Beyond his delight, Han Li felt a twinge of curiosity—if he continued to ripen the Golden Thunder Bamboo, would it undergo further changes?
With this thought in mind, Han Li spent several months dripping Green Liquid onto the bamboo.
The result was that the bamboo itself showed no change whatsoever in color or power. Its size remained fixed at roughly the ten-thousand-year mark, refusing to grow even a fraction more.
What did happen, however, was that during this period of forced ripening, a young shoot had sprouted right beside the original bamboo.
As the Green Liquid continued to drip onto it, the young shoot grew day by day. After several months, the new Heavenly Thunder Bamboo looked exactly like the original had in its younger days—of course, this time it was a complete, whole stalk.
Seeing this, Han Li was not the least bit disappointed. On the contrary, he was overjoyed.
Truth be told, even the original Heavenly Thunder Bamboo alone was barely enough to forge a single set of twelve "Azure Bamboo Swarm Cloud Swords." Now that he knew the Green Liquid could produce additional young shoots, his predicament of insufficient raw materials was completely resolved.
But this, in turn, made Han Li's ambitions even greater.
Since he no longer had to worry about the quantity of raw materials, he decided he wouldn't settle for forging just twelve flying swords. Instead, the sudden idea struck him to forge the maximum possible number of "Azure Bamboo Swarm Cloud Swords"—a full set of seventy-two.
Though his magical power at the early Core Formation stage was nowhere near sufficient to refine and command so many swords, he wasn't worried. He could simply refine them one by one as his cultivation progressed.
After all, a matched set of flying swords could either be treated as a single magical treasure stored within one's body or split apart and used individually—it made no difference.
Once this thought took root, Han Li's heart burned with excitement, and he began to consider whether he could truly accomplish this.
The greatest challenge in forging a matched set of magical treasures lay in the differences between the raw materials, which made them extremely difficult to forge successfully. But now he would be using Heavenly Thunder Bamboo from the same root system, so that problem was eliminated.
The remaining question was how well he could manage the forging process and prepare the supplementary materials.
He had already prepared all the supplementary materials long ago. Whether forging twelve swords or seventy-two, the same amount of supplementary materials was required, so there was no need to seek out anything additional.
The only thing that truly worried him now was his own lack of skill in forging magical treasures.
After all, he had absolutely no experience in artifact refining.
For ordinary magical treasures, this wouldn't have been a concern—the process of refining them with Core Fire was straightforward and easy to pick up.
But the "Azure Bamboo Swarm Cloud Swords" were entirely different.
Even a single sword from the set, taken on its own, would be far more complex to forge than any ordinary magical treasure.
What's more, because they needed to function as a matched set, each individual sword had to be refined using a specific magical formation. This required at least a working knowledge of formation arrays. Without that, there was simply no way to even begin forging this particular treasure.
But Han Li was a man of extraordinary resolve. Even faced with so many difficulties, he made his decision—if he wasn't going to forge them, fine. But if he was, he would forge the very best flying swords possible.
Otherwise, he never would have been so tenaciously attached to the Heavenly Thunder Bamboo in the first place.
With this settled, Han Li spent a day and a night deliberating inside his cave dwelling before finally drawing up a cultivation plan for the next twenty-odd years.
…
A few days later, in the market district of Heavenly Star City, an inconspicuous little shop suddenly gained a new proprietor—a plain-looking young man who appeared to be in his early thirties. Besides him, there was also a tall, thick-browed, large-eyed brawny servant.
The young man took over the shop and immediately changed the old name "Li's General Store" to "Azure Bamboo Studio," selling only a selection of talismans and medicinal herbs. However, after half a month, a few low-grade magical artifacts of rather crude quality were added to the inventory.
What puzzled several nearby shopkeepers was that this young man rarely ventured out the shop's front door. Day after day, he sat reading a tattered, coverless silk-bound book, occasionally gesticulating excitedly as though he had stumbled upon something fascinating. At other times, he would retreat to the rear quarters of the shop and not show his face in the front hall for most of the day.
All the customers and business were handled by that honest-looking brawny servant.
Most of the nearby shopkeepers were ordinary mortals born and raised in Heavenly Star City, running their shops simply to make a living. Only one—a white-haired elderly man surnamed He—possessed a low-grade Spirit Root, though he was at only the third or fourth level of the Qi Refining stage.
Even so, this was enough for the elderly man surnamed He to command great respect among the other mortals, who addressed him as "Master He" from morning to night.
So when the young man first arrived, the others had already consulted Master He and learned that the young man possessed no magical power whatsoever—he was merely an ordinary mortal.