, Chen Daoxuan clearly knew that the clan already did not possess much money.
Over the years, in order to support his refining studies, the clan had invested at least five thousand spirit stones.
One had to know that 5,000 spirit stones was a huge fortune for even a foundation establishment cultivator.
At least among the itinerant cultivators and foundation establishment cultivators, very few people could afford that many spirit stones.
However, if he did not rely on the clan, who could Chen Daoxuan rely on?
Although he had been in this world for 16 years, he had never left Shuanghu Island even once.
For so many years, apart from cultivating, he had spent all his time studying how to refine artifacts.
He rarely had to worry about clan matters.
For the Chen clan of Shuanghu Island, Chen Daoxuan becoming an artifact refiner was already the greatest reward he could give to the clan.
He pondered this matter for a long time.
In the end, Chen Daoxuan decided to rely on the power of the clan. Even if he really could not obtain assistance, he could at least get thirteenth uncle to give him some advice.
After all, compared to Chen Daoxuan, who was a rookie in the cultivation world, Chen Xianhe, who had participated in cultivator wars, and had lived in the cultivation world of the Myriad Sea of Stars, and even the Immortal Cloud continent, was much more experienced than him.
"Let's do it!"
Chen Daoxuan quickly put down the spirit smelting furnace and flew toward the cave abode of the clan leader, Chen Xianhe.
...
Chen Xianhe's cave abode…
At this moment, Chen Xianhe, who had finished inspecting the clan's secret stash, was holding a cup of tea and humming a tune as he lay comfortably on the reclining chair to bask in the sun.
"Achoo!"
Suddenly, Chen Xianhe sneezed fiercely and sat up from the reclining chair with a blank look on his face.