Raina repeated herself, saying, "So when can you make me a sword?"
Calming down enough to answer her, I said, "I would need to build and set up all the machines first and then refine the steel. After that it would take me about two days to forge both swords as while I do have the knowledge, I don't have the experience working the metal."
Without letting me think about what I had just said, Raina immediately replied, "You will have as much time as you need for the rest of the week."
After a moment, I realized what I had said, but Raina soon pulled more objects toward use, and my training with my marksmanship began again.
Four hours later, Raina let up with the training, and I had a notification from the system.
[Through training, your Marksmanship skill has increased to 95]
With training now over Raina then rushed me over to the workshop so I could set the machines in there to build the other machines that I needed.
The entire time, she was watching over me like a hawk, as if she could see everything that the system was doing.
Afterwards I set up wooden polls for the powerline I would eventually run over to the mines. Since I had the rest of the week to do what I needed to make steel weapons, I would need to ensure that the mines never stopped working.
Raina made this faster by carrying me while flying and clearing the trees until we reached the ore patch.
It was there that she saw the ore I would be using and said something interesting. "This is an almost useless spiritual iron mine. What are you planning to do with it? Don't tell me this is what you are going to make the swords out of?"
Surprised by this knowledge and chuckling at her skepticism, I say, "This is the iron I am planning on using, but I will be separating the ore first as it is a mix between copper, iron, and sulfur. When that is done through the help of the system, I should have pure iron and copper ores to work with, as well as plenty of sulfur to make more bullets."
Raina still seemed skeptical as she asked, "So you are going to use those machines to purify the iron?"
I slightly panicked after I heard her say this as I thought she was going to use something else to do that, so quickly said with my tail lashing about wildly, "No! I wont be purifying it but separating it as I don't want to get rid of the other parts, only separate them so I could use them better."
She then looked confused again before saying, "Okay, if that's what you want to do," And turning around to continue to the next ore patch.
When we got there, she just looked at me weirdly before grabbing me and flying back to the house. This little excursion only took us about an hour, so I was surprised to find some visitors at the house.
There were six people standing outside of the house with a familiar face in the lead.
Lou Xia was standing there talking to five old men with a pleading expression on her face as Raina landed behind them throwing up dust as she set me down next to her.
One of the old men was clearly unhappy as he tried to reprimand Raina for throwing up dust at her landing before he saw her and his face went white. The others also had similar angry expressions that changed to one of unconcealed fear once the dust settled and they were able to see Raina standing there.
If it wasn't poor manners and Raina would not scold me for it, I would have started laughing then and there, but as it was, I held myself back from doing so.
Lou Xia was doing the same as the five old men were staring at Raina and she stared back. This lasted for a few minutes until Lou Xia broke the silence, saying, "I brought the spiritual plant cultivators my family managed to hire for the shrine."
Excited by this information and reminding myself that Lou Xia had not been here before, I asked, "Do you want to go to the shrine immediately or take a tour around the place first?"
Lou Xia's eyes shined when I asked this before looking at the old men and frowning before saying, "I think that we should let the elders take a look at the shrine and your plans for it so they can get to work before you show me around?"
Hearing her proposal, I started running toward the shrine while pulling out a copy of the plans. This set had a full layout of the gardens with all the colors and types of flowers needed.
I heard Raina chuckle behind me before they followed me into the garden and to the center, where I stopped.
The old men did not want to follow me into the shrines area affect, but when I unraveled the blueprint, they were forced to follow.
After seeing the blueprint, they started to complain about being used as common gardeners until Raina looked over at them, causing them to quickly shut up. Hearing this, I said, "If you don't want to get paid, then you don't have to work."
This seemed to work as they simply grumbled before asking a few questions about the blueprint.
It took about half an hour to sort out all the details.
With that finished, I was able to show Lou Xia around the place.
In every building I had taken her in, she had some great ideas about improvements or uses for the rooms.
When we got to the library, she stared at the multiple iterations of my Qi-gathering technique for a long time before I managed to pull her away.
She also asked about the training gear in the courtyard, or more specifically, the padded armor. When she heard what it was for, she started to complain about all the beatings she endured while training and emphasizing how jealous she was of me.
It then came time to show her the workshop. When she saw the generator that used formations to power it, she started laughing uncontrollably.
When she finally calmed down, she said something about the machines being powered by formations now, referencing when she first saw the machines working.
Ignoring her, I walked over to said machines, collected the machines used for ore processing, and then started to run power lines out to the mines.
This time, I could just run through the forest while randomly confirming placement when the power lines snapped into place.
Once at the mine, I placed the automated drilling machines and then placed the ore separators attached to them where the mined material would be dropped off, thus instantly starting the process of separating them.
When Lou Xia saw that and heard what I was planning, she instantly got a smile on her face and simply said something along the lines of me being me.
During this time, the spiritual plant cultivators had started the process of working on the shrine, but would need at least one or two more days to finish if everything went well.
After this, Lou Xia returned home, and the old men left leaving the three of us on the mountain alone. Thankfully, Yuki already made dinner, and everything was ready for us to eat.
It looked like Yuki made enough food for us to at least have some guests for this meal, but guessed wrongly. This was not an issue, though as I just stored the excess food in my inventory where it would stay fresh for as long as it stayed in there.
While we were eating the meal, I got to see some dark circles under Yuki's eyes, indicating her lack of sleep.
This was fairly concerning, so I asked, "Is there something wrong? You seem to be tired."
Yuki looked up in fear and was about to say something when Raina spoke up for her, saying, "She is not a very powerful cultivator. So she needs some rest every now and then."
Hearing Raina's response, I say, "Oh? Then how far through Cultivation are you?"
Yuki then quickly replied, seemingly waiting for this question, "I am at the second stage of the body-tempering realm, ma'am."
Gaining the knowledge about Yuki's realm, I get an idea and ask, "Is there a way to undo all the progress you have made in cultivating your body?"
Yuki then looks even more afraid than before, saying, "No, I don't believe there is, ma'am."
Before either of us could think more on this, Raina spoke up, saying, "I could make a formation to do that for you. It would not even disrupt her cultivation much. Only spreading around the remaining impurities in her body and not injecting more."