Blacksmith: The Tempering Begins With One’s Flesh - Chapter 36

Chapter 36: Beast Bone

Just then, however, the scarlet flames on Lin Feng’s longsword suddenly vanished. The next second, there was a flash of pure white light in his eyes.

The Holy Flame’s pure-white blaze was exceptionally eye-catching in the muddy, smelly sewers full of rot.

Lin Feng raised his sword up high. When he saw that the chunks of meat in the sewage pond were almost about to gather back into a whole, he flicked his wrist and threw the Holy Flames on the sword onto the pile of meat.

There was a sudden explosion of intense sizzling in the narrow underground sewers.

Lin Feng took a few rapid steps back, covering his mouth and nose with one hand while holding his sword in the other, keeping his guard up.

Thankfully, the Holy Flame was a high-grade fire that had even been upgraded once before.

A plume of thick black smoke rose into the air, and the Sludge Carrion-eater’s life energy disappeared from the pieces of meat as they burned away.

Finally, Lin Feng could heave a sigh of relief.

Although he had to spend a lot of Flame Energy to destroy the Sludge Carrion-eater with the Holy Flame, Flame Energy was practically an infinite resource for a smithing maniac like him. That was why he was not unduly bothered by the energy consumption.

When the pure-white Holy Flames eventually burned out, the chunks of the Sludge Carrion-eater’s meat had also been reduced to lifeless hunks of charcoal.

Lin Feng sheathed his sword and took two steps forward, standing in front of the Sludge Carrion-eater’s remains.

The foul, corrosive acidic liquid in the sewage pond had also been purified by the Holy Flames, so Lin Feng bent down to take a closer look at the scraps of meat left.

Grade-2 beasts usually dropped some Grade-2 beast materials when they died. As a smith, Lin Feng knew that better than anyone else.

He rummaged through the remains until finally, his eyes lit up.

His palms ran through the dark pieces of charcoal flesh and he picked up a fairly unassuming but unnaturally heavy greyish-black stone from the pile.

“A Grade-2 beast material, the Corrosive Crystal, huh…”

This material was obtained from Sludge Carrion-eater. When used in forging, it could give weapons the ability to produce some of the Sludge Carrion-eater’s corrosive fluids.

A weapon or armor like that could eat away at a beast’s defenses if they came into contact.

Lin Feng put away the material, which still smelled rather unpleasant, and patted his hands. He then took another look around the sewage pond, but his gaze lingered once more on the Sludge Carrion-eater’s corpse.

“That’s strange…”

Lin Feng muttered to himself, holding his chin.

He paced around the sewage pond slowly, murmuring softly,

“Grimm’s sewers may be complicated and sprawling, but it’s mostly long drains full of the residents’ daily used water and wastage.

“Yes, Sludge Carrion-eaters like dark and damp places, but an underground sewer without any magic like this shouldn’t be a good habitat for it at all… Unless…

“Could the sewers be hiding some other secrets?”

In that case… Lin Feng patted down his hands gently and used his fire-type sword as a torch, heading deeper into the sewers once again.

Thankfully, while the underground pathways in the south-eastern part of the city was a complex map of interlocking corridors, there were actually only three sewage ponds and stores that connected all these paths.

Lin Feng searched each of them out, but he did not encounter any other demonic beasts aside from a few normal grey rats.

“Hold on…”

Lin Feng had arrived at a deeper part of the underground network.

He swung his sword and cleared away the skittish grey rats around him before using the red flames on his sword to illuminate the way ahead.

Just then, his gaze suddenly hardened.

Not too far away from him, directly under a sewage pipe, there seemed to be something long, somewhat pale, and glowing with a faint light.

Lin Feng approached it slowly. In these long, narrow, and dark corridors, he did not dare to let down his guard for even a second.

“Is that…

“A bone?”

However, upon approaching the item, Lin Feng felt nothing but confusion.

It was a piece of broken greyish-white bone, just lying there in the sewers. He picked it up and held it in his hand.

Suddenly, he could clearly feel a wave of elemental energy emanating from the broken bone he held.

The energy was a mass of different elements, an almost chaotic cocktail of them.

However, one of these forces was just too powerful. Even Lin Feng, whose muscles and bones had been made as strong as a Grade-3 weapon, was scalded by that burst of elemental energy the instant he touched the bone.

His hand instinctively shook, and the broken bone fell to the ground once more.

When he looked at his palm, Lin Feng was stunned to see that a mere pulse of the elemental energy contained within that bone had lacerated his palm and cut open his skin.

“What grade is that bone…?

“Could it be a part of a demonic beast?”

The possibility occured to Lin Feng, and he tore off another strip of his hemp clothing to wrap the bone up.

Strangely, the bone did not react at all when the cloth touched it. It just sat there quietly on the hemp, even its glow fading away considerably.

“So it only reacts to nearby living things, huh…?”

Lin Feng nodded imperceptibly.

“That elemental energy…

“If it really was a part of a demonic beast, that beast has to be at least Grade-4.

“Although the elemental energy inside that bone is muddled, it’s still extremely strong. If I want to reinforce my heart again later, I think I can make good use of the elements in this thing!”

Lin Feng’s mind raced, and soon he had come up with a way to utilize the broken bone.

He tied it to his waist with more hemp and took one last patrol around the sewers before he finally left the underground.

Outside, the moon had already risen to the highest point in the sky.

Lin Feng emerged from the sewers into the empty streets. After locking the entrance up tight again, he headed toward the Mercenaries’ Guild.

It did not take him long to return to the Guild, his body still reeking of rot.