Cultivation Struggles of a Lowly Fox

Aiko observed Old Lei as he wielded that big hammer with ease.

”You can’t use Divine Sense during forging?” Aiko suddenly asked him, interrupting his concentration.

Old Lei paused. ”How will you build a house when you don’t know how to do it? Sure, the house might look fine, but will it last?”

”So it’s a difference of experience? No, maybe grasping the essence of how Forging Cultivation works?” Aiko nodded slowly.

Old Lei raised his eyebrow. He didn’t expect this little Fox to be so intelligent.

’Who said that all Foxes are lustful whores.’ He clicked his tongue as he hammered the iron into shape.

”And you use this to understand the material, so that you can use Divine Sense later, but what if that material is tricky?” Aiko stared at him, hammering in constant rhythm.

”You mix materials together, so it’s easier to handle. If you are looking for the tricky part inside the material, then you need to have more control over your Divine Sense.” Old Lei glanced at the young Fox. This would be the first time that his appraisal was way off.

”So you can overpower it, but won’t it have a negative effect on its durability?” Aiko played with the metals nearby. She had never seen so many colourful metals before and was curious where he got them.

”Certainly, that’s why you usually mix several ingredients in order to create Treasures.” Old Lei explained as he worked the iron.

”But what would be the difference between completed work with Divine Sense that is stable and one that is not?” Aiko nudged him. She felt like this was kind of like Alchemy in a sense. You just didn’t count your breathing and had to make the material soft enough that you could mould it, but not soft enough that it would turn into liquid.

”The stable one would turn into proper Treasure, while the unstable one would turn into Cursed Treasure.” Old Lei answered the curious Fox with some apprehension.

”The Cursed Treasures have negative effects. They can range from itchy ears to straight-up death wish, so they are treated as cursed objects and not used.” Old Lei added, so that the young Fox didn’t try anything foolish.

”I see... but doesn’t that mean it would empower the positive effects? There needs to be some kind of balance, right?” Aiko blinked at him carefully.

”I don’t know. I have never forged Cursed Treasure.” Old Lei shook his head, and Fang Jia was overly excited.

’I can’t believe that Old Lei would admit that he didn’t know about something! Go Aiko, go!’ Fang Jia smirked from ear to ear happily.

”Whenever I would notice things not going well, I would stop. You can learn bad habits if you finish things and they turn out cursed.” Old Lei glanced at Fang Jia. He would give her proper homework later.

”I see...” Aiko nodded. It was very similar to Alchemy, but it seemed like there was less danger compared to it.

”What are the possible dangers during forging?” Aiko asked him out of curiosity.

”The main one would be the explosion of the Forging Cauldron. While the walls are thick and everything, if you are not careful, it will still explode.” Old Lei shook his head.

”But the main issue would be consumption.” He warned the young Fox.

”Consumption?” Aiko tilted her head.

”Unlike Alchemy, where you use somewhat low temperatures. Forging Cultivation needs ridiculous, but stable temperatures. As such, the sheer concentration and consumption of Qi is on another level.” Old Lei explained.

He then added. ”So while Alchemy is quite renewable and easy to get into, Forging Cultivation is the complete opposite.” He shook his head. ”You can’t grow materials, and most of the time, you need to look for them. That comes with the inherent danger of sudden death. Moreover, just because you find those materials doesn’t mean they are usable, as they need to be purified.” It was a taxing and very expensive occupation, but one that was very sought after.

There were a limited number of Cultivators that would be able to join Forging Cultivation, and even fewer that had the means to maintain this expensive path.

Thus, all Treasures were inherently more expensive, and if you wanted your own weapons, it would cost you even more.

”I see, unlike Herbs, there is no way to grow metal...” Aiko narrowed her eyes. ”Can’t you just create metal from Qi?”

”It’s definitely possible, but the amount of Qi you need is not something one can easily do.” Old Lei shook his head.

”Hmmmm...” Aiko paused. ”You forgot to hammer that part, it’s uneven. This part doesn’t have enough heat, and this part has too much heat. Moreover...”

She started to disassemble his smithing skills, which prompted a glare from him.

”I know. I’m just testing you.” He wasn’t. He reached a point where he stagnated, and the more time he spent at that point, the worse his skills got. ’I have aged.’ He looked at the slightly uneven blade and sighed.

”How can you teach when you can’t even do simple things?” Aiko tilted her head.

”While I have become rusty, I’m still Forging Ancestor!” Old Lei angrily glared at the young Fox.

”Is that so?” Aiko tilted her head. ”But wouldn’t that mean that Fang Jia would pick bad habits from you?”

Old Lei suddenly got all fussy and kicked both of them out.

”Do you still want to learn the Forging Cultivation path?” Fang Jia suddenly asked Aiko. She was in a good mood, since this was the first time she had seen him so fussy.

”Definitely, we lack proper Treasures.” Aiko nodded slowly. The first thing she would have to do is acquire blacksmithing skills so that she could understand smithing better.

She walked back with Fang Jia, who hung on her arm. She was like a panda wrapped around her, but Aiko didn’t mind.

”You need to first finish your Cauldron.” Fang Jia suddenly said, and Aiko stopped.

”I don’t have to. I’m not aiming for Treasures yet.” Aiko shook her head, but then she paused. ’Damn! I was almost swept! I can’t stay here for that long!’ She wanted to return and finish those Massage Chairs, so that their income would increase.

Aiko noticed that Forging Cultivation was more expensive than Herbs, since there was no way to create metals, for now.

As such, she would have to spend a lot more Spirit Stones on it than on Alchemy.

Moreover, selling those Treasures would also be an issue, since the auction was still locked for them.

”I will do basic smithing.” Aiko suddenly said. Her Divine Sense was good enough that she didn’t need to hammer, but she would still try it out.

She was curious about what kind of effects it would have on her. Would it help her? Was it just a waste of time? Aiko didn’t know, but she was looking forward to it.

...

Aiko sat down at a table with Fang Jia. They brought some basic, cheap metals, which were fine with Aiko.

She was not looking for anything expensive, just something that she could use to test things.

’I want to test the difference between having the given Skill and not.’ Aiko narrowed her eyes.

Testing what kind of impact her Skills had on her, and haven’t, was very important at her current stage.

If everything could be solved by Skills, she would splurge a bit of her Skill Points to gain the necessary Skills to make things easier for her.

Picking that metal, Aiko used her Divine Sense to lift it up.

”What are you doing?” Fang Jia was curious about what Aiko would do with it.

”Observing.” Aiko activated both [#### Eyes] and [Moon’s Eyes]. This allowed her to get the general structure of the metal.

There were dots that connected to each other. Hundreds of thousands of those dots were in a single small piece of metal.

They were arranged sporadically, without a sense or reason.

’What would happen if I could arrange them?’ Aiko tilted her head. She summoned her Grandpa to help her with it.

Grandpa Flame appeared, but didn’t say anything. They had a close connection with each other, so he understood Aiko’s intentions.

’I didn’t think she could see so much.’ Dragons had their own eyes that could see through things, but just because they saw those things didn’t mean they liked to create things.

Because they saw things others couldn’t, they always tried to make everything perfect, but that was not always possible.

More often than not, you would end up with an imperfect product that would anger you.

It got to the point that some Dragons would even lose their sense of reason out of that anger.

As such, there were only a few Dragons that forged or created things in general.

Grandpa Flame slowly heated the metal, and Aiko used her Divine Sense to mould it into different shapes.

The moulding was very slow and inconsistent, as the temperature was low, but once you raised the temperature, it turned even worse.

The small dots would move around much quicker, making it harder to properly align.

To add insult to the injury, Aiko also didn’t know what was the best alignment she could have.

This made things significantly more difficult, and it took a lot of time.

...

”Vicious Jade Fox.” Nightingale called out.

”Mm?” Aiko didn’t even bother to look around, but that didn’t surprise anyone.

Around here, there were dozens of floating metals, slowly melting, shaping, re-shaping, and so on.

It was a sight to behold, but one questioned her Divine Sense. Was she overworking her brain, or was this her natural state? Her calm and collected demeanour made things even more difficult to guess.

”Patriarch would like to talk to you about the sealing process.” Nightingale said slowly.

”Hmmmm.” Aiko was quite dismissive, since she was collecting her research material.

”Is that a no?” Nightingale was slightly confused.

”I will be there later.” Aiko dismissed everything around her, since she was this close to realising something incredible.

She was this close, yet so far from it. Whenever she would get close to it, it would feel like she was hitting some kind of wall.

So Aiko’s ’reasonable’ assumption was to create this kind of simulation dozens of times to speed this process up.

It was quite taxing on her mind as she was trying to calculate and observe all of them, but she could feel that ’wall’ slowly breaking down.

She was this close...!