Cave Refuge-Chapter 315 - 292 Preparations Before the First Weapon Refinement

After the attack of the Giant Scorpion, Dong Tianyu also realized his deficiencies in real combat. While controlling multiple firearms simultaneously with the Art of Controlling Objects was powerful, it was something he preferred others not to see.

The world hadn’t yet reached the point in novels where Spirit Energy had revived and a large number of superhumans had emerged among the survivors, so for the sake of leading a peaceful life, the skills Dong Tianyu showed in public were generally a bit stronger than others, but not beyond their understanding.

However, it was precisely because of this that Dong Tianyu didn’t have good strategies for group combat when faced with situations like the recent one, where ordinary firearms struggled to penetrate the thick shell of the Giant Scorpion.

Therefore, after the camp became secure, Dong Tianyu began to consider preparations for future battles. As long as there were no superhumans on Blue Star, or Martial Artists hadn’t reached the Middle Martial level, Dong Tianyu would try not to reveal his Cultivation techniques.

If that were the case, it meant excluding the ability to cast spells. Of course, Dong Tianyu wouldn’t use them in public, but as long as his Cultivation Level was reached, he would still practice when it was time for cultivation.

After all, having a gun in hand but not using it and having no gun to use may seem to have the same outcome, but in reality, the situations are vastly different.

Since casting spells was off the table, there weren’t many tactics left. Although the black and white dumplings in the Cave were being well-fed by the Canaries and had grown plump and strong, in the end, they were still ordinary beasts. Even Martial Artists with a bit more real combat experience could easily take them down, not to mention Inner Breath Realm Martial Artists.

Dong Tianyu had considered using the Giant Scorpion for Gu Refining, but after some thought, he ultimately abandoned the idea, as he preferred to strengthen himself with his own power instead of relying on such creatures.

After much thought, he realized that he would still rely on the multitude of skills of Cultivation to solve this issue.

Filling Dong Tianyu’s deficiency in group combat was actually quite simple, whether it was Elixir Refining (poison), Refining Puppets, or even Artifact Refining and Talisman crafting, all could easily solve the problem.

Using poison in public required no explanation; after all, injuring enemies with poison has always been a common tactic since ancient times.

Refining Puppets could be publicly claimed to be newly developed intelligent robots.

Artifact Refining hardly needed to be mentioned; any old excuse would do to pass it off.

As for crafting talismans, simply cloaking them with an external shell would transform them into throwable weapons.

Dong Tianyu thought for a long time and eventually decided to start with Artifact Refining.

After all, whether it involves Alchemists, Artifact Refiners, or Grinder Forgemasters, while the names differ across systems, their actual work is not much different.

While spending some Survival Points in the Cave could directly convert other types of items into those of the mystical kind, the results of such conversions were out of Dong Tianyu’s control. Moreover, the converted items didn’t always satisfy him.

Furthermore, the larger and more functionally powerful the item, the more Survival Points it cost to convert, so in the end, Dong Tianyu decided to learn Artifact Refining himself.

The price for basic Artifact Refining in the Scripture Hall was not high, but the price for the comprehensive guide to basic materials was quite steep.

Initially, Dong Tianyu wasn’t keen on buying this guide to basic materials. After all, with Blue Star in its current state—not to mention Pengcheng—the entire world was still at the early stages of Spirit Energy revival, so there wouldn’t be many items imbued with spiritual properties.

In Dong Tianyu’s view, Blue Star was unlikely to produce anything he could use in the short term, so buying the book on materials was practically irrelevant.

However, Dong Tianyu did not expect that after flipping through the basic Artifact Refining guide he had just acquired, he would be driven to return to the Scripture Hall to purchase the comprehensive guide to basic materials.

It was only after using Divine Sense to read through the entire book that Dong Tianyu’s face showed a sudden understanding.

The book did not contain any elaborate forging techniques or other confusing elements. Its content was exactly as its title suggested.

It introduced common materials found in the Cultivation World. But unlike common introductions that are followed by a bunch of meaningless chatter, this book went in-depth to analyze the characteristics of each material. After becoming familiar with this book, even if Dong Tianyu left Blue Star and went to another world, he could use the characteristics of the materials to identify them by their names from Blue Star.

Beyond that, the book also discussed the relationships between materials, such as the similarities between metals and how to purify materials by removing impurities.

After reading the book, although Dong Tianyu had not personally crafted anything yet, he had at least come to a preliminary understanding of Artifact Refining.

He casually pulled out two steel columns from the ruins of a collapsed workshop and then hid inside the Cave to begin smelting them with Spiritual Fire.

Like alchemy, Artifact Refining requires a high-quality flame; common Mortal Fire is hardly enough to melt the materials in hand.

Therefore, no matter what is being refined, a special kind of flame is needed to assist.

Whether it is for Artifact Refining or alchemy, special flames are needed during practice, but normal Cultivators don’t have techniques like Aubrey’s, which allow him to absorb special flames into his Cultivation Technique to use at will later.

A typical Cultivator wanting to refine elixirs or artifacts has only two options. The first is to use the fire from within, like the flames most commonly used by beginners and the majority of practitioners.