Wei Yuan said, "If a craftsman wishes to do good work, he must first sharpen his tools—"
"A fierce shaman needs only muscles!"
Wei Yuan said, "Shamanic power has its limits. When you need to borrow strength, borrow strength and act in accordance with heaven—"
"A fierce shaman needs no heaven!"
"Speak properly to me!"
"A fierce shaman never speaks nice words—"
Wei Yuan pulled an iron slab out from under Jidao's hoof.
Practicing the Desolate Tongue did not hinder Wei Yuan's work. He had kept Jidao forging iron for hours on end, cycling through seven or eight techniques, and had finally beaten out a slab of iron gleaming with a dark-red luster. The price was that Jidao's legs were nearly broken from exhaustion.
The iron slab rippled with a faint, fiery sheen, its quality and purity far surpassing Jidao's scrap-iron knife. True desolate iron, once refined to a certain purity, actually turned dark red.
Wei Yuan propped the newly forged iron slab against the rock wall and thrust his spear into it. Even using half his strength, he barely pierced through. Wei Yuan then activated the "Sunder Firmness" true intent upon the spear. A ring of light rippled from the spearhead, and with a sharp crack, the iron slab shattered into several pieces.
Testing proved that the strength of this desolate iron slab essentially brushed against the edge of a Scenery Command spirit treasure. The reason it shattered was twofold: first, all three true intents and divine abilities on Compassion were of the immortal tier; second, the iron slab still contained too many impurities, possessing excess brittle hardness but insufficient toughness.
However, after questioning Jidao about the typical standards and equipment of Shaman Hunters, Wei Yuan felt that an iron slab of this quality was already more than enough to overwhelm them.
With the first iron slab, tools would follow. And with tools, everything that came after would be easy.
Wei Yuan found a rock wall with a slightly brittle texture, then unleashed a roar at it using the battle cry he had just learned and was not yet very skilled with!
The rock wall softened slightly.
Then Jidao Zhengang followed with a savage bellow! The rock wall softened once more.
Thus, Wei Yuan roared, then Jidao roared; Jidao roared, then Wei Yuan roared. After a round of roaring, Wei Yuan felt the rock wall was sufficiently loosened, so he thrust his spear forward with all his might, simultaneously triggering "Sunder Firmness."
With a boom, the rock wall burst open. A hollow finally appeared in the towering weathered stone terrace, and several slab-like stone pieces fell down, the larger ones resembling pot lids and the smaller ones like bowls and plates.
With this pile of high-quality stone slabs, they had the best anvil stands.
Over the next few days, Wei Yuan worked non-stop day and night with Jidao. But the Desolate Realm had no night; at all times, there was at least one sun hanging in the sky. So Wei Yuan split his divine sense into two, assigning each a separate task.
One task counted the end of a day in the Desolate Realm whenever only a single sun remained in the sky; the other tracked time according to Qingming in the human domain. That way, Wei Yuan could track Desolate Realm time while also knowing the time back in Qingming.
In this manner, after one Desolate Realm day—amounting to four days in the mortal world—Wei Yuan ultimately forged a complete set of desolate iron tools, as well as a tower shield seven feet high and four feet wide, barely enough to cover most of Jidao's vital areas.
By this time, all the edible parts of that molten ox had been completely digested, with a slight deficit remaining. By the Desolate Realm's accounting, an entire ox had been traded for a few tools and a tower shield.
The moment the tower shield was finished, Jidao was on the verge of collapse. Yet he still held the tower shield, unable to bear parting with it. In his words, if taken to Jitian City, this shield would be enough to buy ten of him.
Solely on the merits of its material, the tower shield was worthy of being called a Scenery Command spirit treasure. Wei Yuan had never imagined that the very first Scenery Command spirit treasure of his forging career would come about like this.
However, the shield was uneven in thickness, and there were several obvious seams along its edges. If Yu Zhizhuo saw it, he would probably sever ties with Wei Yuan on the spot before reforging it from scratch.
Equipped at last, Wei Yuan delayed no further and headed with Jidao toward the area frequented by Shaman Hunters.
Shaman Hunters were a profession unique to the Desolate Realm. Not only did they hunt Shaman sinners, but they were also responsible for hunting the Desolate Realm's unique desolate spirits.
Not every place in the Desolate Realm was as barren as this region; some areas possessed plenty of spiritual flora and fauna. The area beneath Wei Yuan's feet belonged to a dead zone and desolate wasteland even within the Desolate Realm, a place where even Shaman Hunters rarely ventured.
Once one entered this forsaken wasteland, there was no resting, and supplies were nearly impossible to find. Aside from the extremely perilous molten beasts and sand scorpions, there was nothing to eat and no water to be found.
Molten beasts prowled only the wasteland. They possessed very little blood, and to shamans or humans, their blood was practically flowing magma—not only completely devoid of nourishment, but also violently toxic. There were few edible parts on their bodies, and many organs contained dense crystal threads; accidentally consuming them would prove fatal even to a Strength Shaman.
Jidao had fled into this forsaken expanse simply because he had been backed into a corner; this was the only place safe from Shaman Hunters.
Now that Wei Yuan was taking him to turn the tables on a Shaman Hunter, Jidao was terrified to the marrow, muttering fierce words in a voice so faint it was barely audible.
Wei Yuan naturally paid no heed to Jidao's pleading along the way, simply advancing swiftly while searching for any trace of movement. Before long, Wei Yuan spotted a target: a molten ox lying dead on the ground.
Wei Yuan patted Jidao, pointed at the carcass, and whispered, "There's very likely a hunter lying in wait over there. Go drag the ox over."
Jidao was exceptionally reluctant, but dared not disobey Wei Yuan. He could only poke his head out furtively, inching toward the ox carcass with three cautious glances for every step.
All the way to the carcass, nothing happened.
Yet just as he reached out to butcher the meat, a sharp whistle suddenly pierced the air. An arrow streaked through the sky, aiming straight for Jidao's shin!
The shot was vicious and tricky, but Jidao had been prepared. He unslung the tower shield from his back and slammed it into the ground! The shield was massive; the slightest adjustment covered most of his body. With a sharp clang, the arrow struck the shield and bounced straight off, leaving behind only a tiny pit.
The Shaman Hunter lurking in the shadows did not relent. In an instant, the onslaught intensified, a volley of heavy arrows raining down so fiercely that Jidao could not even raise his head. These arrows struck with immense power, but all were deflected by the tower shield, unable even to lodge into the metal.
Wei Yuan, meanwhile, concealed his presence, moving swift and silent, quickly closing the distance to the Shaman Hunter's position.
This Shaman Hunter was exceptionally well hidden. From afar, his hiding spot looked like nothing more than a small mound of earth. Such mounds littered the Desolate Realm; if not for the arrows shooting out from it, even Wei Yuan would not have realized a Shaman Hunter lay concealed within.
Across the final dozen zhang, Wei Yuan leaped into the air, lunging at the hunter!
Only then did the Shaman Hunter sense Wei Yuan. His reaction was lightning-fast: while one pair of arms continued drawing the bow and loosing arrows, another pair of arms drew twin sabers, slashing upward in an intersecting arc toward the airborne Wei Yuan!
Yet he immediately realized something was wrong: the weapon in Wei Yuan's hands was a stone slab the size of a tabletop! The twin sabers slashed into the stone slab, throwing up a shower of sparks, but left only two white scuffs—not even a groove.
Gripping the stone tabletop, Wei Yuan crashed down from above, slamming the Shaman Hunter and his twin sabers straight into the ground!
With a hollow boom, the small mound was flattened completely. Amid the churning dust, Wei Yuan, still not taking any chances, stomped on the stone slab several times. Only after confirming there was no movement beneath did he lift it.
There lay the Shaman Hunter, contorted in a bizarre pose and embedded inside an equally bizarre crater, completely knocked out cold.
Jidao jogged over, so excited that for a moment he couldn't even speak the Desolate Tongue. He had never imagined that this Shaman Hunter, who had driven him to the brink of death multiple times, would be knocked senseless by Wei Yuan in a single exchange.
At this moment, Wei Yuan also counted himself fortunate to have wielded such a massive stone slab. This weathered stone unique to the Desolate Realm's dead zones was unimaginably heavy, its hardness rivaling that of a Scenery Command spirit treasure. The three-finger-thick, tabletop-sized slab in Wei Yuan's hands weighed over ten thousand jin.
The stone slab could block sunlight and cut off breath and spiritual presence, allowing Wei Yuan to sneak up to within ten zhang while carrying it. The Shaman Hunter had noticed nothing until the slab flattened him.
"Master, what do we do with him?"
Wei Yuan looked at the hunter's evidently fine equipment and immediately said, "Strip him bare first!"
"Right away!" Jidao had been waiting for this order all along. He got to work instantly, stripping all the equipment off the Shaman Hunter in a matter of seconds.
Then he glanced toward the hunter's vital region and scoffed contemptuously, "A worm after all!"
At last, Wei Yuan understood what "worm" meant.
Chapter 872