Chaos stone

In the Bai clan, there was a large volcano. On the slopes of the volcano, there stoop two very large buildings on opposite sides of the volcano.

The two buildings were the blacksmithing pavilion and the alchemy pavilion. These were the place where the alchemists and the blacksmiths of the Bai clan came to work. In the early stages of alchemy and blacksmithing, you could generally get by by using fire stones. But as you started to refine tougher and tougher materials you would need to use higher temperatures. Temperatures only the volcano could provide.

And the stone Bai Yun collected from the secret abode was definitely something that required very high temperatures.

Bai Yun collected some clan points from his father and left for the blacksmithing pavilion. One he reached there he booked a high grade room for a couple of months. The rooms in the blacksmithing and alchemy pavillions were divided into low, mid, high, supreme and great grades depending on the temperature of the lava inside it. Bai Yun was not sure just how long it would take him to accomplish what he was trying to do. After all, he had only heard about it before. He had never attempted it before.

But he knew that once he was successful, his strength would certainly rise by a large amount. So he had no choice but to try it. If it looked as if it would take too long, then he could just drop it and try again later.

Bai Yun then went to the room he had booked. It was a large hexagonal room. In the middle of it lay a small hole out of which a red light was coming out. Bai Yun peeked out into the hole, only to get hit by a sharp wave of hot air. There, at the bottom of the hole, he could see dense lava flowing about.

Bai Yun took off his clothes and stood there in just his shorts. The temperature of the room was too high to wear too many clothes. Also he did not want to damage them in case he made a mistake.

And then he took out the piece of stone that he had gotten from the secret abode.

The piece of stone that he held was a chaos stone.

Chaos stones were pieces of stones that were imbued with chaos qi. Chaos qi was the purest and most powerful form of qi. It is said that when the universe was first formed it was made of only of chaos qi. And then later it decomposed to form the various types of qi we see in the world. It could be said that the chaos qi was the progenitor of all energy in the world.

As a result, it was extremely powerful. No one below the immortal step would be able to utilize it, and even then they would barely be able to. Chaos qi was mainly used by god step cultivators to train.

But the chaos qi had almost disappeared from the universe. It was possible for god step cultivators to make it by themselves. Otherwise it was extremely rare.

And the way chaos qi existed in the universe was mostly in the form of chaos stones. These were pieces of stone that had chaos qi trapped in them. Each piece of stone could hold a particular amount of chaos qi and it could be extracted and absorbed for cultivation. There were even places were chaos stones were used as currency.

Bai Yun looked at the chaos stone in his hand. The stone that he held had had all of its chaos qi extracted. It was only a stone that once held chaos qi rather than a true chaos stone. If this was a true chaos stone, its value would have been almost unimaginable. And Bai Yun would have been completely helpless in front of it.

Usually, when the chaos qi was extracted from a chaos stone, it would shatter. It was extremely rare that the stone would remain intact even after the extraction of chaos qi. It could be due to luck or even due to an extremely careful method of extraction.

Most people would not know of any use for used chaos stones. But Bai Yun studied under a titled god of smithing from a different universe. He was a person who chased after the pinnacle of smithing and lived in the void, a place beyond any universe. He had come up with a strange hypothesis. Chaos stones had contained chaos qi for a long time. Thus they must have some of its aura or property. If it is possible to extract the aura of the chaos qi, it could theoretically strengthen a weapon.

And the theory was right. Though only he and his disciples knew how to do it though. When Bai Yun studied under him, one of the first things he had to do was to extract and meld the chaos aura from the used chaos stones into a weapon.

But when he studied under him Bai Yun was already a peak god realm cultivator. It literally took him a thought to extract the chaos aura. But now he no longer had that ability. He would have to use the blacksmithing skills he had learned in order to extract and use the chaos aura.

Bai Yun took the stone and took a hammer available in the room. There were quite a few tools that were placed in the room for the use of blacksmithing.

Bai Yun put the stone in the anvil. He then took the hammer and started to hit the stone at specific points on the stone.

Bai Yun was using a technique he knew called the nine nine hammering technique. It was a powerful blacksmithing technique that used repeated hits on a material to create microscopic cracks inside it to break and refine it. It had numerous variations, ones including only nine hits to ninety nine hits to nine hundred and ninety nine hits and so on. The stronger the material, the more hits were required to break it.

After days, the piece of stone finally broke down and shattered into pieces. But he was not satisfied with this. He picked up each of the pieces and continued to break them apart again. Bai Yun only stopped when the chaos stone was finally broken down into a fine powder.

Once the entire stone had been ground down to powder, it was time to begin the extraction process. Bai Yun collected the all the tiny pieces, not missing even the smallest bit, and put them in a large pot. He then slowly heating the powder until it started to turn red.

Bai Yun then took out the sword given to him by his father. The chaos aura required a certain level for the materials or they would not be able to withstand it. The only item Bai Yun had that could handle chaos aura was the sword. He then put it directly into the lava at the highest temperature.

Slowly the sword heated up and turned crimson. Bai Yun kept the sword there and knelt by the pool for hours. As he watched, the sword finally started to melt.

Bai Yun pulled the sword out at that juncture. He then sprinkled a tiny amount of the powder of the chaos stone that he had prepared onto the sword on both sides. Once that was done, he picked up the hammer and started to use the nine nine hammering technique once again. This time to hammer the powder into the sword.

Each powder on the sword was struck exactly nine times. With each strike, the powder would break apart a little and release the chaos aura it held into the swod. Once he was done with one piece, he would work on the next.

Thus one strike at a time he slowly started to reinforce the sword. When the sword cooled down, he would once again dip it into the magma to heat it up. Thus the cycle continued and Bai Yun continued to work without rest. The only times he slept or took rest was when the sword was immersed in the lava to heat it up.

Days passed by as Bai Yun ingrained the chaos aura into his sword. Finally, it was completed after he used up almost half of the chaos powder. It wasn't that he didn't want to use more, but the materials that the sword was made of was too weak. They may be considered as top tier in the howling wolf world, but they were not very powerful in the context of the universe. They couldn't handle any more chaos aura.

Bai Yun took out the sword and stared at it. Thanks to his special hammering technique, its strength and sharpness had risen even without the chaos aura. Not only that, but it had also transformed a small amount. What initially started out as a silvery sword had turned grey.

When he saw the remaining powder, Bai Yun stared at it for a while. He didn't know what to do with them. None of the other weapons that he had was good enough for the chaos stone powder. They might not be able to handle it and could easily break.

As he stood there pondering, a sudden thought came to him. The purpose of the second step of body tempering, muscle tempering, was to use the body as a raw material and temper it like you do a mineral. Bai Yun thought about whether it was possible to use the chaos stone powder in body tempering.

For a long time, Bai Yun just stood there, staring at the powder. It was a crazy idea and anyone else who attempted it would certainly fail. But Bai Yun was not anyone else. He was confident in his skill and ability.

After a while, a look of determination flashed through his eyes. He removed his clothes and covered his body evenly with the powder.

Once he did so, Bai Yun used his soul tendrils to grab hold of the hammer. He then picked it up and struck it towards his own body. The next second Bai Yun grit his teeth in pain as he was hammered.

Clenching his teeth Bai Yun continued to hammer himself. With each strike, each piece reduced itself and released a small portion of chaos aura, which Bai Yun trapped with his god sense.

Bai Yun only stopped when he was too tired and need to sleep. He knew that he did not have much time, and the method he was testing may not work. So he tried to do it at the maximum speed.

Soon time passed. Only the sound of a hammer hitting the flesh and Bai Yun's grunts were heard in the room. He slowly picked up his pace as his body build a tolerance to the hammering. During his recovery after the auction house incident, he had been fed a great many medicines. Some of them had been hidden in his body and not activated even by his god sense. As he continued to hammer himself, the hidden medicinal effects slowly seeped out, and slowly made Bai Yun's body even sturdier.

Finally, after days of torture, every little piece of powder was used up. Bai Yun had completely absorbed every drop of chaos aura in the powder.

He then started to run the body tempering technique, Undying Body and the qi cultivation technique, Way of Harmony. He split the chaos aura between the two paths and started to cultivate. Cultivating two techniques was not difficult for him thanks to his soul tendrils.

One by one, Bai Yun completed the skin sewing patterns on his skin. At the same time, Bai Yun's cultivation slowly crept up. Along with this a wisp of chaos aura slowly infused itself into Bai Yun's body and qi. It did not increase his strength, but it did make his cultivation much more stable and reduced the chances of instability due to a weak foundation and fast cultivation.

Slowly days passed. And then one day Bai Yun's tightly closed eyes snapped open. A small grin lingered on his lips.

His body cultivation had increased by leaps and bounds. He had reached the nine pattern realm in skin sewing, only one step away from the grand completion of the skin sewing realm. This meant that his entire body was now covered with sewing patterns. And every one of his patterns was reinforced with chaos aura, making them even stronger.

And his qi cultivation had reached the seventh stage of qi condensation realm. This probably made him invincible in the qi condensation realm.

He had completed all he set out and more.

It was time to leave.