Chapter 291: DIY Your Own Copper Man

But now, even cultivators are seeking official positions. How can ordinary people believe that their ancestors once stood shoulder to shoulder with gods and demons?

"I understand," He Lingchuan said. He took out a potion from his pocket and poured five drops into Elder Liang's empty bottle.

Elder Liang looked at his disciple, who then ran out of the tent.

A quarter of an hour later, he returned, holding a wooden bead.

This was the underwater wooden bead where the beast soul resided.

He Lingchuan took it and saw it appeared to be the soul of a giant ape.

"Good, it's not a shoddy substitute. The transaction is complete."

Elder Liang smiled at him, his expression calm and still indifferent.

Watching him leave, He Lingchuan shrugged.

The history spanning nearly three thousand years is complex, and it cannot be solely blamed on gods and demons for tempting human hearts or on people forgetting their ancestors. The Immortal Sects and Daoist Schools also did many unsavory things, not only eroding the great achievements of their predecessors but also squandering the goodwill of the common people.

Elder Liang deliberately avoided mentioning these things, but He Lingchuan had read many works on the subject in the Wenxuan Pavilion during his Dragon Coiling Dream, so he wasn't easily swayed by one-sided accounts.

See? Reading extensively truly has its benefits.

Next, he quickly ate his breakfast and went to the military camp to find someone.

Two quarters of an hour later, he went to find Lingguang.

The monkey had taken over a tent for its research, with a "no entry" policy. Out of respect for Young Master He, and given its remarkable ability to help the distressed and cure diseases, the quartermaster didn't fuss about it causing a commotion throughout the camp the previous night.

As soon as He Lingchuan entered the tent, Lingguang turned around, its eyes wide, ready to scold, but seeing him, its monkey mouth retracted.

"Did you come up with anything?"

Lingguang immediately wilted. "It's going to take some more time."

He Lingchuan saw its two monkey eyes were red, knowing it had been up all night. "Even the great immortal sages of the Middle Ages couldn't figure this out. You expect to achieve something in one night? Alright, take a rest, and lend me your alchemy furnace."

The monkey immediately tensed up. As a medicine ape, the alchemy furnace was its most precious possession. "What do you want to do with it?"

"I need to forge a treasure, and I don't have a suitable furnace on hand. Just let me use yours for a bit; it'll be quick."

"What kind of medicine do you need? I can refine it."

"I'm forging a tool. Do you know how?" He Lingchuan's gaze swept around the tent, but he didn't see the alchemy furnace.

The monkey was even more surprised. "Forging an artifact? You? What kind of artifact are you forging on the front lines? Why don't you go back to Dunyu City and find Li Fubo?"

"Hurry up, stop stalling! You won't break your furnace!" He Lingchuan grew impatient. "I'm just forging a bronze golem; it's extremely simple!"

"Forging a bronze golem?" Lingguang was stunned. "My furnace isn't big enough."

"A small one," He Lingchuan gestured, "about half the size of my palm."

He urged it repeatedly, and only then did Lingguang reluctantly take out a toy-like three-legged miniature furnace from its pocket, place it on the ground, and casually recite a few incantations.

The brass furnace immediately grew, standing about six feet tall and gleaming brightly enough to reflect light.

This showed how well Lingguang usually cared for it.

He Lingchuan had been pondering the Golden Armored Golem technique in the Dragon Coiling Dream, meticulously refining every detail many times over. After all, the crafting cost was extremely high, and even a slight error would be unaffordable for him.

Fortunately, this secret technique had a unique characteristic:

The difficulty of the golem technique lay in how the master controlled it, while the crafting process itself was surprisingly simple, involving only four or five steps.

For a beginner like him, it was quite friendly.

With the furnace ready and the heat at the right level, He Lingchuan followed the diagram in the secret scroll, placing casting gold, refined iron, and other materials into it one by one.

While examining the blueprints in his dream, he discovered that he actually had six of the seven or eight materials needed to forge the golem!

These were scraps left over from reforging the Floating Life Treasure Blade. He hadn't had time to clean out his storage ring, and now they served as ready materials. Crucially, Yujin and refined iron were the most important; without them, the golem would be nothing but copper sludge, lacking any structural integrity.

As for the one or two missing materials, at most the golem's outer skin wouldn't be as tough and its movements not as agile. The secret scroll also stated that if the crafter gained further insights later on, they could add extra materials during the forging process to customize the Golden Armored Golem with unique features.

At this stage, He Lingchuan didn't need anything particularly distinctive; he just wanted a copper-skinned, iron-boned golem that could defend, attack, and provide assistance.

He understood Lingguang's surprise, but after last night's dream, Wen Daolun had once again reminded him of the ominous misfortune he carried, which was difficult to resolve. This intensified his sense of urgency, prompting him to decide to forge the golem as soon as possible.

There's no such thing as perfect preparation in this world; what's most suitable now is the best.

He kept urging Lingguang to raise the furnace temperature, otherwise the Yujin wouldn't melt. It was fortunate that Lingguang's treasured furnace was powerful, and some special elixirs actually required the addition of metals and various hard-to-melt hardwoods. Otherwise, ordinary medicine furnaces could only heat up to four or five hundred degrees Celsius, unable to melt even iron.

As the alchemy furnace steadily heated up, Lingguang, unsure of its limits, became increasingly cautious. Fortunately, the most difficult-to-melt Yujin began to soften. Lingguang carefully controlled the furnace temperature, and He Lingchuan pulled out a set of molds from his pocket. "Pour it here."

Lingguang dared not speak, its eyes clearly asking, "Where did you get these?"

The molds were about two palms in size overall, with humanoid indentations in the middle, divided into many layers and sections, making them a very standard set of metal forming molds.

This was the main front of a war; where had He Lingchuan managed to obtain such a complete set of molds on such short notice?

He grinned. "Do you remember someone summoning a Green Turban Warrior to beat a cow yesterday?"

Lingguang nodded.

"He had them. I borrowed them for two taels of silver; I have to return them after I'm done." The other person wasn't forging a Golden Armored Golem, but the general appearance of such large summoned creatures wasn't too different, so a universal mold would suffice.

"It's the inside that matters; men focus on the inside!"

The monkey rolled its eyes. "What kind of person is this?"

Next, they began casting layer by layer, section by section. Fortunately, the alchemist's furnace already had compartments to prevent confusion of medicinal properties. He Lingchuan then instructed Lingguang to pour refined iron, red copper, frost silver, and Jujin into the molds separately, corresponding to the golem's skeletal structure, muscles, tendons, and vitality.

The monkey's hand was steady, and He Lingchuan executed the incantations swiftly, so no errors occurred.

With the first layer of the skeletal structure cast, and while the molten iron had not fully solidified, He Lingchuan cut his wrist and let out some blood to complete the recognition process, then dipped a tool in the blood and engraved runes onto the iron frame.

Each rune was smaller than a fly's head, written in the ancient immortal language. At this moment, he had to thank Sun Fuling; Master Sun's rigorous tutoring over the past few days had solidified his foundation in the ancient immortal language, enabling him to write every symbol correctly in this race against time—

If even one had been written incorrectly, the golem would have had to be reforged.

Before the skeletal structure solidified, he finally finished engraving all the runes.

The subsequent procedures followed one after another as normal. Once all the molten metal had completely solidified, he obtained a complete set of the golem's components.

He Lingchuan assembled the DIY golem, installed the newly acquired beast soul as its intelligence core, and then inserted a small piece of profound crystal into its back. He then began attempting to control it by reciting incantations.

It was said that the first communication was the most crucial; whether they could achieve perfect synergy afterward depended on this initial attempt.

After his repeated attempts, perhaps annoyed, the little bronze golem finally tilted its head, looked at He Lingchuan, and then gave him the middle finger.

This was the action its master wanted it to perform. However, He Lingchuan had originally intended for it to raise its index finger.

"It's done, it's done!" He Lingchuan clapped his hands, a burst of excitement comparable only to receiving his first toy seventeen or eighteen years ago. As for the minor error of raising the wrong finger, it should be resolved with repeated control and debugging, or perhaps it was due to cutting corners during the crafting, missing two materials.

Lingguang watched eagerly, sweating profusely from controlling the fire. "How big can it get?"

"At least ten feet tall, I suppose?"

The man and the monkey exchanged glances, then spoke in unison, "Come on, let's go out and test it!"

The guards outside the tent listened, their hearts pounding in fear:

"What new tricks are these two ancestors planning now? Wasn't last night's commotion enough?"

Bai Liqing's deputy, Fu Xin, led a dozen personal guards north, traveling a full day along mountain roads before finally reaching Xinqiao Township.

Before entering the township, two men jumped out from the bushes by the road.

Fu Xin was startled and drew his saber, only to realize they were his own men.

"General Hong ordered us to wait here to meet General Bai Li," one of them said.

Fu Xin's grip tightened on his saber. "General Bai Li has already sacrificed himself. From the mine pit... only we made it."

The two men were shocked. "What about the others? Where are they?"

Fu Xin shook his head.

The two looked distressed. Fu Xin said bitterly, "You were with Hong Chenglüe. Tell me, did you intercept the government troops coming from the west?"

The two soldiers exchanged glances but said nothing.

Fu Xin knew the answer then, gritting his teeth. "Lead the way."

The two still asked, as a matter of routine, "Are there any pursuers behind us?"

"No, we've checked multiple times!" A muscle twitched in Fu Xin's cheek. "Lead the way, quickly!"

The two then led them into the mountains, moving stealthily northeast.

"Hong Chenglüe isn't in Xinqiao Township?" Fu Xin was no longer polite, addressing General Hong by his full name.

"No, General Hong chose another location."

The dozen or so men ventured deeper into secluded areas, but there were always animal trails to follow, and Fu Xin also noticed many fresh horse tracks.

They continued for another four or five hours, even climbing halfway up a mountain, before the guide finally announced, "We're here."

"This is it?"

Fu Xin looked up at the stockade above.

Wooden palisades, cheval de frise, watchtowers, and a drawbridge—it had everything, and it looked quite old, not recently constructed.

He followed the guide inside, noticing the marks of knives and axes everywhere, as well as uncleaned bloodstains.

Inside the mountain stronghold were seventeen or eighteen rows of connected houses. Their earthen walls were thick, doors and windows small, and the windows were set high, clearly a combination of watchtowers and dwellings.

Most importantly, there were signs that people had lived there for a long time.

"What was this place originally?"

"A bandits' lair," the guiding soldier replied. "This place is called Jin'yin Mountain. We just captured the mountain bandits' stronghold last night. General Hong said we'll stay here for now."