129 Terracotta Hill

A few days later, the caravan strolled into Terracotta hill. It was only when they finally reached the terracotta hill that the taut minds of the caravan members finally relaxed.

In the last few days, the caravan had been rushing fast towards Terracotta hill. Thankfully they were not attacked on the way and made it here in peace. When the caravan finally made its way to Terracotta hill, everyone was finally happy. Many of the staff and travelers even cheered a little.

When the caravan entered Terracotta Hill the security leader immediately separated from the caravan. He took the purple spike fruit and went straight to the city lord's mansion to deliver it before some other mess came up. The rest of the caravan went straight to the transportation office to report.

When the danger was finally over, some of the travelers finally started to argue with the caravan owner. They wanted extra money since they were lied to and put in danger. After a short negotiation, the caravan owner agreed to pay them some money for them to keep quiet.

Bai Yun did not stay for the negotiations. The danger along the way did not affect him too much. He just thought of it all as a part of the experience of the journey.

But just as Bai Yun was trying to slip away unnoticed he was once again caught by Huang Yao. She made another passionate speech about Bai Yun joining her mercenary group. After a long time, Bai Yun finally shook her off and escaped.

Bai Yun walked through Terracotta Hill. Even though it was called Terracotta hill, it was actually a city on top of the hill that was called the terracotta hill. The city originally started as a small settlement on top of the hill, but now had spread to cover the hill, and ever much further around the hill. But the important locations of the city were still located on the hill itself.

Terracotta hill was formed by an inactive volcano. But even though the volcano had long become dormant, there was still a strain of earth fire in the hill. This strain of earth fire allowed alchemists and blacksmiths to greatly reduce the effort needed in making their products. But the earth fire was only strong enough to be of help to qi step alchemists and blacksmiths.

Another thing that greatly attracted many alchemists and blacksmiths to Terracotta HIll was the close proximity to ever green hills and a few ore sites nearby. Most of the region here head already been mined and the herbs collected, but there was still enough to keep things going for a long time.

There were also a few other attractions here that brought both tourists as well as adventurers. Thus Terracotta hill, even though it was not a very large city, was quite prosperous.

Bai Yun quickly walked to a nearby inn and booked a room for a week. Bai Yun was planning on staying in Terracotta Hill for a short while. When he was looking at Terracotta hill on the map, he found a lot of interesting things nearby. This was Bai Yun's first stop in his journey.

The caravan had arrived a little after noon. So Bai Yun had the rest of the day for himself. So he went around and started to look around the city. Bai Yun had not forgotten the haul he had gotten in Hescha city. But he got nothing similar even though he spent the rest of the day. It was a rare chance on that day in Hescha city.

The inn that Bai Yun had booked was a rather large one. Bai Yun had just broken through to foundation establishment and needed to adapt to the increase in his strength.

Bai Yun spend the next day slowly getting used to his various abilities. He had realized that there was a rather substantial increase in his strength in the last few days. But it did not take Bai Yun long to adjust to it.

One thing that surprised Bai Yun was that after the breakthrough, his god and devil eyes had also improved. Earlier Bai Yun could only utilize them for four seconds, but now he could utilize them for six seconds. But even now he still couldn't utilize the special abilities even for a second.

Bai Yun was surprised that even though his qi amount had increased by a great deal, the time of usage for god and devil eyes had only gone up by a couple of seconds. As his cultivation got higher, the power of the god and devil eyes also increased, which meant that its drain on his qi also increased.

The next day Bai Yun went out to the blacksmith union. Bai Yun had used the Assassin gods techniques to change his appearance so that he won't be hunted for his skills once he showed all of them. The blacksmith union had set up a store in almost all of the major cities to provide support for blacksmiths. Usually, people would come here to buy weapons or sell some rare minerals that they had found. But it was also possible to rent out a room for blacksmiting if one needed it. Usually, the blacksmiths in Teracotta hill had their own permanent rooms where a strand of the earth fire was directed to, but sometimes traveling blacksmiths would come and rent out a room. It was rare, but not unheard of, so the blacksmiths union happily rent out a blacksmithing room for Bai Yun.

The first thing that Bai Yun did when he entered the room was to heat up the wooden beams. The processing of the wood had to be done carefully. The wood had to be slowly heated while taking care not to let it burn. And as it heated, it had to repeatedly hit in order to compress it and also to remove any impurities in the wood. Bai Yun was trained by the god of blacksmithing, so he would obviously not make a mistake in this process.

Bai Yun spend nearly the entire day working on the wood. When he was done, at the end of the day, he had fifty four arrow shafts.

Next, Bai Yun started to process the volcanic iron. During the processing of volcanic iron Bai Yun had to be even more focused. The temperature during the refinement had to kept at the perfect point. If it was even a little bit hotter, then the poisonous impurities would evaporate and kill Bai Yun. If it was too cold, then the impurities could not be separated, and the whole process would be a failure.

Bai Yun took out the huge piece of volcanic ore and slowly started to wash and process it with various materials. When he was done, he was only left with less than a tenth of the ore. The rest was mostly dirt which had to be discarded.

After this Bai Yun took a small piece of the volcanic ore, powdered it, and heated it up with the earth fire. Every few seconds Bai Yun would check the temperate to make sure the it was the perfect temperature. Slowly the volcanic ore melted under the heat.

After the ore melted, Bai Yun slowly stirred the molten ore. As he did so, the poisonous impurity and the volcanic iron slowly separated. The poisonous impurity was less dense so it floated to the top.

But both the impurity as well as the volcanic iron was red in colour. The only difference was that the impurity was a slightly darker shade of red. It was difficult to differentiate them by sight alone for most people. So most blacksmiths who tried to refine the ore would use various instruments to do so, which would increase the chance of poison affecting them.

But Bai Yun with his superior eyes could easily differentiate them. First he poured out the poison at the top into a special jade container. When it looked as if the iron would also get mixed in with it, he would stop. Since he needed this for making poison pills, Bai Yun wasn't going to contaminate them with iron.

Then the next layer which contained some impurity as well as some iron was removed by Bai Yun and put into special waste disposal containers provided by the blacksmith union. Even Bai Yun's ability couldn't easily separate the iron and impurities in this layer, so it was better to simply dispose of them rather than waste time. Most blacksmiths would also dispose of the poison this way too.

Finally, there was the iron ore. This was separated into a special container by Bai Yun. Since the container to heat the volcanic ore was quite small, Bai Yun had to do this in batches. It took Bai Yun an entire day and night to finish this. He could probably have finished this quicker, but since this was a critical step, Bai Yun often took rest and slept to make sure he did not miss anything.

Finally, Bai Yun had both the poison as well as volcanic iron. It still had some impurity just like any other iron and had to be repeatedly tempered. But to someone who had reached the god level in blacksmithing, tempering iron was child play. It only took Bai Yun a few hours to use the nine nine hammering technique to temper the iron to the limit of his current abilities.

Once he was done Bai Yun used some of the volcanic iron to make the heads for the arrows. He then fixed those to the arrow shaft he made from the variant redwood. Bai Yunalso used some feathers he had bought earlier from some demonc birds as fins.

But even after this Bai Yun had quite a bit of volcanic iron left. Bai Yun thought for a while before he made two swords for himself with the volcanic iron. The sword that he made from volcanic iron was better than the sword he was currently using, so Bai Yun switched them out. He also made one extra as a backup.

The rest of the volcanic iron was used by Bai Yun to make various weapons. Bai Yun made a sword, a saber, a spear and a shield with the remaining volcanic iron. Even though volcanic ore was not very valuable due to the difficulty in refining it, volcanic iron was highly appreciated as a material for weapon making. Especially volcanic iron tempered to the limit like Bai Yun. He expected to sell all of these for a good profit. According to Bai Yun's estimate, if he sold these weapons, not only would he recover the money he spend to buy the volcanic ore and the variant wood and also the money for the room, he would still have some money remaining. Since Bai Yun would need money to continue his cultivation, and the money he had on him would run out soon, he needed a path to make more money. And his skills in blacksmithing and alchemy would do perfectly for this job.

When he was done Bai Yun left the blacksmithing room. He immediately went and sold the new weapons he had made to the blacksmithing union. And they went for even more than what Bai Yun had imagined. In a place like terracotta hill without a lot of high level blacksmiths, such weapons were very rare.

After this Bai Yun went back to his room and fell asleep for a long needed rest.

From tomorrow onward he would be going on an adventure.