Another World Trip: Journey with My Cat and an Otaku Loli Goddess Chapter 137 - Why Are You Hitting Yourself?

“Oh, for Pete’s sake.”

Boom!

****

A loud rumble that nearly caused him to lose balance shook the surroundings!

When everything finally calmed down. He steadied himself and took a good look at the forge.

Even though it was many times smaller than the one that Uncle Tian Lu was using, it was still a monster of a forge.

It stood at about 10 ft tall, so a little more than two Long Di’s standing shoulder to shoulder. Or, to be more exact, it was 2 Long Di’s (post-isekai) and 1 Pebbles the Wondercat (pre-isekai).

It was also as wide as five Long Di’s standing side to side, so it was a sizeable thing. It was covered with rust and dust, like it hadn’t seen any use for a while. As far as shape went, it was cuboid, and there were metal dragon head sculptures at the corners at the top.

It had all the normal parts of a forge, such as an anvil, a fan and so on, like a conventional forge. However, there was a large door at the side.

Opening it up, there was a large space and not much of anything else.

“Crap, I’ll need to stay in this thing while I’m cultivating the technique, don’t I?”

When he stepped back outside, some grooves suspiciously looked like what you should put spirit stones in.

He put one inside just to test it, and the forge roared to life!

It was like a subdued dragon compared to the one that Uncle Tian Lu was using, but its violent flames were unrelenting and caused a feeling of palpitation to rise in Long Di’s chest.

“Great, so this thing sucks spirit stones… figures. Well, apparently I need to heat my body using this, which should increase the efficiency of my cultivating the technique.”

Long Di thought about the fundamentals and movements of the art that Uncle Tian Lu passed down to him.

After making sure he had it down, he took off his clothes and placed them in his storage ring.

He then placed them outside the forge. He was alone in the wilderness, so there was nothing to worry about.

After placing a few more spirit stones in the other grooves (not all of them), he then stepped inside the forge and closed the door.

Fwoosh!

As soon as he entered, a terrifying heat assaulted him as flames licked his skin, but he was already circulating the Foundation Forge Body Tempering Art, so this was just what it needed.

“Okay, so If my understanding of the method was right, then all I need to do is this…”

Long Di gripped the hammer, and in a bizarre arc, swung it towards his eye!

“Cra-”

Pow!

A few seconds later, Long Di was rubbing his eye where a purple mark could be seen.

“That did not go as intended.” His confusion was justified, as when he started the swing, it was supposed to hit his chest whilst he circulated the Foundation Forge Body Tempering Art.

However, somehow, the hammer ended up hitting his eye instead. Worst of all, it looked like that was what he intended from the beginning.

Regardless, he was still thankful that he was able to circulate his somatic essence. Sometimes he could and other times he couldn’t. Worse of all, he couldn’t find the reason why this was the case.

He could cultivate like normal and try to figure this out later on.

“Let’s give it another shot, then. We’ll take it slow and then speed it up little by little.”

Deciding his path, he drove the somatic essence in his body as he carefully manoeuvred the hammer in the path dictated in the Breaking Mundane Forging Heaven Method as the flames washed over him.

Shu. Shu. Shu.

The hammer tore through the air as Long Di swung the hammer. The swing patterns were unusual, and Long Di could see that there were slight deviations that took place if he didn’t watch his motions carefully.

‘This isn’t gonna be simple,’ he thought to himself.

However, he took his time and slowly sped up the movements. It was still a bit rigid, but passable to a certain extent.

If Uncle Tian Lu saw this, he would call Long Di a monster for the umpteenth time before cracking his head open to figure out how his brain worked.

Long Di’s current progress rivalled someone who was practising the Breaking Mundane Forging Heaven method for months non-stop.

However, this was to be expected as a few of the blessings that Long Di received from the goddess included blacksmithing/forging, and cultivation itself.

The only thing was that Long Di was unable to have the hammer land on himself as he intended. It only landed in his eye or missed his body entirely.

Nevertheless, these two blessings superimposed on each other, resulting in a miraculous effect that had him blaze a new record with this cultivation technique.

“Come on.”

Nevertheless, he struggled to have the hammer land on his body. Whenever he drove the somatic essence, to force a shift in the trajectory even a little, it would…

Bam!

“Shitbiscuits.”

It would land on his eye and whenever he went with the motions, it would miss his body robbing him of the tempering he needed.

Shu…

After a while, the flames in the forge died as the spirit stones in the grooves turned to dust and disintegrated.

He didn’t move to put any more spirit stones to fire up the forge again. Instead, he calmed himself down and tried to think about what he needed to do to fix this issue.

He meditated inside the forge and thought about what he needed to do.

He stayed like this for another full day as he thought about the profundities that existed in each swing.

Dum!

Without warning, Long Di’s cauldrons materialised and when he saw them, he fully understood what was happening.

He never paid attention to his cauldrons much while he was fighting. So whenever he used somatic essence, their appearance went unnoticed.

But looking at them now, the cauldrons themselves seemed diminished in a way. They still took on a dark crystal appearance just like before, but they seemed as if they were inactive.

They lost some sort of a lustre he didn’t even realise they had.

“Is it because I’m currently driving the Foundation Forge Body Tempering Art? What the…?”

A more striking sight caught his eye. At the moment, every single one of Long Di’s cores and star cores alike was dim.

Even though cores didn’t normally have light, Long Di’s cores were a different story. Because of the amount of work he put into the purity of his cores, his cores glowed with spirituality.

However, not even this could be seen, they appeared… well… dead in a way. The star cores were no different from cores as they went quiet as well.

“Hold on,” a thought came to Long Di when he saw this.

Krrsh!

“Pauh!”

Long Di coughed up a mouthful of blood when the lightning flickered out into nothing.

“O-Okay, now I get it,” said Long Di as he wiped the blood from the side of his mouth.

“So I can’t run them both at the same time.”

He concluded that trying to run both cultivation techniques at the same time was what resulted in him coughing up blood.

At the time, when the same thing happened, he could feel the somatic essence running through his meridians along with his spiritual essence.

Two of them sharing this space resulted in a clash of energies that caused them to explode.

The only reason why he didn’t suffer even worse injuries was because whatever new energy was being summoned for use, that is regarding somatic essence and spiritual essence, would erupt with the already present energy in his meridians before it built up enough to cause even more damage.

“Okay, I’m glad I found out what was causing that to happen before. Hopefully, I can try it again in the future when I have more time. Maybe, there is a way to have somatic essence and spiritual essence co-exist somehow. Regardless, time to get started on tempering myself.”

He took out a spiritual stone, and after absorbing its energy for use, was able to heal whatever internal injury he suffered.

With a deeper understanding of his abilities, Long Di held his hammer in hand once more and put in a few more spirit stones in his forge.

Whoosh!

The forge trembled as the flames within bellowed like some terrible beast!

Long Di sat in the forge, feeling the fire wash over him, his skin glowed red from the heat and became malleable to forge to become even stronger than before.

“Jade Forging, First Temper!”

Long Di’s voice echoed within the world of flames engendered by the forge. Then, the hammer flew in a magical arc, reminiscent of Uncle Tian Lu’s forging art.

It soared at the profound angle until…

Bam!

Right in his eye!

“Sonnuva—!”