Princess Xu Jiujiu and Jin Li were neither Blacksmiths nor Soul Engineers, so their knowledge of rare metals was limited.
In their eyes, the metal in Huo Yuhao's hand had a restrained and deep metallic luster, and the natural eye-like patterns on the surface were quite peculiar, but that was all.
However, when their eyes swept over the expressions of the three presidents opposite them, even if they couldn't understand the technicalities, they could guess that the metal in Huo Yuhao's hand was definitely not simple.
After a near-frozen silence in the conference room, President Zhu Wen suddenly raised his head.
All the restraint and politeness on his dark face were now replaced by a shock bordering on terror.
The look he gave Huo Yuhao was full of disbelief, and his voice trembled uncontrollably: "It... it has life?!"
Having dealt with metal their whole lives, the three presidents noticed the unusual nature of this metal the moment Huo Yuhao took it out.
That feeling was extremely subtle; from deep within the metal came a faint, rhythmic pulse, like a heartbeat in deep sleep—faint, yet real.
It wasn't the rhythm of energy fluctuations, but the breath of life, the rhythm that only living things possess.
The silence just now, besides the shock, was the three presidents confirming this judgment they couldn't believe over and over again.
Huo Yuhao watched the three presidents' expressions as if they had seen a ghost, his smile remaining as calm and composed as ever.
He gently placed the cube-shaped metal on the table and tapped his fingertip against the mirror-smooth surface, producing a crisp and lingering echo.
Then, he asked in a flat tone: "Can the three presidents, not to mention the other Blacksmiths of the Blacksmith Association... forge a metal like this?"
Once this question was asked, the three presidents fell into silence again.
Even Qu Tong, who had the hottest temper, did not slam the table and stand up this time.
The expression on his dark red face changed several times, his lips moved, but in the end, he didn't utter a word.
Because for such rare metal, let alone Forging it, he had been a Blacksmith his whole life and had never even seen it, let alone heard of it.
It was only at this moment that the three presidents truly realized that Huo Yuhao's previous statement, "How to forge it must be up to me," was not the arrogance of a youth, nor a provocation to the craft of their Blacksmith Association, but was backed by unshakeable confidence.
President Zhu Wen took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the surging waves in his heart.
When he raised his eyes to look at Huo Yuhao again, the contempt and displeasure in his gaze had long since vanished, replaced by an unprecedented solemnity and caution.
His tone was cautious as he probed: "Hall Master Huo, according to what you just said, as long as we follow your method of Forging, can our Blacksmith Association also forge such Materials?"
Hearing this, Huo Yuhao looked at President Zhu Wen, thinking to himself that he was worthy of being the president; while the other two vice-presidents were still immersed in shock, President Zhu Wen had already keenly captured the most critical information.
However, Huo Yuhao did not answer the question directly, but instead turned his gaze back to the metal cube on the table that was emitting a faint purple glow.
He began to introduce: "This raw metal is just ordinary magic silver. It underwent Soul Forging through a special Forging technique, giving birth to its own life and Soul, which is why it underwent a qualitative change."
As soon as the words "Soul Forging" were spoken, the three presidents looked at each other, seeing confusion and bewilderment in each other's eyes.
They had been Blacksmiths their whole lives, but the term "Soul Forging" had never appeared in any Forging classics, nor had it ever been recorded in the lineage of craftsmanship inherited by the Blacksmith Association.
President Zhu Wen opened his mouth and asked tentatively: "I wonder, Hall Master Huo, what exactly is this Soul Forging..."
Huo Yuhao knew that taking out this Soul-Forged magic silver had already taken control of the situation. However, these old Blacksmiths were straightforward people who respected skill over status. To get them to willingly follow his method, words alone might not be enough; he had to let them see it for themselves.
So he didn't waste any more breath explaining, but just swept his gaze over the three presidents opposite him, his mouth slightly raised, and asked: "Where is the Forging room?"
President Zhu Wen stood up abruptly from his chair, staring wide-eyed at Huo Yuhao, his voice filled with a certain irrepressible anticipation: "Hall Master Huo, could this piece of magic silver... have been forged by your own hands?"
Huo Yuhao nodded calmly. He was already a level seven Blacksmith and was not far from becoming a level eight Blacksmith; Soul Forging was nothing to him.
A blazing light suddenly burst from President Zhu Wen's eyes, and he shouted in a loud and urgent voice: "I will take you there right now, Hall Master Huo, please, please!"
Under President Zhu Wen's guidance, the group of six passed through a long, narrow corridor in the back hall of the Blacksmith Association, followed a stone staircase blackened by furnace fire, and finally arrived in front of a thick iron door.
President Zhu Wen took out a polished copper key from his waist, inserted it into the keyhole, and gave it a hard turn. With a dull click, the iron door was pushed open.
A wave of hot, dry air mixed with the faint burnt smell of metal rushed out. This was President Zhu Wen's exclusive Forging room.
Huo Yuhao walked into the room and habitually looked around.
This Forging room was not large, but it was well-organized. The walls were built with thick, fire-resistant blue bricks, which had been baked yellowish by the high temperatures over the years.
In the center was a waist-high Forging bench, the surface of the heavy anvil having been hammered countless times, covered with deep and shallow dents.
Beside the Forging bench was an open furnace, the walls were hung with various hammers, pliers, and measuring tools, and piles of different kinds of metal ingots were stacked in the corner.
Although it was much simpler than the modernized Forging rooms of the Spirit Pagoda Ten Thousand Years later, it had everything it needed.
Under everyone's gaze, Huo Yuhao took off his coat and handed it to Jin Li beside him, rolled up his sleeves to reveal his well-proportioned forearms, and walked straight to the Forging bench.
He first bent down to check the structure of the furnace, then skillfully lit the furnace fire.
The orange-red flames jumped happily in the furnace. After the fire stabilized, his eyes swept over the pile of metal ingots in the corner, and he finally bent down to pick up a piece of sinking silver the size of an adult's palm.
The three presidents looked at each other without speaking, just focusing their attention even more intently on Huo Yuhao's every move.
Huo Yuhao returned to the Forging bench. When the flames in the furnace turned from orange-red to bright orange-yellow, he used a long-handled pair of iron tongs to pick up the sinking silver and steadily sent it into the hottest area of the furnace.
Then he stood quietly to the side, his eyes calmly watching the metal slowly change color in the flames.
When he judged that the heat was sufficient, the sinking silver had been calcined to a bright red, emitting scorching heat waves, with signs of melting on the surface.
Huo Yuhao clamped it out with the iron tongs and placed it steadily in the center of the anvil. The red-hot metal touched the cold anvil surface, emitting a short hiss of "chi," and a wisp of white smoke rose up.
Huo Yuhao held his hands in front of him, and with a slight movement of his mind, a layer of rich black light suddenly surged from his slender, fair palms, instantly turning into a pair of pitch-black Forging hammers.
This pair of hammers was a size larger than the hand hammers used by ordinary Blacksmiths, and the hammer bodies were covered with dense, mysterious purple patterns. Those patterns seemed to flicker slightly with Huo Yuhao's breathing.
And what shocked President Zhu Wen and the other two the most was that the aura emitted from this pair of hammers was exactly the same as the Soul-Forged magic silver just now; they also possessed life.
Huo Yuhao was now deaf to everything in the outside world. His eyes were locked on the red sinking silver on the anvil, and his whole aura became incomparably focused and condensed.
He adjusted his breathing slightly, clenched the hammer handle with his right hand, and raised it slowly. The muscle lines on his arm tightened like a bowstring in an instant.
Then, he smashed down with the hammer.
"Bang!!!"
A huge sound exploded in the enclosed Forging room, like a thunderclap on flat ground. The whole room seemed to tremble slightly under this hammer blow.
However, when Huo Yuhao raised the hammer, the sinking silver on the anvil was not flattened into a silver pancake as everyone had imagined.
It still maintained roughly the same outline as when it was clamped out of the furnace, but its total volume had strangely shrunk by more than half.
And around the shrunken sinking silver, a circle of dense, tiny black metal beads was scattered on the anvil.
As the saying goes, laymen watch the excitement, experts watch the doorway.
The three presidents of the Blacksmith Association were all trembling in their hearts at this moment, their three pairs of old eyes staring fixedly at the sinking silver on the anvil that had shrunk by a whole circle, as if they were looking at some incredible miracle.
Huo Yuhao's hammer blow just now, from the posture of swinging the hammer to the angle of the fall, from the rhythm of force to the lingering charm of the retraction, they saw every detail clearly, but when these details were combined, they found that they couldn't understand it at all.
The technique contained in that hammer blow far exceeded the Forging system they had learned all their lives. They couldn't understand the process, but they could understand the result.
Each of those tiny black metal particles on the anvil was an Impurity that naturally existed in the sinking silver.
These Impurities were tightly combined with the metal matrix on weekdays, requiring Blacksmiths to repeatedly heat and hammer them to force them out little by little.
But Huo Yuhao forced all these Impurities out with just one hammer, and the purification effect was as thorough as the results of their thousands of hammerings.
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A/N:
I hope all of you are enjoying this story so far. I would appreciate some Power Stones if you can spare any. Leave a review if you like the story. Thank you.