Quan Yi curled his dragon body, coiling it into three progressively smaller circles. His eyes, from above, surveyed his own form, or more precisely, the three layers of metal embedded within him.
From bottom to top, the metal was arranged in quantities of four, three, and two within the circles.
They endured Quan Yi's high-temperature roasting.
However, if anyone could see the internal scene, they would notice that each piece of metal was separated by a baffle, existing in an independent, sealed state.
Furthermore, Quan Yi released a slightly different level of heat and employed a unique heating method for each piece of metal.
This was because Quan Yi, based on the melting point, structure, and other characteristics of each metal, softened them to just the right degree for hammering.
Such meticulous operation, requiring the division of attention into nine parts, was as natural as breathing for Quan Yi, posing absolutely no difficulty.
Under Quan Yi's most intense flames, the nine pieces of metal rapidly turned red at a visible pace.
In a few breaths, all the metals reached the optimal state for forging.
Subsequently, Quan Yi ceased the flame roasting, immediately opened a passage, condensed the nine pieces of metal to a single point, and forced them into a completely sealed space by filling the internal void.
The collision between the metals should have caused violent energy fluctuations, but due to Quan Yi's terrifying flames, their internal energy and structure were confined within, maintaining a stable state.
Quan Yi knew this was the best time to fuse the metals. Immediately, the inner wall of Quan Yi activated the power of explosion while compressing them.
"Boom!"
It was as if liquids of various colors were interpenetrating and contaminating each other.
The space within the inner wall also continuously shrunk along with the shrinking of the metals.
This was not only to better transmit the vibration to the metal, but also for a more important reason: Quan Yi was artificially simulating the underground environment to naturally refine and shape the metal.
Having seen the influence of the Wu Earth Drill Essence on metals, Quan Yi had profound insights.
Metals were originally formed under the pressure of the earth, and the reason they exhibit various different characteristics, aside from the material itself, was largely due to the influence of the earth.
In the hands of the earth, this natural blacksmith, even the same iron element would produce two metals with vastly different grades: ordinary iron and Cold Heart Iron Essence.
Therefore, to truly understand metal, one must deeply understand the influence of the earth, the blacksmith, on the metal.
This also meant that Quan Yi's consciousness was no longer focused on the metal itself, but extended to the environment in which the metal formed, gaining a deeper understanding of the whole.
Using a chef as an example, an excellent chef, in addition to superb skills, must also understand the growing environment and season of the ingredients. Only in this way can they better understand the differences in the ingredients.
Even fruits growing on the same tree will have taste differences due to whether they face the sun or are in the shade.
Metal is the same.
During the forging process, Quan Yi accidentally discovered that the fusion degree between rare metals formed around the Wu Earth Drill Essence would be very high.
The fusion degree here does not simply refer to the uniform fusion between metal elements; it also involves the compatibility between life auras.
Unlike ordinary forging, Quan Yi's forging was essentially a fusion of life.
The metals refined, given spirits, created, enlightened, and finally 'transcending tribulation' to ascend by him were all truly living beings.
Therefore, for Quan Yi, alloy forging was not an ordinary fusion of metals, but a fusion between different lives.
This was ten thousand times more difficult than simply melting metal liquids, stirring them together, and solidifying them into an alloy.
Of course, the difficulty was high, but the upper limit of doing so was ten thousand times higher than the former.
According to Quan Yi's tests, although stirring and solidifying metal liquids could make the distribution of various metal elements extremely uniform, the metal formed in this way could not be given a spirit on this basis.
Because the natural spirituality inherent in the metal itself would be completely destroyed in this process.
It was precisely for this reason that Quan Yi chose such a difficult method of forging.
However, choosing this direction meant that Quan Yi was facing an endlessly extending wilderness.
There were no roads, no guidance, and Quan Yi needed to explore independently in the wilderness.
However, Quan Yi still resolutely rushed into this barren land to explore and collide.
He initially considered using a more stable method, using suitable metals to forge each part of the gun separately.
But he quickly rejected this plan.
The reason was simple: if each part was forged to the extreme and then tightly combined like assembling a gun, a rejection reaction would occur.
The spirituality born from each other would repel each other, greatly reducing the ultimate effect Quan Yi had originally envisioned.
But if a single metal was used to construct the whole, the function that the gun could exert would be extremely limited.
If it were a cold weapon, this might not have much impact, but a gun is an integrated mechanical structure, and it cannot use a single metal to meet all functions.
It was also based on this consideration that Quan Yi decisively embarked on the path of fusion forging.
However, Quan Yi was not completely unprepared to do so.
In fact, since the last time he returned to Han Hai City and consulted with Lou Gao, Quan Yi had been preparing for fusion forging.
As a practice, although Quan Yi did not directly carry out metal forging, he had been accumulating experience related to fusion forging.
And this experience came from his dragon scale body tempering.
Since comprehending that everything can be hammered and forged, Quan Yi regarded his body as a forging material and used vibration for forging.
Whether it was the body or the soul bone, Quan Yi had tried to purify complex substances and 'fuse' two different substances, that is, bloodline fusion, through this method.
And these things were essentially no different from metal purification and fusion forging.
In addition, Quan Yi's leapfrog evolution in the vibration perception of his left leg soul bone, Purple Gold Dragon Eyes, soul divinity, and other aspects during this period made Quan Yi's forging skills also undergo a leapfrog improvement.
It was the superposition of these factors that gave Quan Yi full confidence to try a more difficult choice.
Moreover, returning to the issue of fusion degree, the metals that condensed and formed around the Wu Earth Drill Essence grew in extremely similar environments, so their own structural characteristics contained similarities that were different from other metals.
