Down below, Jing Banfeng and Cui Wuji had been listening for signs that Li Yuan’s forging was done. Once the noise died away, they flew up the mountain. The moment they saw Li Yuan, both stopped short in shock.0

“Master Li…your hair…” Cui Wuji stammered.0

Before the two stood the same young man, but streaks of white now threaded through his black hair, giving him a slightly aged look.0

“It’s nothing,” Li Yuan rasped, raising a hand in dismissal. Then he turned to Jing Banfeng. “Clan Head, give it a try.”0

“Uh, oh, alright. I was just going to hang it up for a while, let it build some resonance,” Jing Banfeng replied, well-versed in standard procedure for newly smithed spirit artifacts.0

But Li Yuan only offered a faint smile. “No need. You can use it now.”0

“Really?” Jing Banfeng asked in surprise. The moment he took the blade, that familiar sense of blood bond flared through him, plus something he couldn’t quite define.0

To Li Yuan’s eyes, the overall combat power hovering over Jing Banfeng’s head shifted from 1,380~2,880 to 1,380~5,672. The lower bound hadn’t changed, but the upper limit had soared dramatically. 0

By comparison, Gu Xuejian, a deputy temple master at the peak of fifth rank with five strands of source blood, only measured 2,548~6,536.0

Li Yuan suspected Jing Banfeng’s new ceiling was more of a brief, last-ditch eruption of power. And just at the...0