Lord of the Rending Stars

A few months later, Qingyang finished the simulation and began to familiarize himself with the material properties and furnace temperature control. He also applied for materials from the material library that could be used to forge ten standard weapons and polished the engraving of the secret patterns from rough to smooth.

By the end of the year, the rate of high-quality weapons produced by Qingyang jumped from zero to 30%, and the annual quota for weapon production was exceeded, with the number of high-quality weapons far exceeding the requirements for good quality weapons.

Based on the refining results, the Forging Star Pavilion's Refining Hall system automatically rated Qingyang as a Grade C Refiner, with an annual performance rating of Grade A.

In the following year, Qingyang began to work with F9-level psychic weapons. The secret rune structure of psychic weapons is ten times more complex than that of battle swords, requiring multiple law circuits to be engraved simultaneously on extremely small core components.

"Failed again. This is the forty-seventh time," Qingyang thought, looking at the mountain of scrap materials, a sense of melancholy creeping into his heart.

For the forty-eighth time, he tried to incorporate the insights of the Time Shadow Beast clone into the refining process. When engraving the secret runes, he used a trace of time and space power to "freeze" the energy channel in the optimal state, and then thawed it after the secret runes were formed.

This time it actually succeeded. The core chip of the "Arc Moon Wheel" has an energy conduction efficiency that is 22 percent higher than the standard spectrum.

One of the deacons from the Weapon Forging Hall, "Marquis Tiefang," came to inspect it personally. After a long silence, he only asked, "Lord Liefeng, is this method worthy of being passed on?"

"A little insight, of course," Qingyang said with a smile.

Subsequently, Qingyang compiled the "Time-Space Freeze Engraving Method" into a technical document and uploaded it to the Forging Star Pavilion's exclusive knowledge base. A voice sounded from Qingyang's virtual universe account: "0.1 Treasure Points have been credited to your account. Please check."

"0.1 Treasure Points, not bad." For an ordinary King-level Immortal, 0.1 Treasure Points is a huge sum of money, but for Qingyang, it's nothing.

Five hundred years later, Qingyang is recognized by the Star Forging Pavilion as the "number one person in forging standard weapons with lightning attributes". The success rate of the core module of the F1-level lightning pattern shock cannon produced by Qingyang is consistently above 70%, which is 40% higher than the average level of all weapon forging halls in the Star Forging Pavilion.

During this time, the Class B weapon refiner "Flame Hammer King" personally visited Qingyang to seek his advice. Qingyang shared his design ideas without reservation. Before leaving, Flame Hammer King left behind a 100,000-ton "Melting Core Star Iron" as a thank-you gift.

Six hundred years later, Qingyang failed to forge the battle armor. The molten core star iron and the thunderous wood core were not compatible enough, and the armor disintegrated on the spot during the law resonance test.

Qingyang collected the fragments one by one and hung a new label on the workshop wall: "Six hundred and seventeenth failure: Material ratio taboo, molten core star iron cannot be directly fused with natural plant-based energy-conducting materials."

By the end of the first millennium, the east wall of Qingyang's workshop was covered with more than 37,000 labels representing failed fragments. Behind each label was a complete record and analysis of a failure.

Venerable Master Peng would occasionally pass by, never offering any comment. He would simply watch quietly for a while, sometimes nodding, sometimes shaking his head, before leaving in silence.

In the 1200th year, Qingyang, after failing tens of thousands of times, finally passed the Class B Refiner qualification certification.

The location for accepting weapon crafting quests at the Star Forging Pavilion.

Qingyang opened the weapon crafting task list and saw the real "King-level Immortal Weapon Crafting Task" for the first time.

[List of Refining Tasks for King-Level Ranks]

Task Number: G9-07210

Task Type: Custom Refining

Client: Virtual Universe Company, Third Legion of Extraterritorial Battlefield, Crimson King

Required item: One piece of lightning-attribute armor, which must be able to withstand the burst of divine power and physical defense of a peak-level King.

Materials provided by the client: Void Thunder Gold (G-grade material, obtained by the client from exploring the ruins) and Nine-Headed Cold Iron (F9-grade material).

Task reward: 10 million Hunyuan. For every 10% performance exceeding the requirement, an additional 10% reward will be given.

Note: The client has been waiting for 470 years and urgently needs the funds.

With a swipe of his finger, Qingyang continued reading.

Task Number: G9-1034

Task type: Damaged equipment repair

Item: Fragment of a thunder-attribute treasured battle sword, suspected to be a relic of an ancient civilization (over 70% damaged).

Requirement: Do your best to repair. For every 10% repaired, the Star Forging Pavilion will reward you with 0.05 Treasure Points.

Note: This task has been pending for 30,000 years, and 77 Class B weapon refiners have attempted it, all of whom have failed.

Qingyang did not choose the urgently needed customized task, nor did he choose the relatively easy technical challenge. Instead, he chose to repair the precious artifact that had been hanging there for 30,000 years and had failed 77 times.

Because he wanted to understand one thing: "Why is a treasure considered a treasure? Why is it that his G9-grade peak battle armor, which was only one step away from being an ordinary treasure, is such an insurmountable chasm?"

"The answer may lie in these 'failed' ancient artifacts," Qingyang guessed.

In the 1205th year, Qingyang failed, but the reason for the failure was not discovered, and they could only continue to move forward.

In the 1250th year, Qingyang continued to fail, like an elementary school student struggling with a high school math problem. But this time, his persistence finally led him to find a solution to his failures.

In the 1300th year, Qingyang restored the first complete fragment of the secret rune, which was only the size of a palm, yet accounted for three percent of the entire artifact. When he activated that small fragment of the secret rune with the power of the Thunder God, it spontaneously triggered a faint resonance of the laws.

It was a rhythm slightly different from, yet sharing the same origin as, the law of thunder he cultivated. Ancient civilizations had a slightly different understanding of the law of thunder compared to the human race.

"Persistence pays off, this precious artifact is finally responding," Qingyang breathed a sigh of relief.

Qingyang submitted the three percent restoration results, along with the preliminary analysis of the ancient secret pattern structure, in a mission report.

The Forging Star Pavilion's Refining Hall system made an unusual exception, awarding 0.05 Treasure Points based on a 10% repair rate, with the note: This task can be continued without limit.

In the first 1,500 years, the restoration rate reached 17%; in the second thousand years, the restoration rate reached 31%.

At this moment, Qingyang could vaguely grasp the design concept of that ancient broken weapon, the battle sword. It was not simply about pursuing "explosiveness," but also included a trace of pursuing "eternity."

Every secret rune on the broken weapon sword is not designed to output maximum energy in an instant. On the contrary, its designer intended to create an inexhaustible closed loop of energy within the artifact, allowing it to draw, transform, and store energy from the universe on its own.

This is completely different from the mainstream approach to weapon crafting in the current universe. The current powerful beings in the universe pursue "controlling objects with their will," and objects are merely tools.

Judging from this broken sword, ancient civilizations pursued the idea that "objects form their own world," treating objects as independent laws and life forms.

"The weapon-refining concepts of ancient civilizations do have their merits. We can learn from others' experiences. If we can obtain even a small part of the ancient weapon-refining heritage, we can follow the clues and improve our weapon-refining skills step by step," Qingyang said with emotion.

"It's a pity that there is no such inheritance in the entire primordial universe, except for the Mountain-Sitting Guest, of course," Qingyang added in his heart.

Qingyang sat cross-legged in the workshop, holding the fragment that had been repaired for eight hundred years. After a few words of reflection, he remained silent for a long time. After eight hundred years of repairing the artifact, Qingyang finally understood the true nature of this treasure.

True treasures are not sharper knives or stronger armor. True treasures can be solidified laws, miniature universes.