Cave Refuge-Chapter 316 - 292 Preparations Before the First Weapon Refinement_2
This common flame is known as Spiritual Fire, which generally uses a cultivator’s internal Spirit Power as fuel. The more Spirit Power there is, the longer the fire burns; the purer the Spirit Power, the higher the temperature of the Spiritual Fire when it burns.
Theoretically, the higher the Cultivation Level, the stronger the flame that appears, but in reality, cultivators with higher cultivation levels rarely use this method for alchemy or Artifact Refining.
Instead, they choose the second method, which is to use furnace cauldrons to refine items.
Although a furnace cauldron may look like a simple stove, a true furnace cauldron actually has its own universe inside.
A true furnace cauldron has many formations inscribed within it and also has the capability to collect and store Spiritual Fire, such as the most common Core of Earth Fire and Celestial Fire.
Of course, when Blue Star once lacked spirit energy, these flames had no special effects, but now, as the concentration of Spirit Energy in the air continues to rise, it may not be the same as before in the future.
Dong Tianyu currently has neither a furnace cauldron nor the opportunity to collect Spiritual Fire, so if he wants to refine artifacts, he can only use the first method, igniting his own Spirit Power to perform Artifact Refining.
In order to make the burning of Spirit Power more efficient, Dong Tianyu also spent some Survival Points to learn the Spirit Ignition Technique used in Artifact Refining.
After all the preparation work was more or less complete, Dong Tianyu found an excuse to leave the camp, ensuring that no one was around, he entered the Cave mansion.
In the Cave, he found a relatively open space. After casting the Spirit Ignition Technique, a small flame appeared about three meters in front of Dong Tianyu. As he injected more and more Spirit Power into the flame, the small flame gradually turned into a roaring fire.
Watching the fire grow bigger seemingly out of nowhere in front of him, Dong Tianyu began to control the size of the flame by adjusting the amount of Spirit Power transmission.
Once the size of the flame felt appropriate to Dong Tianyu, he used the Art of Controlling Objects to place the prepared steel column into the fire.
As soon as the steel column touched the Spiritual Fire, which seemed to be not very hot, it immediately melted into molten steel. Under Dong Tianyu’s control, the molten steel was further compressed and purified in the flames, its volume growing smaller and smaller.
Before long, the steel column originally used as a support pillar in a factory had shrunk to the size of a fist in the flames.
At this size, it could actually be further compressed and purified, but Dong Tianyu felt that for his first time refining an artifact, there was no need to push to the limit. It was better to produce a finished product and gain some experience first.
Magic Artifacts and Magical Weapons are different. Magical Weapons require various materials to be fused in specific ratios so that they can possess some special abilities upon completion of the refining.
On the other hand, Magic Artifacts are made from a single material, or they are refined in the same way as Magical Weapons but without acquiring any special abilities in the end. Both outcomes are known as Magic Artifacts.
In fact, Magic Artifacts are not much different from ordinary items. Taking the most commonly refined swords and knives as an example, the Magic Artifacts that cultivators refine are simply sturdier and sharper than those forged by ironworkers, and besides that, they consume less Spirit Power when used.
If this still doesn’t sound clear enough, let’s use simpler gaming terms to explain. For weapons of the same level (made from the same material):
The swords forged by ironworkers have a very low upper limit of attack and have durability, plus they cannot be enchanted.
On the other hand, the Magic Artifact swords refined by cultivators not only have a high attack power ceiling but, although they can be destroyed, they don’t need to worry about durability under normal use and can be enchanted by cultivators.
Furthermore, as the cultivator’s level increases, they can permanently enchant the weapon (by inscribing formations on it), thus upgrading a Magic Artifact without any special effects to a Magical Weapon.
Of course, with Dong Tianyu’s current abilities, crafting Magical Weapons is no doubt as unreachable as the moon, but who says an Artifact Refiner can only craft cold weapon Magic Artifacts like swords and knives?
At the present time, obtaining blueprints for firearms is extremely simple.
It’s like before the disaster; any small workshop with a lathe could make firearms if they wanted to. Since Dong Tianyu had begun learning Artifact Refining, why couldn’t he directly refine firearms?
Keep in mind that many firearms’ power is actually limited by the materials used in their creation. If the material strength used is sufficient, a handgun could use the same bullets as a sniper rifle, and the shooting distance and damage to the target wouldn’t be much different from that of a sniper rifle.
Since he had chosen to craft firearms, Dong Tianyu certainly wouldn’t stick to the traditional methods of crafting ordinary weapons. After all, if the strength of the gun barrel determined the upper limit of the weapon’s lethality, then the bullet was what determined its lower limit.
Without bullets, there was no damage, and the amount of gunpowder filled in the bullet also determined the lethality of the firearm.
With a small amount of gunpowder inside, that thing was just a bullet.
With more gunpowder inside, that thing turned into a shell.
If he refined, processed, and improved the gunpowder, that thing could become a missile.
If he didn’t pack gunpowder but changed it to something else, it would become something unpredictable.
Dong Tianyu wasn’t incapable of making bullets, but with his current Artifact Refining skill level, he could only manufacture one bullet at a time. Although his crafting speed might be fast, it was still much slower compared to an assembly line.
Even though the bullets produced by Dong Tianyu were dozens of times more powerful than those from an assembly line, crafting firearms wasn’t for taking down powerful targets, but rather for mowing down the rank and file in combat.
Dong Tianyu’s plan for crafting firearms was based on the Gatling gun model. For a Gatling that could fire thousands of rounds in a breath, the original issue of the Gatling not being able to fire continuously for a long time due to material constraints was already gone.
However, the problem of ammunition was right in front of Dong Tianyu—after all, at this time, it was easy to buy bullets in small quantities, but very difficult to purchase them in large batches.
Particularly during an earthquake, almost no factories would operate as normal. Moreover, it was unknown how many buildings were destroyed and how many military factories were buried, making the ammunition supply even more critical.
Even though China produced more bullets annually than it could use, many were destroyed rather than risking them becoming outdated and losing value; aside from regular aid donations, they were mostly disposed of en masse.
After all, for the former China, the labor cost of disassembling and renewing was far higher than the cost of direct production from raw materials.
But now, without the assembly lines of military factories, it became extremely difficult for Dong Tianyu to obtain a large quantity of bullets.
There was a solution, which was to transform the solid bullets normally fired into energy bullets.
This idea was correct in theory, but in practice, it was very difficult—especially if firing energy bullets would consume Dong Tianyu’s own Spirit Power.
If each energy bullet consumed less power, the lethality would likely be weak. But if the energy bullets consumed a lot of power, then given the upper limit of Dong Tianyu’s internal Spirit Power, it would probably last only a few seconds.
Dismissing the option of using his own Spirit Power for ammunition, the only other choice was to prepare specialized ’batteries,’ like those used in electromagnetic weapons.
This kind of ’battery,’ without even thinking, would definitely require the consumption of Spiritual Stones during its creation. As for engraving a Spirit Gathering Array to automatically absorb Spirit Energy, consider the firing rate of a Gatling.
If it came to that, given the current concentration of Spirit Energy in the outside world, it would be like charging for ten hours, only to fire for less than ten seconds.
However, after much contemplation, Dong Tianyu still decided to convert the bullets fired from the Gatling into energy bullets—just to increase the ’ammunition’ count within the ’magazine.’
Dong Tianyu could only add a huge ’magazine’ underneath the Gatling, transforming the original handheld Gatling into something akin to a rapid-fire cannon on a ship.
Although this was a bit less portable, with a Storage space, it could still be carried around. And with that enormous magazine base, the combat duration increased while ensuring lethality.
Moreover, because of the magazine’s large size, whether inside a Cave or in the outside world, as long as there was enough time, the Spirit Gathering Array engraved upon it could restore the bullets within the magazine.
The template was now designed, and what followed was the official start of Artifact Refining.
