A Mountain

Attacking the Nether Shaman's kingdom was a matter for later; the urgent priority right now was to escape from his predicament first. However, Wei Yuan had discovered the inherently fragile nature of Nether Shaman kingdoms, and Shu Li's kingdom was the weakest of the weak, which immediately stirred improper thoughts in him. Wei Yuan suppressed those inappropriate notions and began discussing strategies to escape, while simultaneously issuing a task within the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World. Yu Zhizhuo said, "There are two dao arts we could try. The first is the Gold Melting Incantation; in the Hall of Heavenly Craft, we often use this art to make metal-element materials easier to melt and process. The second is the Earth Transforming Incantation, which softens earth-element materials and breaks them into fine granules. However, cold iron and Nether Soil are no ordinary materials—they have an inherent, formidable resistance to dao arts. Therefore, both arts require further modification. "In the past, I made some personal modifications to the templates of both spells for my own use. Here are the templates—take them and use them for now. Their effects should be considerably stronger than the originals, and they might work on cold iron and Nether Soil. I will modify them further based on the physical properties of the cold iron and Nether Soil, but that will take a few days." At those words, everyone in the room shot him a startled glance. Wei Yuan still remembered that back in the Palace of Grand Beginning, there was someone who had profoundly upgraded the Water Blade Art—his name was Pei Tinghai. Every benchmark dao art had been refined and tempered across countless generations before being widely propagated; anyone capable of improving them was, without exception, a genius among geniuses. Yu Zhizhuo produced a sheet of jade paper and handed the two customized, modified spells over to Wei Yuan. The group discussed for a while longer, but found no better alternative, so they dispersed to attend to their own affairs. At this moment, a new proposal suddenly popped up in the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World, pushed directly before Wei Yuan. This new proposal originated from the suggestion of some armchair mastermind among them. The core reasoning was that the Nether Cold Realm existed between reality and illusion, and living beings entered and acted within it in the form of origin souls. Since it was an origin soul, there was naturally no need to be constrained by the form of a physical body. And in terms of resistance to pressure, the optimal shape was undeniably a sphere. What followed was a voluminous argument expounding the advantages of being a sphere: since it was an origin soul, divine sense could replace eyes; spells could be cast just as well without arms and legs; and if one wished to move, rolling and bouncing were far faster than walking on two legs, second only to a thruster. Furthermore, purely from the perspective of resisting pressure, smaller was naturally better for the sphere—if it could be made hundreds or thousands of times smaller than those microscopic organisms in water, all the better. That last part was pure armchair theory. The size of an origin soul was fixed and could not be altered at will, though its form could indeed be changed... After finishing the proposal, Wei Yuan experimented for nearly half an hour. In the end, he managed to pull the arms and legs of his origin soul back in; his neck disappeared as well, and his torso expanded slightly in response. For now, this was the best he could manage. Present Wei Yuan was still quite far from a perfect sphere—at best, he could only be described as a plump potato. However, his resistance to pressure had genuinely skyrocketed. Returning to the Nether Cold Realm now, Wei Yuan felt that surviving for two incense sticks' time would pose no problem. Meanwhile, in the central city of the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World, another group of people had gathered and was putting up a small building. At the entrance stood a stele inscribed with the words: Institute of Structural Mechanics. The institute's first research project was how to excavate and construct a cave under extreme pressure. Curious, Wei Yuan manifested as a mortal, pulled aside several people working on the building, and asked why they had chosen such a name. These mortals were candid, honestly confessing that the inspiration came from Xu Wenwu's materials. Pure mechanics research was both dull and lowbrow, but tacking on prefixes like "structural" or "fluid" instantly elevated its aura—otherwise, they wouldn't be able to hold their ground against the other research institutes. Wei Yuan obviously couldn't wait around for their first research findings. He returned to his quarters and entered the Nether Cold Realm once more. A moment later, Wei Yuan cast off all self-awareness and felt the crushing pressure once again. Yet in his potato form, he indeed felt much more at ease. Without hesitation, Wei Yuan cast Gold Melting Incantations and Earth Transforming Incantations one after another. Within half an incense stick's time, he fired off more than two hundred dao arts in one continuous breath. After casting over a hundred Gold Melting Incantations, Wei Yuan finally felt a small section of the metal mountain above him grow slightly brittle and soft. Deciding instantly, he shot forth a pale red strand of sword qi! Under the cutting force of the sword qi from the celestial laurel tree, a fist-sized chunk of cold iron was finally sliced free. Quick of eye and deft of hand, Wei Yuan immediately stowed it into his dharma idol. He then shifted his body to squeeze part of himself into the newly created fist-sized space, finally finding a bit of relief. Next, Wei Yuan drew a wisp of dense golden qi from the Langya Divine Wood and exhaled, blowing it into the cold iron before him. As a metal-element celestial plant, the Langya Divine Wood stood a grade higher than Nether Cold Iron. Permeated by the dense golden qi, the cold iron softened, and the nether chill within it receded by more than half. Wei Yuan promptly exhaled a wisp of true fire. A moment later, he finally heated this chunk of cold iron to a temperature sufficient to melt ordinary steel. Yet under such extreme heat, the cold iron only grew slightly soft. Had it not been permeated by the dense golden qi, it would not have softened in the slightest. Once the cold iron had softened to a certain degree, another wisp of crimson sword qi gathered in Wei Yuan's hand. With a forceful slash, he sliced off a human-head-sized chunk of cold iron and stored it into the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World. By now, his endurance had reached its limit, so he withdrew from the Nether Cold Realm and returned to Qingming. Waking up in Qingming, Wei Yuan attempted to manifest the two chunks of cold iron into physical reality. Sure enough, just like the Nether Soil, they appeared in the mortal world. But upon hitting the ground, the two pieces of cold iron—one large and one small—smashed straight through the floor tiles and sank into the earth! Wei Yuan swept his divine sense outward and found that the two chunks of cold iron had already sunk half a zhang into the ground. Despite their deceptively small size, they weighed several thousand jin, dozens of times heavier than gold. Wei Yuan dug out the two pieces of cold iron and went looking for Yu Zhizhuo, hoping he could analyze their physical properties and see if a better way to process them could be found. Otherwise, whether it was the dense golden qi of the Langya Divine Wood or the lunar sword qi of the celestial laurel tree, both required a long time to nurture a single wisp. Even if he used all of it up, he could at most hollow out a space a few feet across. When Wei Yuan stepped into Yu Zhizhuo's courtyard, the man was bent over his desk, engrossed in calculating spell templates. Several sheets of jade paper already lay before him, covered in various figures and calculations. Wei Yuan walked into the study, and Yu Zhizhuo, without even looking up, said, "You're back? Have a seat first. Let me finish calculating this dataset, it will only take a—" Before his words had fully faded, his nose twitched. He blurted out, "What is this scent? How can it smell so good?" A tiny golden bird suddenly flew out from between his brows and pounced onto the cold iron in Wei Yuan's hands, clinging there motionlessly, refusing to budge no matter what. Yu Zhizhuo set down his brush and paper and bounded over in a single stride. Carefully cradling the smaller chunk of cold iron, he examined it closely for a long time, even sticking out his tongue to give it a lick. Then, his voice began to tremble: "Th-this is Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Abyss Nether Iron! The market price for one tael of nether iron is ten taels of immortal silver! This little piece alone is over two hundred jin—it's worth at least twenty thousand taels of immortal silver!" The piece Wei Yuan held was the size of a human head and weighed more than two thousand jin. Wei Yuan stood dumbfounded. Was he holding two hundred thousand taels of immortal silver in his hands? If that was the case, this trip to the Nether Cold Realm hardly seemed like a loss. Yu Zhizhuo said, "I originally thought it was Nether Cold Iron, but I never imagined it would be Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Abyss Nether Iron! Ah, cold iron is a magical treasure-grade material, worth one tael of immortal silver per jin. But nether iron is a Scenery Command spirit treasure-grade material, worth a hundred times as much as cold iron, and it's exceptionally rare! "When added to ordinary spirit treasures, nether iron can grant rare attributes like nether chill, annihilation, and yin nether. If we just add a little nether iron to our city defense cannons, the barrel strength will increase dramatically, enough to use magical artifact-grade gunpowder!" After rambling all of that out in one breath, Yu Zhizhuo suddenly remembered something and asked, "Is this the stuff pressing down on you?" "Yes." Yu Zhizhuo's voice began to tremble again. "How much of it did you say there was?" Wei Yuan's expression went deadpan. "Roughly... a whole mountain."