Alex gained an apprenticeship under the artifact forger who was named Hwan Fulin. The man liked being called a blacksmith more than an artifact forger as his mastery lay more in swords and shields than unique artifacts.
That wasn't to say he couldn't make them. Only that he wasn't very proficient.
The apprenticeship would last a total of 10 days over the next 2 weeks, from morning to evening with no breaks.
In return, Alex would have to pay 50,000 True Spirit stones. That was 5,000 True spirit stones every day, but Alex didn't worry about that. He had way too many things he could sell to earn more. Besides, he had a lot of spirit stones that were just sitting there, doing nothing.
Once Alex accepted, the training began the very next day.
The first day of training was for Alex to melt metals that the blacksmith Hwan would have to work on.
At first, Hwan tried to stay by Alex's side to teach him exactly how it was done, but he was surprised to see that Alex was very proficient at heating stuff and even wondered if he was playing a joke on him by trying to learn it.
However, seeing him not be able to differentiate between the different metals and alloys, and not be able to tell what a crucible was made up of, the man finally believed that he was here for the first time.
Alex pulled out the molten metal and poured it onto a large working surface where it flowed down a pre-established path to form the shape of a sword.
The man brought out a hammer and said, "now watch." Then, he started hitting the slowly cooling metal as hard as he could to bring the shape as close to what was asked of him.
"You can do this part with just your Qi, and it will be fine. Most use only their Qi after all," the man said and struck. "However, I have found that using Qi can never bring the same amount of tempering required as a hammer would."
He kept striking the red-hot metal.
"The more force you exert on a metal, the better it comes out in the end," he said as he struck again. He then took the slightly red metal and put it back into the furnace to heat it up again.
"The metal, no matter how well you extracted it from the ore, will always have impurities. Not just the metal, any wood, or leather, or bone that you use for artifacts will always have impurities."
"Your first course of action should be to try and get rid of the impurities," he said. "For some, it will be impossible. But, for molten metal, it's quite easy. You just continue melting it and hitting it. As it tempers, the impurities slowly remove themselves, or simply get burnt away."
He pulled the sword out of the furnace and started hitting again.
"Then, once you get rid of the impurities, or as much as you can, your next course of action is to do 2 things at once."
"First, you need to even out the metal. It was almost liquid just before, so some parts will have more, and some parts will have less. You need to hit it and redistribute the portion as required."
"At the same time, you need to start pouring your Qi through the artifact. As you do that, the Qi will create natural lines all over the metal from where Qi can later travel when you've finished it."
"If you don't do this, there will be no Qi lines in the artifact, and the artifact will resist your Qi every time you use it," he said and continued hitting it. "Any good artifact forgets will make sure to put Qi lines in their artifact, no matter how trashy the materials are."
Alex nodded as he took in all the information.
"If a sword is made up of the best material, using the best techniques by the best forger, but it doesn't have any Qi lines, is that sword considered bad?" Alex asked.
The man paused for a second. He put the sword back into the furnace as he thought. "Not necessarily," he said. "If it really does have excellent material and techniques, then it will be a great sword nonetheless."
"However, if there are no Qi lines, then it will be hard for a cultivator to use it. In those cases, only ones with great Sword skills could use those, which while not bad is still a shame," he said.
The man pulled the sword back and said, "Watch me. I'll put the Qi lines now."
Alex nodded and sent his spiritual sense onto the molten sword.
Qi poured out from the Saint and entered the base of the sword that would go into the hilt. Then, starting there, it separated into multiple paths as they entered the sword.
At the same time, the man hit the sword again. Once the Qi made its way to the end and solidified to form a Qi path, the man started once again and poured his Qi in again to form different paths.
He continued doing that multiple times over the course of the next few minutes while continuing to temper the metal all the while.
Then, once he believed he was done, the man put the sword into a large barrel full of water and sighed as he was finally done making the blade.
Alex noted down every aspect of what was done here today. "Is that it?" he asked.
"We still have a few things remaining. I need to pick an appropriate handle or make one myself. And then I have to sharpen it as best I can," he said.
"I see," Alex said and waited for him to do it.
The man showed how the next few steps were done, and they were relatively easy.
When the sword was formed, Alex held the silver blade as he looked at it from all sides.
"Pour some Qi and see how it is," the man said.
Alex did as told and found that his Qi entered the sword quite easily. "What rank and grade is this?" he asked.
"Given the materials, it's a True rank sword. As for grades, that's hard to tell. Artifacts don't have anything to test their grades with. As such, we usually go by evaluating a variety of things."
"Such as if the artifact is well built, if the ingredient's impurities still remain, if there are skills that have been imbued during the crafting, and many other minute things," he said. "Given my evaluation, that sword is True Earth grade. Not bad for something that took about an hour to make, and it will also fetch about 2000 to 3000 True Spirit stones."
Alex caught onto something that the man said and honed in on it. "Sorry, you can imbue skills onto an artifact?" he asked.
"Oh, yes of course. Have you not seen any artifacts with skills before?" he asked.
Alex thought for a bit. Actually, he did. He had seen plenty of artifacts with skills, but he had simply ignored them.
His mask had the skill to disrupt spiritual energy. His whip had a
Fire skill that burned with Saint fire. His armor had a protective barrier that would activate once to protect him from a very strong attack.
There were many other such artifacts that had skills imbued in them, and it only was now that Alex was consciously thinking about it.
"How do they do it then?" Alex asked. Now that he was realizing something existed, the curiosity was hard to keep back.
"Through Qi lines, from what I know," he said.
"Though… Qi lines?" Alex looked confused. "How does that work."
"You will learn soon when you build an armor, but when you put your Qi onto the artifact to form Qi lines, you can create a design inside that will activate a skill."
"So easy? Why doesn't everything have a skill inside it?" Alex asked.
"It's not so easy," the man said. "You need to know the designs too. For now, we only know the designs for barriers in armor. Most other skill either come from random coincidences or is a trait of one of the ingredients used to make them."
"Suffice to say, we don't know much about it," the man said. "Alright, now stop talking. It's your turn to make a sword."
