"Take me with you."
"Pardon?" Huo Jin frowned. "What do you mean by that?"
Lingxu chuckled, and she replied casually, "Though you are a mortal, you possess such a unique perspective in life. Following your journey would be an exciting one."
"You surely jest, milady. As you have stated, I am a mortal. Unlike yours, my life is finite."
"But not with your soul."
Lingxu's words made his fine hair stand on its end.
"Sorry, but I don't understand what you are talking about." Huo Jin faked an innocent smile.
"Don't play dumb with me, youngling. I have lived through multiple eras, met countless geniuses, yet you didn't even flinch whenever I used my power or tried to control me. Moreover, you always appeared calm and indifferent despite your limitations. A mere ten years old mortal would have cried for days and died. If I ought to guess, your soul is far older than what appears on the surface."
Huo Jin was alerted by Lingxu's sharpness. But he immediately exhaled a long sigh. He actually didn't want to entangle himself with the unknown deity whose nature was ambiguous and potentially very dangerous at that. However, he couldn't avoid fate forever. He had no choice but to accept Lingxu as a companion, for now.
"Very well, I will take you with me but in one condition." Huo Jin said.
"Say it."
"If I never had the chance to become an Immortal, you must protect my family and future offsprings."
Lingxu giggled gingerly. "That is easy. I will sweeten the deal, even. If you are willing to live a bit longer than you should, I can provide you with a puppet or create a corporeal body entirely for your soul to inhabit. However, the consequences are yours to bear."
"Urgh, let us put that aside now... As long as you don't force me to do your bidding and harm me in the process, coexisting with a Guardian Spirit would not be a bad deal."
"It's the best deal a mortal could ever have!" Lingxu exclaimed confidently. "Alright then, do we have a deal?"
"Yes."
After a sweet, girly chuckle, Lingxu's fireball form condensed into a speck of blinding light. She subsequently turned herself into a red jade ring that fitted perfectly on his index finger. Huo Jin felt the sting for a brief second, and the ring cooled down immediately.
"What are we going to do next? What kind of weapon do you want to make?"
"Two guns is more than enough, for now. Besides, I need to get back to the village. It's been a while since I left home, mother must be very worried."
"No more forging?"
"We can do it later once I get back." Huo Jin began to tidy up his work station.
The next day, he began to hunt more rats to consume and harvested their thick hide to make a leather jacket, holsters for his guns, and other accessories. It took him another month to make all the accessories.
Before he left, Huo Jin looted some raw materials that can be used to produce advanced gun models in the future.
"Huo Jin, are you sure to flaunt your guns and dagger out in the open? You'd be targeted by other cultivators if we stumbled on them."
"Do I have any choices?"
"You can store them in this ring. I just finished constructing my Spatial Dimension inside here."
Huo Jin was slightly irritated by his own miscalculation. He should've asked first instead of hunting the rats and wasted his time making the accessories.
Lingxu was snickering behind him, satisfied when seeing him struggling.
"I will trust you to keep them safe when the time comes. As of now, let's focus on surviving that hellish place and return home. Show me the exit, please."
Since Lingxu had restored a portion of her cultivation by the forging, she casually conjured a portal that connected the Heavenly Forge Hall with the outside world. This was possible by tearing the space-time and folding the dimensions.
Huo Jin's mouth was agape, surprised by her ability to open up a portal on a whim. From his current scientific perspective, such a feat was impossible to do without Warp Drive.
"Lady Lingxu, just how strong are you?"
"Strong enough to raze a sect to ashes with a single spell. But, don't worry, I won't do it since it will incite heaven's wrath. My existence in the human realm will be completely revoked if I meddle with worldly affairs.."
"What?!"
"No need to be concerned about. As long as my soul is stored inside the ring, I wouldn't have to worry about the restrictions."
Huo Jin nodded. He braced himself and walked into the portal.
By the time he stepped out, the portal hummed quietly and closed on its own.
Upon adjusting his sight, He found himself in front of the huge Pailou Gate that served as the boundary between Flame Valley and Rongyan Village, or Zhou Continent in this matter.
"Wow, this gate is standing after tens of thousands of years! As expected of the forging deity, Lingxu!" The guardian spirit boasted her past achievement.
"You built them?!"
"Of course! Who else it might be?" Lingxu chimed furiously. "But alas, the seal has weakened and lost its splendor. It barely held the law of space and time. If this Pailou Gate ought to collapse, the Fire Qi Vein will cause a massive outbreak on the other side, and it's already leaking."
Huo Jin frowned upon noticing the contradiction. He previously thought that it was Lingxu who tampered with Rongyan Village's Pailo Gate and transferred him to this hellish place.
'It's highly unlikely. She's weakened by the time I met her. The one who tampered with the gate was someone else. But who?' Huo Jin pondered deeply.
"How do we reactivate the gate?"
"That is easy. I just need to infuse qi into the Seal Formation. However, it would take a while since I need to repair them."
"Okay, I will leave it to you."
While pacing around, Huo Jin noticed something was off. There were so many trails of a huge serpent on the ground. He knelt near the trail, probing its owner.
"This must be the Infernal Python's trails. And quite new at that. That monster is nearby."
Lingxu chuckled, she couldn't help but pity Huo Jin's bad luck. "It seems like the Infernal Python is still preying on you, young boy. That beast won't let their prey escape or die trying."
"No shit." Huo Jin replied curtly. "How long would it take?"
"About an hour or so."
Lingxu turned into her fireball form once again, flying around the gate's pillars to inspect the damage. Not long after, she learned that the gate had been used by humans by brute force to cross between plains, resulting in severe damage on the Seal Formation. But she couldn't be surprised anymore by human greed.
Suddenly, the ground trembled softly as if something huge was rolling, followed with a long menacing hiss that could be heard from miles away.
"It seems like we don't have that luxury. Can you make it quick?"