Chapter 716: Sparrow Blood Iron, Trapped Like a Turtle in a Jar!

After several inquiries, Su Mu finally arrived at a small village thirty li north of the Commandery City, where a hunter about fifty or sixty years old learned of Su Mu’s purpose and his face changed dramatically. He immediately grabbed a broom inside the house to drive Su Mu out.

In the end, Su Mu paid ten taels of silver to make the old hunter relent.

“After this matter, you must never say you heard it from this old man… Alas, about five years ago, the soldiers left the city to exterminate bandits and slaughtered everyone in the Chen Family Village, even sparing not the innocent children who couldn’t speak…”

“Afterwards, the soldiers claimed that it was a rebel base. I lived in a village near there for many years and visited the Chen Family Village multiple times; the village consisted of simple farmers and a few old hunters, all very honest people. How could they be rebels?”

“The one leading at that time is the current Captain in the Commandery City…”

The old man spoke with grief and indignation, but after finishing, he suddenly became panicky and hurriedly shut his mouth.

“That’s all I know. You should go quickly; I know nothing else.”

“Thank you for informing me.”

Receiving the news, Su Mu nodded in secret, confirming in his heart that Qingyunzi’s words were true. Five years ago, Chen Family Village indeed suffered a massacre, falsely reported for merit, and the leader was Yang Yunwen.

Then there’s no need to think much; Yang Yunwen relied on the power of the Yang Family, making no one dare to touch him, and even rose to the current position of Defensive Army Captain due to his ‘merit.’

A hundred innocent souls of Chen Family Village became the bloodstained steps for Yang Yunwen’s promotion. It’s highly possible that Chen Family Village wasn’t the only one; there might also be Li Family Village, Zhou Family Village, and others.

Taking money to do such deeds—this person indeed deserves death.

“Then… quietly wait for days.”

…

These days, Su Mu was not idle either and returned to Sanshan County.

After leaving the Cyan Fish Gang, Su Mu naturally could no longer use the Alchemy Hall’s pill furnace; currently, Su Mu only had two pill furnaces at hand.

One was a non-entry-level pill furnace brought from the Qingyun Three Counties area, and the other was the incomplete Three Flood Dragon Pill Furnace obtained from Baili Ye in Qifeng Town, with a quality of Half-Step Sixth Grade.

Now, the Half-Step Sixth Grade pill furnace was clearly inadequate for Su Mu; he needed a higher-quality pill furnace.

He immediately visited various forging shops in the city, but the ready-made pill furnaces forged by these shops couldn’t satisfy Su Mu. If ordered, custom work would take several months.

Unwilling to stay longer, Su Mu came to places like the Pill Cauldron Pavilion branch and Wanlin Commerce Association branch in the city, where he found two pill furnaces of decent quality.

However, Su Mu didn’t make a purchase, not only because the prices were too high but also due to different alchemical habits, especially for Su Mu, who came from a less structured background as an alchemist.

In Cyan Fish Gang, Second Sister and Big Brother gave Su Mu great freedom; he could adjust the various pill furnaces in the Alchemy Hall to his liking, but now outside, he had no such conditions.

In the end…

Su Mu decided to give up directly purchasing a pill furnace and planned to forge one suitable for himself by hand, thus returning to the Ghost Market.

This time, he was no longer a guest but set up his own stall.

He erected a wooden sign, inscribed with: Purchasing Fourth-Grade Fire Attribute Iron Material.

Iron material doesn’t have a detailed grade classification, as natural iron material doesn’t have clear pill patterns or artifact patterns like finished elixirs or pill-formed blade soldiers.

The same piece of iron material may only forge a lower three-grade treasure artifact in the hands of a mediocrity, but in the hands of a Master Blacksmith, it might forge into a middle third-grade Dharma artifact. Who can say for sure?

Yet, as this world has developed various cultivation arts over such long years, it naturally evolved relatively reasonable industry rules.

This grading starts within the small circle of Blacksmiths—the so-called Fourth-Grade Fire Attribute Iron Material is a conventional term, first excluding those with exceptional forging talent, then excluding the dull-witted.

If placed in the hands of ordinary Fourth-Grade Master Blacksmiths, it can normally forge a Fourth-Grade Dharma Artifact; thus, it’s classified as Fourth-Grade Iron Material, roughly divided by this threshold.

Over time, this concept was passed from the Blacksmith circle to the ears of customers ordering weapons, then spread from ten to a hundred, this rather reasonable concept thoroughly propagated.

Su Mu lowered his requirements as much as possible, not purchasing upper third-grade iron material but instead eeking Fourth-Grade Iron Material, especially because iron materials with fire attributes provide certain benefits when forging pill furnaces.

Thus, he finally set down the requirement for purchasing Fourth-Grade Fire Attribute Iron Material.

People passing by Su Mu, seeing the purchase information on the sign, were mostly startled with surprise, shock, or contemplation, ultimately shaking their heads and leaving.

Fourth-Grade Iron Material is too precious; it’s already extremely rare on the surface in Sanshan County.

If a large quantity of Fourth-Grade Iron Material were handed to a skilled Artifact Refining Grandmaster, it’s likely they could forge a Third-Grade Grandmaster-level weapon.

Jiang Yao once used a Grandmaster-level spiritual spear to fight against three formidable adversaries, even wounding the top three bandit kings to varying degrees, though it was also partly due to Liu Sha, Dugu Lie, and others not exerting their full strength, and Jiang Yao’s own formidable power.

But without that weapon, Jiang Yao undoubtedly couldn’t have fought against three alone, evidenced by the strength of a Grandmaster-level weapon, which only becomes even stronger in the hands of a true Great Cultivator!

In fact, such weapons in Sanshan County or even around Donglai Great County are large enough to affect the power dynamics of various forces, with the circulation of such iron material being monitored and held firmly by major powers.