MM Racing Chapter 402 He hadn't even warmed up the hammer yet
Chapter 402 He hadn't even warmed up the hammer yet
Chen You moved on to his next goal.
This was an extremely burly dwarf, wielding a giant hammer larger than himself, panting heavily.
"What's the most painful part of blacksmithing?" the burly dwarf asked, panting heavily.
Seeing him covered in sweat, Chen You answered sincerely, "I don't have the money to buy good blueprints."
"Wrong!" roared the burly dwarf. "It's the monotony! It's the loneliness of facing the hearth day after day! Can you endure that loneliness?"
Chen You stroked his chin: "What if I paid to hire a few top-tier courtesans to dance and cheer you on?"
The burly dwarf was stunned.
His giant hammer, held in mid-air, froze for a full five seconds.
"This...this is against the rules." The burly dwarf blushed, his eyes darting around.
"A forging ground like this cannot tolerate courtesans... but if she's the top courtesan... that's not out of the question."
"It can improve swing efficiency by at least 200%. You have a great idea, I approve of it."
Progress: 2/10.
Copperbeard covered his face from behind.
Chen You continued to push forward.
The third dwarf, gaunt and bony, was staring blankly at a rare metal that shimmered with a purple light.
"What do you do when you encounter an indestructible material that your hammer can't break and your furnace fire can't melt?" The skinny dwarf's eyes were stubborn.
"Just throw money at it." Chen You said decisively.
The skinny dwarf sneered, "How vulgar! Can gold coins smash fine gold?"
Chen You held up one finger: "I'll offer 100,000 gold coins to invite 100 master-level blacksmiths from across the server to come over, one hammer each, and take turns hammering."
"If you can't break it, I'll add another 100,000."
The skinny dwarf's sneer froze on his face.
He imagined the spectacular scene: a hundred grandmasters wielding giant hammers, capable of smashing down not only refined gold, but even city walls.
"...Many hands make light work, and this is both reasonable and well-founded."
"Approved."
Progress: 3/10.
The fourth dwarf was a one-eyed dragon.
"The weapons we've produced are junk, with terrible stats, nobody wants them, what should we do with them?" the one-eyed man asked.
"Pack it up in an exquisite blind box," Chen You said, employing modern business logic. "Tag it as a 'mysterious ancient relic' and sell it to lucky people who like to gamble."
"Even scrap can be sold at the price of a masterpiece."
The one-eyed man gasped, as if a new world had opened up for him: "A shrewd businessman! But... he makes a fortune."
"Approved!"
The fifth dwarf...
The sixth dwarf...
The atmosphere in the lobby has completely changed.
The once solemn forging ground has been transformed into a business roadshow venue for Chen You.
He used pure capitalist thinking and the overwhelming power of a super-rich individual to completely fool this group of NPCs who had been working in isolation for years.
Copperbeard followed behind, his expression gradually shifting from anger and shock to numbness.
He discovered that Chen You was exploiting a bug in the system's judgment logic. As long as Chen You's answer could logically "solve" the dilemma raised by the dwarves, the system would judge it as "acceptable".
Even if this solution is tainted with the stench of money.
In less than ten minutes, Chen You had already received nine approvals.
Progress: 9/10.
He walked toward the last dwarf in the corner of the hall.
This dwarf is different from everyone else.
He neither forged iron nor started a fire; he simply sat quietly on a discarded iron felt, holding a rusty little iron hammer in his hand.
Most importantly, his eyes were covered with a tattered cloth.
He is blind.
The blind dwarf heard footsteps and slowly turned his head.
"You smell too strongly of gold coins," the blind dwarf said in a hoarse voice.
"You've blinded those nine idiots, but I'm blind, so I see things very clearly."
Chen You raised an eyebrow.
Oh, we've run into a tough one.
"Money can't buy true skill." The blind dwarf raised his rusty hammer. "I'll ask you one last question."
What constitutes the ultimate hammer technique?
Chen You fell silent.
This question is a bit vague.
Money won't work, and the blind box theory won't work either.
He turned his head and glanced at Bronzebeard not far away.
Copperbeard crossed his arms, giving off a "let's see how you get through this" look.
Chen You withdrew his gaze, and the words that Tongxu had said earlier flashed through his mind.
"Eight Hammers of the Rosy Clouds..."
Chen You sighed, looked at the blind dwarf, and said in an unusually calm tone: "The ultimate hammer technique is to not be bound by rules or confined by sight."
The blind dwarf's grip on the hammer tightened slightly.
Chen You continued, "Blindfolded, just blindly hammering."
The hall fell into a deathly silence.
Copperbeard's sneer froze on his face, and he almost spat out a mouthful of blood.
However, the blind dwarf's body began to tremble violently.
He suddenly stood up, and the rusty iron hammer in his hand clattered to the ground.
Two lines of clear tears flowed from under the tattered blindfold, tracing down her face covered in coal dust.
"The greatest truths are the simplest... The greatest truths are the simplest!" The blind dwarf roared to the sky, his voice filled with both sorrow and ecstasy.
"I've sat here for thirty years, racking my brains, yet you've revealed the secret of heaven in a single sentence!"
"That's right, since you can't see it, just hammer away! That's the highest level of doing whatever you want!"
A beam of light, ten times thicker than before, shot into the sky from the blind dwarf's head and slammed into Chen You's badge.
Progress: 10/10.
[System notification: You have gained the absolute approval of ten senior blacksmiths.]
Chen You patted the blind dwarf on the shoulder: "Brother, you've got it, don't get excited."
He turned around, walked towards the petrified Bronzebeard, and reached out his hand.
"Now that all ten are here, what about my ultimate technique?"
Copperbeard looked at Chen You as if he were a monster.
He never dreamed that the sacred and inviolable hidden trial would be passed by this human in such an absurd and outrageous way.
The system's mandatory commands flashed wildly in his mind, urging him to issue the reward.
Copperbeard gritted his teeth and, with trembling hands, pulled out an ancient book radiating a seven-colored glow from his robes and slapped it into Chen You's hand.
"Take it! You...you're a mudslide in the forging world!"
The surrounding players' eyes instantly turned red.
Players who travel all the way to East Iron City to stay permanently are all complete forging fanatics.
They endure the tedious loading screens here, swinging their hammers thousands of times a day, their blood drained by the furnace fire—all for what?
It's all for better skills! And better blueprints!
My friend is right, grabbing his hair, his worldview completely shattered.
"Why should I?!" A shirtless berserker player broke down on the spot, slamming his iron hammer into the ground.
"I've been forging iron here for three months and haven't even gotten a single thing! He didn't even get to warm up his hammer, and he just took the ultimate manual by chatting with me?"
"This game is supposed to be played like this? He's cheating!"
"Protest! I want to report this behavior that disrupts the balance!"
The sentiment is indignant.
The temperature in the lobby seemed to rise a few degrees because of the players' jealousy.
Chen You ignored the protests around him.
A faint smile played on his lips as he reached out to take the ancient book, which radiated a glowing light, from Grandmaster Bronzebeard's hand.
"Wait!"
A thunderous roar erupted from outside the hall.