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There’s going to be a day where I can’t accomplish what Lucia wants of me. When that day comes, she’ll be confused, and when the day passes, she’ll forget about it and believe I can still do everything. It was easy to live up to her expectations because of her incredibly short memory; however, Sophia doesn’t have the same issues with her head—I think. There must be a bit of pride in me somewhere because I don’t want Sophia to see me fail. Also, I think I can fix Durandal. “I’ll need to harvest a sky-realm expert’s body for some materials if you want me to fix Durandal. Luckily for you, I have a lot of them. Those people in those cages over there. All of them have problems with their souls and have to be killed anyway. Pick one of them to turn into Durandal’s new weapon body.”
Lucia turned her head and stared at my prisoners. “You want me to what?”
Ugh. I swear, there was a time Lucia could remember more than one instruction. Did she really become dumber? “Behind you, do you see those cages?”
“Yeah….”
“There’s people inside them, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Knock one of them out and bring them to me.” Hmm? Am I a bad person? I’ve thought about it a lot while thinking about karma, and every conclusion I’ve reached has been a negative. I’m a good person. For the sake of the Immortal Continent, these invaders have to die. If they don’t die, there’s a chance their elders will come down to look for them. If the elders come down, no doubt, they’ll cause immeasurable amounts of devastation to the populace as vengeance for the mistreatment of their disciples. The lives of a few hundred invaders or the trillions of lives living on the Immortal Continent, which is more important? To me, the answer is simple, and any kindhearted, righteous leader would make the same choice.
“Uh, can’t you fix Durandal with normal things?” Lucia tilted her head. “Like, I don’t know, metals? What are swords normally made out of? Iron?”
Of course, I can. “There’s iron in people’s blood. What’s the problem?”
“It’s cheating, that’s the problem!” Lucia snorted and crossed her arms. “If you put Durandal inside a sword made of someone’s body, isn’t that putting him inside someone else? I don’t want Durandal to enter another woman!”
“Then pick a man.”
“That’s even worse!”
Is it worse? I’m not sure. “Do you want me to repair him or not?” I don’t know traditional blacksmithing techniques. I feel like it wouldn’t be too difficult to learn, but quite frankly, it sounds boring to me. It’s a mentally challenging task, sure, but that’s only because of the intense amount of concentration required to repeat the same action. Formations are much more interesting to delve into. What’s creating weapons out of people’s bodies count as? Formation making, obviously.
“I do want you to repair him, but do it normally!”
“This is normal.” Right. When the majority of the sect elders are using items I crafted for them, this is definitely the more normal way of crafting weapons. Supplies are cheaper this way too. Ah, why do I care so much about what Sophia thinks of me? “You know what. I can’t do it. Go ask the blacksmiths.”
Lucia’s eyes widened. “You can’t do it…? Gah, fine. I’ll go tell that guy to fix Durandal then. Hmm…. Actually…. What if I Soul Scoured him to figure out the way to do it? Then I could do it myself. Yeah! That’s a great idea!”
Before I could say anything about Lucia’s dangerous-sounding plan, she vanished, leaving Sophia behind. Even if Lucia Soul Scours someone for that knowledge, there’s no way she’ll be a competent blacksmith. …Right? I’m still astounded by the fact she’s an excellent cook, but there’s no way she’ll be a capable blacksmith too, right? The odds of that happening are way too low. Maybe she’ll come to her senses after Soul Scouring the poor man she has in mind. Meanwhile, I’ll finally get started on this hammer.
“You lied to Mommy, right?” Sophia asked. “You can fix Durandal the normal way, but you didn’t want to.”
Let’s break this image Sophia has of me. I almost found myself acting like some pompous immortal, changing my fundamental self because of something like face. Why should I care if a child looks down on me? Admit my shortcomings, don’t fall for cheap provocations, and don’t think I’m greater than everyone else. That’s all I have to do to live a long life. Power really does mess with people’s heads. “Nobody is perfect, squirt. I can’t do everything. Your mom can’t do everything. You won’t be able to do everything.”
Sophia shut her mouth and stared at me. I didn’t mind. I already separated the skin from the body. It was actually very tough, and the flesh was even tougher. The sky-realm-ranked knife I was using barely made scratches on the corpse’s muscles. I’m not sure I can accurately separate the flesh from the bones such that it peels the way I want it to. The goal is to maximize the surface area of the flesh while keeping it intact. At the same time, I have to watch out for the tendons, making sure I don’t break them. It’s easy to get a small piece of tendon by chopping up a large one, but it’s much more difficult to stitch a bunch of small ones into a large one.
Afterwards, I have to detach the organs. Unsurprisingly, they can be turned into pills. Why is it unsurprising? Well, animal organs are turned into medicine all the time. Why would it be any different for humans? After all, in the immortal realm, beasts and demons consume humans to grow stronger much similar to the way humans consume demons and beasts. The most important part of Kuang Feng, however, is his dantian. It’s where all his spiritual energy was stored during his life. I can use this as the core of the immortal-ranked hammer I’m going to make Lucia. It’s arguably the most important part. I know it’s meant to create weapons, so how come … it smells so appealing? Ugh. This is because of Lucia’s food talk, isn’t it? Let me just stuff these odd feelings of hunger away.