Inside the assessment area.
Su Yu quickly settled on the most perfect forging method in his mind.
But just as he was preparing to purify the materials, he suddenly remembered something.
This was his first time forging, and he didn’t have a forging hammer.
Su Yu turned around and looked at the elderly examiner sitting in the rocking chair.
“Examiner.”
“Do you have a forging hammer here?”
“Could I borrow one?”
The moment he said this, the elderly examiner, who had been dozing off, abruptly opened his eyes.
He stared at Su Yu as if he were looking at an alien.
His face was filled with astonishment and speechlessness.
“Borrow a hammer?!”
The elderly examiner actually laughed in anger.
“Kid, are you here to make a joke?”
“A forging hammer is a forgemaster’s second life! Who the hell would lend his own hammer to someone else?!”
“You didn’t even bring the tool you make your living with, yet you came to take the exam?”
The old man impatiently waved his hand.
“Shoo, shoo, shoo!”
“There are standard forging hammers for sale in the basic materials section downstairs. One hundred thousand yuan each!”
“Why don’t you go buy one yourself?!”
“Stop disturbing this old man’s sleep!”
Su Yu thought it over and was just about to go buy a hammer when—
“Click.”
The glass door to the assessment area was pushed open from outside.
“It is rather presumptuous to come without even a hammer.”
An old yet powerful voice rang out from the doorway.
With his hands clasped behind his back, Zong Yan strode inside.
Hearing the voice, the elderly examiner instinctively turned his head.
The next second—
The old man shuddered violently and sprang straight up from his rocking chair!
“E-Elder Zong?!”
The examiner’s voice trembled. He hurriedly bowed at a perfect ninety-degree angle, his attitude reaching the utmost level of reverence.
“What brings you personally to the assessment area?!”
Zong Yan paid no attention to the examiner.
His gaze remained fixed on Su Yu.
“Young man.”
Zong Yan walked up to Su Yu and looked him over from head to toe.
The admiration in his eyes grew increasingly intense.
Yet on the surface, he deliberately kept a stern expression, putting on an imposing and severe demeanor.
“In the path of forging, the greatest taboos are impatience and inadequate preparation.”
“However…”
“This old man happens to be in a good mood today, and you seem rather agreeable.”
Zong Yan flipped his wrist.
Voom—!
An incomparably terrifying aura, heavy and bottomless as an abyss, instantly filled the entire assessment area!
Even the temperature of the surrounding air seemed to be forcibly suppressed in that moment!
A massive forging hammer appeared in Zong Yan’s hand. It was dark gold from head to handle, with countless complicated formation patterns carved across its surface!
The hammerhead was as large as a water tank!
The handle was thick, like the backbone of a dragon!
Merely held in Zong Yan’s hand, it caused the surrounding space to emit faint groans, as if it could barely bear the weight!
A national-guardian-grade weapon!
The Mountain-Shaking Hammer!
“Borrow this hammer for your use.”
Zong Yan handed the Mountain-Shaking Hammer to Su Yu, a sly hint of testing flashing through his eyes.
This hammer weighed tens of thousands of tons!
It was an unparalleled treasure that he normally used to forge the core components of national-guardian-grade mechs.
Extremely precious!
He had brought it out not because he genuinely expected Su Yu to use it for forging.
Rather, he wanted to use the terrifying weight and pressure of this national-guardian-grade weapon to teach this arrogant kid, who had come without even bringing his tools, a lesson.
He wanted Su Yu to understand that there were heights beyond the heavens and depths beyond the earth.
Once the kid was crushed beneath the hammer’s weight, left red-faced and thoroughly humiliated, Zong Yan would then graciously produce an ordinary hammer for him and offer a few pointers.
A perfect script.
He would establish his authority while extending a favor.
The corners of Zong Yan’s lips curled into an almost imperceptible smile as he watched Su Yu expectantly.
Su Yu looked at the enormous dark-gold forging hammer held out before him.
A trace of surprise flashed through his deep eyes.
What a fine hammer.
The formation patterns were somewhat crude, but the material was indeed top-tier starcore meteorite iron.
“Thank you.”
Su Yu did not stand on ceremony.
He simply extended his right hand and grasped the thick hammer handle.
Whoosh—!
The heavy Mountain-Shaking Hammer was like a piece of weightless foam in Su Yu’s hand.
He lifted it effortlessly.
In fact—
Wanting to test how it felt, Su Yu even held the hammer one-handed and smoothly spun out a dazzling flourish in midair!
Wuuu—!!!
The hammer’s tens of thousands of tons, accelerated to such a speed, instantly tore through the air!
The violent pressure of the wind was like a Level Twelve hurricane. It blew the elderly examiner’s beard straight upward, nearly tossing him off his feet!
Silence.
The stern, sly expression on Zong Yan’s face froze.
He stared blankly at the Mountain-Shaking Hammer, which Su Yu was swinging as if it were a toy. His mind instantly short-circuited.
At that moment—
Su Yu suddenly stopped moving as well.
He looked at the giant hammer in his hand, radiating terrifying pressure.
Then he looked at the dumbfounded Zong Yan standing across from him.
A trace of awkwardness flashed through his eyes.
Damn it.
Su Yu cursed inwardly.
The dark-gold divine blood flowing through his body now amounted to one hundred million points, and his physical strength was comparable to that of a Martial Emperor.
To him, tens of thousands of tons really were no different from a feather.
But the problem was—
To keep people from discovering the truth, he had disguised his outward vital-energy value.
It was only one thousand points!
A vital-energy value of one thousand was roughly equivalent to that of an ordinary Martial Master.
At most, his strength should have amounted to a few thousand or ten thousand pounds!
A Martial Master with only ten thousand pounds of strength—
had just lifted a national-guardian-grade hammer weighing tens of thousands of tons with one hand, then casually and effortlessly spun it through the air?!
Newton’s coffin lid was probably about to be blasted into outer space!
This—
was indeed rather awkward!
“What’s wrong?”
Lin Xiaoxiao, who had been standing outside the glass door, noticed the strange atmosphere inside. Unable to hold back, she pushed the door open and poked half her body through, asking with concern,
“Is there something wrong with the hammer?”
Hearing Lin Xiaoxiao’s voice, Zong Yan finally recovered from his extreme shock.
He suddenly sucked in a cold breath!
The way he looked at Su Yu had changed completely. He was no longer looking at a genius.
He was looking at a living monster!
Something wrong with the hammer?
What could possibly be wrong with the hammer?! That was this old man’s national-guardian-grade bonded weapon!
The one with a problem was this kid!
Zong Yan never considered the possibility that Su Yu had concealed some peerless cultivation.
After all, no matter how young this boy was, even if he had begun cultivating from the womb, his vital energy could at most have reached the Grandmaster realm.
What was more, as a Saint-level powerhouse, Zong Yan’s senses were extraordinarily sharp. The vital-energy fluctuations emanating from this kid truly were only at one thousand points!
Therefore—
There could only be one truth!
“Natural divine strength!!!”
Zong Yan roared inwardly, his blood boiling with excitement!
“Was it the Primordial Tyrant Body? Or the legendary Heavenly Bloodline?!”
“His vital-energy value is clearly only one thousand points, yet his physical strength is so terrifying that he can completely ignore the weight of tens of thousands of tons!”
“This is simply an unparalleled divine physique born for forging!!!”
Zong Yan’s eyes reddened with excitement, and both his hands trembled violently.
He had struck gold!
No!
This was a sign that the Ancestor had manifested—directly dropping the future of Great Xia’s forging world right in front of him!
Exceptional talent! Terrifying concentration! And, on top of that, natural divine strength rarely seen once in ten thousand years!
If this kid didn’t learn forging, it would be nothing short of a criminal waste of his gifts!
Faced with Zong Yan’s fanatical gaze, which was as ravenous as a wolf’s and almost seemed ready to devour him, Su Yu fell silent for a moment.
Since the other party hadn’t pressed him for an explanation, he couldn’t be bothered to offer one.
He hefted the Mountain-Shaking Hammer in one hand, lightly weighing it twice.
Then he offered a heartfelt compliment.
“This forging hammer…”
“Is truly exceptional.”
With that, Su Yu turned around and once again faced the fist-sized chunk of star-pattern steel ore.
The small talk was over.
It was time to get down to business.
He turned around.
At that moment, Su Yu’s ten-billion-year muscle memory fully awakened.
There was no flashy warm-up.
No complicated, drawn-out pattern-guidance process.
Su Yu merely raised the Mountain-Shaking Hammer in his hand.
His breathing somehow fell into astonishing synchronization with the leaping flames in the forge!
His waist sank slightly.
The great dragon of his spine suddenly unfurled!
The thousand points of qi and blood he had deliberately suppressed at the Martial Master level surged along an extremely strange yet flawlessly perfect route, instantly coursing through his entire right arm!
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
to panic—he has a system. As long as an investment target dies, he can claim a reward. And since he is immortal, the one thing he has plenty of is time. ... Countless years later. “Immortal Emperor of Longevity? I invested in him.” “Supreme Celestial Venerable? I invested in him.” “Undying Empress? I invested in her.” “...” “Heh. Once they’ve all died, even the Heavenly Dao will have to kneel and call me Dad.”
m back to his original world. In the end, he realized he had overthought things. [Hey, why is Shen Manni, the female lead, acting strange? Shouldn't she be fawning over the male lead at this point?] [Zhou Qiaoqiao, are you sick? Weren't you supposed to break off your engagement today?] [Damn it! An Youyi, please do your job as an undercover agent and sell my information to the protagonist, you idiot!] ... At this moment, Xu Mo himself didn't know that these female leads had already heard his inner thoughts. Then they decided not to play by the rules. Xu Mo: Please respect my profession as the big villain!
his freshman year, Su Bai accidentally bound the "Indulgence Tycoon System." 【Sleeping in? Reward: +$1,000】 【Spent $288 at a street barbecue stall? Cashback: +$2,880】 【Dropped $14,396 on in-game skins? Special reward unlocked: A brand-new Porsche Panamera!】 Luxury cars, penthouses, corporate shares, financial empires… College life was all about living freely and doing whatever he pleased! … When the adorably naive academic genius faced family medical bills and financial struggles, Su Bai waved his hand dismissively: "Your future is on me." "Wuwu~ Big Brother is so good to me! I’ll become a scientist to repay you!" When the genius girl got bullied by a shady professor? Su Bai casually dropped a billion-dollar investment, forcing the university to grovel and beg for her return. A company’s funding chain collapsing? Su Bai smirked—cash was the one thing he’d never run out of. Years later, when people traced the rise of the AI prodigy beauty, who was the man behind her success? Not just that—Su Bai also became the tsundere campus belle’s unattainable dream, the contrast senior’s daily necessity, and the beautiful counselor’s emotional anchor…
