900 Smelting Tungsten

The man took Alex behind the smithy, to a place that was quite separate from all others.

"Where are we going?" Alex asked.

"The furnace for melting this metal is over there in those buildings. You can't just melt it anywhere you want because of how much heat it produces," the man said.

"I see," Alex said. He looked around the snow-filled backyard of the smithy and saw quite a few people working on parts of artifacts that didn't require much physical work.

The basic furnace-related work was done in the front shop.

They arrived at a location from where Alex could feel intense heat without even entering any of the rooms. "The furnace is here?" Alex asked.

"Yes," the man said. "Scared? I'm not returning your ores even if you want to quit now."

"Oh, it's fine. I don't plan on quitting so easily," Alex said and waited for the man to open the door.

The man shrugged and opened the door. Alex felt the hot air hit him, but the heat barely registered in his senses.

He was more surprised about the size of the furnace. "It's quite small," he said without thinking much.

"It can fit up to a ton of the ore at once, so it's not really that small," the man said.

The furnace looked like a cauldron, except it was long vertically with barely half a meter in diameter.

"That's where we'll melt the ore?" Alex asked as he looked at the material of the hot furnace. "That looks like it's been made from the same metal as well won't it melt?"

"No, that's an alloy, made by mixing different metals. It's not really strong, but has a high melting point," the senior said.

"Oh, what metals? Are they as good as the Starforged Tungsten themselves?" Alex asked.

"No, just 3 parts Ice Iron, 1 part Pale Onyx, 2 parts Violet Obsidian, and 10 parts Starforged Tungsten. You can easily make that furnace too," the man said.

"I see," Alex then turned to look at what the man was doing. "Are you not going to put the ore in?"

"Not yet," the man said and placed the ore in a giant platform and activated some sort of formation.

Instantly, everything was blocked by the platform. The man then brought out a giant hammer, clearly made from the same metal, and watched golden energy flow into it.

The man raised the hammer up high and slammed it down on the ore.

A deafening boom resounded all over the room as the formations on the wall lit up to block the sound from escaping.

Alex felt the force behind the attack. That was definitely in the Saint Foundation realm.

The man pulled the hammer up another time and slammed it down. He continued doing that for a while as the ores turned into even smaller pieces.

'Oh, he's making it easier to melt,' Alex understood.

After a while of beating the ore, the man finally stopped and took the broken ores out of the platform. The platform itself, however, wasn't damaged at all.

The formation there was most likely connected to the Spirit vein that lay below the city.

The man took a giant drum of water and poured the ore into the water. After mixing them for a bit, he threw out the water.

"That gets rid of a lot of the dirt," he explained and continued. He then took the drum of material and poured it into the furnace.

Then, all that was left was to heat it up.

"Tell me immediately if the heat causes a problem, okay? We need this thing to reach over 4000 degrees, and that's not something you should be able to handle," the man said.

"4000? That's quite high," Alex said. He thought back to his own pill-making sessions and never did he have to go over 1500 degrees. Even those didn't last for more than a minute or so before lowering the temperature immediately."

'Not even lava gets that hot, right?' Alex thought.

He stayed to the side and watched as the man suddenly poured his Qi into the furnace.

Alex sent his senses into the furnace and saw that the temperature in there had reached very, very high.

He was also quite surprised to see that the Qi to heat up the metal was being pulled from all around the room, meaning that the Saint Foundation realm cultivator in front of him also had learned the Dao of Heat.

As the man said, the heat really did have nowhere else to go but outside and soon the room started heating up.

The man sent his spiritual sense back at Alex to check if he was okay, but he didn't need to worry at all. Alex was perfectly fine with the heat.

Just because the metal was heating up at 4000 degrees, didn't mean that all the heat that reached Alex was that high as well.

It wasn't even 400 degrees, and that was an amount that Alex could easily navigate through.

Alex watched everything happening as he remembered the methods to smelt metal.

The first task was the pulverize the ore as best as you could. Powdered ores worked the best, but no one would expect the Starforged Tungsten to be powdered.

The second task was to remove as much extra stuff from the ore as possible, such as dirt, minerals, and even other metals using whatever method possible.

Finally, the third task was that you melt the remaining metal and use some reducing agents to remove whatever it is that is still available in the molten metal that didn't float to the surface or sink to the bottom.

Alex waited for a bit and saw the man pull out something from his storage bag.

He poured the bag into the furnace from the top where the hot air was blowing out.

"You're still fine?" the man asked with a confused face.

"Yes, I'm fine, senior," he said. "By the way, what did you put in there just now?"

"This? This is the soot that falls from the volcano. We use it to purify the Tungsten," the man said.

"Oh," Alex thought. 'So that's for the third task.'

Alex felt the molten metal in the furnace move as the soot was immediately mixed into the metal. He watched the soot react with the stuff in the molten metal and float to the top as slag.

The furnace burned for a while longer as the temperature in the room continued to increase. Finally, the man stopped pouring in his Qi and stepped back with a face full of sweat.

"You handled that quite well," he said.

"I was quite far from the furnace," Alex said.

"Still, I've seen Saints run out because the heat was too uncomfortable for them. Are you sure you're not a Saint realm cultivator yet?" the man asked.

Alex smiled. "I'm afraid not," he said. "However, I have been around volcano peaks a lot, so I'm used to being in high heat"

"Oh, is that so?" the man said. He dragged a mold for the metal and opened up the furnace at the bottom as the molten tungsten slowly flowed down the side of the furnace and into the mold.

The mold didn't last very long as it could barely hold the heat from the tungsten, but the man was already working on cooling it down the moment it poured down, so even when the mold broke, the shape of the metal remained.

He further cooled it down and finally, the metal was possible to handle.

In the end, the metal was barely big enough to make a single formation flag if one wanted to. However, that formation flag alone would weigh about 40 kilograms.

Alex watched the rest of the stuff in the furnace begin to flow, which the man let pool on the ground. Once it was cold enough, they would pick it up and either throw it away or repurpose it for other stuff.

"Here, you happy?" the man asked. "Now give me my spirit stones and you can leave."

"Thank you, senior," Alex said and brought out his spirit stones. However, before handing it over, he looked at the man and asked, "Do you think I can learn how to forge artifacts here?"

"You want an apprenticeship?" the man narrowed his eyes.

"Just for a few weeks, to learn the basics," Alex said.

The man thought for a while and snatched Alex's spirit stones. "Fine, but you'll have to pay me a lot."