The morning mist hung like gauze, enveloping the dead silent mountain forest.
Gu Xuan slowly closed his five fingers, and the South Furnace Sect iron token left by Ye Xi quietly turned to dust in his palm.
He gently rubbed his fingertips, as if he could still feel the four knife-sharp characters carved on the token—"Admission Credential."
However, beneath the sharpness of the characters lay a lingering, decaying aura, as if the credential itself had been abandoned for a thousand years in time.
Without the slightest hesitation, a wisp of pure Yin Energy from the Demon Suppression Hall seeped from his fingertip, probing like a spirit snake into the last trace of the token’s dissipating aura.
In an instant, his Spirit Sea shook violently, and a broken, bloody scene flashed across his mind like lightning!
It was a volcano impossibly vast, and deep within its crater, a giant, crimson furnace burned fiercely.
In the heart of the furnace, a long, already broken saber was slanted, its body covered in web-like cracks.
Surrounding the giant furnace were nine charred corpses kneeling on the ground, maintaining a posture of the most devout worship even in death, as if offering everything they had to that broken saber.
The scene vanished in a flash, but Gu Xuan’s gaze suddenly darkened, chillingly cold.
“This is not an invitation… this is a trial,” he murmured, his voice so cold it could freeze the frost beneath his feet.
As the last trace of the iron token’s aura was completely devoured by the Yin Energy, a blurry map slowly materialized in his mind.
He lingered no longer; with a turn of his body, like a phantom, he sped directly toward the absolute dead zone of the Bei Jing indicated on the map—Charcoal Iron Ridge.
Traveling for three days, the wind in the Ice Erosion Canyon cut at his face like thousands of invisible small knives.
This was truly a place of death.
The canyon walls along the way were embedded with countless weapons twisted and deformed by high temperatures, while the ground was covered in a thick layer of rusted armor remnants; the mottled bloodstains had long since solidified into dark brown.
Clearly, a massive army had met a devastating end here, their very bones melted into the mountain stone.
Gu Xuan stopped, taking out a fragment of a Mayfly Remnant Core.
This strange object, obtained in the Bone Forest, possessed an extraordinary sensitivity to vengeful spirits and Wrath Energy.
He injected a trace of Yin Energy into it, tentatively releasing a faint aura.
Buzz—!
The next moment, the entire canyon seemed to come alive!
A violent resonance erupted from deep underground; dozens of broken swords buried beneath the frozen soil and rock began to tremble on their own, emitting sharp, mournful cries, before bursting from the earth with a "clang, clang, clang," their tips pointing uniformly toward the deepest part of Charcoal Iron Ridge.
Gu Xuan’s eyes narrowed, and his divine sense spread out like a tide.
He was horrified to discover that the entire continuous mountain range was structured like an inverted giant bell, hollow inside, and pulsating with an extremely slow and regular frequency, as if a slumbering ancient behemoth were breathing silently.
Even stranger, ever since stepping into this area, every hundred steps he took, a faint "ding" sounded in his ears—crisp, ethereal, like a small hammer lightly and steadily striking a red-hot anvil in a blacksmith’s shop.
By the time he reached the core area of Charcoal Iron Ridge, it was already dusk.
The sky darkened at a visible rate; the blood-red setting sun was swallowed by heavy leaden clouds, plunging the entire world into gloom.
Ahead, a bottomless rift spanned the ground, completely blocking the path.
The former stone bridge had long since collapsed, leaving only a few broken piers at the edge of the cliff.
The only passage was a black stone boardwalk formed from cooled lava, winding tortuously like the spine of a black dragon, extending into the darkness at the bottom of the rift.
At the entrance to the boardwalk stood half a broken stone tablet, inscribed with two large characters in an ancient script: "Halt."
The inscriptions were blurred by millennia of wind and sand, but a faint, nauseating scent of blood subtly seeped from the remaining strokes.
Gu Xuan, expressionless, walked to the tablet, flicked his finger, and a drop of Yin Blood from the Black Water Pool of the Demon Suppression Hall quietly dripped onto the tablet’s base.
The moment the blood drop rolled down, an Aberration occurred!
"Crack... crack..."
The entire stone tablet suddenly covered itself in fine cracks; countless Fu Wen hidden inside lit up like awakening venomous snakes, finally converging into a new line of text: "Only those who carry the Huozhong may enter."
"The Green Lantern she gave is extinguished…" A cold, sharp arc curved on Gu Xuan’s lips, “But I myself am the fire.”
Before the words faded, he brought his fingers together like a blade and slashed sharply across his own palm!
Blood surged out but did not fall; instead, it hovered and burned above his palm, transforming into a ball of eerie, blood-colored flame.
Using this essence blood fire as a guide, he unhesitatingly pressed it onto the line of Fu Wen!
The Fu Wen ignited instantly, and the entire black stone boardwalk lit up, revealing a path of light formed by Blood-Colored Runes, leading straight to the end of the darkness.
When Gu Xuan stepped to the end of the boardwalk, a terrifying aura, a mixture of scorching heat and dead silence, rushed toward him.
A majestic, circular giant furnace stood before his eyes!
The furnace towered over a hundred zhang high, pitch black as ink, cast from some unknown metal.
Nine immensely thick chains were wrapped around the furnace body; each chain was forged from tens of thousands of human skulls, densely packed, their empty eye sockets seeming to silently watch every visitor.
In front of the furnace door squatted a headless bronze statue.
It held a strange posture, both hands raised, jointly holding an ancient iron anvil.
It was the legendary Forging Heart Anvil!
Just as Gu Xuan was about to approach, the ground beneath his feet shook violently, and heavy, mountain-like footsteps echoed from within the giant furnace.
Immediately following, a phantom, distorted figure slowly seeped out from the tightly closed furnace mouth—it was the remnant consciousness of the Mountain Ghost Child!
At this moment, its face was even more blurred than when it was in the Bone Forest, and its voice was intermittent, like a candle in the wind, ready to extinguish at any moment.
“Don’t… don’t touch… that’s not a tool… it’s an instrument of torture…”
“What it forges… is not a weapon… but… Sacrificial Offerings…”
Before the words finished, the phantom of the Mountain Ghost Child could no longer maintain its form; after a violent distortion, it collapsed with a crash, dissolving into specks of light that scattered into the air.
Only a light, lingering sentence filled with endless despair echoed in Gu Xuan’s ears:
“If you wield the blade… the blade will wield you.”
Gu Xuan stood silently for a moment, his eyes showing no wavering.
He slowly drew the Sucking Soul Dagger, lightly flicking the ground with the tip, tossing up a piece of broken bone stained with Wrath Energy. He then flicked it with his finger, sending it accurately into an inconspicuous feeding port above the giant furnace.
Rumble—!
In an instant, the dead silent flames inside the furnace surged skyward, soaring a hundred zhang high!
The flames were a strange, ghostly blue, and within the fiercely burning blue flames, countless faces, struggling painfully and screaming silently, appeared!
Simultaneously, the whisper from the bottom of the Demon Suppression Hall spring sounded in his mind with unprecedented clarity for the first time:
“Use your hatred… burn it… I will teach you how to carve the words ‘Cultivation Court’ into the blade of the future, stroke by stroke!”
Gu Xuan abruptly closed his eyes, ignoring the external phenomena.
His entire focus sank into his Spirit Sea; the majestic Demon Suppression Hall was vibrating violently, and the ancient furnace within its Alchemy Workshop was resonating with the Myriad Bone Giant Furnace outside with an intensity never before seen!
A line of cold text appeared in his Spirit Sea:
【 Detected ancient Divine Forging system, capable of synchronously upgrading the 'Alchemy Workshop' functional tier. Connect? 】
“Yes!”
He roared the word in his heart without the slightest hesitation.
Heart-rending pain instantly swept through his entire body!
It felt as if two red-hot worlds were forcibly connecting through his meridians.
A torrent of violent power from the Charcoal Iron Ridge giant furnace, mixed with endless Wrath Energy and pain, surged madly into his body, threatening to explode and incinerate him completely!
But he gritted his teeth tightly, letting his bones cry out and his meridians burn as if scorched by magma, steadfastly guarding the last shred of clarity in his spiritual platform, guiding the power of the two worlds’ furnaces to complete this incredible connection!
After an unknown amount of time, when the ghostly blue flames gradually died down and the outside world returned to silence, Gu Xuan slowly opened his eyes.
In his palm, a piece of grayish-white metal scrap had appeared without him noticing.
This iron scrap was only the size of a fingernail, unremarkable, but it felt as heavy as a thousand jun in his hand, sending a chill that reached the bone marrow straight up to his scalp.
【 System Prompt: Obtained 'Forge Heart Remnants' ×1 （ Core Material ）. Collecting three pieces allows an attempt to forge a 'Pseudo-Divine Grade Weapon'. 】
Just then, the ninth bell chime drifted from the deepest part of Charcoal Iron Ridge, matching the frequency of the bell sound he had heard earlier in the Bone Forest exactly.
And at the Withered River Ferry in the Southern Wilderness, ten thousand miles away, the old Scale Master who fished all day long, using bones as weights, suddenly raised his head and looked north.
The pale bone knife he never let go of suddenly cracked and broke in his hand.
“He really…” The old Scale Master’s cloudy eyes burst with astonishing light, and he muttered, “Lit the fire.”
Charcoal Iron Ridge, edge of the rift.
Gu Xuan sat down cross-legged; the violent power from the giant furnace and the chilling aura from the Demon Suppression Hall were now fiercely colliding within his body, like two irreconcilable primordial beasts.
His meridians were scalding hot as if branded, every inch of his flesh trembling in the cycle of intense pain and rebirth.
He had to regulate his breathing immediately to completely suppress and absorb this almost uncontrollable power for his own use.
However, the moment his mind settled, the 'Forge Heart Remnants' lying quietly in his palm gave a barely perceptible, slight twitch.