Villain: Manipulating the Heroines into hating the Protagonist Chapter 1047: The Dragon-Marrow Banquet

Deep within the cavernous belly of the third outer island of Abyssal Pearl City, the air inside the volcanic smelting chamber hung thick with burning sulfur and waves of crimson heat. Far beneath the rocky crust of the island, natural vents of deep-earth magma intersected with high-pressure ocean thermal fissures, filling the three-hundred-yard obsidian hall with a low, unending rumble like a slumbering dragon.

At the center of the chamber stood the massive, flat-topped anvil carved from a single block of Heavenly-Strike Meteorite Ore.

Spread across the dark stone surface around the anvil lay the priceless spoils harvested from the Dead-Kelp Basin: the six-foot-tall dorsal shell plate and leg greaves of the Early Grade 8 Golden-Back Armored Crab King, the two eight-thousand-catty Deep-Gold Pincer Halberds—one intact and one sheared at the wrist socket—three Grade 7 Black-Scale Sea Scorpion cores and tail-barbs, nine Grade 6 Demon Beast cores, twenty-four coils of tough Three-Horned Flood Wyrm heart-tendons, and thirty gallons of glowing golden-blue Grade 8 Demon King blood sealed inside rune-etched jade vats.

Before igniting the main furnace for the eight-month forging seclusion, however, Wang Jian ascended to the surface harbor of Abyssal Pearl City one final time to inspect the public defense works alongside his virtuous wife, Yue Lingshan.

Under the bright morning sun of the southern harbor wall, three hundred masons and forty array disciples from the municipal guilds were busy lowering massive blocks of carved profound-earth granite into the three breakwater jetties that had been cracked by the Grade 6 Three-Horned Flood Wyrm during the staged two-week battle a month prior.

Standing atop the central watchtower scaffold, Yue Lingshan wore her modest, high-collared white robes woven from Thousand-Year Spirit-Silk. A light sheen of perspiration glistened on her fair brow as she held her jade formation compass, directing a team of Foundation Establishment stone-carvers to inlay fresh water-repelling coral plates along the lower sea-wall foundation.

When Wang Jian stepped onto the wooden scaffold dressed in his clean, dark azure advisor robes, Yue Lingshan’s clear dark eyes lit up with immediate warmth and affection.

"Husband! You returned from the western continental shelf right on time!" Yue Lingshan hurried over, bowing slightly before her hand slipped naturally into his warm palm. She gestured proudly toward the three rising stone jetties below. "Look at the southern harbor mouth. By replacing the damaged limestone blocks with three-layered profound-earth granite and linking the breakwater nodes to the secondary municipal vein, the defensive strength of the southern gate will be thirty percent higher than before the beast pack attacked!"

Wang Jian smiled gently, using a soft breeze of his True Essence to cool the sweat on her cheeks while checking the steady, healthy pulse of her Mid-Stage Core Formation Golden Core through her wrist.

"The foreign merchant captains down on the wharves haven’t stopped praising your name all morning, Lingshan," Wang Jian said warmly. "Every guild leader in the bay believes that without your two-week stand atop this wall, the beast pack would have breached the inner docks and burned their cargo ships."

A faint, happy blush colored Yue Lingshan’s cheeks. "It was City Lord Lin Wanyue, Sister Shen Mengqi, and Sect Leader Hua Yimei who bore the brunt of the Grade 6 Flood Wyrm’s acid breath in the sky—I merely kept the water curtains steady behind them. How did your deep-sea mineral survey go along the western shelf?"

"We discovered a rich pocket of deep-earth metallic ores and harvested several high-grade Demon Beast carcasses that had been crushed in a trench collapse," Wang Jian replied smoothly, reaching into his Storage Ring to hand her a heavy spatial pouch filled with three thousand Mid-Grade Spirit Stones, four hundred High-Grade Spirit Stones, and three boxes of Rank 3 restorative pills. "However, smelting those deep-sea ores to upgrade the core weapons of our alliance will require extreme volcanic heat and complete isolation. For the next eight months, I will be sealing the deep-earth forging caverns beneath the third outer island alongside Senior Mu Lianhua, Senior Su Binglan, City Lord Lin Wanyue, and the others."

Yue Lingshan accepted the spatial pouch with both hands, nodding with earnest understanding. As an accomplished Array Master herself, she knew that high-tier weapon refining could not tolerate the slightest external spiritual disturbance.

"Rebuilding all three harbor breakwaters and carving the seventy-two secondary array locks along the eastern and northern walls will take my masonry teams at least eight months as well," Yue Lingshan said brightly. "With the foreign merchant fleets paying us monthly anchorage fees to hide inside our bay, I will stay right here at the harbor command tower to supervise the public patrols and keep the municipal barrier running smoothly. You and Senior Mu can lock the third island gates without worrying about a single spy approaching the lagoon!"

Wang Jian pulled his virtuous wife into a gentle embrace, kissing her forehead tenderly. "If any Demon Beast pack larger than Grade 6 approaches the southern reef beacons, crush the jade lotus talisman at once."

"I will, Husband. Take care of your strength in the hot forge!"

Watching Yue Lingshan turn happily back to her formation blueprints—proudly convinced that she was bearing the heavy public burden of defending Abyssal Pearl City while her devoted husband labored in a dusty underground workshop—Wang Jian descended the watchtower stairs and boarded his covered transit cutter.

Two hours later, the heavy Star-Core Iron blast doors of the volcanic smelting cavern beneath the third outer island ground shut, and forty-eight sound-and-aura sealing runes ignited across the obsidian walls.

The first two months of the eight-month seclusion were dedicated entirely to a grueling feat of high-tier metallurgy: breaking down the indestructible shell and weapons of an Early Grade 8 Demon King.

Ordinary Core Fire—and even a single Early-Stage Nascent Soul flame—could not melt the sixteen-thousand-catty Deep-Gold Pincer Halberds or the three-inch-thick Grade 8 Golden Carapace of the Golden-Back Armored Crab King without burning away the precious innate earth-and-water runic patterns embedded inside the golden chitin. To liquefy the Grade 8 materials while preserving their spiritual marrow required a sustained, three-way furnace of Heavenly Flames.

Around the central Heavenly-Strike Meteorite Ore anvil, Wang Jian had raised three stone firing platforms connected directly to the boiling magma channels beneath the floor.

Because the ambient temperature inside the sealed cavern had climbed high enough to vaporize iron tools, Mu Lianhua and Lin Wanyue had discarded their formal outer robes completely.

On the left platform stood Mu Lianhua, the Early-Stage Nascent Soul Grand Alchemist. She wore only a pair of thin crimson silk hip-ties and a soaked, translucent white silk wrap knotted loosely beneath her chest—leaving her massive, creamy breasts glistening with rivers of sweat and heaving openly with every deep breath she drew.

On the right platform stood City Lord Lin Wanyue. Stripped of her heavy municipal regalia, the mature widow wore nothing but high-waisted royal-blue silk briefs and a thin gold chain around her narrow waist, her colossal, heavy breasts hanging completely bare and slick with perspiration as her stiff pink nipples gleamed in the fiery orange glow of the magma pools.

At the front of the meteorite anvil stood Wang Jian, bare-chested in loose black silk trousers, the diamond-like bronze skin of his muscular torso absorbing the blinding glare of the volcanic vents.

"Ignite the three-flame crucible," Wang Jian commanded, lifting both of the eight-thousand-catty Deep-Gold Pincer Halberds onto the center of the meteorite anvil alongside three thousand catties of raw Star-Core Iron and five hundred blood-red ingots of Deep-Sea Red Gold.

"Yes, Master!" Mu Lianhua and Lin Wanyue answered in unison.

On the left platform, Mu Lianhua extended both pale arms, her bare, heavy breasts trembling with the force of her spiritual output as a three-foot-wide river of deep blue Azure Sky Heart Phoenix Flame poured from her palms, wrapping around the left crescent halberd on the anvil.

On the right platform, Lin Wanyue bit her lower lip and pushed her Peak Late-Stage Core Formation power to its absolute limit, venting a thick, viscous, blood-red stream of Crimson Sun-Marrow Flame straight onto the right halberd blade and the piles of Star-Core Iron!

At the center, Wang Jian raised his left palm. Channeling the vast power of his Stellar Demonic Nascent Infant, he unleashed a roaring, domineering stream of Golden Phoenix Flame straight into the intersection where the blue phoenix fire and the blood-red sun-marrow fire met!

HSSSSSS—ROOOOAR!

When the three supreme flames merged atop the meteorite anvil, a terrifying tri-colored inferno erupted twenty feet toward the cavern ceiling. The extreme heat dispersion caused the solid obsidian walls thirty paces away to weep molten black glass, while the air around the anvil warped and shimmered violently.

For forty-five continuous days across the first and second months, the three of them maintained the tri-colored inferno without letting the heat drop by a single degree.

Whenever Lin Wanyue’s Core Formation spiritual sea neared exhaustion after a twelve-hour shift, Wang Jian stepped directly behind the naked, sweat-drenched City Lord on the firing platform—pressing his muscular chest against her bare back, cupping her huge, slippery breasts in one hand to feed her a stream of restorative Verdant Eternal Spring Essence, and taking her right there on her feet from behind so she could draw directly from his Nascent Soul Yang reservoir without ever extinguishing the Crimson Sun-Marrow Flame in her palms!

Slowly, inch by agonizing inch under forty-five days of continuous three-flame calcination, the indestructible sixteen-thousand-catty Deep-Gold Pincer Halberds, the three thousand catties of Star-Core Iron, and the five hundred ingots of Deep-Sea Red Gold softened. By the fiftieth day of the second month, the mountain of raw materials had melted into a blinding, ten-foot-wide floating lake of viscous golden-black liquid metal hovering six inches above the meteorite anvil.

"The Grade 8 pincer-gold and the spatial iron have reached full liquid fusion!" Mu Lianhua called out, her mature voice hoarse as sweat dripped from her chin onto her heaving chest.

Wang Jian stepped up to the edge of the glowing anvil. In his left hand, he held a pair of heavy star-iron tongs gripping the broken, three-foot crimson blade of his Life-Bound Magic Treasure saber, Blood’s Thirst. In his right hand, he gripped the haft of his massive forging hammer cast from pure Star-Core Iron.

Because Blood’s Thirst had been nurtured inside his body for years, its fractured spiritual pathways were linked directly to his own heart and his Nascent Soul.

Without hesitation, Wang Jian plunged the broken crimson blade of Blood’s Thirst straight into the center of the floating ten-foot lake of molten Grade 8 pincer-gold, Star-Core Iron, and Deep-Sea Red Gold!

ZZZZZT—HUMMMM!

As the tri-colored inferno melted the fractured edges of the old crimson saber and forced the boiling Grade 8 liquid alloy into its open metallic pores, a sharp, tearing vibration shot back along Wang Jian’s spiritual link. Wang Jian’s expression remained as cold as ancient iron. He bit the tip of his tongue and spat a mouthful of shimmering, dark-gold Nascent Soul essence blood straight into the floating molten lake, binding the new metals to his life-source.

Then, planting his bare feet wide upon the scorching basalt floor, Wang Jian aligned his ankles, knees, hips, and spine, and raised the massive Star-Core Iron forging hammer high above his head.

"Earth-Shattering Forge Method: Eighty-One Stellar Folds!"

Inside his lower energy reservoir, the three-inch Stellar Demonic Nascent Infant opened its eyes, pouring the full gravitational weight of his Initial Stage Nascent Soul Realm and his dragon-marrow-tempered body into his right arm.

Wang Jian brought the hammer crashing down onto the floating mass of glowing golden-black metal!

CLANG—BOOOOOOOM!

A deafening metallic thunderclap shook the entire third outer island from its deep-earth roots to its cliffside peaks. A blinding ring of golden-violet sparks blasted ten rods outward across the cavern, and the ten-foot lake of viscous liquid alloy was forcefully flattened to half its thickness in a single blow, expelling a screaming jet of gray impurity smoke from the ancient crab metal!

Wang Jian did not pause for even half a breath. Pivoting on his heel, he used the tremendous upward rebound of the Heavenly-Strike Meteorite Ore anvil to carry the heavy Star-Core Iron hammer in a fluid overhead figure-eight and smashed it straight down a second time!

CLANG!

CLANG!

CLANG!

Throughout the third and fourth months of the seclusion, the deep-earth smelting cavern echoed day and night with the rhythmic, earth-shaking strikes of Wang Jian’s hammer.

Every single strike carried over twenty thousand catties of raw physical momentum backed by devouring Stellar Demonic Qi. Using the Star-Core Iron tongs in his left hand, Wang Jian flipped the glowing, flattened slab of golden-black metal back upon itself after every ninth blow, while Mu Lianhua and Lin Wanyue surged their Heavenly Flames to weld the folded joint seamlessly together.

Twenty folds... forty folds... sixty folds... eighty folds!

With every fold, the physical volume of the sixteen thousand catties of Grade 8 pincer-gold and three thousand catties of Star-Core Iron shrank smaller and smaller, while its internal weight and spiritual density climbed to a terrifying level. By the eightieth fold on the final day of the fourth month, the entire nineteen-thousand-catty mountain of divine metals had been compressed down into a single, four-foot-long, four-inch-wide curved saber blade of dark, light-devouring obsidian-gold!

The blade no longer yielded easily to the hammer; every strike sent bone-rattling shockwaves up Wang Jian’s forearms and released visible ripples of spatial distortion across the cavern air.

"Eighty-first fold—Lock the Core!" Wang Jian roared, his bronze muscles corded like iron cables and slick with steaming sweat.

Delivering the final eighty-first hammer blow to seal the tip of the saber, Wang Jian dropped the hammer and snatched up the lead-lined Profound Frost-Jade box resting beside the anvil.

Flipping open the lid, he lifted out the fist-sized, blindingly bright Early Grade 8 Demon Core of the Golden-Back Armored Crab King—and slammed the Grade 8 Demon Core directly into the open dragon-mouth socket forged at the hilt guard of Blood’s Thirst!

KRA-CHIME!

A phantom projection of a ten-foot golden armored crab king roared above the anvil in a last struggle of lingering beastly resentment—only for Wang Jian to press his bare palm over the hilt and unleash sixty-four devouring blood-runes of his Stellar Demonic Meridian Scripture, crushing the remnant beast spirit and turning the Grade 8 Demon Core into the beating heart of the saber!

"Binglan, Ruyan—open the blood quench!" Wang Jian barked.

Standing beside a six-foot trough carved from black frost-stone, Liu Ruyan pulled the wax plugs on a jade vat, pouring ten gallons of pure, glowing golden-blue Grade 8 Demon King Blood into the trough, while Su Binglan—dressed only in a sheer, sweat-dampened glacial-silk wrap that clung to her massive, snow-white breasts and wide hips—infused a concentrated layer of absolute-zero Grand Yin Ice Flame into the blood bath, chilling the Grade 8 blood to the threshold of freezing without letting it solidify.

Gripping the newly forged hilt of Blood’s Thirst, Wang Jian lifted the white-hot, humming four-foot saber off the meteorite anvil and plunged the entire blade straight down into the trough of freezing Grade 8 Demon King blood!

HSSSSSSSSSS—ROOOOOOAR!

A blinding column of crimson-and-gold steam erupted to the roof of the cavern, accompanied by a low, bloodthirsty dragon-roar that resonated from the steel itself!

Within ten breaths, the ten gallons of Grade 8 Demon King blood inside the trough were completely drunk dry—absorbed down to the last drop by the thirsty, eighty-one-folded alloy of the saber.

When Wang Jian lifted Blood’s Thirst out of the empty frost-stone trough, the air inside the volcanic cavern seemed to sink three feet downward under its sheer physical and spiritual weight.

The four-foot curved blade was cast in a deep, abyssal black-gold hue, with seventy-two natural veins of blood-red Deep-Sea Red Gold and silver Star-Core Iron swirling along its fuller like dark galaxies. Set into the heavy guard, the Early Grade 8 Demon Core pulsed like a miniature dark sun. Though technically classified at the absolute pinnacle of Peak-Grade Magic Treasures, its raw physical weight of nine thousand catties—light as a feather in Wang Jian’s soul-bonded grip, yet heavy as a falling mountain peak to any enemy it struck—and its innate Grade 8 armor-crushing spirituality placed it half a step into the realm of an Ancient Treasure!

With a single casual test swing into the empty air, a silent six-foot crescent of black-gold spatial distortion leaped from the edge, slicing three feet deep into the solid obsidian cavern wall fifty paces away without a sound.

During the last ten days of the fourth month, while Blood’s Thirst rested inside Wang Jian’s lower energy reservoir to bathe in his Nascent Soul Core Fire, Wang Jian, Shangguan Wan’er, and Su Binglan turned their attention to the six-foot-tall dorsal carapace plate and the unbroken leg greaves of the slain Crab King.

Using the spatial-iron saws and four intact Grade 7 Demon Beast Cores (two Black-Scale Sea Scorpion cores and two Three-Horned Flood Wyrm cores), Wang Jian shaped the remaining Grade 8 golden carapace plates around four heavy frames of Nine-Folded Profound Iron. Shangguan Wan’er inlaid three hundred strands of Abyssal Star-Iron nerve-threads into their joints using her Celestial-Tide Abacus to align their movement pathways, while Wang Jian etched thirty-six lightning-grounding and water-crushing formation runes across their golden breastplates.

When Wang Jian inserted four High-Grade Spirit Stones and the four Grade 7 Demon Beast Cores into their chest sockets on the final night of the fourth month, eight eyes of molten brass snapped open in the dark.

Four ten-foot-tall Grade 7 Peak Heavy Armored Dao Soldiers stepped off the assembly slabs, their golden-plated boots shaking the floor. Armed with heavy tower shields and halberds cast from the leftover slag of the Grade 8 forge, each construct possessed the physical durability of an Early-Stage Nascent Soul body refiner and the striking power of a Peak Late-Stage Core Formation elder—providing an unbreakable four-man guard unit to patrol the secret deep-earth transit tunnels beneath the four outer islands.

As the seclusion entered its fifth month, Wang Jian did not allow the v