Chapter 296: Divine Sword

“The key to the treasure vault on Shenglin Mountain is kept by the mistress of the Si family, who is also the Saintess of my Tianmo Jiao.”

Dan Youxin continued: “All the assets of my Tianmo Jiao are managed by the Si family, and every item of wealth must pass through their hands. If the Jiao Master wants to access the treasure vault this time, he still needs to get the key from the Saintess. As long as we take out the heavenly materials and earthly treasures from the vault, refining eight thousand jian pei won’t be difficult. Using the supervisory factory to manufacture the jian pei will be very fast!”

The Si family is a prominent clan in the Tianmo Jiao, and the Saintess is often from their lineage. This generation’s Saintess is Si Yunxiang, which means the treasure vault key is with her.

Qin Mu found Si Yunxiang, and she said in surprise: “Eight thousand swords to refine a jianwan! So many swords—can the Jiao Master even lift it?”

Qin Mu’s face darkened, as he was also a bit worried about whether he could carry a jianwan made from so many flying swords.

Si Yunxiang noticed his expression and smiled: “You are the Jiao Master and Holy Teacher, so it’s only natural for the heavenly materials and earthly treasures in the treasure vault to be used to refine spirit soldiers for you. However, these treasures have been accumulated over time by the Jiao’s disciples. With this natural disaster relief effort, all of our Tianmo Jiao’s funds have been spent on aid, and the vault has no money left. If anything else goes wrong, it would be troublesome for the Jiao to handle emergencies without funds.”

Qin Mu laughed: “I understand your difficulties. I still have a million Da Feng coins here—why not contribute them to the Tianmo Jiao so you can use them for emergencies.”

Si Yunxiang was overjoyed and said with a smile: “A million Da Feng coins is a lot, but with a million disciples in the Jiao, it’s barely enough to give each one a single coin. Since the Jiao Master is refining swords, there’s no need to keep using that Shao Bao Jian anymore…”

Qin Mu’s face darkened again as he took off the Shao Bao Jian and gave it to her.

Si Yunxiang kindly reminded him: “The Taotie bag of the Jiao Master seems to have some other treasures, like the Qian Zhuang Tower—those could also be used to fill the treasure vault…”

Qin Mu took off the Taotie bag and pulled out the Qian Zhuang Tower and Jiao Wei Qin, but then he suddenly became alert: “Wait, I only need to refine a spirit soldier for the Liuhe realm—why do I have to use treasures of the Jiao Master level? Their value is completely different! Saintess, are you trying to trick me?”

Si Yunxiang sneered: “Jiao Master, the treasures in the Tianmo Jiao’s vault are more than enough to refine a dozen Jiao Master-level items! If you’re using them to refine a single jianwan, we can’t just empty out the vault, can we?”

Qin Mu thought about it and realized she had a point, so he reluctantly gave her the Jiao Master-level treasures from his Taotie bag. These were all obtained from raiding the Loulan Golden Palace, so he didn’t feel too heartbroken about it.

“Jiao Master, you still have those starlight pearls from the Qu Shan Shrine in the East Sea, right?”

Si Yunxiang’s eyes sparkled: “There are three thousand of them!”

Qin Mu said with a dark face: “Saintess, this is all I have!”

Si Yunxiang laughed: “You are the Holy Jiao Master, and I’m not really taking your treasures—I’m just storing them in the Tianmo Jiao’s vault, so they’re still yours. Managing the wealth for the Si family is a thankless job—we can only look but not use it. No matter how many treasures there are, they all belong to the Qin family in the end.”

Qin Mu felt her words made sense, but something still seemed off. Nevertheless, he took out the three thousand pearls.

Si Yunxiang glanced stealthily into his Taotie bag and said: “And those two big eyeballs…”

“No!” Qin Mu’s face turned iron-blue, and he had an urge to kill.

Si Yunxiang probed: “What about the Jiao Master’s Long Qilin…”

Qin Mu let out a breath and said with a smile: “If you can afford to keep it, you can take it.”

Si Yunxiang quickly laughed: “I was just joking, Jiao Master. That glutton is better off with you—the Ancestor Master didn’t want him either, saying he eats too much. I’ll go have my Si family elders fetch the treasures from Shenglin Mountain right away to refine the swords for you.”

Qin Mu held his now deflated Taotie bag, his face greenish, feeling like he had been stripped bare by this crafty woman.

“This woman is obsessed with money—I can’t outwit her. I need to bring Ling’er over soon to manage the finances, or the Saintess will strip me clean and suck me dry!” Qin Mu, the Great Jiao Master, thought to himself.

Si Yunxiang ran to one side and took out a mirror. The mirror floated into the air and spun twice, revealing another mirror inside it. Behind that mirror was an old woman, who asked: “Xiang Saintess, what do you need?”

Si Yunxiang explained the matter of Qin Mu refining swords and said: “The Holy Jiao Master needs to refine a spirit soldier, which is no small matter. Please, Ancestral Grandma, take the top-grade materials from the treasure vault and send them to the supervisory factory in Fang State.”

The old woman frowned: “The Si family doesn’t do losing deals. The Jiao Master is still young, and his cultivation isn’t high yet—what does he need top-grade treasures for…”

“We’ve made a profit!”

Si Yunxiang showed off the treasures she had coaxed and tricked out of Qin Mu, making the Si family Ancestral Grandma’s eyes light up. She exclaimed: “So many town-sect level treasures—Saintess, you truly know how to manage the household! Excellent, excellent—you didn’t turn out like your aunt! Your aunt spends money like water and never keeps accounts—she’s a real spendthrift!”

She was referring to Si Popo, who never cared about money and always bought the most expensive things without regard for whether they were suitable.

The Si family Ancestral Grandma continued: “The top-grade sword-refining materials are often extremely heavy—a piece the size of a finger can weigh several dozen jin, and we don’t have enough in the vault to make eight thousand swords. We could refine twenty-seven swords at the town-sect treasure level, and each would weigh about ten thousand jin.”

“What about the next grade down?” Si Yunxiang asked.

“That’s still not enough—it can only make about a hundred flying swords at most.”

Si Yunxiang furrowed her brows: “What about the grade below that?”

“The grade below is elite Han Tie, elite Xuan Jin, and elite Xuan Tong—they’d be more than enough for eight thousand swords.”

Si Yunxiang said: “Then please have Ancestral Grandma bring the best of the next grade down, and use elite Xuan Jin for the rest. The top-grade ones can be used to sharpen the spirit swords.”

The Si family Ancestral Grandma asked suspiciously: “Elite Xuan Jin is three times heavier than elite Han Tie—why use elite Xuan Jin instead of elite Han Tie?”

Si Yunxiang smiled sweetly, and the mirror’s Si family Ancestral Grandma rolled her eyes: “You little rascal, up to your tricks again—watch out or the Jiao Master might not be able to lift it and spank you! I’ll send the items to Yong State, and you can have that Fan Yunxiao bandit sail over to get them.”

Si Yunxiang agreed, and she turned the bronze mirror in the opposite direction twice, making the mirror within disappear.

Two days later, Fan Yunxiao sailed back from Yong State, bringing the materials Qin Mu needed for refining swords. The Fang State supervisory factory immediately bustled with activity again.

Forging the jian pei wasn’t complicated—it was just about initially shaping the swords—but even so, each one needed to be refined hundreds or thousands of times through repeated forging and casting.

Once the jian pei were ready, they were like flat bars, and Qin Mu would have to polish them into proper swords himself, hammering them thousands of times.

Qin Mu picked up a jian pei, his face not looking great. Si Yunxiang stepped forward, pretending to be concerned: “Jiao Master, what’s wrong?”

“It’s a bit heavy.”

Qin Mu said awkwardly: “It’s two or three times heavier than I imagined—one sword is about three hundred jin, and after refining into a jianwan, eight thousand swords…”

Si Yunxiang burst out laughing: “You asked for the finest materials, so of course they’d be heavy. The edge-sharpening materials we’re using are even better than those in the swords granted to first-rank officials by the emperor—heavier, sharper, and harder to forge! As they say, true mastery lies in simplicity—you could just throw the jianwan out without any sword techniques and smash a whole crowd.”

Qin Mu said with a dark face: “But I have to be able to throw it—eight thousand swords…”

Si Yunxiang was beside herself with laughter: “I’ve heard that when refined to the extreme, the weight can be controlled at will. You’re an expert at refining treasures, Jiao Master—you’ll definitely get it to that level!”

Qin Mu carried the jian pei and turned to leave, muttering some obscure words like “a hundred forgings to achieve divine craftsmanship” and “strength to pull up mountains.”

Si Yunxiang blinked, feeling quite pleased with herself.

In the supervisory factory, although Dan Youxin wanted to stay and observe Qin Mu refining the swords, Prince Ling Yushu still had official duties in other states and prefectures, so he ordered the Tian Gong Hall disciples to help out while he and the Ministry of Works officials went to the next state.

With the help of the Tian Gong Hall disciples, Qin Mu’s sword-refining speed wasn’t slow, but crafting eight thousand swords and ensuring they perfectly matched his spirit soldier form was still a massive undertaking.

Especially since the heavenly materials and earthly treasures Si Yunxiang had brought were of such high quality, making it very taxing to refine them to be size-controllable. Qin Mu kept imprinting the spirit soldiers and embedding various marks on the swords, and after several months, he had lost a lot of weight from the exhaustion.

Ling Yuxiu and Si Yunxiang also stayed to help, and the two women learned many forging techniques from Qin Mu. They upgraded their Jiu Long Bing and Qian Si Jian by adding superior materials, improving them significantly.

Qin Mu had refined seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine swords, but the last one was the mother sword in the jianwan, which had to be made from the best materials to coordinate all the sub-swords.

For the mother sword, Qin Mu put in a lot of effort. He saved the finest materials, a type of metal he’d never seen before—only fist-sized, yet weighing ten thousand jin. Si Yunxiang said it was from outer space.

However, this metal was only enough to make the sword blade and body, not a complete mother sword.

Qin Mu took out a broken sword from his Taotie bag, which he had also gotten from the Loulan Golden Palace. Si Yunxiang hadn’t taken it because it was broken.

Qin Mu held the unknown metal in one hand and the broken sword in the other, comparing them. Suddenly, there was a clang, and the broken sword and the metal attracted each other, colliding together!

This change surprised Qin Mu. The broken sword glowed brightly, and golden light flowed from the fist-sized metal, forming sword streams that flew through the air, circling into large rings around him. The dazzling light illuminated the entire supervisory factory, shining out through the doors and windows.

A series of dings rang out as the light from the metal collided with the broken sword’s blade repeatedly, each impact making Qin Mu’s arm numb.

After countless collisions, the metal suddenly fell to the ground with a crash, turning into ashes and scattering everywhere.

The broken sword in Qin Mu’s hand now shone brilliantly—it was no longer broken!

The sword had absorbed the metal’s golden energy, growing a new blade and looking brand new!

Strange patterns on the sword, like dragons or snakes, writhed and then lit up before dimming. Qin Mu could still make out the two characters they formed.

“Wuyou!”