The moon's shadow sank in the west.
It was not until the late hours of the night that the pounding sounds from the auxiliary hall finally ceased.
Tang Jian sat slumped against the wall, drenched in sweat, holding a short sword about two feet long in his hands, gently rubbing it.
The sword was still in its embryonic form, not yet awakened, but its blade was exceptionally bright, shimmering with silver light, appearing quite extraordinary.
"I didn't expect that after being smelted once, the sword embryo would still have so many impurities removed under my secondary smelting with this peculiar flame. Although the blade has shrunk considerably, its quality has improved significantly. The subsequent awakening process should be much easier now," Tang Jian muttered to himself with a smile playing on his lips.
However, when it came to the awakening, he felt somewhat troubled again.
Awakening the sword embryo was the final and crucial step in transforming it into a magical sword.
It determined whether the embryo could become a magical sword and what quality level it would attain afterward.
To perform the awakening, one could not do without an awakening chisel.
Such chisels were typically cast from bronze and needed to be embedded with elemental stones of different attributes to function when inscribing symbols, channeling the spiritual energy from the stones into the sword, endowing it with various attribute enhancements.
For instance, Chen Guang had once used an awakening chisel embedded with a fire elemental stone to awaken a knight's sword, granting it the enhancement of a burning attribute.
It could be said that the awakening was closely tied to the quality of the magical sword and the attribute enhancements it could receive. Yet, at present, he had no awakening chisel to use.
Throughout the entire Yan Swordsmith Shop, perhaps only Chen Guang and Yao Bin possessed such tools, and he had no way of borrowing them.
"Do I have to try that method again?" Tang Jian wiped the sweat from his forehead and said with a bitter smile.
After speaking, he leaned back, closed his eyes, and began to rest.
About an hour later, his eyes suddenly reopened. He placed the sword embryo across his knees, forced himself to gather his spirits, and exhaled a long breath.
Then, he raised a finger and compelled the scattered spiritual energy around his body to flow toward the tip.
Thin streams of spiritual energy converged at the tip of his right index finger, gradually transforming into a crimson glow, the size of a red bean, flickering slightly.
With his left hand, he pressed the short sword embryo against his knee, and with his right index finger, he began to inscribe.
Accompanied by a faint sound, Tang Jian's brows furrowed tightly, and a pained expression appeared on his face.
He had only heard his master Ning Shen mention this high-difficulty technique of using spiritual energy wrapped around the fingertip as a chisel to inscribe symbols. Although he had practiced it a few times, he had never truly applied it to crafting a magical sword.
Using this technique for awakening required a certain level of spiritual cultivation from the swordsmith, typically at the peak of the Qi Refining stage or even above, to ensure that the inscribed symbols were coherent and retained their spiritual effects.
Tang Jian was still recovering from severe injuries and only had the cultivation of the third layer of the Qi Refining stage. The difficulties he faced were imaginable.
After only a few strokes, he had to stop.
Firstly, the pain in his fingertip was unbearable, and secondly, the markings on the sword's blade were so shallow that they were negligible, rendering them ineffective.
After stopping, Tang Jian rubbed his aching index finger and sighed helplessly, muttering to himself,
"This will definitely fail the awakening. If it doesn't work, I'll have to find another way, but then...sigh..."
Saying this, he slowly stood up, dragged his weary body to the round table, picked up the teapot, and poured himself a cup of water.
As he lifted the cup to drink, his gaze fell on the oil lamp on the table, and he lost focus for a moment.
Suddenly, his brows lifted, and forgetting about the water, he hastily dropped the cup and once again placed the sword embryo on his knees.
Tang Jian raised his index finger again, and a bean-sized golden flame suddenly emerged from the tip, accompanied by a flicker of light.
With a focused gaze, he gradually pressed his finger down onto the sword's blade and began to inscribe slowly.
This time, although there was still a burning sensation on his finger, it was not as sluggish as before. The inscribing speed was even faster than when he used an awakening chisel in the past.
However, Tang Jian was not at ease either. The limited spiritual energy within his body was rapidly depleting, and a dull sensation repeatedly surged through his head. He gritted his teeth and endured, preventing himself from collapsing.
Time passed slowly, feeling like years, and a clear, circular symbol gradually formed on the sword's blade under Tang Jian's finger.
Finally, the spiritual energy within Tang Jian was completely exhausted. His vision blurred, and with a slight tremor of his finger, the golden flame extinguished completely. His entire body went limp, and he leaned to the right, collapsing under the table, unconscious.
...
The next morning dawned.
A sliver of sunlight slipped through the cracks in the door and window, casting its glow directly onto the round table inside the house.
Tang Jian, still slumbering beneath the table, was stirred by the light as it flickered across his eyelids. After a few gentle trembles, he slowly opened his eyes.
Groggily, he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and suddenly remembered something, quickly reaching out beside him.
His hand closed around the hilt of the silver-white short sword.
Tang Jian was instantly filled with delight!
A faint glow seemed to flow along the blade, and near the guard, a complete "Flame Invocation Sigil" was etched—it was unmistakably a mid-grade magical sword.
Before he fell asleep last night, he had thought he had failed to complete the sigil carving. He never imagined that he had actually succeeded, and what he had forged was a mid-grade magical sword, something he had never accomplished before.
"It seems this strange flame has an incredibly significant impact on enhancing the quality of magical swords and improving the success rate of forging. Otherwise, how could he, with his skill level, have forged a mid-grade magical sword from scrap materials?" Tang Jian suppressed the shock and joy within him as a tumult of thoughts flooded his mind.
"Bang, bang, bang!"
Just then, a series of urgent knocks suddenly sounded from outside the door.
Startled, Tang Jian quickly got up, hid the short sword in a pile of charcoal, and after briefly straightening his clothes, he went to open the door.
There stood Yao Bin, his expression somewhat displeased as he said, "Tang Jian, didn't you know we're opening the furnace today?"