Chapter 398: Artifact Refinement

"Well?" Having made his offer, Yaoguang watched the Penglai Dao Lord and waited for her answer.

Dao Integration was a gamble for any Void-Shattering cultivator, and death was the most likely outcome. The Dao of void especially carried not only the risk of Dao transformation, but also a perilous human tribulation.

Of course, he could consider integrating through the Great Dao of time instead. But time-type Dao Techniques were extremely rare; what if he never found another to deepen his comprehension of that Great Dao?

He could hardly gamble his future on the Dao of time just to dodge that human tribulation.

Given that even he had no absolute certainty of achieving integration, choosing the path with the highest success rate was obviously the soundest course of action, and among all the Great Dao, the Dao of void, walked by countless cultivators before him, offered by far the richest body of knowledge.

That, in turn, meant facing the human tribulation, and with someone of the Penglai Dao Lord's caliber protecting him and holding that tribulation at bay, his advancement would become practically certain.

The Penglai Dao Lord looked at him, eyes curving, a smile on her lips. "Everything you've said rests on the premise that you succeed at Dao Integration. What if you fail? Then the immortal artifact and immortal array come to nothing."

"Which is why it comes down to whether you have the nerve for it." Yaoguang smiled back. "Prior to my integration, I don't need any support from you at all. With my own methods, I can take the sect master's position and use that position to gather resources, practice Dao Techniques, and build my foundation. If I fail, we speak of it no more. But if I succeed, every problem you face and every worry you carry resolves itself, and you gain a Dao Lord ally in the bargain."

"Yaoguang, you have a silver tongue," the Penglai Dao Lord said.

"I'm merely laying out in advance what is likely to happen," Yaoguang replied.

The Penglai Dao Lord gave no answer. Instead, she turned her gaze to the Limitless Sword's embryo.

The next moment she moved, pointing a finger at the unfinished Dao Artifact, and in that instant Yaoguang seemed to see the phantom of the entire world rise before his eyes.

Dao resonance unlike anything he had ever felt spread from her fingertip, so potent that a single wisp seemed worth refining an entire Void Dao Pill; channeled into a spirit treasure, it would have instantly qualified the treasure to transform into a Dao Artifact.

And within that visible resonance, rippling outward like waves, a stream belonging to the Great Dao of void was drawn down and poured into the Limitless Sword.

In an instant, the resonance of the Limitless Sword in its nascent form exploded upward with a loud humming sound, jumping straight to the Dao Artifact tier and, its momentum unspent, pressing on toward the level of a high-grade Dao Artifact.

"This is..." Yaoguang's eyes flew wide.

This refinement technique was using brute force to create miracles! She had simply summoned the Great Dao to manifest and dumped an ocean of Dao resonance into the blade, force-feeding the embryonic Limitless Sword into a Dao Artifact!

"So it is really becoming a high-grade Dao Artifact... And it seems like it can push further still, into a top-tier Dao Artifact!" Sensing the changes in the Limitless Sword, the Penglai Dao Lord studied the blade with surprise.

"Why wait for someday?" Yaoguang sprang forward at once, guiding the surging Dao resonance along the sword's body into a higher order of communion with the Great Dao of void.

In moments, the blade completed its transformation from ordinary to high-grade Dao Artifact and kept climbing toward a top-tier Dao Artifact.

"You're saying you can refine this into a top-tier Dao Artifact right now?"

"Yes." Yaoguang nodded. "Given enough Dao resonance!"

"Dao resonance, huh?"

At that, the Penglai Dao Lord pointed her finger toward the sword once more. The Great Dao of void shuddered, drawn onward by the Great Dao of origin, and in the instant the two Great Dao collided, countless motes of resonance poured forth in an unending cascade, flooding all of the Hundred-Refinement Peak.

"Like this?" the Dao Lord asked.

"Yes! Exactly like this!"

Yaoguang made a sweeping motion with his hand, and the Dao Artifact materials he had long since prepared surged out one by one. Using the Spirit Nurturing Technique, he gathered the drifting resonance and fused it into the Limitless Sword before him.

As all those materials, saturated with dense Dao resonance, melded into the blade, the Limitless Sword kept transforming, the aura of the Great Dao radiating from it growing stronger and grander by the moment.

"You're channeling your resonance wrong. Ninety-nine percent of it is going to waste! Let me guide your infusion!" With that, Yaoguang activated his Psyche King talent, instantly bringing his psychic thought into resonance with the Penglai Dao Lord's.

"This ability of yours... is rather ingenious." Watching the Limitless Sword transform over and over, the Penglai Dao Lord made no move to block his guidance.

She could not refine artifacts. All her time and energy had gone into cultivation; never mind refinement, she was also a novice in alchemy and array arts. The Dao Artifacts she gave the Penglai Immortal Sect's juniors were all made by drowning things in resonance: pour in enough, and any spirit treasure or astra would be able to transform into a Dao Artifact.

This was the first time she had seen artifact refinement done with actual ability, the way Yaoguang did it, and it left her genuinely curious. How does an artifact paragon refine?

Under their combined work, the Limitless Sword grew at a ferocious pace. One day passed, then three, ten, half a month...

In just one month, as the Dao resonance radiating from the blade climbed to an unprecedented height, all of it suddenly transformed from intangible to tangible. A seemingly true Great Dao of void, woven out of countless threads of Dao resonance, plunged into the Limitless Sword.

In that moment, the blade was no longer merely the Limitless Sword; it had become the outward manifestation of the Great Dao of void itself, the sword's body nothing more than the Dao's vessel.

"A top-tier Dao Artifact." A note of wonder crept into the Penglai Dao Lord's voice.

One month! In one short month, she had watched this Dao Artifact rise from nothing and transform three times: from a simple Dao Artifact, into high-grade, and then a top-tier one.

Through the whole process, she had done nothing but bind the Great Dao of void in its manifested state and keep pouring Dao resonance into the blade; every step of the refining itself had been done by Yaoguang.

And just like this, as a Void-Shattering cultivator, he had actually forged a top-tier Dao Artifact, something many Dao Lords still lacked.

It was, quite simply, unbelievable.

"Done." Yaoguang was delighted.

The Limitless Sword! Refining this sword into a true top-tier Dao Artifact by using only his own abilities would have taken decades.

Instead, with the Penglai Dao Lord's help, it took just one month! In a single month, the embryo had leapt three tiers and emerged as a top-tier Dao Artifact. For him, this was a windfall beyond all expectations.

"Forging top-tier Dao Artifacts while still at the Void-Shattering Realm... You said you can produce semi-immortal and immortal artifacts after becoming a Dao Lord; I believe you now!" The Penglai Dao Lord's psychic thought pulsed with the words, and only then did Yaoguang notice their psyches were still connected.

He smiled. "Thank you for your help, Dao Lord. Without you, who knows how long this artifact would have taken to finish."

"You had already laid an excellent foundation yourself. I merely sped the process along a little." As she spoke, the Penglai Dao Lord looked at the sword in Yaoguang's hand, and a trace of envy showed in her eyes.

Seeing it, Yaoguang's thoughts stirred. "You must have thought about forging a top-tier Dao Artifact suited to yourself, am I right?"

"Mhmm. But I became a Dao Lord not long ago, and I know nothing about artifact refinement. To this day I make do with a set of ordinary Dao Artifacts," the Penglai Dao Lord replied.

A Dao Lord wielding ordinary Dao Artifacts was like a Void-Piercing cultivator wielding common spirit treasures: useful in name only.

Even high-grade Dao Artifacts meant little to a Dao Lord. On the other hand, a top-tier Dao Artifact could amplify a Dao Lord's strength by ten or twenty percent.

And however modest that sounded, for beings who stood at the very limit of what any cultivator under the starry sky could reach, even one or two percent could tip a life-and-death struggle against a peer, let alone ten or twenty.

"Do you have suitable materials? If you do and you trust me, I can try to forge you a top-tier Dao Artifact. It will take some time, of course, and I'll need your help with the later stages," Yaoguang said.

"You?" The Penglai Dao Lord glanced at him. "I cultivate the Great Dao of origin."

Yaoguang smiled and drew a hand through the air, and the Dao resonance of the Sovereign Human Emperor began to flow.

"You've mastered that technique?" the Penglai Dao Lord said, taken aback. A second later, the surprise on her face turned to outright shock. "No! This is more than mere competence... Your Sovereign Human Emperor has reached the mastery stage?!"

Yaoguang nodded. "With mastery-stage comprehension of the technique, forging a top-tier Dao Artifact is possible. It's just slower and will require more effort. Naturally, if my understanding deepens in the future and I bring it to perfection, refining it will be faster."

"Mastery..." The Penglai Dao Lord did not answer. She simply stared at Yaoguang, momentarily lost. "It has been less than forty years since I shared the Sovereign Human Emperor technique with you... You took a non-void Dao Technique to the mastery stage in forty years?"

"I have an unusual gift for practicing Dao Techniques. I could hardly have reached the Void-Shattering Realm this quickly otherwise," Yaoguang said.

By his own estimate, his speed at practicing Dao Techniques exceeded even the Penglai Dao Lord's; nothing less would have cracked this Dao Lord's composure for the first time.

"So fast..." the Penglai Dao Lord murmured. Then, suddenly, she laughed. "I think I finally understand a little of what my peers felt, watching me master technique after technique."

Yaoguang smiled as well. "So then, would you like to try?"

"Yes!" The Penglai Dao Lord produced a storage treasure without hesitation. "These are the materials I've collected. Take them all. Look through and tell me, is anything missing? Whatever's lacking, I'll go find it."

Yaoguang swept his psychic thought through it, intending to take inventory. The next second, his thoughts stalled outright, struck by Dao resonance so dense it was like standing face to face with the Great Dao of origin itself.

"This..." Yaoguang gasped.

If the materials in this storage treasure were converted into Pure Yang Grand Pills, they would be worth no less than a hundred billion!