The vapor within the Heavenly Thunder Formation gradually dissipated, and He Lingchuan's vision cleared, revealing a ground crisscrossed with ravines—all scorched furrows plowed by lightning.
The land had suffered grievous devastation.
Yet another figure still slumped half-sprawled within the formation. He Lingchuan looked closely; to his surprise, it was Master Sanshui!
He was still breathing. His robes were charred black, and his left hand and everything below his legs had been reduced to cinders, entirely stripped of his former transcendent, immortal bearing.
He Lingchuan walked over slowly, came to a halt before Master Sanshui, and put away his mask.
Whether it was the final radiance of a dying candle or not, the clarity in Master Sanshui's eyes was unprecedented.
He struggled twice to sit upright, but his strength failed him.
A formerly exalted immortal, a figure who could move mountains with a single hand, had now fallen into such a wretched state.
He Lingchuan squatted down and carefully helped prop him up against a large boulder.
"The battle just now left me with no choice. Please do not blame me, Daoist Master."
Toward this prominent figure from thousands of years ago, one of the creators of the Dafang Pot, he still had to show due respect.
There was no hatred in Master Sanshui's gaze, only a touch of chagrin. "The Dafang Pot should never have existed. Back then, I took away the Qianling Lid precisely to interrupt its evolution. Yet in the end, you people hunted it down anyway. Alas, how muddleheaded you all are."
He Lingchuan knew that the "you" Master Sanshui spoke of did not refer solely to him, but to the countless people who had obsessively pursued the Dafang Pot.
"The Dafang Pot's evolution was never interrupted, not ever," He Lingchuan said softly. "Look around you, Master."
The secret realm they were in was none other than the handiwork of the Dafang Pot.
Master Sanshui choked, at a loss for words.
Faced with this firsthand source of information, He Lingchuan could not resist asking, "What harm does the Dafang Pot actually cause?"
Earlier, Nailuotian's avatar had mentioned that this Master Sanshui was actually one of the exalted immortals who had forged the Dafang Pot. His understanding of it ought to far exceed anyone else's.
"The most crucial treasure used in forging the Dafang Pot was actually a massive fragment knocked off the Tianluo Star."
When Master Sanshui uttered these words, he saw that He Lingchuan's expression remained unchanged, clearly having known all along. Thus, he continued:
"Back then, led by Immortal Shou'an, we originally intended to forge another divine treasure to counter the Tianluo Star's influence on the mortal realm. Who would have guessed that the more we forged, the more off-track it went, until we ultimately ended up with something like the Dafang Pot?"
"Could forging the Dafang Pot truly be considered a failure?" How could a failed product be so profoundly mysterious?
"It wasn't quite a failure. But its emergence completely deviated from our original intent." Master Sanshui shook his head. "All those who took part were great figures adept in artifact forging. By rights, we should have known eight or nine parts out of ten what the finished product would look like before even starting.
"Yet this forging was filled with twists and turns. The Dafang Pot entered the smelting furnace three and a half times in total, and the first two times, the furnaces exploded completely. Heh, both of those furnaces were rare, precious treasures." Master Sanshui licked his lips. "I faintly sensed something was amiss and said it was heaven's will, warning them not to forge it any further.
"However, seeing that a mere fragment of this supreme fiendish treasure was so difficult to handle, everyone refused to accept defeat. They thought: We could drive out your master; are we really unable to deal with a tiny shard of yours?"
The Dafang Pot had been forged after the clash of gods and immortals drew to a close, when the Heavenly Fiends were banished from the human realm. Although signs of the spiritual energy's decline were already emerging, the immortals who had taken part in that epochal war still rode high on the momentum of their great triumph and their merit of saving the world, laughing proudly between heaven and earth.
"So everyone decided to try again, and my dissuasion was in vain. That time, Immortal Shou'an activated the 'Furnace of Heaven and Earth' beneath Mount Shou'an of the Dahuan Sect to smelt the fragment of the Tianluo Star," Master Sanshui recalled. "This 'Furnace of Heaven and Earth' was no man-made treasure, but a naturally formed subterranean crucible of the earth's core, brimming with the primordial true qi from the dawn of creation. It could smelt all manner of things, and not even divine weapons could withstand its heat. In fact, it was what gave birth to spirits like the great fire spirit, Juju."
So that was Juju's cradle? He Lingchuan thought to himself. No wonder even the haughty Heavenly Palace and Beijia treated Juju with offerings and respect. Turns out the fellow not only possessed fierce capability, but also boasted an extraordinary origin.
To put it simply, clinging to a furnace at the core of the earth made him exceedingly difficult to kill.
"Nobody expected that this forging would take only eighteen hours!"
He Lingchuan let out a soft exclamation, caught by surprise. Back then, merely mending and reforging the Fusheng Saber without melting it down had taken several days. For a divine artifact of the Dafang Pot's caliber to be completed in just eighteen hours was indeed astonishingly swift.
He also recalled the title "Immortal Shou'an." At the Dun Garden auction hosted by Fang Canran, a broken sword tip had been auctioned off. Snapped from Immortal Shou'an's natal artifact and containing boundless gold, it had fetched a sky-high price of eight hundred and seventy thousand taels of silver.
Of course, Immortal Shou'an's reputation carried immense weight, for not only was he the sect master of the Dahuan Sect, but he had also been one of the foremost leaders who led the hosts of immortals against the Heavenly Fiends during the ancient war.
If a single broken tip of his sword could sell for eight hundred and seventy thousand taels, how much would the Dafang Pot he personally forged be worth?
That alluring thought flashed through He Lingchuan's mind for just an instant before he snuffed it out.
What was the use if it couldn't be sold? Pure wishful thinking.
"The moment the Dafang Pot was forged, a crimson glow lit up the heavens, accompanied by lightning and thunder that lasted for three full days. We knew that such an anomaly occurred only when a treasure capable of shaking heaven and earth was born.
"Yet when we examined it, we discovered how bizarre this artifact was. Clearly harboring immense power, its interior was absolute chaos; clearly in absolute chaos, it behaved remarkably stable; and it possessed no artifact spirit, nor would it likely ever birth one in the future—that was the unanimous consensus and regret of us all.
"Can an artifact without a spirit still be called a divine object?" Master Sanshui smiled bitterly. "Without an artifact spirit, it will not acknowledge anyone as master, nor will it heed any commands. Yet it was so volatile that any power leakage would bring unimaginable consequences.
"Even so, the power it contained was vast and diverse, as though gathering the essence of two different realms. Immortal Shou'an even believed it could help us fathom the supreme Great Dao. We had seen countless Heavenly Fiend treasures before, yet none had fascinated us so deeply; we studied it for well over a hundred days." Master Sanshui shook his head. "Two people attained enlightenment quite quickly, taking another step forward from the pinnacle of their cultivation. That feeling is something I cannot explain to you."
He Lingchuan nodded, keeping an easy mindset.
At different realms of existence, one could not force understanding—just as a summer insect could not comprehend ice.
"We desperately needed to communicate with it, so someone proposed placing it back into the furnace once more to directly implant an artifact spirit! This time, nobody objected; even I agreed wholeheartedly." He gave a heavy sigh. "Looking back, we truly must have been blinded by folly."
He Lingchuan asked curiously, "Could that even be done?" It sounded exceptionally difficult.
"An artifact lacking a spirit is all too common. If the artifact is fine enough, one can simply transfer a spirit into it. This step is also called 'spirit infusion.' It is much like what farmers often do, called... called..." After all his exhaustion, Master Sanshui stumbled over his words.
"Grafting?"
"Yes. Injecting fresh life into a sturdy foundation. This is a common technique in artifact forging. Do you not practice it?"
He Lingchuan rubbed his nose. "Artifact forging in later generations differs greatly from your era. So, did you infuse a new artifact spirit into the Dafang Pot?"
Hearing this, he faintly guessed the ensuing turn of events.
"Everyone wanted to contribute their own artifact spirit. When facing the Dafang Pot, who didn't harbor a bit of selfish desire?" Master Sanshui caught his breath. He Lingchuan noticed that his knees had already dissolved into froth.
It seemed he would not last much longer.
"In the end, my Qianling Treasure Seal—or Qianling Treasure Lid—was granted this opportunity and cast into the Furnace of Heaven and Earth to infuse its spirit into the Dafang Pot," Master Sanshui said in a low voice. "The spirit of the Qianling Treasure Lid was an innate spirit. It gained sentience back when it was still a metal essence scampering all over Mount Xiling—what they call the awakening of metal and stone, an extraordinarily rare feat. Later, through two or three smeltings, the spirit remained in complete harmony with my mind. Over more than a thousand years of companionship, we grew increasingly close, and it suppressed countless great demons. If it were still here, heh, what I unleashed today would not have been the Heavenly King Seal, and you might not have withstood it... In any case, requesting its service was the most suitable choice at the time."
Hearing him say this, He Lingchuan was reminded of the Fusheng Saber. An artifact as a bosom friend—that described his bond with Fusheng, just as it had described Master Sanshui's bond with the Qianling Treasure Lid.
"This forging was even shorter. Barely an hour after the Furnace of Heaven and Earth began smelting, I sensed an urgent distress call from the Qianling Treasure Lid!" Because he was linked in mind and heart with the lid, he could feel every change in its spirit. "The Dafang Pot was actually trying to devour it! It wasn't spirit infusion, nor was it fusion—it was devouring!"
"Uh..." To He Lingchuan, that was hardly news; he fed the Dafang Pot every few days. But several thousand years ago, Master Sanshui and the others had known nothing of the pot's nature, so they were naturally shaken to the core.
"Just as we moved to abort the forging, the Furnace of Heaven and Earth suddenly erupted." Reaching this point, Master Sanshui could not help raising his voice. "That earth-shattering scene is something I can never forget. It was fortunate that we and Juju deployed our arts to suppress the eruption in the end; otherwise, the grounds of the Dahuan Sect, along with Mount Shou'an, would have been reduced to ashes."
Mount Shou'an was Mount Xu of later generations. He Lingchuan listened in silence, recalling the volcanic eruption he had triggered when wreaking havoc in the Heavenly Palace.
Compared to what the Dafang Pot had done back then, the trouble he had caused was rather minor.
"Only later did I learn that at the same time the subterranean fires of Mount Shou'an erupted, eleven other volcanoes within a radius of fifty thousand li erupted as well, accompanied by earthquakes and tsunamis. In the south, two maritime nations sank directly beneath the sea."
"...It had that much destructive power?" No wonder Master Sanshui had said the Dafang Pot was forged three and a half times—the fourth attempt had never been finished.
"Juju dove deep underground to inspect it, only to discover that the eruption was caused by the Furnace of Heaven and Earth shattering, allowing subterranean fires to surge forth." Master Sanshui shook his head. "Without the suppression of the Furnace of Heaven and Earth, Mount Shou'an could hardly enjoy peace thereafter."
Hearing this, He Lingchuan came to a sudden realization.
Why was there such a magnificent circular magma pool on the main peak of Mount Xu? When he had visited Tianshu Peak back then, he had found it utterly incredible that the Heavenly Palace was perched atop an active volcano.
It turned out that the rupture of the Furnace of Heaven and Earth had caused the subterranean fire to erupt, shaping that bizarre terrain.
No wonder both the Dahuan Sect in its later days and the Heavenly Palace treated Juju with lavish offerings; as it turned out, only he was capable of suppressing the subterranean fire back then.
Chapter 851