Lin Mu's goal was to gain as much power as he could in the time that he had right now. And since it was not a very large amount of time, the only way he had to increase that was in a rather dangerous way.
"Are you sure you want to attempt that?" Xukong questioned.
"Yes. It will take me a while to reach the Shell Completion stage of the Dao Shell realm. If I focus on body cultivation, I might be able to finish the third treasured organ and directly obtain the peak level strength of it." Lin Mu answered.
Lin Mu had finally decided to use the True Gold Body forging arts to cultivate. It was a cruel technique, but he was ready for it and had become extremely determined. But Lin Mu knew just being determined was not enough, he also needed some extra skills.
~huu~
"Time to finally learn the forging techniques Jing Luo gave me." Lin Mu said as he took out the jade slips.
There was possibly thousands of years of experience condensed in these jade slips and Lin Mu knew just how valuable they were.
'I don't need to learn it entirely. I simply need to learn the metal refinement part for now so that I can properly refine the gold.' Lin Mu thought as he closed his eyes.
His spirit sense touched the jade slip as bits of information started appearing in his mind. Lin Mu simply spent two days learning and memorizing just this information. After that, he spent three days comprehending and revising what he had memorized.
Then on the sixth day, he finally opened his eyes.
~huu~
Letting out a deep breath, Lin Mu's eyes glimmered with excitement.
"Time to test it out first." Lin Mu said as he took out a small cauldron.
The cauldron was something that was used to refine alchemical pills, but could still work for refining metal. Such cauldrons were usually very sturdy and easily withstood high temperature that could melt the base metals.
The cauldron in front of Lin Mu was very plain and generic, made out of Iron and reinforced with runes. This was something new disciples would use to learn first and make pills.
While it did not have any extra features nor did it provide better quality in making pills, for Lin Mu this was the perfect item since he didn't need to focus on the efficacy of medicinal ingredients.
He wasn't even using it for that; he was simply refining some metal.
Lin Mu scanned his ring and quickly found a suitable chunk of gold.
"Hmm… it should be about a kilogram in weight." Lin Mu estimated.
He had plenty of gold and other metals he had obtained over the years and the cave in the Kong plane where the nexus was had even more gold. In fact, the gold in the inheritance cave was many times more than what Lin Mu had in his storage.
He had let it stay in the cave since Jing Luo and others would be able to access it when needed and won't have to call for him every time. Of course, the access to it was restrained and not just anyone could go in.
For now though, Lin Mu had enough to just learn on his own.
~clang~
The chunk of gold landed in the cauldron and Lin Mu recalled the basic methods.
"Since I can use fire spirit Qi, I don't need to depend on external fire. Plus, the control will be better." Lin Mu muttered and ignited flames on his hand.
Then in the next second, the flames spread out like a wave and covered the entire cauldron. Lin Mu knew that equally spreading the heat was an important part of the process, and many forgers struggled with it.
But for him, this problem could be solved by directly covering the entire cauldron with flames. The flames licked the cauldron and soon it heated up.
~Crackle~
A strange crackling sound could be heard coming from the cauldron, which pulled Lin Mu's attention.
"What was that?" Lin Mu said, feeling confused.
At first, he wondered if the cauldron was damaged and breaking or something. But then using his spirit sense to check it in detail, he realized what the issue was.
"Huh, never thought there would be such fine air pockets in the cauldron." Lin Mu said, observing the cavities that were present on the cauldron.
They were too fine to see with naked eyes and only with spirit sense could he perceive them somewhat. The crackling sound Lin Mu heard had come from it. Thinking for the reason, Lin Mu recalled something he had learned.
'So it's the air escaping with force due to heating quickly. Normally it would not do this since a cauldron like this would be heated with an external fire that would heat it slowly and make the air escape gradually as well.' Lin Mu remembered.
With the little scare out of the way, Lin Mu put his focus back on the gold. While it had not shown any signs of melting yet, it was starting to heat up and change color.
Lin Mu felt like he should increase the heat more, but then recalled one of the warnings in the jade slip.
'If I heat it too quickly, the impurities will not be extracted properly. It needs to be gradual.' Lin Mu thought.
Hence following that, he let the gold heat up and change color several times. From its golden yellow color it changed to orange, then red, after which it returned to a bright yellow which was hard to look at.
After a few more minutes, it started to soften and change its shape. Lin Mu continued to heat it until it fully became liquid. Fine bubbles could be seen coming out from the liquid gold as some of the impurities escaped in the form of gases.
"The start is good, but this is just the second step. More to go!" Lin Mu said with enthusiasm.
