A World Worth Protecting

Dreams are beautiful, but reality is cruel.

On Wang Baole’s first attempt, he took out a small shield and put it into the smelting furnace. After making some measurements, he put in an Armament Sand particle. However, as soon as it was integrated, the small shield vibrated vigorously and immediately lost all its Spirit force.

Wang Baole frowned while taking it out to examine it. He realized that all the inscriptions on the Spirit Kernel had already been destroyed. The Dharmic Artifact needed to be filled with new inscriptions again, and the materials on its exterior also needed to be removed. Overall, it was considered half broken.

Wang Baole sighed and retrieved the second Dharmic Artifact to try again. His progress was initially going well, but after half an hour, a loud boom accompanied the complete deconstruction of the second Dharmic Artifact. Wang Baole got a shock, and upon taking the second Dharmic Artifact out for examination, he found that not only had the Spirit Kernel been completely destroyed, its inscriptions were also all warped.

“Is it really impossible?” Wang Baole scratched his head as he looked at the large number of Dharmic Artifacts that he could not sell off. After thinking about it, he decided to continue trying.

In the blink of an eye, three days passed. In those three days, Wang Baole was immersed in the process of trying to integrate the Armament Sand with the Dharmic Artifacts. He failed eighteen times and was so demoralized that he was about to give up.

In most of those eighteen failures, the entire Dharmic Artifact had destabilized not long after the Armament Sand was integrated. All the inscriptions within the Dharmic Artifact were destroyed and warped one after another. It was as if the Dharmic Artifacts could not withstand the integration of the Armament Sand and were being immediately destroyed.

However, when Wang Baole was about to give up dejectedly, on his nineteenth refinement trial, which involved a second-grade flying sword, a bright glow suddenly appeared after the flying sword vibrated as it integrated with the Armament Sand.

The appearance of the glow made Wang Baole excited. He immediately put in his best effort to control it. After five minutes, as he retrieved the flying sword following the disappearance of the glow, he realized that there were obvious changes being made to it.

“Success!” Wang Baole was extremely surprised as he quickly examined it. He realized that the flying sword had become heavier than before. Therefore, he integrated some Spirit Qi within it to inspect its interior and immediately found that inscriptions of greater complexity had appeared on the flying sword’s Spirit Kernel, similar to the scabbard. The only difference was that those on the scabbard were more complex.

At the same time, the inscriptions on the flying sword were clearly different from before. After analyzing it closely, Wang Baole found that nine inscriptions had been changed, and it was those changes that created subtle differences in the overall arrangement of the inscriptions.

However, even though the differences were minor, it created major transformations in the potency of the flying sword. Wang Baole had never seen this inscription arrangement on the jade slip before and was unable to work out what effect had occurred to the flying sword after its transformation.

Fortunately, he had his formula for the inscriptions. Therefore, he sat down and tried to derive them. After a while, as Wang Baole lifted his head, he was mildly bewildered.

“Its speed has been decreased, and so has its degree of sharpness. Every aspect has been sacrificed, except that… it has been strengthened almost tenfold in terms of hardiness?” Wang Baole mumbled to himself. That was the conclusion that he had arrived at after using the formula to derive the inscriptions. After a long while, with his head lowered, he took out the Flying Frost Sword, a perfect second-grade Dharmic Artifact, and slammed it directly on the transformed sword!

Theoretically, even though both swords were second-grade Dharmic Artifacts, one was perfect, and the other was just ordinary; one was extremely difficult to refine, while the other was easily made; one required the expenditure of many precious materials, while the other merely required cheaper materials.

This way, upon contact, the transformed sword should be broken. However, right now, as Wang Baole’s Flying Frost Sword landed, the crisp sound of metal clashing was produced. The Flying Frost Sword violently rebounded, and a hairline crack even appeared on it. Instead, the ordinary sword remained undamaged!

It’s so strong!

That scene caused Wang Baole to gasp in shock. He held up the transformed flying sword and flung it forward.

Instantly, the flying sword floated forward slowly, with a speed akin to a mosquito.

That made Wang Baole dumbfounded. After testing out the extent of its sharpness, he looked at the transformed sword. It could no longer be considered a sword—calling it a spear would be more appropriate.

What is this? It was previously trash, and now, it’s still trash…

Wang Baole sighed, tempted to change some inscriptions in order to preserve its hardiness while increasing its speed and sharpness. However, after spending time trying to figure it out, Wang Baole had no choice but to give up, for he could not seem to find any clues as to how to go about doing it.

Despite that, it was not all bad—at least Wang Baole had managed to record the order of the mutated inscriptions so that if he wanted to strengthen his Dharmic Artifacts in the future, he could just carve the same inscriptions in that particular order.

He finally tossed the Dharmic Artifact aside. After pondering for a moment, Wang Baole was still indignant and continued trying to make alterations using the Armament Sand.

Just like that, a month passed.

After Wang Baole had exhausted all his trashy Dharmic Artifacts and tried transforming dozens of Dharmic Artifact puppets, he slapped his forehead dejectedly as he looked at the Dharmic Artifacts strewn before him.

Why is everything in a mess?

In his refinement process, he had quite a substantial number of refinement failures. Even though he had managed to succeed in transforming dozens of Dharmic Artifacts, none of them were what he wanted.

The transformation that occurred after integration of the Armament Sand was too unpredictable and uncontrollable. It was impossible to attain a particular change in a specific domain, seemingly a result purely based on luck.

If that was all, it might not have been so troubling. However, what made matters more complicated was that in the Dharmic Artifacts that he had succeeded in transforming, some ridiculous functions had appeared, which put Wang Baole at a loss.

For example, the flying sword originally had advantages in terms of speed, sharpness, and hardiness. However, not only was the first flying sword a disaster after Wang Baole further refined it, of the two that followed, one of them was incredibly fast yet extremely fragile and blunt, and it almost disintegrated while flying in the air.

The other flying sword was even more ridiculous. It was not able to differentiate between friend and foe, charging ferociously at Wang Baole in a crazy manner once it was activated.

There were also several Golden Bell Beads, which had yet to become perfect second-grade Dharmic Artifacts, that transformed into self-destructing beads. They did not have to be thrown at others, as they would explode by themselves under the slightest pressure. As Wang Baole simply held the beads after refining them, they immediately exploded.

Yet, none of that was what gave Wang Baole the most trouble. The ones that drove him up the wall were an umbrella, a fly-whisk, and a Deity Immobilization Rope.

The transformations made to these three Dharmic Artifact did not seem to make much sense. The umbrella was originally for shielding and protection, and even though its protective effect was increased significantly after refinement, it seemed to always malfunction. Every time that it malfunctioned, it would fly out like a flying sword. It was as if it was a flying sword born into the body of an umbrella.

The fly-whisk made Wang Baole sigh disappointingly. It had originally been made of soft whisk threads but became extremely tough after being transformed by the Armament Sand. The threads were like strands of steel and seemed to be extremely hardy. Logically, Wang Baole should have been glad that such a transformation occurred, but in reality, the threads turned limp after a maximum of three seconds…

What made Wang Baole most troubled was the rope. Wang Baole still remembered vividly that he had refined the rope five days ago. When he stepped out of his cave abode to try its functions out, the rope simply rose into the skies and… disappeared.

That darned rope. I’ve no idea what happened to it after it flew away. It hasn’t returned since then…

The more Wang Baole thought about the rope, the more agitated he became, as he felt that the rope had created the greatest problem.

Even so, of the dozens of Dharmic Artifacts, there were a few that Wang Baole felt were acceptable. For example, there was a large seal that was originally an ordinary second-grade Dharmic Artifact. However, after the random mutation, it became a perfect second-grade Dharmic Artifact that was even more powerful. Wang Baole was shocked, as he felt that it was not too different from a third-grade Numinous Treasure.

However, when Wang Baole tried it out, he realized that the large seal would occasionally malfunction. When this happened, it became useless. It would become highly flexible such that, at the slightest touch, it would be tossed into the sky.

As for Wang Baole’s puppet Dharmic Artifacts, there were two that were successful. One of them was incredibly tough, such that Wang Baole’s punch could not even break it apart. That made Wang Baole surprised.

The other puppet was changed in terms of speed. Wang Baole took it out for a trial and realized that it was running faster than even he could. Therefore, Wang Baole hurriedly studied the inscriptions on the puppet’s Spirit Kernel and made a note of them.

“What on Earth are all these?” Wang Baole looked at the Dharmic Artifacts in front of him and sighed deeply. He felt that he had wasted both time and Armament Sand during this period.

Thankfully, he had gained an understanding of the arrangement of some inscriptions that were not found in the Dao College’s records. That somehow soothed his troubled mind a little. Now, as he planned to put his Dharmic Artifacts away, he stopped suddenly.

This is not the way to go. I have so many Dharmic Artifacts, both good ones and bad ones. If they are mixed together…

Wang Baole thought about the scenario where he was in a battle and wanting to injure the enemy using his flying sword. Instead of attacking the enemy, the flying sword would end up trying to stab him instead. This made Wang Baole sigh, and he quickly carved a cross on the surface of each modified Dharmic Artifact!