13: Chapter 13 Furnace Improvement, Iron Pillar Breakthrough

Clang—!

A loud bang shattered the heavy silence beneath the Artifact Refining Workshop, and sparks sprayed out from the cracks in the furnace walls like red-hot needles piercing the air.

Chen Tiezhu stood before the furnace, his face flushed red by the firelight and veins throbbing at his temples. He had lost count of how many times he had swung the hammer in his hand. Staring at the crooked rune grooves on the control console, a low curse escaped his throat: "Useless! They're all fucking useless!"

The furnace core hummed incessantly, and the needle of the Spiritual Pressure gauge spun frantically in the red zone.

This furnace had held out for three days and nights, never stopping since the moment the Insect Tide retreated, but now it finally couldn't take it anymore.

The Spirit Stones in the main melting chamber hadn't fully melted yet; the semi-liquid crimson flow was clogged in the pipes, and it would explode if the temperature rose any further.

"Slow! Too slow!" He kicked the leg of the control console, deforming the metal bracket instantly. "Thirty-six Mid-Grade Spirit Stones took six hours just to melt halfway! Mecha parts outside are waiting to be cast, and Array Base components are waiting to be quenched, and you're here choking on me?"

He suddenly grabbed the recording board off the table and slammed it onto the ground; the bamboo slats snapped with a crack, and ink smeared everywhere. His hands were shaking violently—not from exhaustion, but from sheer frustration.

Over twenty years of craftsmanship and the refining System he built with his own hands had become a stumbling block before his eyes today.

Just as he was gasping for air and preparing to grab a wrench to dismantle the furnace core and force a pressure release, footsteps echoed from the doorway.

They were steady and rhythmic, each step sounding like it was treading on a heartbeat.

Chen Wuwang had arrived.

He wasn't wearing armor, only a grey cloth robe. The old wound on his right cheek still felt slightly warm, and his left hand pressed lightly against his ribs as he walked—his spiritual power hadn't recovered, and his body was still weak.

But his gaze was sharp as it swept over the burst energy pipes, the clogged melting channels, and Chen Tiezhu's face, covered in a mix of furnace ash and sweat-soaked grime.

"The old problem," he spoke, his voice hoarse but steady. "The furnace body can't handle the pressure, and the spiritual flow distribution relies on manual frequency adjustment. Once it overloads, it collapses."

Chen Tiezhu looked up, his eyes bloodshot. "Then you tell me what to do! Wait? Wait for another wave of enemies? Wait for the clansmen to fill the mineral veins with their flesh and blood? I, Chen Tiezhu, can go without sleep for three days, but this furnace... it can't keep up!"

By the end, he was practically roaring.

Chen Wuwang didn't respond. He walked straight to the main control console, squatted down, and wiped his finger across a charred interface.

His mechanical prosthetic eye flickered slightly, and a data stream immediately popped up in his vision: Energy loss rate 37%, frequency offset ±12 Hz, System stability rating: D-.

"Traditional furnaces have indeed reached their limit." He stood up, took a metal chip the size of a fingernail from his robe, and held it out in his palm. "Try this."

Chen Tiezhu squinted at it—a black crystal substrate with circuits as fine as hair etched onto the surface, and a sesame-sized blue core embedded in the center, blinking rhythmically.

"What is this?"

"A Nano-scale Chip," Chen Wuwang said. "A Spiritual Energy Furnace Control System. It can automatically adjust temperature gradients, divert Spiritual Pressure, predict clogging points, and even synchronize power supply with the Leyline Spirit Network."

"A machine?" Chen Tiezhu sneered. "You want me to trust a pile of scrap metal instead of my own hands?"

"I'm not telling you to throw away your craft." Chen Wuwang pressed the chip into his palm. The force wasn't heavy, yet it felt overwhelming. "I'm telling you to turn your craft into rules. Every parameter you've adjusted, every node you've calibrated—I've recorded them all and fed them into it. It learned from you, Uncle Tiezhu."

Chen Tiezhu froze.

He looked down at the chip, his fingertips tracing its edges. He knew about this—a few days ago, the Family Head had him perform a series of stress tests: high-temperature oscillations, reverse induction, multi-frequency resonance... He thought it was an experiment for the new mecha, but it turned out... he was teaching the machine.

"You've had this planned for a long time."

"The first priority after the war is to replenish equipment." Chen Wuwang patted his shoulder. "I can't always be guarding the Array Core, and you can't spend your whole life guarding this furnace. What we want isn't just to survive; we want the Chen family's fire to burn brighter than anyone else's."

Chen Tiezhu remained silent for a long time before suddenly grinning, his teeth stained with ash. "Alright... then let's let it burn big this time."

He turned and grabbed his toolbox, shouting at the top of his lungs, "Someone! Remove the furnace cover! Change the core interface! Strip away all that redundant wiring from yesterday!"

—

For the next three days, the lights never went out on the third basement level of the Artifact Refining Workshop.

Chen Wuwang didn't leave. He sat on an iron stool in the corner, occasionally carving symbols on the stone table with a dagger that no one could understand. When he was tired, he would close his eyes to rest, and the first thing he did upon waking was check the furnace data.

Chen Tiezhu worked around the clock with his five apprentices, welding interfaces, connecting pipes, and burying cables.

The hardest part was the protocol interface between the chip and the ancient-style furnace—one wrote with Spiritual Qi, the other ran programs with code. Forcing the two languages to communicate almost triggered a backflow explosion.

In the early hours of the second startup test, just as the Spirit Stones were injected into the furnace chamber, the blue core suddenly flashed red. A reverse spiritual flow surged up, making the entire melting channel shake with a "boom," and the observation window nearly shattered.

"Cut the power!" Chen Wuwang roared.

Chen Tiezhu lunged forward to pull the plug, his hands turning red from the heat before he finally cut the connection.

He gasped for breath, staring at the smoking wires, his voice raspy:

"It's no use... It's just not working. The machine doesn't understand the nuances of the fire; it doesn't know when to be aggressive and when to hold back..."

Chen Wuwang didn't say a word. He walked over, drew his Titanium Alloy Dagger, and began carving into the blank space on the furnace wall.

It wasn't runes, nor was it an array diagram.

It was a series of bracketed commands, looking like code yet sounding like incantations.

He chanted as he carved: "if (pressure > 80) then divert_to_secondary; else maintain_core_flow..."

The tip of the blade scraped across the metal, sending sparks flying.

Three minutes later, he finished the last section and stepped back. "Try again."

Chen Tiezhu gritted his teeth and plugged in the chip.

Buzz—

The blue light lit up and remained stable.

The furnace core slowly heated up, and the Spirit Stones began to soften. The crimson liquid slid into the main melting channel along the newly modified diversion grooves, nearly twice as fast as before.

The temperature curve rose steadily without fluctuations or stutters.

"Did it work?" someone whispered.

No one answered.

Not until the first batch of finished spiritual liquid flowed into the casting module and the System automatically completed the cooling and shaping did a standard component pop out with a "ding"—its surface was smooth, without bubbles or cracks.

"It... it really worked."

Chen Tiezhu stumbled forward and reached out to touch the freshly baked metal. It was scalding, but he wasn't afraid. He stared intently at the surging crimson flow inside the observation window, like a river, like lava, like something alive roaring forward.

Then he laughed.

It started as a low chuckle, then grew into a loud laugh, and finally, he was laughing so hard that tears came out. He slammed a fist onto the control console. "Family Head! Look at this flow rate! This purity! This stability!"

He turned around abruptly, his face a mess of ash and sweat, his eyes frighteningly bright:

"This furnace... can refine Immortal Artifacts!"

His laughter bounced off the four walls, shaking the dust from the ceiling.

Chen Wuwang stood at the edge of the furnace light, the corners of his mouth curling slightly.

He knew that what was burning in this furnace wasn't just Spirit Stones.

It was the ashes of the old era.

It was the fuse for the future.

He lifted his foot and walked toward the exit.

Behind him, the flames rose, and the data screen read: "Efficiency increased by 980%."

Ahead, the wind was picking up at the Eastern Cliffs.