Chapter 3479 — Repairing the Medicine Cauldron!

Even so, the demands on the environment are stringent! The repair must take place somewhere rich in heaven-and-earth spiritual energy, or it is likely to fail! Alchemy works much the same way, except that in alchemy there is a medicine cauldron into which all the true qi can be poured and gathered together, whereas weapons cannot be put into anything like a cauldron, for weapons come in every size, long and short, in wildly varied shapes, and it is impossible to fashion a single uniform vessel for forging them.

Of course, a place rich in heaven-and-earth spiritual energy might be desperately hard for anyone else to find, but for Wei Zhao, who possessed the jade pendant, a cultivation divine artifact, it was no problem at all: he need only take the medicine cauldron into the jade pendant's space to forge and repair it there.

Wei Zhao read on to the second condition: repairing a medicine cauldron required a cultivator of at least the Heaven Rank, and the higher the grade of the cauldron, the higher the corresponding rank of the cultivator must be—though this was by no means absolute, since the surrounding environment could affect the factor!

For instance, an artifact-mender at the peak of the late Heaven Rank, with strength at Great Perfection, repairing a first-grade medicine cauldron might well manage it in an ordinary setting, for his own physical strength, true qi, and cultivation already made up for the deficiencies of his surroundings.

Conversely, a cultivator of the early Heaven Rank could repair a second-grade medicine cauldron in a place where spiritual energy was utterly abundant—the environment compensating for what he himself lacked!

Reading this, Wei Zhao was suddenly delighted! He had assumed the Divine Farmer's Cauldron was an ancient divine artifact, and that repairing it would demand extraordinarily high strength—at the very least, he had thought, a Heaven Dao expert would be required.

But to his surprise, artifact menders enjoyed this advantage: the surrounding environment could supplement one's own strength. The heaven-and-earth spiritual energy inside the jade pendant's space was, presumably, inexhaustibly abundant—which meant that no matter how high-grade a medicine cauldron Wei Zhao wished to repair, he could succeed, so long as he did it in that environment!

Of course, this rule applied only to the repair of medicine cauldrons. Repairing other things naturally carried other conditions, not entirely the same.

Wei Zhao then continued to the following requirements: to repair a medicine cauldron, one had to have mystic iron, refined steel, and blue crystal powder. It seemed these three materials had become the most basic stuff of both artifact-forging and artifact-mending.

Fortunately, Wei Zhao currently had all three in hand, and in some quantity, too. They would serve.

What remained was a passage of mental cultivation formulae, used to condense and refine the forging fire—but the formulae were fiendishly complicated, enough to make Wei Zhao's eyes swim! Still, judging by his past experience, he could already condense the forging fire the way he had condensed the jade pendant's space; since the spirit essence necklace had already set a successful precedent, Wei Zhao had no need to study those impossibly complex formulae—so long as the end result was the same, that was enough.

"Jingjing, I'm more or less ready to repair it. Stand guard for me. Don't disturb me—I need to calm my mind and repair it!" Wei Zhao said to Han Jingyi, who sat nearby typing code ceaselessly on a laptop.

"Mm-hm, Wei Zhao, go ahead and repair it. Jingjing's busy over here too! I expect we'll both be at it for a while!" Han Jingyi said.

Wei Zhao nodded, sat cross-legged on the bed, and entered the jade pendant's space! Since his true body remained outside, from the outside there appeared to be nothing unusual at all! Once inside the jade pendant's space, Wei Zhao suddenly discovered that the medicine cauldron had been placed in the condensed space within the jade pendant, while he himself was in the space on the side with Jiao Yazi and Gui Dongxi!

The two spaces existed independently and did not connect, which left Wei Zhao at something of a loss—it seemed the Divine Farmer's Cauldron could not be brought over to this side?

This discovery gave Wei Zhao an immediate headache. It was completely different from what he had imagined, so he could not help asking, "Elder Jiao, let me ask you—can the things in the space condensed by my jade pendant be brought over here?"

"No!" Jiao Yazi answered.

"..." Wei Zhao's hopes died on the spot. If he could not bring it over, what use was it?

"But your primordial spirit can go there!" Jiao Yazi's next words sent Wei Zhao into transports of joy: "Your true body cannot enter, but your primordial spirit can, no problem."

"Then... how does my primordial spirit get in?" Wei Zhao could not help asking.

"Very simple. All you need is your will. Think of your primordial spirit going over, and it will go over," Elder Jiao said.

Wei Zhao's will stirred faintly, and sure enough, his primordial spirit entered the neighboring space! From behind the mountain of piled-up energy stones, Wei Zhao found the broken Divine Farmer's Cauldron, then sat cross-legged, readied the materials, and following the methods recorded in the fragmentary scroll of artifact-mending arts, began to repair the Divine Farmer's Cauldron...

Time flew by. With his previous experience condensing the jade pendant's space and the spirit essence necklace, Wei Zhao found this round of mending smooth and familiar.

Add to that the boundless heaven-and-earth spiritual energy within the jade pendant's space, and the repair process went remarkably smoothly...

Wei Zhao's heart was pounding with excitement. Previously, even after he obtained the Divine Farmer's Cauldron, he could only look at it, not use it—and he had passed right by the replica of the Divine Farmer's Cauldron in the ancient tomb, a fact that had left him deeply frustrated.

But now everything was different. Wei Zhao could repair the Divine Farmer's Cauldron with ease, which made up, in some measure, for his earlier regrets!

Of course, he had You Panhu to thank for this as well—had he not been given this broken Divine Farmer's Cauldron, he would never have had the chance to repair it...

It was not until the small hours that Wei Zhao finished repairing the Divine Farmer's Cauldron. The process had been nothing if not tortuous, yet it had gone fairly smoothly, and the small problems that arose had all stayed within controllable bounds.

"Jingjing, the Divine Farmer's Cauldron is repaired—take a look!" Wei Zhao emerged from the jade pendant's space, bringing the cauldron out with him.

"Oh? It's fixed?" Han Jingyi lifted her head from the code and glanced at Wei Zhao. "You're really amazing, Wei Zhao—you can repair a medicine cauldron just by sitting still. Are you an automatic repair machine?"

"Heh, the cauldron was on me, and I repaired it a special way. I'll explain it to you slowly when there's time." The method by which Wei Zhao had repaired the cauldron inside the jade pendant's space was far too complicated, and he could not explain it clearly in a moment, so he decided to tell Han Jingyi later.

"All right, then. Let me first look into the matter of remodeling the Divine Farmer's Cauldron." Han Jingyi did not press further. If Wei Zhao did not speak of it, she would not pry—that was the virtue of Han Jingyi.