A Living Anvil
The experiment was a success. Jekyeong was at least seventy percent certain. The remaining thirty percent wasn't a risk of failure, but rather the possibility that the effects might fall short of his expectations.
‘Even if the spiritual energy doesn't penetrate deeply enough to affect my molting, it will at least strengthen my scales. Either way, it will be of some help.’
Jekyeong intended to begin immediately once the human artisans finished recovering. However, there was one thing that worried him.
‘Will those fellows be able to do it properly?’
Not to boast, but Jekyeong was well aware that his true form possessed an immense, overwhelming majesty. Even a Great Yao would often quail in his presence, while lesser demons would tremble in terror or, in extreme cases, faint outright. This happened even when he had no intention of exerting pressure and was simply coiled quietly.
While the beast race was instinctively susceptible to the influence of higher-ranking beasts, the fact that even Great Yao reacted this way suggested it was no longer a simple matter of biological hierarchy.
Jekyeong did not believe these fragile humans could maintain their sanity upon seeing his true form, let alone when standing right against his body. And he certainly did not expect them to execute the forging method properly in such a compromised state.
"Cheongo." After much deliberation, Jekyeong finally hit upon a solution.
"Huh?" Cheongo, who had been chatting away with Muk-su while Jekyeong was lost in thought, poked its head out of its nest.
Jekyeong frowned slightly when he noticed a pulpy, fruit-like residue smeared around the bird's beak, but he quickly took a deep breath to calm his rising irritation.
"Can you hypnotize the humans outside? But their reasoning must remain intact. You must only erase their fear."
"Hmm... I don't know. I've never tried that before."
"Then go try it."
"But it's such a pain..."
Seeing Cheongo's indifferent expression, Jekyeong kept his mouth shut and pulled a lowest-grade spirit stone from his storage bag. Cheongo glanced at the stone's luster, but its bored expression didn't budge an inch.
"..." Jekyeong put the lowest-grade spirit stone back and pulled out a low-grade spirit stone. At the sight of the glittering stone, Cheongo's eyes sparkled slightly, but its body remained sprawled out, refusing to move a muscle.
"..." Jekyeong bit his lip slightly and produced one more low-grade spirit stone. Only then did Cheongo slowly begin to pick itself up.
Jekyeong decided to look on the bright side. If two low-grade spirit stones—and a spiritual fruit the bird had pilfered God knows when—could buy a significant leap forward in his cultivation, it was a bargain.
"I did it!" As expected, Cheongo did not disappoint. Though it could be incredibly annoying at times—no, quite often—it always handled its tasks cleanly.
"They must not be afraid even when they see my true form. They need to perform the same hammering they did for three days, but directly on my body."
Hearing this, Cheongo's gaze turned bizarre. It scanned Jekyeong up, down, left, and right, looking at him as if he were some incomprehensible, freakish creature.
"Don't look at me with those strange eyes."
"You're the one who said something weird first!"
Unable to bear Cheongo's persistent, disrespectful stare, Jekyeong had no choice but to explain his plan. Only then did Cheongo's eyes return to normal.
"If dozens of people crowd around and hit you, won't it hurt?"
"Well, I'd be surprised if I felt so much as a tickle."
These were mid-stage Qi Condensation cultivators, not even late-stage, and they possessed no particularly outstanding talents. Jekyeong was confident that even if he fell fast asleep right in front of them, they wouldn't be able to leave a single scratch on him. In fact, they probably wouldn't even be able to wake him up.
"Oh, I see." Seeing Jekyeong's confident display, Cheongo gave a half-hearted nod and lay back down in its nest.
It took a full ten days for the human artisans to recover their strength.
"From now on, I will tell you what you must do." Jekyeong stood before the fully recovered human artisans once more and got straight to the point.
"What you forged ten days ago was my scale. To be precise, it was a shed skin left behind after my molting."
The expressions of the human artisans twisted strangely. Though mostly suppressed by the sheer terror weighing down their minds and bodies, the shock in their eyes was impossible to hide.
"Now, you must forge my scales. Not the scales that have fallen from my body like the ones you hammered ten days ago, but the scales currently attached to my flesh."
As soon as he finished speaking, flames erupted from Jekyeong's body. Within a pillar of fire so bright and hot it threatened to blind them, a colossal silhouette revealed itself. A massive maw capable of swallowing an entire ship in a single gulp, followed by a trunk. Then more of the trunk, and more, an endless expanse of body slithering out.
Before the eyes of the horrified human artisans, the ground where Jekyeong had stood in his human form caved in and cracked. Having fully revealed his true form, Jekyeong slowly shifted his weight. The earth sank along the path of his movement. He was nothing short of a living, breathing, colossal hydraulic press.
"Caw!" Just as the trembling human artisans were about to roll their eyes back and faint, Cheongo let out a clear cry and flew over their heads.
"Look at me if you don't want to die! Look at me if you don't want to wet yourselves, you dummies!"
Hearing Cheongo's voice, the human artisans raised their heads as if possessed, their gazes locking with Cheongo's glittering eyes.
"Caw!" Cheongo's eyes were like mirrors. No matter where or how they looked, they could lock eyes with it. And the moment their gazes met, their minds were projected into Cheongo's eyes.
"Don't be scared, you dummies! Why are you afraid when he isn't even going to eat you? You should be happy instead! Once you finish this job, you get to go home!"
Cheongo's cheerful voice washed over their minds. This brute-force persuasion instantly transformed the dread looming over their hearts into joy and anticipation.
"Now go to work! The faster you finish, the sooner you go home." By the time Cheongo's song-like words ended, the hunched backs and trembling knees of the human artisans had straightened completely.
"Lord Dragon. May we begin?" One of them, a middle-aged man, even dared to look Jekyeong straight in the eye and ask the first question.
Jekyeong stared down at the brave middle-aged man and slowly opened his mouth.
"Begin."
With Jekyeong at the center, dozens of humans positioned themselves at appropriate intervals. To Cheongo, they looked exactly like blowflies swarming around a massive pile of demon beast dung. Of course, knowing that Jekyeong would be absolutely furious if it voiced this amusing thought aloud, Cheongo merely snickered quietly to itself.
Clang! Clang! Having finished their preparations, the human artisans began the forging in earnest. They swung their hammers against scales that were as large as their own torsos. On the surface, it looked like mechanical hammering, but it was actually a sophisticated manipulation of spiritual power. Each strike of the hammer carried far more than mere physical force.
‘This is...’ Though the hammering didn't even tickle, Jekyeong focused all his attention on the exact moment the hammers struck his scales. Specifically, he was trying to decipher the complex forces channeled through the hammers into his scales.
‘What they pour in is spiritual power and lifespan. Yet, what leaves the hammer and transfers into the scales is pure spiritual energy. In other words, what I am absorbing is the energy of heaven and earth, completely unrelated to the forgeman himself?’
Jekyeong was slightly taken aback. This differed from his expectations. He had assumed that Muju's forging method directly imbued the target with the forgeman's own spiritual power, consuming a portion of their lifespan in the process. He had even hypothesized that Muju might have conceived this forging method after drawing inspiration from demonic secret arts.
But looking at it now... this was different from the demonic arts Jekyeong had heard of. It consumed the forgeman's lifespan and spiritual power to infuse an object with spiritual energy. But if what entered the object was the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, then where did the forgeman's lifespan and spiritual power go? They were offered to heaven and earth. In other words, this forging method paid a toll to heaven and earth to borrow its power.
Jekyeong recalled hearing that in ancient times, before spell arts became the primary tool of cultivators, the prevailing shamanic rituals operated in a similar fashion.
‘Where did Muju obtain such knowledge? Or was it merely a coincidence?’
Jekyeong was deeply curious, but since thinking about it wouldn't yield an answer, he focused his attention back on the spiritual energy permeating his scales.
‘As expected, there don't seem to be any side effects.’
It felt like soaking in a hot spring while receiving a massage. The spiritual energy seeping into dozens of his scales grew denser and denser until, at some point, it began to trickle minutely into the flesh and bone beneath his scales.
"Whew... Whew..." Unlike Jekyeong, who was peacefully enjoying his "massage," the human artisans were drenched in sweat, panting heavily. The dark circles under their eyes had returned to how they looked ten days ago, and their bodies had withered until they were practically skin and bones.
"Caw!" Cheongo, who had been quietly watching the scene, let out a long cry. At that, the human artisans, who had been hammering as if possessed, collapsed simultaneously like puppets with their strings cut.
"Hmm?" Jekyeong finally opened his eyes and slowly raised his body. "How much time has passed?"
Cheongo replied while preening its feathers, "Two days."
For a brief moment, he had lost all track of time. It felt as though he had only closed and opened his eyes, yet two days had flown by. Jekyeong glanced at the limply sprawled human artisans and clicked his tongue.
"How incredibly fragile."
Jekyeong found them so weak it was almost pitiful. In truth, however, they could hardly be blamed. Although Cheongo had erased their fear, the absence of fear did not change the fundamental pressure they experienced.
Before a Great Yao in the mid-stage of the Great Yao realm, mid-stage Qi Condensation artisans struggled merely to stand. No matter how much Jekyeong relaxed and tried to be gentle, his subconscious breaths and every tiny movement exerted an immense pressure on them.
‘Two days of work followed by ten days of rest? The efficiency is terribly low.’
The number of scales they had forged over the two days was only one per person. Since this amounted to less than ten percent of his total scales, continuing at this pace would take roughly five months.
"Let them rest." After giving the order to Hyeongu, Jekyeong returned to the Black Cult Palace, where he began consuming spirit stones and meditating deeply.
Though less than ten percent of his scales had been infused with spiritual energy, he could already feel a distinct change.
‘It is slow... but the effect is definitely there.’
It was only the beginning, but he could feel it clearly, however faint. Stimulated from both inside and out, spiritual energy seeped into his spirit and flesh. It felt as though a path that had been opened on only one side was now being cleared from the other, finally connecting into one. Although this path was still narrow, fragile, and so precarious it might collapse at any moment, a path was still a path.
Thump! A once-familiar sensation, which had felt completely out of reach for so long, returned to him. It was the premonition of molting. However, it was still far too distant. He had merely caught a faint glimpse confirming that it would eventually arrive.
‘Good.’