Chapter 753: Trade
Soon, she led me to her own abode. Whereas many other suns use palaces and magnificent buildings to dwell in. Showcasing their power and their unlimited wealth. While for her she had an enormous smithy where she worked in.
Massive bellows that continued to blow constantly were churning out smoke. The sound of hammers striking steel and workers shouting over each other was constantly heard all over the place.
Flame and soot covered the place, and instead of her sitting down to watch all this, she waved her hand to change her robes to dirty and greasy ones.
"Let me show you how we do things here," she said in a wide smile as she walked up to one of the currently operating furnaces.
There was a great-sized piece of metal being processed and extracted from the furnace where a line of more than a hundred workers were striking it.
"Boss! Welcome back!" one of the workers said.
"We saw the tournament from here, it was fun watching it," another added.
"You didn't slack off while I was away did you?" she said teasingly.
"No boss, we already finished our quota and some more, we're only missing this keel to finalize the hull, and all that's left is welding things together for the frame to be done," he said.
Apparently, this single piece of giant metal is the keel that will support a massive ship.
"This doesn't look like a normal ship's keel," I said.
"Because it isn't," she replied, "This is actually inspired by your small ship, I'm planning on making something bigger made from Soulsteel, however, I don't have enough materials, so I'm only making the major and most important parts from it," she said as she slammed the hammer down.
Now, this is where true expertise is shown. You need strength to do metalwork, but not too much of it. A smith is always a strong person, but not every strong person can be a smith. Due to the preciseness of the strength needed for each blow to bend the metal. If too much of it is used, it will break something or bend it out of form rendering it useless.
But too little strength used and no change would happen and might even ruin the material because it will need reheating constantly.
For her, although she was at the level of a sun, she matched the hundred worker's pace and power, as they all struck down with exact power on the keel morphing it into a slightly curved but powerful bow shape.
It took several hours of working before she was done and said, "I have a guest to entertain, continue working."
She turned to me in all smiles and said, "It's good to break a sweat," though soot covered some of her face her blue eyes were still shining bright despite the grim on her face.
A cultivator can easily not get affected by such things, but since she didn't care or worry about it affecting her or her image with workers far below her cultivation stage and simply did 'dirty' work. She grew on me.
I'm fond of people who are hard-working despite their status.
"I'm quite envious of you," she said.
"Of what?" I asked.
"Because you always manage to make and create quite eccentric and amazing things with your mind. Though you're far below us in the cultivation stage, I cannot see it in me to think less of you when it comes to your mind, it is quite… beautiful, a beautiful mind," she smiled.
"Ah, well I cannot take credit for everything I've done, I used the knowledge of others and transformed it into my own," I replied.
She wiped her hands with a handkerchief as she said, "That is the beauty of innovation, one takes ideas from others and adds onto them, creating an endless stream and constant flow of ideologies that would one day bore something incredible," she said. "We all seek perfection in our craft," she finalized.
"Indeed, we seek perfection but dread to ever achieve it," I said.
Her head snapped at me saying, "You too?"
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"If you were offered perfection, would you take it?" she asked her eyes vibrating.
"I guess your wording is slightly off, but I understand what you mean. No, I would never take it, perfection is the death of innovation, it is what goes against anything we try to get. We as craftsmen and innovators would rather forever chase after perfection than ever achieve it, because once you achieve perfection then there is nothing else to change nothing else to add nothing else to modify.
It is a full stop to the flow, a dead end where one cannot recover from, that is what I think perfection is, the same as the road to cultivation, one can always chase the peak knowing that it is far, knowing that is not attainable."
"So you believe that cultivation itself has no end?" she asked.
"It may have it, I wouldn't know if it did. But what I know for sure is, that no matter how high one gets, there will always be deeper seas, and higher mountains, always and forever…until the end of time itself," I said.
"Like I said," she grinned, "a beautiful mind,"
She moved forward first inside the smithy and said, "Follow me, I have stuff to show you," she said.
I followed her into a small room at the end of the smithy. Once we got there, somehow, she already changed back into her azure and blue cultivation robes and was waiting for me next to a large table that took the majority of the space of the small room. Discover more content at m,v l'e-NovelBin.net
On the table were more than a hundred or so tightly packed diagrams and plans for all sort of machinery she was working on, and the most impressive and largest one of them all took almost the entire table size.
I took a quick glance at it and frowned.
"You don't seem to like this," she said.
"More like, is this the ship you're working on?"
"Yes, that is indeed the vessel I'm working on, you just saw its keel, as for the rest of its parts they have already been built separately, all we need now is assembly."
"Hmm, and these are the weapons you'll be using to protect it?" I asked as I pointed at the many weapons on the ship's sides and attached to what seemed to be a deck.
"Yes, they have a full range of motion, I was even inspired by your bottom cabinet and installed these," she said as she pointed at upside-down cannons under the ship or where they should be.
"What if you were being chased?" I asked.
"We'll use cultivators to protect the ship from behind," she said.
"That could work, so what is needed of me? You seem to be on top of things here."
"I need your puppet knowledge," she said.
"The inner reactor?" I asked.
She nodded raising her head up and down.
"That's a difficult request, you know full well that I cannot give you that, you're putting me in a tight spot." I said.
"I don't want to take them or buy them, I want to hire them," she said.
This was interesting, "So you want a working force? What will guarantee that you won't just simply do the same as what the Cryptic Sun did. Because you can just simply copy their inner circuts and recreate them," I said.
"That's not possible, not for me at least. Perhaps the Wisest Sun he can do that, but I cannot. I'm good with my hands, recreating the exact same puppet with the same specs is easy for me. But to remake the inner meridian as you called it. That will require a lifetime of Law study. Not even the brightest disciple of the Wisest Sun is able to make a semi functional Key.
And you have five different attributed ones inside the puppets you own. The time and effort it would take me to decipher the laws and understand them, then recreate them and learn advanced levels of inscriptions is not short, it would take me a thousand years and that is an overestimation of my ability, and we don't have that much time," she said.
This type of praise was extremely honorable to hear from one of the suns.
She then raised her hand up, "I swear to the heavens that I won't cheat you out of this deal and all will be open between us. And let heaven be my witness."
The skies above us rumbled as they accepted the vow. With that done I had no excuses to refuse a good deal.
"Done," I said as I gave my hand for a handshake.
She was confused for a moment, "Your hand," I said and then I grabbed it and shook it twice, "This is how we confirm a deal and seal it."
She smiled saying that I was weird, but it didn't feel bad hearing it.
"Alright, how many puppets do you need?" I asked.