34: Chapter 34 Automated Weapon Forging, Iron Pillar's Dream

The moment the furnace hatch closed, Chen Tiezhu's fingers still hovered above the control console, his fingertips trembling slightly. He didn't press down, nor did he dare to.

Ten Psionic Furnaces arrived at the Artifact Refining Workshop at noon yesterday. For a whole night, the clansmen installed them into the bases like moving shrines, connecting the guide rails and linking the Rune Arrays.

Now these behemoths were squatting quietly in the center of the workshop, glowing with a cold, iron-like blue light, like sleeping giants.

"Patriarch." His voice was a bit raspy. "This thing... can it really refine on its own?"

Chen Wuwang stood half a step behind him, the lens of his Mechanical Prosthetic Eye reflecting the flickering data stream on the control screen.

He didn't speak, just raised his hand and lightly tapped the edge of the control panel with the tip of a dagger—Clang, clang, two crisp sounds echoed far in the empty workshop.

"You'll know once you try it," he said.

Chen Tiezhu's throat bobbed. He knew it sounded simple, but the string in his heart had been taut for too long.

The image of his wife collapsing before the Artifact Refining table twenty years ago still burned in his dreams.

The moment the Spiritual Qi Backlash exploded, she was still clutching an unfinished Rune Plate in her hand.

From then on, he believed in only one thing: without a craftsman quenching it by hand, a refined artifact has no soul.

But the System before him was the lifeblood Chen Wuwang had exchanged five Ore veins and ten furnaces for. He couldn't say no to trying it.

Finally, he gritted his teeth and slapped down the Master Start Button.

Buzz—

A low vibration rose from beneath the ground, and the floor of the entire Artifact Refining Workshop trembled with it.

The Conveyor Belt started slowly, raw stones clattered into the Sorting Slots, and with a click, the qualified Ores were pushed into the Feed Inlet.

In the next instant, the furnace hatch closed, blue flames flared up, and Spirit Stones turned into a crimson liquid flow, surging through the pipes.

Chen Tiezhu's eyes widened.

He saw the metal base material automatically fed into the processing area, and three Rune Engraving Arms started simultaneously, operating at high speed, embedding Array Patterns into the Sword Embryo like dancing dragons and snakes.

Not a hair's breadth of error, not a single trace of excess spiritual power overflowed.

Mist surged in the Cooling Pool as a Flying Sword slowly rose, its entire body glowing with a warm spiritual light, the blade trembling slightly and letting out a clear Dragon's cry.

Throughout the entire process, no one had touched it once.

"This..."

Chen Tiezhu's throat felt blocked by something. He stumbled a few steps to the Exit Slide, grabbed the freshly forged Flying Sword, and ran his fingers along the spine of the blade—

Smooth, even, the spiritual power circuit was a complete closed loop, and even the quenching patterns were as regular as if measured with a ruler.

He looked up at Chen Wuwang, his lips trembling:

"Patriarch, I... why do I feel like... this wasn't refined, but 'born'?"

Only then did Chen Wuwang approach, his Mechanical Prosthetic Eye scanning the control screen, the corners of his mouth curling slightly. "It wasn't born; it's just a successful run."

He pointed at the data stream. "Every step you see—feeding, smelting, engraving, cooling—are rules written in code. Just like how you taught your apprentices blacksmithing back then: how long to heat it first, then how many times to hammer it, and finally dipping it in water—now I've written that 'craftsmanship' into the System."

Chen Tiezhu was stunned.

"So... from now on, no one needs to guard the furnace? No need to get up in the middle of the night to check the heat? Even runes can be engraved automatically?"

"Yes." Chen Wuwang nodded. "And not just this one sword. As long as the raw materials don't stop, it can keep producing. A hundred swords a day, a thousand swords, all without human labor."

Chen Tiezhu suddenly fell silent.

He looked down at the Flying Sword in his hand, his fingers stroking the blade over and over as if afraid it would melt. After a long time, he murmured:

"When my father taught me blacksmithing, he said a good weapon must be nurtured with the craftsman's blood and sweat, otherwise it's a dead thing. I believed that my whole life... but today..."

He paused, his voice suddenly dropping:

"If my son were alive, he would have taken over the Artifact Refining Workshop this year. I didn't let him learn programming, didn't let him touch these iron-shelled machines, fearing he would follow in my footsteps... but now I realize, maybe... maybe this is the true Legacy."

Chen Wuwang didn't speak, just placed a hand on his shoulder.

Only the hum of the equipment and the hiss of steam from the Cooling Pool remained in the workshop.

Suddenly, a red light flashed on the control screen.

"Warning: Energy Buffer Array uncalibrated, psionic transmission delay 0.3 seconds."

Chen Tiezhu jerked his head up. "It's going to blow! During the last test, the furnace blew out half a wall because of this!"

Chen Wuwang remained calm, his fingertips already tapping rapidly on the virtual keyboard.

Lines of correction code scrolled across the screen. His movements were extremely fast, as if writing a program he had long since memorized.

"Stabilized." He withdrew his hands.

Sure enough, the data stream returned to stability, the blue flames burned steadily, and the next Sword Embryo had already entered the engraving area.

Chen Tiezhu was dumbfounded. "You... how did you know how to fix it?"

"An old trick from Earth." Chen Wuwang smiled. "Exception Handling Mechanism. When a program errors, it doesn't restart; it repairs itself. You fail in Artifact Refining because you don't know where the problem is; but I do."

He stared at the screen. "That's why I dare to gamble. Because you are worth it."

Chen Tiezhu froze.

He remembered last night when Chen Wuwang called him to the Cultivation Pod and pointed at those three Gold-veined Spiritual Plants, asking: "Don't you want your son to inherit the true Dao of Artifact Refining?"

At that time, his heart was shaken, and he didn't answer.

Now he understood—the 'true' way Chen Wuwang spoke of wasn't about clinging to old methods, but about letting Artifact Refining survive and be passed on.

"One more time," he suddenly said, his voice firm. "Let me press it myself."

Chen Wuwang took a step back.

Chen Tiezhu took a deep breath, placed both hands on the start area, and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the hesitation was gone.

Snap!

The button was pressed.

The Conveyor Belt turned, raw stones entered the furnace, and blue flames rose.

This time, he stared intently at the Rune Engraving Arm, watching how it precisely set its strokes, how it adjusted its angle, and how it completed the Spirit Sealing at the final moment.

When the second Flying Sword rose from the Cooling Pool, he rushed over, grabbed it, and his other hand trembled as he reached for the production records on the console.

"Fully automated process, duration seven minutes and thirty-eight seconds, yield rate 100%, spiritual power purity 98.6%..." He read the data, his voice getting softer and softer until it was almost a whisper.

Then, he laughed.

First a grin, then laughter rolled out of his throat, getting louder and louder, finally even carrying a hint of a sob.

"Patriarch!" He turned around, eyes red, holding the Flying Sword high. "I... I finally succeeded!"

He wasn't talking about this one sword, nor about this production line.

He was talking about twenty years of obsession, about his late wife's dying gaze, about the son who never got to grow up, about all the sleepless nights, the burned hands, and the shattered dreams.

Now, everything had an answer.

Chen Wuwang looked at him, not smiling or applauding.

He just stood there quietly, letting the laughter echo in the workshop, hitting the walls and bouncing back, mixing with the hum of the machines like a celebration that had arrived far too late.

It took a long time for Chen Tiezhu to slowly calm down.

He crouched at the mouth of the slide, tightly clutching the Flying Sword as if holding a child he had lost and found again.

His shoulders were still trembling slightly, whether from excitement or relief.

Chen Wuwang turned toward the console, retracted the panel, and turned off the main power.

The equipment shut down one by one, the blue flames went out, and the workshop returned to silence.

He took one last look at Chen Tiezhu's back and whispered to himself, "Next step, it's time to integrate the Sword Intent System."

Having said that, he stepped outside.

Behind him, Chen Tiezhu still crouched there, motionless, cradling the warm, glowing Flying Sword in his arms as if holding the entire future.