"At least a ton each of Windspirit Iron and Profound Thunder Gold? What about Thousand Mechanisms Copper with the space attribute?"
Hearing that the rare metals sold by the Seven Treasure Chamber of Commerce also had at least a ton in the sect treasury, Chu Chengzhou nodded, then asked again.
Forging battle armor does not require too much rare metal, and he wanted a nine-metal fusion. Taking the average, a stock of a ton was enough for himself and his few girls.
Ning Fengzhi waved his hand and said, "Rest easy on that. A few years back our sect found a giant copper mine in Fasinuo Province. The Thousand Mechanisms Copper I mentioned was dug from that mine as an associated ore.
"Though the occurrence rate of Thousand Mechanisms Copper as an associated ore is low, the copper mine is huge. Count it up and the total amount of Thousand Mechanisms Copper is actually not small."
Demand for rare metals across the continent is very low. There is hardly a market. Yet the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect has never stopped mining rare-metal deposits.
This is not because the sect is idle and overeager, knowingly pushing production despite a tiny market and causing oversupply. It is a helpless necessity.
Most rare metals are associated minerals, like Thousand Mechanisms Copper.
It is true that Thousand Mechanisms Copper has little market demand, but copper ore does, and in great demand. When copper ore is mined, Thousand Mechanisms Copper, as an associated mineral, gets dug up with it.
After smelting the copper ingots from the copper ore, the differing melting points separate out the Thousand Mechanisms Copper.
Thousand Mechanisms Copper is a rare metal and carries the space attribute. You cannot just throw it away.
As for selling it cheap, does the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect lack that little money? Better to let it collect dust than sell it off cheap.
So, with no market demand and refusing to sell at a loss, the Thousand Mechanisms Copper was tossed into the sect treasury.
Also worth noting, the reason the sect found this giant copper mine was not its sheer size, but because the associated mineral Thousand Mechanisms Copper appeared within it.
Thousand Mechanisms Copper is a rare metal, and a very uncommon space-attribute metal at that. It could be sensed by the treasure-seeking ability of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda martial soul and judged a valuable treasure.
If it had been a simple ordinary copper deposit, since ordinary copper is not a treasure, no matter how large, it could not have been sensed by the treasure-seeking ability attached to the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda.
One could say that Ning Fengzhi became the continent's biggest mining magnate not only thanks to the inherited treasure-seeking ability of his martial soul, but also because rare deposits of metals and gems on the continent are mostly associated with large ordinary deposits.
An hour later, after leaving the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect, Chu Chengzhou flew to a barren mountain a hundred li east of Heaven Dou City.
It proved true. When in need, go to your father-in-law. To say nothing else, by the time he left the sect, his storage-type soul guide held several tons of Windspirit Iron, Profound Thunder Gold, and Thousand Mechanisms Copper.
For Ning Fengzhi, the continent's biggest mining boss, he might lack other things, but he would never lack gold soul coins or rare metals.
He manifested the True Spirit Banner martial soul in his hand. His seventh soul ring shone. With its size deliberately suppressed, the summoned spirit Xiao Hei, which looked like a small black cat and derived from the Dark Devilgod Tiger, took form.
"Xiao Hei, go over there and guard your master."
"Roar."
With a low growl, Xiao Hei nodded, walked off into the distance, and plopped down.
Of course, summoning Xiao Hei was not only to have it stand guard.
At a critical moment, relying on the True Spirit Banner's spirit-transformation trait, one man and one tiger could enter a Spirit-Transformation form with himself as primary and the summoned spirit as support, raising his base from a level 99 Limit Douluo to the level-100 tier.
Even with a base at level 99, Chu Chengzhou could unleash or drive god-tier attacks and defenses. But if his base itself stepped into level 100, his ceiling in offense and defense would rise again by a large margin.
Nor was entering the Spirit-Transformation form his only way to push his base to level 100.
By activating the external soul bone Holy Light Dragon Armor's all-attribute amplification soul bone ability, Power of the Holy Dragon, his strength could likewise cross the level-100 threshold.
After that, Chu Chengzhou took out nine rare metals from his storage-type soul guide: metal-aspected Refined Gold, water-aspected Sinking Silver, fire-aspected Crimson Demon Refined Gold, earth-aspected Xuanhuang Bronze, wind-aspected Windspirit Iron, thunder-aspected Profound Thunder Gold, light-aspected Mithril, dark-aspected Nether Iron, and space-aspected Thousand Mechanisms Copper, nine in total.
Not knowing how to match these nine rare metals to achieve the best metal properties after fusion refining, Chu Chengzhou took four hundred jin of each.
Nine metals at four hundred jin each made three thousand six hundred jin. Even discarding at most ten percent impurities, there would still be more than three thousand two hundred jin.
A thousand jin for the battle armor, a thousand for the great bow, five hundred each for the forging hammers, and the rest for arrows. Perfect.
Of course, that was only the expectation. A one-to-one ratio across the nine rare metals was certainly unreasonable. He would increase or decrease during fusion refining, but as long as the weight after Heavenly Refinement stayed above three thousand jin, it was fine.
Otherwise the quantity would be too small to gather the strongest Heavenly-Refined metal needed to forge his full set of equipment in one go.
Red soul power flowed from his hands onto the nine ingots floating before him. Under the heating of fire-attribute soul power, the total three thousand six hundred jin of rare metals quickly turned into a white-hot mass of molten metal.
Next, blue water-attribute soul power was injected. After a slight cooldown, Chu Chengzhou flipped his hands. The Heavenly-Refined Four Symbols Sinking Silver Hammers manifested. Chaotic soul power poured in. The pair of Sinking Silver hammers, shining with a faint azure glow, flew up and began hammering the suspended mixed metal sphere.
This time, Chu Chengzhou did not go for a single hammer for Thousand Refinements, a single hammer for Spirit Refinement, or even a single hammer for Soul Refinement. Unhurried, he controlled the twin Sinking Silver hammers while spreading out his spiritual power to carefully sense the subtle changes within the metal sphere.
As he had thought, fusing nine rare metals of different attributes had much in common with fusing the nine elemental soul powers. Using the metal-aspected Refined Gold as an anchor, Chu Chengzhou sensed areas of disharmony between the Refined Gold and the other eight rare metals.
Though the disharmony was extremely subtle, he still detected it.