Chapter 128: The Yin-Polar Earth-Lung Fire Gourd

"A Celestial Immortal of the Monster Clan has infiltrated... the rear lines?" Luo Zu felt a strange sense of unease upon hearing this news.

He had never expected his own location to be considered the "rear."

Furthermore, the arrival of such news implied that the Wu-Monster conflict in this region had been won by the Wu Clan. Otherwise, how could there be talk of a Monster Celestial Immortal being severely wounded and slipping behind the lines?

"We must be cautious," Luo Zu remarked to Tie Touwa and the others.

He had been staying at Iron Mountain Village recently, having led a large group of his kin there to help build the village and forge three hundred cores for the Fire-Extinguishing Arrows.

However, the others were less concerned. Tie Touwa asked, "Chief, why hasn't Tang come today?"

"A Monster Celestial Immortal has infiltrated the area. With such danger outside, it is wise to limit our movements," Luo Zu replied calmly.

"But a Monster Celestial Immortal... that doesn't seem to have anything to do with us, does it?" Tie Touwa scratched his head.

"Caution is paramount," was all Luo Zu said.

Tie Touwa and the rest could only nod blankly. Whatever the Chief said, they would do; in any case, there was no point in them getting involved in such matters. As long as the Chief was willing to continue the lineage, that was all that mattered. After all, the Chief was so powerful, and Tang was also formidable; the children born from their union would surely be even stronger. Focused entirely on the survival of the human race, they did not overthink things. As for the Monster Celestial Immortal, it was far too distant a threat. If it were close, they would be dead anyway, so why worry?

Yet, deep down, Luo Zu could not shake the fear of a "what if." If the immortal accidentally stumbled upon Luo Township and discovered the traces of the Wu Clan, it would surely go berserk. A rampaging Monster Celestial Immortal could wipe out everything within ten thousand miles, and if it grew even more enraged, a million miles might be left desolate, stripped of every blade of grass and even a layer of the very earth.

Of course, he hoped he was merely worrying over nothing and that the Wu Clan, currently holding the advantage, would soon capture and slay the intruder.

He turned his focus to the forging tasks assigned by the Wu Clan and began to study the tools they had provided.

First was the iron-forging tool shaped like a gourd—twenty meters tall, thick at the top, even thicker at the bottom, and narrow in the middle. It was a bizarre contraption. Luo Zu studied it meticulously for a day, and only after Tang offered some guidance did he understand how to operate it.

This device was called the "Yin-Polar Earth Lung Fire Gourd."

The name "gourd" made Luo Zu find the object even more absurd. To use it, one had to first set up a formation and connect it to the ley lines. This would draw up the subterranean fire, which the internal restrictions of the Gourd would then intensify to an extreme degree. It could reach such high temperatures that even ore, tempered by the constant pressure of moving ley lines, could be melted into liquid. Furthermore, the upper portion of the Gourd acted as a bellows, stoking the fire in the lower chamber to even greater intensity.

"I heard the Heat-Wu tribe has a furnace that uses 'non-burning fire,'" Luo Zu thought, stroking his chin as he watched the Gourd glow red, its top spout belching black smoke.

"Hmm... microwave? Electric oven? Induction cooker?"

The methods of the Wu Clan were truly ahead of their time. This was to be expected, perhaps; with the addition of supernatural power and several hundred million years of development, if they hadn't yet managed to build a man-made sun to replace the one in the sky—rendering the most important star in the Primordial World unemployed—Luo Zu would have considered it a dereliction of their duty. He wondered what kind of methods the Monster Clan possessed to have held their own against such a Wu Clan for so many years.

"Why doesn't the Wu Clan just dig out the entire Primordial Earth and gather all the ley lines together?" a sudden thought occurred to him. "Oh, right. The other great beings wouldn't allow it."

"If only one could turn the Primordial World into a giant ship and sail it through the Chaos," Luo Zu’s thoughts wandered. Perhaps the Primordial World was drifting even now. And the pilot... Hongjun?

After mastering the Yin-Polar Earth Lung Fire Gourd, Luo Zu immediately began to promote this advanced technology among the humans living within the world inside his gourd.

The humans' forging capabilities improved rapidly, and with Luo Zu’s "time acceleration," the technology underwent quick iteration, being further refined by the small-stature humans.

However, this "advancement" was essentially a matter of hitting rock bottom before slowly climbing back up. The small humans could not build the Gourd, and neither could Luo Zu; he lacked the materials and the technical knowledge. The sacrificial runes on the device were encrypted, and without Wu blood, one could not access the ancestral knowledge of the Wu.

But this did not stop Luo Zu from attempting a replica. Although he dared not dismantle the original, ten days of observation allowed him to deduce the principles. With his seventy-two spiritual brains running simulations, he modeled the device in his mind, grasping seven or eight out of ten aspects, and began crafting his own iron-forging furnace within his inner world.

During his observations, he discovered that the Gourd could fuse mysterious Metal-element essences—which were previously impossible to melt—into iron, creating a new type of alloy. The cores of the Fire-Extinguishing Arrows were made of just such an alloy.

This was a technology the human race had never possessed. Luo Zu was delighted; his Great Void Sword could also be improved using this opportunity.

His Great Void Sword currently had nine internal restrictions, a result of his diligent refinement. Having attained the status of a True Immortal, his comprehension of immortal arts and the Great Dao grew daily, which was why his refinement speed was so high. He also had the help of the small humans in his inner world. Luo Zu had "harmonized" with his three realms; every movement within that world was within his perception. The "Heavenly Dao" faithfully recorded every change, waiting for Luo Zu to review it.

Whenever the small humans, barbarians, or monsters had any insights into cultivation, they were fed back into the "Heavenly Dao." Luo Zu had even set up a special section within the "Heavenly Dao" to collect and organize these insights for him. The insights of master smiths were among them, and many practitioners would refine their own magic tools, often coming up with ingenious ideas. Luo Zu used these organized insights to accelerate the refinement of the Great Void Sword.

"I previously added thirty-five new Metal-element essences to create a new alloy. I can add even more now, which will allow it to sustain more internal restrictions," Luo Zu calculated.

In his understanding, magic tools were divided into low, middle, and high grades based on the number of internal restrictions: under eighteen for low-grade, eighteen to thirty-six for middle-grade, and over thirty-six for high-grade. There was no theoretical ceiling, but one had to reach seventy-two restrictions for them to be considered "perfected" and forged into a true Magic Treasure.

Currently, the Great Void Sword had only nine restrictions. It was not very handy to use—hardly better than the spells Luo Zu could cast himself. If a magic tool could not provide its master with an extra edge, one might as well just tear up a mountain and use it to fight.