After adding the three formations he had decided upon, Zhou Fan looked at the sword. The metal it was originally forged out of was gray, but due to the fire element formation on it, it had a slight red hue.
It was very slight, but it was still noticeable to a normal human. The sword was now completely finished since Zhou Fan didn't plan on adding anything else.
In order to see how good the sword was, Zhou Fan swung it a couple times. He didn't swing it very hard, but it made a sound of cutting the air.
After swinging it around a couple more times, Zhou Fan turned around and threw the sword at the cave wall. The tip of the blade perfectly collided with it, causing a slight and miniscule white scratch that could barely be seen to be etched onto the cave wall.
Not only was Zhou Fan not upset at the result, but he was thrilled. He never expected a mere 1st rank sword to leave a mark on cave walls that had reached the 5th rank.
There were only a few reasons why it had. One, the sword had a sharpening and strengthening formation, along with the fire element formation. Although the arrays were only first rank, it greatly increased the sword power. Two, the wall was very weak despite being at the 5th rank. Its power was spread out to a thin area and it only really had enough durability to resist a core formation attack before being destroyed.
That meant that the sword, when thrown fairly fast, could leave a scratch on a core formation cultivator.
It wasn't a bad result at all, but Zhou Fan quickly ignored it and continued with the rest of the first rank forging skills.
In a week, he had become a first rank forging master. It only took that long because he had to completely master the manipulation of the heat, material, and hammering. Also, he had to learn different techniques for different weapons.
Zhou Fan increased the flames' heat and the water's coldness in preparation for the 2nd rank materials.
The first ore he threw in was some obsidian at the second rank. It quickly got hot, and Zhou Fan picked it up with Qi before he began to shape it.
While normally obsidian could not be melted and was a somewhat fragile rock, Zhou Fan's comprehension of the dao and the elements changed everything. Even something like obsidian acted like common steel in his hands.
It wasn't really anything to be proud of since even a nascent soul realm cultivator with some skill in forging could do it, but Zhou Fan still felt it was something worth being proud of in the end.
Once again, the first weapon Zhou Fan was making was a sword. Like before, even the hilt would be made up of the ore, which was obsidian in this case. He felt no need to make some sort of handle since the weapons were so low rank and that technically wasn't even a part of forging. That fell under another sub category of forging, leather making.
It was unnecessary to practice it since he would naturally have some skill in it once he mastered forging completely.
Once the sword was completely shaped, Zhou Fan dropped it in the cold water and let it cool. While he could have immediately cooled it himself, he was still trying to do it the basic way.
After a couple of seconds, the sword cooled down and completely solidified. Next, Zhou Fan needed to add formations.
Once again, he added the sharpness formation and the strengthening formation. Instead of a fire formation this time, he decided to add a water formation. It would make the sword sharper and flow better.
After adding the formations, Zhou Fan looked at the sword to make sure that he hadn't missed anything.
Once he confirmed that he hadn't, he tossed the sword at the exact same speed at the exact same wall, just inches away from where the first one hit.
This time, the sword left another mark. The mark was wider by about an inch and deeper by about half an inch, but there was no serious damage and the wall was nearly completely unharmed.
Despite the fact that the mark was barely bigger, Zhou Fan wasn't surprised. The second sword actually had more than twenty times the power of the first one, but the wall wasn't weak at all.
The first mark was so small it nearly didn't exist. The fact that the second one actually left a noticeable mark was quite impressive.
Once he stopped looking at the wall, Zhou Fan left the second sword on the ground, where it landed next to the first that had been sitting there.
It took him just about a month to become a second rank forging master. He had done nearly the same thing as before, with only a few variations and a few new techniques. What took so long was that the difficulty was higher. He still hadn't failed a forging yet, but that could all be chalked up to the fact that he was in the god realm, although he was lowering his overall power, and his immense talent.
He didn't wait long before he moved on to the first third rank ore. He took it out randomly, and the ore turned out to be a piece of gold.
Zhou Fan increased the flames' heat and the water's coldness before he threw the piece of third rank gold into the fire.
It quickly melted and Zhou Fan picked it up with Qi, beat it into shape, and dipped it in water.
As per usual, he made a sword. It looked exactly like all the other swords he had made, besides the fact that the color and material was different.
After adding the sharpness and strengthening formations, Zhou Fan decided to make the elemental formation a gold formation.
It perfectly fit with the sword and its power was great.