"Haa. To think I'd have to work even on a day like this." A beautiful woman wearing a business suit said tiredly, lazily resting her head on her palm as he looked out the window. She was a worker at the Blacksmith Association of Eastsea City.
It was a prestigious job that she was overjoyed to have but sometimes the stubbornness of blacksmiths amazed her. Outside their sturdy walls, there was a hurricane running through the town and yet they still kept on hitting their metal without a single worry.
Since blacksmiths were well known for their overwhelming concentration she wouldn't even be surprised if most of them didn't even know there was something happening outside. She would be surprised if even five people working right now knew about the storm.
"So this is the blacksmith association. It has quite an impressive atmosphere." A leisurely voice accompanied by the sound of two footsteps entered her ears causing her to perk up. Quickly fixing her posture and any mistakes in her uniform from her laziness before they arrived.
"Mhm." A second much more bland voice entered her ears, the two figures finally stepping around the corner, gracing her with their presence. And what a grace it was. She had seen her fair share of muscly men but never had she seen such a 'soft' beauty much less two.
Scanning over their bodies with her eyes purely for research purposes she was impressed by how attractive they were. Both seemed to be divine beings visiting the mortal plane. In fact, she would have thought it was true if it weren't for the god realm vanishing.
However, she wasn't unprofessional enough not to notice the obvious signs of an important individual. While most of the things she took note of were small things only experience could see there was one thing that stood out to anyone who had a brain capacity larger than a peanut.
Despite the furious storm occurring right outside the two were completely dry, not even a trace of water on their divine bodies. This meant one of two things, one they simply weren't touched by the water or they had dried themselves off using their internal energies.
No matter what option it was, they were undoubtedly soul masters meaning they were VIPs that must be treated with as much care as possible. They looked young, roughly nine years old, so she couldn't guess their intentions however that didn't change anything.
Soul masters were the cream of the crop of humanity, even their powerful blacksmith association where the saint ranked blacksmith Mu Chen resided would naturally need to be careful around them to not make unnecessary enemies.
The two children were Tang Wulin and Gu Yuena who had convinced her other half to finally join the blacksmith association after a bit of help from his blacksmithing teacher. It was quite an amusing situation to be sure since it included one of the few people Wulin truly liked.
Gu Yuena who had happened to be there cultivating with him heard the conversation and convinced him to join the association after three months of putting it off for 'more important things' as he said though she would just call him unmotivated.
Joining the blacksmithing association wouldn't actually help him much, rather it may harm him. He already had a sufficiently hidden way to gather and sell metals through FUG and revealing his talent may endanger him so he ended up delaying despite his teacher's words.
However, she abused his one weakness to get him to join. She asked him to join it so that she could see him create life from metal and also brag about it to other people, both of which she truly wanted to do.
When she checked on him in the past she had never seen him create life from metal since he always did it in one of his secret locations to keep it from Mang Tian and every girl wants to brag about their close friends.
In the end, he agreed and they scheduled it for their next day off however they received a stroke of luck from fate herself in the form of a large storm canceling school for the next week. It made the weather quite dreary but it helped them quite a bit so it was a fair trade off.
Besides, with her affinity to water and wind the storm wouldn't even go near them if she didn't want it to. Of course, they had plenty of ways to remove the water if they had happened to get wet but it was a nice convenience, especially since her other half wanted to use annihilation to dry himself.
As amusing as it may be that was not something the universal force of destruction and oblivion should be used for. For all intents and purposes, he shouldn't even be able to use it as freely as he does.
It was because he struggled with the concept of emotions that he was able to do so as annihilation forced deep desires of destruction, madness, and chaos onto the user each time it was used which in the end resulted in the demise of the Dragon God.
These destructive urges were strengthened when combined with the god kings sacrificed during the fall of the Divine Dragon Realm to the point where they should be impossible to endure let alone tame.
At first, she worried that because he was gradually learning about emotions this madness would begin to affect him however her worries were unfounded. Apparently, years of experiencing the corruption of madness made him extremely resistant to their temptations.
"How may I help you both?" The woman working at the association questioned the two of them, a polite and practiced smile on her face. She had been in the industry for years and as the first person people talked to she was a large part of the branch's reputation, she knew how to be professional when she needed to be.
"I'd like to apply for an examination." Tang Wulin explained simply, his voice blunt and emotionless as usual. No matter how many emotions he learned due to Gu Yuena's help he could not manage to add them into his voice, at least not on purpose.
According to Gu Yuena, he sometimes spoke softly and gently or occasionally, like when he threatened Wei Xiaofeng yesterday, he would sound cold in a similar fashion to their teacher so apparently he could do it though it seemed to require fairly high emotional stimuli.
"Of course. Do you have a letter of introduction?" The woman asked him professionally, already pulling up a few files on her desktop type soul communicator. Having a letter of introduction was important as it allowed one to skip the training stage and enter the examination immediately.
"Mhm." Tang Wulin hummed quietly, passing her a letter he had been given by Mang Tian long ago. It was a fairly short letter though it was long by when compared to other blacksmiths and essentially boiled down to Mang Tian staking his reputation on Wulin succeeding.
"R-Rank 5?!" The woman shouted out in complete and utter surprise.