Chapter 147: The Miraculous Moment
Translator: Ash Editor: Geoffrey
"Crack Crack!"
Over this past month, Li Yao had been unearthing the treasures buried in the rubble with fanaticism. His maintenance ability was way stronger than that of the past when he was in the magical equipment graveyard, and his hand speed for doing high-intensity maintenance work had also soared to an inconceivable level!
Not to mention the fact that he was now a 3rd level Refinement Stage cultivator, so in addition to his hands, there were also ten spirit threads which he could mobilize as he wished with a moment’s thought.
"Whoosh!"
Ten spirit threads stretched out from his forehead and spread to each and every direction, each of which wrapped around a rivet respectively and hurled them into the storm set off by his hands.
Generally, a 3rd level Refinement Stage cultivator was still a low-level cultivator, thus the strength of his spirit threads was very low and they were unable to move objects.
However, as Li Yao had been constantly training his spirit threads with the Black Wing Sword's, they had become longer, thicker, and sturdier.
Although they were still unable to do heavy lifting, moving some small components and rivets was quite easy.
Not to mention that apart from him, he also had the help of the Black Wing Sword, this monstrous magical equipment!
"Little Black, find me a few No.7 rivets please!"
On one side, Li Yao was assembling, while on the other, he was shouting.
Following that, ten black spirit threads charged out from the Black Wing Sword, who was hovering in the air. The spirit threads were like dancing tentacles which plunged into the messy stack of components at a lightning fast speed and accurately found the components Li Yao required.
If there was an ordinary person standing next to them watching with his naked eyes at this moment, he would see a dream-like scene—both of Li Yao’s hands had turned into two tornadoes as many small components were as though they were being sucked in by some magic, causing them to make a headlong rush into the storm!
After half an hour—
"It's done!"
The scattered magical equipment components on the ground had disappeared, and what replaced them was an octagonal, diamond-shaped unit. Li Yao's eyes seemed to radiate with a hungry look, radiating an enchanting gleam.
Li Yao had no time to appreciate, as his pair of hands were bright red as blood; it was as though he had just finished tempering them in flames.
He immediately plunged his hands into the vat of water.
"Hiss—"
Steam immediately rose from the ice-cold water.
Li Yao felt that even his bone marrow was burning and not even the ice cold water was able to quell its burning. Having added a crystal into the ice maker and activated the freezing array glyphs to the limit, he stuffed both his hands inside.
"Humm..."
The ice maker started shaking madly. Very quickly, a layer of frost condensed on Li Yao's hands, which was then immediately melted by the heat rising from the depths of his hand.
Only after repeatedly condensing and melting again and again for 4-5 times did Li Yao finally heave a long sigh of relief.
Despite his body being extremely exhausted, especially his hands, which had reached the point where each and every strand of muscle was torn...
His soul was excited to the limit and it seemed as if True Samadhi Fire was about to shoot out from his eyes!
"Next is... the cooler!"
In the refining process, many magical equipment required the temperature to be dropped from thousands of degrees to zero in the blink of an eye so that it could make the internal constituents crystallize and allow the equipment to withstand the powerful impact of the array glyphs.
Therefore, the cooler was also crucial and it very well defined the quality of a crafting furnace.
Gathering all ten fingers together, Li Yao brought them to his mouth and blew air upon them before he began the second round of crazy assembling!
For the next four hours, Li Yao didn't take a break for even a second and had even evaporated two tanks of ice-cold water for cooling.
Before the advent of dawn, he had finally completed all the assembling of the eight units!
The heater, cooler, compressor, anti-gravity unit, lightning unit... Eight units, like stars surrounding the moon, fanned out around the furnace.
Li Yao's pair of eyes had turned crimson as blood tears were quickly flowing out from the corners of his eyes.
Li Yao, however, was completely oblivious to it. Scooping out ice-cold water, he poured it on his head.
"Calm down, I have to calm down. I am only finished with the eight units. What comes next is the crucial most part. I have to use the core components to connect these eight units and integrate them with the main furnace!"
"This is the most important step. Whether the furnace can unleash 100% of its ability depends on this step!"
Li Yao took a long, deep breath as he scooped out a couple dozen ice cubes using the ladle and poured it over his head while he began analyzing the core components.
"What?"
Li Yao blinked his eyes as a sliver of a perplexed look appeared in the depth of his eyes.
"There is something wrong here! Why are these core components inconsistent with that in the blueprints?"
Still believing it to be his mistake, Li Yao placed all the core components separately and once again carefully examined the blueprints. Even after looking for a long while, he was still confused.
"Clearly, the components marked in the blueprint are more advanced and more sophisticated."
"And the components before me are comparatively crude and backward. Although they both have quite the similar refining style, they are simply not the same set of components."
Supporting his cheek with his palm, Li Yao pondered for a while. Meanwhile, the ice cubes that were poured on his head had completely melted, and the resulting water trickled down his cheeks and dripped onto the floor, making "drip drip drip" sounds.
"I understand! This furnace had an accident sometime in the past, and as a result, its core components were damaged. Therefore, to make do, they had improvised and imitated these components. That's why they are far worse than that in the blueprints."
Li Yao lightly smacked his forehead.
'This is troublesome. The components do not match the blueprints, making the assembling procedures completely insignificant. What to do now?'
'Shall I wait for teacher to return?'
Li Yao dismissed this notion at the very first moment it appeared in his mind.
What a joke! Li Yao was someone who would slaughter God if he encountered God, kill Buddha if he encountered Buddha on the road of assembling this furnace. Not to mention the fact of how happy and delighted he was when he first laid his eyes upon it.
It was like he had lured a girl onto the bed and even stripped off her pants. How could he stop abruptly at this moment?
How could that be possible?!
"Since the arrow is already fitted to the bowstring, it must be released. If I don't have the blueprints, then I will draw my own. If I don't have the assembling procedures, then I will deduce them myself!"
Firming his heart, Li Yao pulled out the jade chip from the mini crystal processor and threw it on one side before he launched a blank blueprint template. His thoughts moved at a lightning fast speed as he drew all the core components into the empty template via telepathic thoughts transmission.
It looked a little like a 3-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, where one could see thousands of pieces coming in contact with each other as they tried to draw a perfect 3-dimensional diagram. One could only imagine how hard it was!
Fortunately, Li Yao still had a secret trick up his sleeve.
"The three hours cool down period is already over. I can once again enter the super perceptive state!"
Li Yao pursed his lips into a smile. As he concentrated with all his heart, his temples once again madly started twitching, seemingly as if an inexhaustible amount of thoughts were stimulated as they clashed and spilled out from the depths of his brain!
After half an hour, during which god knows how many times he had poured ice-cold water over his head, a new translucent blueprint finally appeared in the hologram.
Li Yao was feeling dizzy and cold sweat broke out all over his body. He could barely move his lips as he somehow drew a smile that was even more miserable than when one was crying before a deep frown appeared over his glabella.
"This is still wrong!"
"There should not be any problems with this blueprint, and I have even deduced the subsequent assembling process. But the problem is..."
"If this blueprint is correct, then after I have assembled the furnace, the performance will be far less than what is demonstrated by the original blueprint!"
"If the true 1st Gen Tai'e crafting furnace can give a performance of 70 points, then this makeshift thing could give at most 40 points!"
"This won't do! Its performance is far worse."
"The 1st Gen Tai'e furnace was already an antique from a century ago, and now after these improvisations, its various performance parameters are rotten to the core. How am I supposed to refine some matchless masterworks?"
Li Yao quickly did some calculations.
In accordance with the blueprints that were given by Yuan Manqiu, the 1st Gen Tai'e crafting furnace could reach a temperature of 3,000 degrees in under a minute, and its limit temperature was 4,100 degrees!
Whereas in accordance with blueprints drawn by him, using these dilapidated components, it could only reach a temperature of 2,400 degrees in under 2 minutes, while its limit temperature was 2,900 degrees!
A temperature of 2,900 degrees was unable to melt even the cores of many demon beasts!
"This is not the crafting furnace I want! I have to modify it! But even a clever housewife can not cook a meal without rice. I don't have sturdier components which will increase the performance, so how am I going to improve it?"
Having pondered for a while, a spark suddenly flashed in Li Yao's eyes, illuminating his forehead.
"I do have them!"
"The Refining Department used to have a dozen crafting furnaces. Although they had been destroyed in the explosion, their wreckage is still buried under the rubble, all of which had been retrieved by me!"
"The oldest of these crafting furnace dates back to a century ago, and some of them are the latest model from a decade ago whose performance is unimaginably higher than that of the 1st Gen Tai'e furnace!"
"Although they have become a wreck, they still have many usable components which can be removed and installed on 1st Gen Tai'e. In that case, would I not be able to assemble an..."
"Unparalleled Super Modified 1st Gen Tai'e Crafting Furnace!?"
Li Yao, without even taking a breath of respite, immediately charged towards the warehouse where he had stored the wrecked crafting furnaces.
While running, he was quickly doing calculations in his brain, figuring out which components of the wreckage could be disassembled and fitted into the 1st Gen Tai'e crafting furnace.
Over this past month, these wrecked crafting furnaces had been tossed about by him many times for research, so he clearly knew everything about them down to the minute details. He simply didn't need to think; translucent diagrams of components jumped out from the depths of his brain one after another.
When he finally arrived at the warehouse where the wrecked crafting furnaces were stored, four to five kinds of modifying plans had already appeared in his mind.
The overall performance of 1st Gen Tai'e furnace had been improved to 130%.
If he chose the most radical, most difficult, and riskiest plan, it was possible to increase the overall performance to 210%!
"Whooossssh!"
Li Yao, like a mad devil, charged into the warehouse.
A crafting furnace itself weighed a few tons or a couple dozen tons and some could even weigh over a hundred tons. Even if they had been wrecked, they were still exceptionally heavy; it was impossible for Li Yao to tow all the wreckage.
He simply dismantled them, removing the components he required, and used a forklift truck for towing them away.
The forklift truck was originally a manned equipment, but as its performance was quite low, it was simply unable to move while carrying such heavy magical equipment components.
Li Yao found a few thick iron cables and asked the Black Wing Sword to pull hard from the front.
How could the Black Wing Sword be willing to do work? It jumped three feet into the air in anger. Li Yao showered him with praises and promised that in the future, he would help it oil three times a day and give it a high purity crystal for it to engulf. Only in this way was he able to barely make it work like a horse.
After an hour, large piles of variegated components of different shapes and sizes were scattered around the 1st Gen Tai'e crafting furnace.
"Next... is the time to witness the miracle!"