Volume One, Chapter 145: Boundary Gold

Passing by Yu Jiuchuan's room, Mo De paused, thought for a moment, and walked up to knock on her door.

"Who is it?" Yu Jiuchuan asked as she opened the door, only to find junior schoolmate Mo De standing outside.

Mo De was not surprised to see Yu Jiuchuan dressed in pajamas. Instead, with a smile, he asked, "Senior Jiuchuan, have you had dinner yet? If not, I can grab a portion for you on my way back."

Clearly, after returning to her room at noon and changing back into her pajamas, Yu Jiuchuan had been engrossed in her books, completely forgetting all about dinner.

"Then I'll have to trouble Junior Mo," Yu Jiuchuan said, not standing on ceremony with him, and asked him to bring back a bowl of rice with meat and toppings.

After hastily reaping the benefits within the Hall of Anomalies, Mo De wandered around the cafeteria. Only after tasting the food from five or six different windows did he finally fill his stomach, and with Senior Jiuchuan's stir-fried tomato and egg rice bowl in hand, he headed back.

Knocking on Yu Jiuchuan's door once again, Mo De handed over the food container and turned to leave.

This time, Senior Jiuchuan still seemed oblivious to the fact that the topmost button of her collar was undone.

Silently chanting "see no evil" in his heart, Mo De returned to his room and brewed another cup of coffee to banish distracting thoughts.

He didn't seem to realize that this was the second cup of Huo Yufei's exclusively formulated special coffee he had consumed today.

That night, the lights in Mo De's room burned bright, and a solitary figure sat quietly at the desk, studying until dawn......

......

Throughout Saturday and Sunday, Professor Dong was still occupied with his inventory work, so the lectures were temporarily covered by another professor from the college's Department of Metallurgy. Although using the same lesson plan, this teacher lacked the charismatic delivery of the old professor. A single lecture left Mo De's head spinning, causing him to yearn for the pleasant days of the past.

Lunch and dinner were still brought back to the apartment for Yu Jiuchuan, while the book "A Fool's Guide to the Properties of Metals" in Mo De's hands was read through to the very end under his day-and-night relentless study.

The final section of this fool's guide briefly introduced the grading and rough classification of exotic metals to Mo De.

Unlike regular metallic elements, exotic metals mostly exist stably in their elemental forms, and their capabilities far surpass those of ordinary metals.

For instance, the "Shimmering Soft Silver" that Mo De had witnessed during the major evaluation earlier—if shaped under specific conditions, even if its form were subsequently altered by external force, the metal product would automatically revert to its original state before reaching its critical point.

Because exotic metals are extremely scarce, human understanding of these materials is still in the exploratory stage. The production capacity for manufacturing exotic metals using existing technology is extremely low, and most of the precious exotic metals currently in circulation are mined from various mining areas.

All exotic metal veins are highly prized resources valued by nations, and local governments dispatch heavy troops to closely guard the mining zones.

Mo De took out the block of exotic metal he had refined using black fire and compared it with the various exotic metals recorded in the book, only to find that they seemingly did not belong to any category of recorded exotic metals.

With no other choice, Mo De had to draw upon the classification techniques for exotic metals described in the book to re-refine and categorize these mixed exotic metal blocks, dividing them into five major classes.

The properties of these five classes of exotic metals varied completely.

Some exotic metals were quite bulky yet as light as a feather, as if a single breath could blow them away; other exotic metal blocks were small but as heavy as Mount Tai, and had he not constantly circulated his metallic ability, Mo De would have feared they might crush the table and smash through the floor.

Some exotic metals exhibited a shimmering, colorful luster on their surfaces, looking extraordinarily mystical; while the outer layers of others emitted a sharp, icy radiance, giving a chilling and suffocating sensation.

As for the fifth special type of exotic metal, its quantity was the scarcest—it was a small ball of metal radiating a bronze glow.

Pulling out the short blade he had forged earlier, Mo De held it in his palm, then picked up the small metal ball, carefully sensing the structural similarities and differences between the two.

In the end, Mo De concluded that these two things should belong to the same category, except that the short blade refined from dead gold had a higher purity.

And the purity of the exotic metal in the short blade was much, much lower than the golden radiance condensed from his copper coat within his own body.

It seemed that under the continuous burning of the black fire, these bronze-colored metals would eventually be purified and evolve into exotic metals resembling the golden radiance of the copper coat.

Perhaps it was no longer quite appropriate to call these metals refined through black fire sacrifice by the name of exotic metals. Thinking over and over again, Mo De decided to give a name to these strange metals in his possession.

He would collectively refer to them as "Boundary Gold."

As for that bit of golden radiance from the copper coat in his hands, which had already been purified to the absolute limit, Mo De planned to temporarily call it "Boundary Copper."

After all, this bit of golden radiance from the copper coat seemed to have a deep connection with that scabbard made of boundary void stone......

......

Su Ziwen frowned, once again rejecting a senior student from the Three-Arts University who had come over to strike up a conversation. She quickly finished her lunch and walked toward the direction of the reception apartment building.

Ever since her secondary supernatural mutation was completed, her presence seemed to have been massively enhanced. An ethereal and crystal-clear temperament emanated from within her, making her the focal point of attention wherever she went.

This otherworldly, fairy-like ethereal temperament gave Su Ziwen quite a headache because she did not want to be overly conspicuous among crowds.

Su Ziwen had once consulted Teacher Chen Yue about what was happening to her. After looking her up and down, Chen Yue only concluded that she was about to break through to the late stage of the Avatar Realm, saying that perhaps the overflowing spatial power was caused by the impending breakthrough, and everything would return to normal once the breakthrough was complete.

Glancing at the room next to hers, Mo De's door remained tightly shut.

Whenever she thought of that guy, Su Ziwen could not help but knit her slender brows.

These past few days, whenever she met Mo De in the mornings, she could smell the rich scent of coffee lingering on that fellow. Could that guy possibly have been staying up all night?

"Hello, Senior Ziwen!" A crisp voice came from behind Su Ziwen, interrupting the young girl's ethereal thoughts.

"Oh, little Feng has returned too." Su Ziwen turned around and saw Ivanoti Feng, with her silver hair and silver eyes, skipping over from the hallway corridor.

"Aren't we entering that 'Enlightenment Sealing Pagoda' tomorrow? So I came back a bit early today to make some preparations," the little girl replied in a brisk tone.

That's right, today was already Sunday, and tomorrow, Monday, was precisely the day to enter the Enlightenment Sealing Pagoda.

"Prepare well," Su Ziwen waved goodbye to the little one and turned to walk into her own room.

Su Ziwen knew very little about the college's supreme treasure, the "Enlightenment Sealing Pagoda," but she firmly kept one sentence said by Ms. Chu Fengyi in her heart.

The more thorough the preparations and the firmer the foundation, the more firmly one would be able to seize the opportunities encountered within the pagoda.