Chapter 4
Enlightenment Scripture of Hong Meng
All these years, in order to develop the steel furnace that he had envisioned, Chen Daoxuan had exhausted most of the resources that should have been used to learn how to refine artifacts. Unfortunately, things did not turn out as he had hoped.
Chen Daoxuan, who possessed the wisdom of another lifetime, knew that his scientific research on this subject might not yield results. However, as long as he succeeded, the rewards would be astonishing.
“Fortunately, with the help of ‘Hong Meng Wu Dao Jing’, the progress of my study of artifact refining is far beyond anyone’s imagination!” Chen Daoxuan muttered.
The ‘Hong Meng Wu Dao Jing’ that he was talking about was discovered inside his own sea of consciousness when he broke through to the Qi refinement realm five years ago and opened his sea of consciousness.
At that time, it had been quietly wandering about in the middle of Chen Daoxuan’s sea of consciousness.
It was mysterious, peaceful, and emitted a faint golden light.
Chen Daoxuan had never seen the words written on the scripture before, but he knew their meaning, so he could still meditate on the words.
The name of this scripture was loosely translated as “Hong Meng Enlightenment Sutra”.
This scripture was not long, and Chen Daoxuan only needed exactly the time it took for an incense stick to burn to finish reciting it completely.
When he started meditating on the scripture, he did not notice anything unusual.
It was just that after meditating, he felt that his spiritual sense was full, his mind was clearer, and he felt refreshed.
However, after learning about refining for a period of time, and when he tried to refine red copper ore for the first time, Chen Daoxuan discovered the terrifying effects of this scripture.
Normally speaking, even a first-tier refiner would feel mentally exhausted after refining the spirit ore for three days and three nights without rest, and their spiritual sense would be drained.
Moreover, Chen Daoxuan had only been a rookie at the first level of the Qi refinement realm back then, and his situation had been even worse off.
He recalled that the first time he finished refining the red copper ore in the earth fire chamber; he had simply collapsed to the ground, and his entire sea of consciousness seemed to have been crushed flat by someone or something.
Then, for some strange reason, he meditated on the Hong Meng Enlightenment Sutra.
When he did, something unexpected happened. Not only did his sea of consciousness, which was originally in a mess, return to its normal state, but even his spiritual sense was slightly strengthened.
After this incident, Chen Daoxuan became certain of the fact that the Hong Meng Enlightenment Sutra could restore a cultivator’s spiritual sense, which was invaluable.
Although spiritual medicines to restore spiritual sense were not rare in the immortal cultivation world, each one was expensive. It was not something that a small clan like the Chen clan of Shuanghu Island could afford or possess.
This was also the reason why he did not dare to openly display his rapid progress in artifact refinement, which was thanks to the help of the Hong Meng Enlightenment Sutra scripture.
Of course, other than concealing the existence of the Hong Meng Enlightenment Sutra scripture, he also needed to use his clan’s support to obtain artifact refinement resources in order to develop the furnace in front of him.
At the thought of this, Chen Daoxuan’s gaze turned firm again. “No matter what, it’s not like I haven’t gained anything in the past five years. Perhaps tomorrow will mark my moment of success!”
Chen Daoxuan secretly encouraged himself.
According to his assumption, this furnace in front of him should be able to replace the manual process of refining spirit ores by cultivators, just like the smelting furnace back on Earth.
However, there was a very big difference between refining spirit ores and refining ordinary ores…
Which was spiritual essence!
For ordinary iron ores, the refinement process only required high-temperature smelting.
However, spirit ores were different. While refining them at high temperature, one also had to fuse the spiritual essence of the spirit ore during the refinement process.
This touched on Chen Daoxuan’s blind spot.
He was still capable of refining the ore at high temperature, but fusing the spiritual essence, according to the records in the artifact refining inheritance, could only rely on the cultivator’s spiritual sense.
Other than that, the clan’s second-tier artifact refining inheritance did not mention any other alternative methods.
Perhaps there was no other method in this world…
However, Chen Daoxuan discovered that immortal cultivators in this world, no matter what happened, would choose to rely on their own strength to solve their problems instead of relying on external tools and objects.
Their perspective was fundamentally different from that of the civilization back on Earth.
Whether it was refining pills, refining artifacts, making talismans, or even combat, immortal cultivators were more inclined to rely on their own strength.
Even if possessing a powerful spirtual artifact could provide them with a major advantage in combat, immortal cultivators were still more eager to improve their own cultivation.
This was also the reason why alchemists were often more popular than artifact masters.
Returning to the topic at hand…
Over the past five years, apart from studying the traditional knowledge of artifact refining, Chen Daoxuan had placed all his attention on this furnace in front of him.
It was not entirely correct to say that he had failed.
Chen Daoxuan had categorized the furnace in front of him into five components according to their respective functions.
These were the control system, the intake port, the heating refining system, the floating system, and the discharge port.
The core of the system was the control system.
Chen Daoxuan was most proud of his efforts when it came to the control system.
This was because the core of the control system was the driving array, which was created by Chen Daoxuan based on the knowledge of arrays recorded in the second-tier refining inheritance, as well as his own ideas.
In addition, he could control the distance between the spirit stones and the driving array using the slider, which meant that he could control the amount of spiritual essence that the driving array received, and thereby control the temperature of the furnace.
In other words, with the help of this furnace, a few mortals would be able to operate this furnace to smelt the red copper ore.
The only problem that could not be resolved at the moment was how to fuse the spiritual essence of the spirit ores.
This problem had troubled Chen Daoxuan for almost a year.
As he had completed the driving array, he was more inclined toward creating a new array to fuse the spiritual essence of the spirit ores. Unfortunately, he had yet to succeed.
…
Chen Daoxuan stood in front of the furnace with a bunch of blueprints in his hand.
Upon closer observation, the blueprints were all three dimensional, detailed blueprints of the furnace in front of him.
There was only one blank blueprint, which corresponded to the bottom section of the furnace.
According to Chen Daoxuan’s assumption, there should be an array that could fuse the spiritual essence of the spirit ore engraved there.
“Sigh!”
After a long time, Chen Daoxuan sighed.
The feeling of being one step away from the door to success was too unbearable.
After thinking for a long time, Chen Daoxuan gradually put his thoughts aside when he felt his head start to faintly ache.
He put down the blueprints in his hand.
Chen Daoxuan then simply sat down and meditated. He closed his eyes and started to recite the Hong Meng Enlightenment Sutra.
Reciting the Hong Meng Enlightenment Sutra and cultivating the Origin Convergence technique every day was an unbreakable habit of his.
In fact, compared to cultivating the Origin Convergence technique, Chen Daoxuan recited the Hong Meng Enlightenment Sutra more often.
This was because every time he tried to refine an artifact, he would be exhausted and his spiritual sense would be weakened. When that happened, as long as he recited the ‘Hong Meng Wu Dao Jing’ once, he would recover and become lively again. Naturally, he could not grow tired of such a good thing.
As he recited the scripture, Chen Daoxuan fell into a state of chaos. At this moment, whether it was the flow of air or passage of time around him, he failed to notice either one; it was as if he had completely lost consciousness.
Soon, the time for one incense stick to burn passed.
Opening his eyes, Chen Daoxuan’s expression gradually turned serious. This was already the ninth time it happened.
In the past, he had meditated on the Hong Meng Enlightenment Sutra, but had never experienced such a phenomenon.
It was just that, in recent times, his body had clearly undergone some new changes.
“I don’t know whether these changes are good or bad…”
Chen Daoxuan looked at the nine Stardust that were revolving around the golden scripture in his sea of consciousness, like stars surrounding the moon. He muttered, “What are these Stardust?”