Chapter 4182 — A Helpless Failure
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
Ten-thousand-year tree crystal, ancient pure-land soil, and a whole array of other rare treasures of heaven and earth—you two actually threw them all together into one furnace without a second thought? Even those genius grandmasters would find such materials hard to master. And you two novices dared to fire the furnace and have at it?
Truly absurd. It would be a wonder if it took shape at all. In fact, to have reached this final step was itself nothing short of a marvel of the age!
But Ragpicker Wang and Wei Zhao knew none of this. They still assumed the problem truly lay in their own skill, and they sat there glum-faced, at a loss for what to do.
The final shaping depended entirely on heat control refined to its absolute peak. There was no shortcut of any other kind. Unless one found a ready-made grandmaster forger to help, there was simply no way to think of a solution—and even an ordinary grandmaster forger could not manage it!
Yet forgers were exceedingly few. In all the Northern Island, apart from Ragpicker Wang, one would be hard-pressed to find even a few, and in forging skill they were likely no match for him, so none of them could truly be called a grandmaster forger. What was to be done?
With no other choice, Wei Zhao could only leave Ragpicker Wang alone in the cave to keep trying, while he himself returned first to the Welcome Pavilion. After all, sitting there doing nothing was no solution, and even if he stayed, he could not help Ragpicker Wang.
Still, this vexation would not leave him. Even alone and away from it all, Wei Zhao kept unconsciously knitting his brow.
"Little Junior Brother, what's wrong? Are you unhappy playing with us?" Shangguan Lan'er pouted at the sight, for these past few days she had been dragging Huang Xiaotao along to visit Wei Zhao whenever she had a moment, on the fine pretext of helping the two of them grow closer and being a proper matchmaker.
Huang Xiaotao, too, was watching Wei Zhao carefully from the side, quietly worried. She assumed that she and Shangguan Lan'er had been coming too often lately and had annoyed him.
"No, don't misunderstand. It really has nothing to do with the two of you." Wei Zhao hastened to explain. "I'm actually troubled by my own affairs. Lately a friend and I have been forging a weapon. We used a great many rare treasures of heaven and earth and spent a great deal of effort. That living-phase mushroom I went to such lengths to find earlier was in fact for this forging. But now, just when success is in sight, we're stuck at the last step. It simply won't take shape smoothly, and there's truly nothing I can do."
"Oh, so that's how it is. What a pity my grandfather doesn't understand forging either, or I could have asked him to help." Shangguan Lan'er shook her head regretfully. "My own weapon still has to be gathered from materials and sent to a forger to be made, but those forgers aren't very high in rank, so I doubt they'd be of any use..."
Huang Xiaotao could be of even less help in such a matter. The only thing she could do was comfort Wei Zhao from the side and tell him not to fret.
"There's no help for it. We'll just have to take it one step at a time and let my friend keep probing and trying. I only hope things don't get any worse before we find a solution," Wei Zhao said with a bitter smile.
After chatting for a while, the group dispersed. It happened that Shangguan Lan'er had just received a letter from Ning Xuefei, and she at once wrote back a detailed account of everything that had been going on with Wei Zhao of late—even his current troubles were written into the reply. (To be continued) R655