Chapter 32: Ancient Blacksmithing · Dou Technique Models!
Generally speaking, battle equipment is divided into two realms: mundane equipment and spirit equipment.
Mundane equipment refers to weapons that merely activate the basic properties of materials, without any special effects. This is the norm for most equipment, especially above the Xuan rank, where almost everything is either pseudo-Earth-rank or pseudo-Heaven-rank equipment.
Spirit equipment, however, represents the pinnacle of battle gear. Not only are the materials perfectly harmonized, but they also contain embedded energy models from Dou Techniques, granting them extraordinary effects—what Jiang Lin calls "attributes."
It's worth noting, though, that Jiang Lin's forging of spirit-grade equipment is still unstable. Some of the weapons he made with "Qi-breaking" traits were mainly thanks to his Fire-Metal Dou Qi attribute, which let him activate the sharpness within certain metal materials—resulting in semi-spirit weapons. Of course, to others, those were already top-tier gear.
"Besides mastering material properties, I'll also need to study various types of Dou Techniques."
Inside the forging room of Wan Yao Zhai, Jiang Lin tossed two untreated wind-element magic cores into a large wooden box in the corner—already filled with dozens of magic cores of different sizes and colors.
"Thankfully, this world doesn't have the kind of setting where magical beasts take a hundred, thousand, or even ten thousand years to mature. Otherwise, at the rate I consume magic cores, even the entire Magical Beast Mountain Range couldn't support just me."
The Dou Qi continent is vast, populated by various races—magical beasts, humans, snake people, bear folk, dragon tribes, and many more. Besides blacksmiths, alchemists also consume massive amounts of magic cores. And yet, these resources never seem to run short.
Why?
Because, as the saying goes—if you're bold enough, everything can be a magic core.
After all, if human alchemists refine magical beasts, then a dragon alchemist refining humans shouldn't be considered excessive, right?
Moreover, "magic core" is just the name given from a human-centric perspective. Perhaps in other species' eyes, what humans call "magic cores" are "human cores." Thus, a magic core isn't exclusive to beasts—it's the internal Dou Qi nucleus of any living creature.
Jiang Lin walked to a nearby shelf and scanned the thirty-plus Dou Technique manuals stored there. He finally selected a Yellow-Rank Low-Level wind-element technique called Light Wind Step.
All the Dou Techniques on that shelf had been traded for over the past year, using Yellow-Rank Low-Level weapons in Wutan City and Qingshan Town. Most were low-level, with only a few being mid-level.
Naturally, Jiang Lin couldn't cultivate wind-element Dou Techniques, but he could reference the meridian diagrams in the manual. With his terrifying sensory perception, he could use trial-and-error to tune and replicate the technique's energy model—scaling it down using Dou Qi materials and embedding it into his equipment as an attribute.
For instance, the chestplate of Jiang Lin's Black Knight armor had an embedded trait called "Diamond Armor" that increased resistance to strikes, knockbacks, and overall defense. Had Jiang Lin activated this trait during the Moonhowl Wind Wolf's attack, the chestplate might not even have been scratched. But he hadn't—because he feared draining his Dou Qi, leaving him vulnerable in the dangerous Magical Beast Mountain Range. So, he chose to endure the hit instead.
Why is Jiang Lin's fighting style so aggressive and decisive?
Because he can't afford drawn-out fights—especially when fighting opponents above his level.
He could reduce Dou Qi usage in weapons by adding magic cores, but he rarely did so in his armor. Weapons strike others; armor protects him. Depending too much on magic cores in armor risks them being shattered. In his Black Knight battle suit, only a few key areas had embedded cores, activated only when he channels his own Dou Qi. That's why he always reserves enough Dou Qi—for "powering on" those core functions.
"Debugging Dou Technique models... This isn't something a human should be doing." Jiang Lin picked up Light Wind Step, stared at its meridian diagram, and raised his eyebrows—it felt like his brain was about to explode just looking at it.
It wasn't that the diagram was complex—on the contrary, lower-ranked techniques usually had simpler meridian routes, except for some special cases.
Still, regardless of the complexity or clarity of the annotations, every time Jiang Lin tried to replicate a Dou Technique energy model that allowed Dou Qi to flow smoothly, it felt as challenging as creating a technique from scratch.
This is because minuscule Dou Qi resistance exists between different meridians and acupoints. Most Dou Techniques build their functionality around these micro-resistances. What many Dou Qi users complete instinctively—those smooth "buggy" flows—Jiang Lin had to analyze and reconstruct through sheer understanding!
It was like the first programmer wrote a buggy but executable program. Now Jiang Lin, the second programmer, had to replicate it—but seeing the chaotic bugs, his mind went blank. He couldn't copy-paste; he had to rewrite the code line by line, debug it, and eventually produce something that looked identical—but subtly different in function.
"If all ancient blacksmiths worked like this, then they were born to be coders!" Jiang Lin hugged the Dou Technique manual, tears of joy welling in his eyes at its super vague, ultra-subjective descriptions. He now understood—aside from the broad structure, none of the "data" inside could be trusted.
Ancient Blacksmiths: "Bro... where's your blueprint? Just trade your equipment design with others once you've developed it, right?"
What Jiang Lin didn't know was that even among ancient blacksmiths, very few had ever, within just three years, managed to reverse-engineer at least three different Dou Technique models. Most ancient blacksmiths spent their whole lives studying and perfecting powerful models, then converted them into soul blueprints to trade with others. As they accumulated more models, they could combine them to create stronger equipment, convert that into new blueprints, and trade again.
But someone like Jiang Lin—who relied solely on his hyper-sensitive perception to debug and study model after model at lightning speed—would have been known among ancient blacksmiths as a "cheating freak."
Still, despite the pain of deciphering and refining these Dou Technique models, Jiang Lin had reaped enormous benefits—
His understanding of Dou Techniques now exceeded that of their original creators.
(END CHAPTER)
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