So no sentry duty for me. Yay. As an aside, I only needed to guard Tang Qi Hong during the smithing process because she would return to her home where Sect Lady resided in after that. And obviously Sect Lady Zi Da Ji would be a much more powerful and capable bodyguard than someone like me could ever be.

About three days pa.s.sed, and we made a bit of progress with the six Spirit Artifacts. Tang Qi Hong wiped the perspiration from her forehead as she used her qi to control the temperature of the furnace. The Earth Magnets that we had brought back from Cloud Sky Mountain had finally been melded to the other Spirit Materials that Tang Qi Hong took from the sect.

"Okay, we"re done for the day," she reported as she switched off the furnace. I nodded and began to help her pack up.

I was about to escort her home, as duty demanded, when Tang Qi Hong suddenly turned to me after putting away her stuff.

"That reminds me. How goes your progress with your own Spirit Weapon? That shield, right?" she frowned. "Even though you used it the other day, you told me it"s far from complete. How far have you gotten so far?"

"Uh, I didn"t have time to work on it these couple of days," I admitted, turning a little pale. Tang Qi Hong scowled.

"All right. Let"s head to your workshop. Show me what you have!"

"Um…I don"t think that"s a good idea…"

"Oh, stop complaining! Let"s go!"

Tang Qi Hong hopped out of her workshop and proceeded toward the direction of the Blood Blades dormitory. Knowing that I wouldn"t be able to convince her when she made her decision, I could only helplessly follow her and ensure she stayed out of trouble.

Stopping in front of my apartment, she turned to look at me expectantly. Obviously she was waiting for me to unlock the door for her. I gave her a droll stare.

"My workshop is that way."

"Eh…?"

Tang Qi Hong looked extremely embarra.s.sed when she realized that she had gone the wrong way. Coughing as she lowered her head, she gestured impatiently.

"Well, what are you waiting for? Lead the way!"

"You were the one who so confidently brought me here," I muttered under my breath, trying not to laugh.

It didn"t take more than five minutes for us to reach my workshop, which was located in the old outer sect disciple area. It wasn"t my old one, to be honest – the moment I was promoted into the Blood Blades, I was allocated an unused shed closest to the Blood Blades dormitory. As most (actually, almost all) Blood Blades kind of abandoned smithing and Spirit Engraving after they got into the combat division, there was no real need for them to be a.s.signed workshops.

I was kind of a special case, because I requested for it. Unfortunately, because I sucked terribly at smithing, they didn"t take my request seriously and just a.s.signed me an unused shed. If I had displayed overwhelming talent at smithing and Spirit Engraving, I bet the Sect Leader and Elders would personally order a custom workshop built next to the Blood Blades dormitory. With my lack of skills, I was just not worth the investment.

Well, at least I had a place to smith and engrave Spirit Diagrams, so I couldn"t complain. It was much better than them telling me to give up totally just because I lacked the "talent" or "results." That was how the real world worked, unfortunately. Without results, no one was going to spend too much money on nurturing you.

Unlocking the door to my run-down workshop with the key they gave me, I pushed the door open and politely signaled for Tang Qi Hong to step inside.

"Hmm, so this is your new workshop. I don"t think I"ve ever been here before."

Tang Qi Hong had not visited my workshop ever since I joined the Blood Blades. She had only visited my apartment once in a while, usually to hang out or ask for favors. Since we were not officially in a relationship, such visits were far and few in between.

"Yeah, Elder Zhao was kind enough to secure it for me when I asked him," I told her, withholding all the problems and complaints I might have regarding the almost casual manner in which they a.s.signed me this particular workshop.

"This looks more like one of those workshops a.s.signed to the outer sect disciples," Tang Qi Hong remarked, clearly not liking what she saw. I sighed.

"We are in the outer sect disciple residence right now," I reminded her. "We might be close to the Blood Blades border, but this is officially within the outer sect disciple zone."

"Oh." Tang QI Hong scratched her head, but didn"t say anything else. She glanced at the ramshackle shelves and other stuff lying around. Like most guys, I wasn"t very neat, but I wasn"t very untidy either. There was still a bit of clutter, but there were a lot of avenues for her to walk around without stepping on any of my belongings.

She headed toward my bench, all the while glancing around at my shelves and looking a little disappointed.

Well, sorry for not maintaining an environment expected of an inner sect disciple. While, as one of the Blood Blades, I had the status equivalent to an inner sect disciple, my smithing and Spirit Engraving skills were not on par with one, and thus I didn"t receive the resources usually allocated for inner sect disciples with regard to forging. It sucked, but there you had it. On the other hand, I did have access to all the resources made available to the Blood Blades, but I just didn"t make full use of it.

I was getting my priorities wrong.

"Where are the colossal beasts?" Tang Qi Hong suddenly asked.

"Huh?" I stared at her in shock. "What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?"

Tang Qi Hong placed her hands on her hips. "You know what I"m talking about. You should have frozen ancient and enormous beasts inside your chamber, sealed from a forgotten era. You should even have one colossal python as big as a mountain that wold make the Ice Soul Python as small as an earthworm in comparison!"

"Ugh…" I held my head as I tried not to shout. "Aren"t you mistaking me for Qin Lie? Why the f.u.c.k would I have Colossal Beasts in my workshop? It"s not as if I ran away from Nine-Tailed Fox Sect and hid in the Arctic Mountain Rage so that I could escape Liang Shao Yang"s attempts to murder me. Aren"t you in the wrong story?"

"…oh. Whoops. Sorry."

Apparently, Tang Qi Hong"s mind had been stuck in the Spirit Realm for quite a while now. She grinned sheepishly.

"Sorry. Been reading too much xianxia novels lately."

"Shouldn"t you be reading all those reincarnation novels about how a Marine-super-doctor-a.s.sa.s.sin-genius thief-super-soldier woman got killed in the real world and reincarnated as a twelve-year-old "trash" princess who is being bullied by her family and abused by her sisters for some reason? And then goes around slapping their faces after the original "trash" princess was killed, and goes on to be a genius martial artist/spirit doctor?"

Tang Qi Hong brightened up. "Oh, I read those too."

I tried not to sigh in exasperation. "At least you aren"t reading all those stories about a girl having a CEO lover and getting into toxic relationships where the guy is basically abusive, but they somehow end up together regardless."

"What makes you think I don"t?" Tang Qi Hong demanded, annoyed. She had thought my question a slight toward her taste in books…but then again, I read stupid xianxia stories with Mary Sue protagonists, so I couldn"t very well criticize other people about their tastes in stories either. I calmed down and smiled.

"We"re getting sidetracked. You wanted to see my personal project?"

Taking out my Snow Aegis, I activated it. While the original spatial device was fairly small, it grew rapidly, seeming to draw ma.s.s from nowhere. That was exactly the reason while I needed the Void Whale part and made it double as a Spatial Device. When not in combat, the unnecessary components were sealed away in the alternative s.p.a.ce, remaining dormant until I activated it. Then they would leave the spatial device and combine with the spatial device.

"Hmm…" Tang Qi Hong studied the snowflake-shaped shield for a few moments, nodded in approval. "This actually looks good. Considering your usual products, I"m actually impressed with how you forged this."

"I spent months forging just this one thing," I muttered dryly. "I would be pretty sad if it didn"t turn out the way I wanted it."

Tang Qi Hong frowned. "Well, you said it was incomplete?" she turned my Snow Aegis over, taking out a hi-tech single eye-lense from her spatial ring, put it on and a.n.a.lyzed it. "It seems complete as a shield."

"Oh…I don"t want it to just be a shield," I confessed. Heading over, I took out the doomed Castellax-cla.s.s battle-automata"s components. The undamaged ones, anyway. "I was trying to combine it with these parts."

"Battle-automata components?" Tang Qi Hong frowned as she lifted them to look at them. "Even a cerebral cortex and power battery. Why would you add these to a shield?"

"Because they are capable of complex calculations and autonomous fire responses," I replied. Reaching into my Snow Aegis again, I took out a bunch of stuff. Tang Qi Hong"s eyes widened when she saw the unfamiliar (for her) weapons.

"What are those? I have never seen anything like them before."

"They are guns," I explained as I raised one of them for her to look. "They absorb the qi from the shooter and focus it into a high concentrated qi beam, amplifying the firepower several times over. Even a normal guy should be able to punch through concrete with a single beam from one of these guns."

Even though I called them guns, they were very different from modern guns back in my original timeline. The barrels were sleek and smooth instead of cylindrical, and they were silver. They looked more like wings, or the petals on my Snow Aegis. Each barrel terminated in a single small hole where the beam would be fired from, and at the other end, the guns thickened and widened, including propulsion and anti-gravity systems.

"Wow…I"ve never seen anything like this before," Tang Qi Hong marveled as she a.n.a.lyzed it through that hi-tech eyegla.s.s. She could see the qi crystal at the core of the gun, the main conduit that would amplify the wielder"s qi and turn it into a beam, which reflected off several crystalized mirrors inside the hovering weapon before being unleashed from the barrel. She also noted the mini-cerebral cortexes inside each gun, which served as its "brain" or a crude form of artificial intelligence, and linked to each other through a wireless network that was supported by the main cerebral cortex inside the core Snow Aegis.

"I"ve tried to use Spirit Diagrams to finish it up, but it doesn"t seem to work. I still can"t get the artificial intelligence to run the way I want it to. Right now I can control it remotely, but with up to nine guns, I can"t direct all of them at once. I need the artificial intelligence to a.s.sist me with manipulating them. That"s where I"m stuck at right now."

"Yeah, of course you would." Tang Qi Hong turned to stare at me sternly. "You"re attempting a weapon no one has built before! An advanced, hi-tech weapon that never mind me, even Elder Hai mo hasn"t heard of before! Can you imagine the waves you would make if this gets out? You"ll cause a storm in the blacksmithing and Spirit Engraving world!"

"That is a.s.suming I succeed, of course," I reminded her. Tang Qi Hong"s beautiful expression softened and she nodded.

"Yeah, I can see why you"re having so much trouble. It"s very difficult to invent a new Spirit Engraving for a weapon that has never been built before. To be honest, I"m not even sure how this weapon works…"

"Should I demonstrate it to you?" I asked. Tang Qi Hong"s eyes brightened up.

"Of course! Can you?"

"Um…we"ll need to go to the training facility first." I glanced outside. "If you don"t mind visiting the Blood Blades" training facility."

"Of course I wouldn"t!"

Tang Qi Hong clearly looked like she couldn"t wait to go. She impatiently scooped up the gun and headed for the door. I had to hurriedly grab it from her and stuff it into my Snow Aegis and contract it back to its normal spatial device form.

"I see why you needed the Void Whale now," Tang Qi Hong remarked as she stared at the spatial device that I placed inside my pocket. I merely smiled and shrugged.

"Yeah."

"What did you call that? Guns? I"ve never heard of that before."

Tang Qi Hong frowned. Of course she wouldn"t. In this world, guns were pretty much redundant because most people could shoot qi blasts out of their hands. So it never occurred to them that they would need a tool or weapon to do the exact same thing. Yet they continued to use a lot of melee weapons like swords, axes, halberds, spears and even shields and armor. That meant that weapons as a concept wasn"t obsolete.

No, the purpose of weapons was to increase the killing power of a martial artist. Therefore a gun that could just shoot qi blasts wasn"t sufficient. I needed a gun that could amplify the firepower of those qi blasts, and I succeeded in crafting that.

Now, even a normal person with very little qi could hurt a person with a lot of qi by shooting him with this weapon, because it leveled the playing field by amplifying the power of his little qi to match the other guy"s a lot of qi. Of course, there were ways to defend against this, such as defensive martial arts techniques, or shields and armor, but at least the little guys had a way of defending themselves right now even if they had very little qi.

"Speaking of which, you called that weapon you forged for the entrance exam to the Nine-Tailed Fox Sect a rifle…wasn"t that a kind of gun too?"

Very astute of Tang Qi Hong to make the link. As expected of a master blacksmith. She must have noticed the similiarities in mechanism and the barrel, though the ice rifle operated on a completely different mechanism, given that it fired solid projectiles rather than qi beams.

"Oh, yeah…it broke after a few days. Evidently ice is not a good material to use for forging guns."

That was a huge blunder on my part. Guns operated on the principle of igniting gunpowder, which produced a lot of heat. You can probably guess what sort of effects that had on ice. Even if this was a "fantasy" xianxia world, that didn"t mean anything goes. It sucked, but I was doomed to make a lot of mistakes instead of "revolutionizing" this alternative timeline.

There weren"t many people in the Blood Blades" training facility, not at this time of the day. Tang Qi Hong made a quick call to her home to inform her parents that she would be a little late, and then followed me inside.

"This is…"

"The target range."

Tang Qi Hong glanced around when I brought her to an indoor field where targets stood pretty far away. The targets were defensive battle puppets that stood stationary, and depending on the training program you selected, they would either move or stay still, waiting for you to hit them with ranged qi blasts or other ranged martial arts techniques.

As the guns were a ranged weapon, it only made sense to make use of this training facility instead of the close combat ones.

"Let"s select one with the most powerful defensive settings," I mumbled as I keyed in the programs I wanted. One of the battle puppets whirled as the conveyor rolled, and the machine dropped the poor target practice in the middle of the field. It stood up and straightened, its eyes glowing red as it activated several qi barriers.

"Um…isn"t this a bit too much?" Tang Qi Hong murmured as she saw the qi barriers. "You"ll need a peak-level Pure Spirit Stage pract.i.tioner to break through that amount of defenses…"

I grinned. "And this is where I demonstrate to you how meaningless all those levels and realms and stages are."

"…eh?"

With a thought, I had one of my guns hover in the air. It stabilized and pointed its floating barrel straight at the defensive battle puppet. With a thought, I instructed it to fire.

Responding to my will, the gun glowed azure, drawing qi from my body and charging up its qi battery that I replicated using the Castellax-cla.s.s battle-automata"s core qi battery at base. That core qi battery currently resided inside the core component of my Snow Aegis to power up its defensive barriers and fields, as well as to maintain the connective network that linked the guns to it and each other. The qi transformed into a beam within the gun"s insides, bouncing off several mirrors and blasted out of the barrel, slamming into the numerous qi barriers in front of the target battle puppet.

In just an instance, the intense qi beam shattered the dozen layers of solid qi barriers before punching a hole through the adamantine plating of the battle puppet, causing it to double over and collapse. And then the falling battle puppet vanished in a ma.s.sive explosion, incinerated into flying molten, shrapnel.

"What the h.e.l.l?!"

Tang Qi Hong"s jaw dropped. I grinned and shrugged.

"And that didn"t even need a lot of qi from my part."

"What are you smoking?!" Tang Qi Hong whirled around and grabbed my shoulders, shaking me violently. "Never mind your completed Snow Aegis…if you just show this "gun" thing to Father and the Great Elders, they will immediately promote you into the inner sect! You"ll be on par with me and Liang Shao Yang!"

"Just because I was able to design just this single thing?" I rolled my eyes. "It"s not that special. People have already been pulling this off with Spirit Bows and qi arrows. It"s not like there"s any precedent." Furthermore, when I tried the gun out in the training facility, the elder in charge didn"t seem to think it was anything special, and just got mad at me for blowing up the training dummies. "Besides, I"m afraid that I"ll disappoint you, because that"s the only thing I"ll be able to design. I honestly don"t think I"ll be producing new, innovative designs rivaling this in future."

Not unless I could come up with mecha suits and nukes, but as expected those were beyond me. In my previous timeline, we had technology that could produce lasers, which was how I managed to come up with this in the first place, but that consumed way too much energy to be efficient. In this timeline, that energy problem was solved with the existence of qi, so I didn"t hesitate to make use of qi to supply that tremendous amount of energy required for laser weapons. But I hadn"t heard of working mecha suits and I was a literature student, not a nuclear physicists. Even though I had some understanding of how nuclear fusion and nuclear fission worked because I read science fiction, I did not have the knowledge of producing them in a lab.

"Even so, you should still tell Father and the elders about your invention!" Tang Qi Hong insisted. "Do you know how much the sect will be able to benefit from this?!"

"I plan on doing so after I complete my Snow Aegis," I replied and scratched my cheek, faintly wondering why she was so excited over my gun. "I"ll be able to put on a more impressive show if I do so."

Tang Qi Hong shook her head in wonder. "Something even more impressive than this? Are you serious?"

"Well, not that much more impressive, since you can already pull it off with your Nine Heavenly Armaments technique, but if I pull this off, then regular people can accomplish the same thing as you without having to learn the Nine Heavenly Armanents technique. Oh, this doesn"t make your technique obsolete." I raised both hands to a.s.sure an offended Tang Qi Hong. "In fact, it"ll allow you to probably control nine times as much as you could before, and this doesn"t allow people to master the fighting styles of nine different weapons, just allows them to control nine weapons at the same time. So the Nine Heavenly Armaments technique will still be pretty powerful."

"Hmph…" Tang Qi Hong didn"t look convinced. She then turned to look at the raging inferno, which was currently in the midst of being extinguished by the automatons that operated in the training facility, spraying the flames with foam. "So this is what guns are capable of. What are you trying to achieve with the guns by combining them with your Snow Aegis?" she frowned when what I said earlier hit her. "Controlling nine guns at the same time, using your Snow Aegis as the main conduit or remote control?"

"Something like that," I agreed with a wide grin. "I call it the Disconnected Rapid Armament Group Operation Online Network, or DRAGOON for short."

"…seriously?" Tang Qi Hong had a sneaking suspicion that I ripped the name off from somewhere – which I did, of course – but didn"t say anything because apparently the Gundam series did not exist in this timeline. She took a deep breath and then nodded. "All right, I"ll help you complete that DRAGOON system or whatever."

"Thank you."

Realizing that I had to swallow my pride and lower my head for help, I bowed gratefully. In the end, I wasn"t a genius. I still needed the help of a genius if I were to complete my invention. It stung that I couldn"t do it on my own, but I wasn"t perfect.

Sometimes I wished I was a Mary Sue protagonist who was capable of everything. If I was anything like Nagumo Hajime from Arifureta Shokuyou de Sekai Saikyou or Ya Se from The Great Conqueror or countless other protagonists who could simply waltz into another world and revolutionize their technology with their contemporary knowledge, I could do it all on my own and churn out innovative invention after invention. Thus impressing everyone in the world and receiving praise. But now I had to share the credit.

a.s.suming Tang Qi Hong succeeded, of course.

"All right, let"s head back."

Tang Qi Hong was already heading back. I took one last glance at the inferno that was ravaging the range, and then nodded. The automatons had already extinguished the flames, and there was not much of the fire left. The charred remains of the battle puppet – which were lying in countless pieces across the field – were being retrieved by collection automatons. No doubt they would be brought to the outer sect and used as spare parts or recycled for new battle puppets.

The battle-automata that I brought back from the ancient tomb were far too valuable to be used for training puppets, which was why there was no sign of them in the training facility. I was glad to see that.

"Let"s do this," I muttered under my breath, and then turned to follow Tang Qi Hong back to my workshop.

"You again!"

Before we could leave, however, a familiar figure descended from the office on the second story. The elder in charge of the training facility, Xun Lian, glared at me.

"Stop using that gun thing to destroy the test dummies! You think they are free, is it? They cost money to produce!"

"I"ll get the sect to pay for it," Tang Qi Hong a.s.sured him. Elder Xun Lian shook his head.

"That"s not the point! The sect is already paying for it! But…!"

"Elder Xun, did you not see the weapon Fei Wu used to obliterate the training dummy?" Tang Qi Hong interrupted, trying to withhold her excitement. She turned to me. "This isn"t the first time you used it here, right?"

She could guess that from Elder Xun"s words and outrage. He turned to stare at her, surprised.

"Ah, Qi Hong. Yes, I"ve seen it, but…"

"Do you not realize it"s a new weapon? A brand-new, innovative weapon that can revolutionize the blacksmithing industry?!"

Tang Qi Hong was probably feeling a little outraged that Elder Xun did not take note of the weapons I was trying out in the training facility and report it to the inner sect elders. It would have made great news.

He blinked for a moment, and then turned to stare at me, his mouth a little dry.

"Um, well…I suppose so?"

Evidently it had never occurred to him. That was also why I didn"t find my own invention that impressive. Elder Xun never said anything and scolded me when I was trying them out in the training facility. So I thought it was pretty normal. Furthermore, people could already pull off the control multiple weapons at the same time if they mastered the Nine Heavenly Armaments technique, so it never occurred to me that my guns were anything special.

Furthermore, people could achieve a similar effect with bows and arrows. That said, qi arrows weren"t that much more powerful than qi blasts, but the bows helped them focus their qi into more intensive weapons with added penetrative power. Not as much destructive power as my guns, but there were precedents.

"The both of you…" Tang Qi Hong groaned in exasperation. Shaking her head, she grabbed my hand and began dragging me back toward my workshop without another word.