Dragon Canon

There was no need for all of them to stick together to take down a single stockaded village, of course. Ji Liuli and Bao Yun went away to take out the smaller villages in the surroundings.

The group reconvened two minutes later, fresh ruins in the backdrop. Many Shamans were still alive and escaping everywhere, but the villages had all been destroyed

Their next target was a small tribe numbering several thousand people. It was situated on the shore of a small lake.

This time, Wei Yuan attacked first and dropped the Great Realm right on top of the small tribe. Bao Yun empowered it with the Seven Wonders Exquisite Treasure Tree, causing its manifestation range to swell to one thousand zhang once more and forcefully transforming the area into the Pure Realm of Humanity.

Parts of the Great Realm had even stretched into the lake and the water fields surrounding the village. Suddenly, the surface of the lake began to churn as several large fishes, each several chi long, leaped out of the water. Two of them even landed on the shore. The fishes looked terrifying, and their backs were covered in jagged barbs. Right now, their scales were splitting open, and blood was seeping out of their bodies continuously. They looked to be in extreme agony.

The flesh of the fish was highly poisonous, but its poison could promote a Shaman’s cultivation, making it an essential dish on a Great Warlock’s table[1].

The water fields were planted with things that looked like small trees covered in tumors. Stimulated by the clear qi, the wooden tumors swelled continuously and burst one after another, oozing a pale blue, viscous fluid from within.

The contents of a wooden tumor turned into powder when it reached full maturity. When mixed with water, it became the staple food of an ordinary Shaman.

The water fields were also bubbling furiously as countless insect carcasses floated up to the surface. Even Shamans refused to eat these insects. They were said to be the food of slaves and the poorest of the poor.

By now, the village was in total chaos. Several Dao Foundation stage warriors tried to fly up into the air only to be struck down by Wei Yuan’s golden cauldrons. Many ordinary Shamans were running out of the village and escaping into the surrounding wilderness, but he neither stopped them nor hunted them down purposefully. He only focused on killing the cultivators and destroying the settlement.

Less than two minutes later, the village was completely destroyed. The one Warlock and five ordinary warriors living in the village were killed. Everyone who had reached a certain in the Body-tempering stage was killed as well.

The group would destroy another two villages on the way back before finally returning to Qingming, but not because Wei Yuan was feeling merciful. They had simply run out of time. The longer they delayed, the stronger the warning signs became. Had they dilly-dallied even a little longer, the Great Warlock’s blood curse would most likely catch up to them.

Back in the realm, Xiao Yu approached the group excitedly and declared, “Come! I want you to try out the guns I just made!”

Xiao Yu did not notice the somewhat subdued feeling in the air and excitedly led them to the stone valley behind the central peak. There was now a new stone table in the valley, upon which lay a slender steel tube emitting a faint blue glow. One end of the tube was open and roughly as wide as a thumb, and the other end was sealed.

Xiao Yu loaded the gunpowder and an iron bullet laden with sharp sword intent into the steel tube. Then, while wielding the steel tube like a sword, he pointed it at a large tree and ignited the gunpowder with Dao energy. There was a bang, and the iron bullet sank several inches deep into the tree trunk.

Everyone here possessed great eyesight. They could tell that, unlike Wei Yuan’s stone spear from last night, the bullet had flown in a steady trajectory after leaving the muzzle.

Xiao Yu flourished the iron tube like a sword before saying smugly, “What do you think?”

Deeply intrigued by the demonstration, Wei Yuan inquired about Xiao Yu’s methods. The swordsman held nothing back and told him the creation process in detail.

Xiao Yu had procured two sword forgings from the Swelling Water God Palace’s hidden storerooms and melted them using The Sun’s true fire. He then spent the whole night adjusting its physical properties until he ultimately forged this steel tube. He then re-refined it using Dao energy until it was only half as heavy as the two sword forgings combined, and much, much greater in terms of quality. It was now on par with a middle-grade mystic sword.

As Wei Yuan examined the steel tube, he could not help but wear a strange expression on his face.

Objectively speaking, the thing looked like a steel tube. However, the Dao essence it was emitting was that of a sword. Therefore, it was a sword in the eyes of any cultivator. It could be twisted into a bundle or squeezed into a ball, and it still wouldn’t change the fact that it was a sword.

In other words, Xiao Yu had fired a bullet using an immortal sword.

This has potential, Wei Yuan thought to himself.

The sword—no, gun—Xiao Yu made was of excellent quality. It could kill a blood tempering stage cultivator in one hit, but not one who had mastered the bone tempering stage. It was because the shot wasn’t quite strong enough to penetrate their bones. That said, a bone-tempering stage cultivator could definitely die if they took more than a couple shots.

Although slightly weaker than an ordinary Liao bow’s in terms of potency, the sword-gun[2] was much, much easier to handle. All the cultivator needed to do was aim. It consumed far less Dao energy to fire the sword-gun than it took to manipulate a mystic artifact-grade arrow as well. An ordinary Liao cavalryman could only shoot a swift-wind arrow once per battle, but fire this sword-gun dozens of times without any problems whatsoever.

Xiao Yu was very proud of his creation as a matter of course. If the gun was mass-produced, he believed that they could field a formidable long-range unit immediately. Wasn’t that exactly what mass production was all about?

Wei Yuan was just as excited as Xiao Yu at first, but upon further reflection, he realized that there were still many issues.

For example, the gun was fired using Dao energy. However, Dao energy was something only a spirit nurturing stage cultivator or above could possess. But if someone had reached the spirit nurturing stage, then it was far more convenient to use the bow and arrow than a gun. Their rate of fire far exceeded that of a gun as well—the gunpowder and bullets required reloading after a gun was fired after all.

Xu Wenwu’s world had guns with faster rate of fire and greater firepower as a matter of course. Each had its own specific name as well. However, they all felt that a rate of fire was of little use unless the issue of firepower was resolved.

Suddenly, a new idea occurred to Ji Liuli. She took the steel tube from Xiao Yu and refilled the gunpowder. However, she filled it almost to the brim before inserting an iron bullet in the end. She then aimed it at a large rock a dozen or so zhang away and flicked a finger.

The steel tube flew toward the rock like an arrow and sank all the way through. Then, the gunpowder ignited, and the bullet emerged from the other end of the rock with a loud bang!

Wei Yuan’s eyes lit up. Stabbing an enemy first before shooting them point blank? Ingenious!

Intrigued, everyone started thinking up fun, new ways to increase the weapon’s potency. However, no one thought well about Xiao Yu’s plan to mass produce the weapon.

The swordsman had failed to account for the fact that his sword-gun was forged using two low-grade mystic sword forging and the true fire of an immortal sword, The Sun. How many people could afford such conditions? Not only that, the sword-gun cost roughly a thousand taels of immortal silver to make, yet it was only strong enough to kill a cultivator in the blood tempering stage. They could have spent that money to hire a killer capable of killing a hundred blood tempering stage cultivators.

That said, although Xiao Yu’s dreams of mass production failed to bear fruit, everyone was inspired by it. For example, Wei Yuan was wondering what would happen if he made a spear-gun instead of a sword-gun.

He immediately grabbed two mystic artifact staff forgings from the hidden storeroom and requested a ball of true fire from Xiao Yu. Then, he immediately threw himself into the forging process. Inspired by Ji Liuli’s demonstration, Xiao Yu himself was reforging the steel tube into a sword. It was because he realized that there was no need to copy exactly how it was done in Xu Wenwu’s world.

Zhang Sheng, of course, wasn’t about to join in their shenanigans. Instead, he grabbed Ji Liuli and left to examine the surrounding earthly veins and fengshui, searching for mineral resources.

Bao Yun stayed behind to help Wei Yuan. Together, the duo quickly refined the two mystic artifact staffs into a single spear and removed many impurities from it. Thanks to her help, The Sun’s true fire also burned hotter than usual and made the forging process a piece of cake.

Refining materials and improving physical properties were basic skills all disciples of the Palace of Absolute Beginning possessed. Thus, this was never a problem for Wei Yuan. The real problem lay in creating the Dao essence of a mystic artifact, and engraving arrays on the object to imbue it with attributes.

Fortunately, Wei Yuan wasn’t planning to imbue his spear with anything flamboyant. He was only going to enhance it with two of the most basic attributes, Sharpness and Enduring. Not only were they the most common attributes of a weapon or mystic artifact, the arrays were featured during the centralized learning graduation exam. Thus, it took Wei Yuan no effort to engrave them even without using an array tool.

While Wei Yuan and Xiao Yu were engraving their arrays, the Seven Wonders Exquisite Treasure Tree manifested a green branch that instantly cleared their mind and caused their inspiration to overflow, instantly increasing the success chance of their work by thirty percent.

About forty-five minutes later, Wei Yuan finally finished forging his mystic-artifact grade spear. On the surface, it looked just like any other spear. However, it was a chi longer than his previous spear. It was because he was still growing, and his old spear no longer felt like a perfect fit for him.

Something was very strange about the spear Wei Yuan had forged. It had a mystic artifact shaft that was in the middle-grade thanks to the treasure tree’s influence, and three spearheads that were only in the low-grade.

In fact, the spear consisted of two separate mystic artifacts: the shaft was one, and the spearheads were another. If one wasn’t too particular, they could pretend that it was a composite mystic artifact. The shaft was hollow and could be filled with gunpowder. Once a spearhead was attached, the spear was considered complete.

Inspired by Ji Liuli’s demonstration, Xiao Yu had reforged the steel tube into a two-chi-long blade. In addition, he refined an extra blade that was a chi long. When combined, they formed a single mystic sword. Just like Wei Yuan’s spear, the blade of the sword was hollow and could be filled with gunpowder.

The sword could be imbued with the power of The Sun when wielded. After being hurled at the enemy, the gunpowder could be ignited to propel the tip of the sword forward and deliver a secondary strike.

The only drawback of the weapon was that it had to be released quickly. As the Immortal Sword harnessed the true fire of the sun, even the slightest delay would cause the gunpowder to ignite instantly. Xiao Yu had learned this lesson the hard way and lost a few strands of hair as a result.

Meanwhile, Bao Yun was looking at her two sect fellows and the treacherous weapons they had forged with a thoughtful expression.

She felt like she had misjudged Xiao Yu’s true nature all this time.

The spear Wei Yuan forged sported a slightly weird presence. It was because the spearheads and the spear shaft were of different quality. Anyone who saw it would naturally feel wary of it. On the other hand, Xiao Yu’s sword and attached blade were practically one and the same. It was impossible to tell that they were separate from the outside. If Bao Yun hadn’t watched the forging process from the start until the end, and if she wasn’t paying close attention, then she could have overlooked it as well.

There was a clear gap between Wei Yuan and Xiao Yu’s artifact-forging skills.

Out of habit, Xiao Yu had added a bunch of precious materials he had prepared himself into his sword and improved its quality considerably. It was now a premium sword among middle-grade mystic artifacts.

However, this practice had also increased the price of his sword from one thousand to a whopping five thousand. The same amount of money could have bought him a brand new upper grade mystic artifact, or the service of a highly renowned cultivator.

Utterly failing to realize that his sword was stupidly expensive, Xiao Yu excitedly filled the blade with gunpowder before attaching the sword tip. Then, he looked at Bao Yun and said, “Help me test out my sword, will you?”

“Sure,” Bao Yu answered before standing opposite Xiao Yu.

Xiao Yu took a moment to gauge distance before waving at her. “Come closer. I’m not confident about its aim.”

Bao Yu obeyed and took a few steps forward. She eventually came to a standstill ten zhang away from him.

“Perfect,” Xiao Yu remarked before holding his sword in front of himself and turning solemn; devout even. As a sword cultivator, it was only natural to hold a sword with sincerity and respect.

Seeing how serious Xiao Yu was acting, Bao Yun channeled her Dao energy in advance. Now, she was only waiting for the swordsman to strike her.

Xiao Yu struck a familiar opening pose, holding his sword horizontally with the blade pointed toward Bao Yun. Fixing his gaze on the sword’s edge, he lightly ran his index and middle fingers along its smooth body and ignited it with the true fire of the sun. At the same time, he chanted aloud, “To fight alone across eight thousand li; to stand against a million soldiers with a sword!”

But before Xiao Yu could finish his grandiose-sounding poem, and when his fingers were sliding just halfway across the blade, a bang suddenly struck everyone’s ears, and a sword tip flew toward Bao Yun amidst smoke and fire!

Very much caught by surprise, Bao Yun caught the sword tip with her bare hand. She actually looked a little flustered.

Wei Yuan’s eyes lit up. In that instant, a whole world of possibilities had opened themselves to him.

1. I looked around recently and found a pagan religion called Wicca. While not entirely the same it definitely shares some similarities to the tribe. ☜

2. I know some of you want it to be named a gun-sword… but it isn’t. XD ☜