Zhou Ming came to the warehouse of Wuying Hall.

This warehouse had been specially cleared out to store gifts after he took over the Imperial Palace.

The old warehouse manager brought from the Marquis's estate was a thin old man in his fifties, meticulous in his work.

Every item was registered, labels were written neatly, and even who sent it, when it was sent, and its estimated value were clearly marked.

Zhou Ming walked around the warehouse; the shelves were filled with famous calligraphy and paintings, rare ancient books, previous dynasty porcelain, and armor and swords inlaid with gold and jade. A whole white tiger skin hung on the wall, its fur so bright and fresh it looked like it had just been peeled off the tiger.

Unfortunately, in Zhou Ming's eyes, these things were no different from the firewood piled outside the back door of the Kitchen; he could not sense a shred of Spiritual Qi.

After wandering around for a long time, only a piece of jade half a person's height in the corner made him stop.

The jade was entirely cyan, with a warm texture, faintly radiating a trace of weak Spiritual Qi fluctuations.

Zhou Ming squatted down and reached out to touch the surface of the jade. It felt warm to the touch, and a thread of Spiritual Qi drilled into his Meridians along his fingers. Although it was as thin as a hair, it was undoubtedly Spiritual Qi.

"Move this to my room." Zhou Ming stood up, dusted off his hands, and instructed the officer behind him.

Then he frowned and added, "Help me inquire which noble family has hard Ore or any strange and curious things. I will purchase them at a high price."

The officer saluted expressionlessly and turned to walk out.

Zhou Ming stood in the room, looking down at the half-person-tall piece of jade at his feet.

He rubbed his fingers slightly, and a wisp of purple-gold flame appeared silently at his fingertips.

Bringing the flame close to the jade, the cyan jade texture acted like a piece of lard thrown into a hot pan in front of the Nascent Fire, melting silently.

The jade liquid dripped down the stone body, shrinking by a fraction with every inch it flowed. In less than a quarter of an hour, the half-person-tall jade had turned into a mass of emerald liquid the size of a little finger, suspended in the center of the Nascent Fire, spinning slowly.

Zhou Ming twitched the corner of his mouth.

Such a large piece of jade, and after burning it down, only this tiny bit was left. What could it be used for?

He shook his head, thinking it was better than nothing, and used his Divine Sense to control the emerald liquid into the shape of a ring, then withdrew the Nascent Fire.

The liquid cooled and solidified rapidly in the air. In just a moment, it turned into an entirely emerald-green ring, its surface smooth as a mirror, with faint, silk-like flowing light swimming slowly inside.

Zhou Ming picked up the ring and examined it against the sunlight coming through the window for a while, then nodded.

If this thing were placed in a jewelry shop outside, it would be a priceless treasure at the very least. Just that wisp of flowing light inside the ring face would be enough for those noble ladies to fight over.

Just as Zhou Ming was refining the ring in his room, Yuyang Commandery was already in an uproar.

The news had spread from the mouths of the Imperial Guards at the Xuanwu Gate.

That Steward Zhou, who previously cared for neither gold nor silver nor beauties, and whose mood determined whether he accepted gifts, had actually taken the initiative to release word that he wanted hard, strange, and curious Ore.

Once this news spread, those opportunists who wanted to curry favor with Zhou Ming but could not find a way were suddenly so excited their eyes lit up.

In less than half a day, a long line had formed in front of the Xuanwu Gate near the Wuying Hall of the Imperial Palace, and people delivering gifts came in an endless stream.

There were antique shop owners clutching strangely shaped Ore, old military officials holding ancestral meteorites, hunters carrying unknown metals dug from deep mountains, and even several people working together to carry a pitch-black boulder.

The queue stretched from the Xuanwu Gate along the palace wall all the way to the outside of the alley.

After listening to the officer's report, Zhou Ming swept his Divine Sense outside the Xuanwu Gate and only sensed a few pieces with weak Spiritual Qi fluctuations among that pile of messy Ore.

The rest were all common items: copper and iron Ore of slightly better quality, a few pieces of decent crystal, and a pile of broken stones that even the people delivering them couldn't identify.

Zhou Ming originally wanted to tell the officer to send these people away directly, but he swallowed the words as they reached his lips and rolled his eyes.

Empress Su Mingyue was fighting on the front lines, and the silver burned daily for food and horses was an astronomical figure.

Now that people were queuing up to stuff things into his hands, it would be a waste not to take them.

He didn't care about these gold and silver treasures himself, but Empress Su Mingyue's military expenses needed a massive amount of silver to fill.

He told the officer the locations of those few pieces of Ore with Spiritual Qi one by one, and asked him to leak a word to the outside.

"Steward Zhou said, it is better to just send silver than to bring those pieces of scrap metal."

Once this word spread, the trend in Yuyang Commandery immediately changed again.

Those who had been sent away holding Ore turned around, took silver notes and gold ingots from their family warehouses, and lined up in front of the Xuanwu Gate again.

The people who came had changed faces; they were all stewards and direct descendants of various noble families, each holding a red wooden tray with a thick stack of silver notes stacked on it.

Zhou Ming had people register the items delivered one by one, exchange the silver notes for silver, and carry them into the warehouse box by box.

The old warehouse manager was sweating from his forehead, and the abacus beads clattered all afternoon without stopping.

After arranging the scene at the Xuanwu Gate, Zhou Ming picked up the few pieces of Ore the officer had accepted for him and weighed them one by one.

Two pieces of hard, pitch-black Ore caught his attention.

He hadn't found this Ore in the mineral atlas in the Library; it was pitch-black throughout and felt heavy in the hand.

It was more than twice as heavy as iron Ore of the same size, and its surface gleamed with a cold metallic luster.

Zhou Ming tried tapping it with his fingertips; the sound the Ore made was not the dull thud of stone, but an extremely low metallic hum.

No longer struggling with what this thing was, whatever it was, he would know once he tried.

Zhou Ming sat cross-legged, rubbed his two fingers, and a wisp of purple-gold Nascent Fire appeared. He cast the first piece of pitch-black Ore into the flames.

The Ore was much more heat-resistant than the previous jade; it persisted in the Nascent Fire for quite a while before it began to soften.

He was not in a hurry, sitting there cross-legged and burning it slowly.

After an unknown amount of time, the first piece of Ore finally turned into a mass of dark silver liquid the size of a fist, and immediately after, the second piece of Ore also melted in the Nascent Fire.

Zhou Ming fused the two masses of liquid together, used his Divine Sense to stretch and shape them, and carefully adjusted the curvature of the blade, the thickness of the guard, and the length of the hilt according to the image of a long sword in his mind.

When the shape was completely fixed, he slowly withdrew the Nascent Fire and let the long sword cool naturally in mid-air.

The cooled long sword was pitch-black all over, its surface matte, without any patterns or decorations, as plain as a rough blank just dug out from the most inconspicuous corner of a blacksmith's shop.

Zhou Ming gripped the hilt; it felt cold and solid, and its weight was much lighter than an iron sword of the same size.

Yet it was not light in a flimsy way; it was a just-right, handy weight that made one feel, upon holding it, that this sword was a part of one's body extending outwards.

Zhou Ming tried injecting a wisp of magic power into the blade.

The long sword trembled violently, and a dark, deep light suddenly lit up on the blade, more profound and restrained than the cold light he had seen on ordinary iron swords.

Then the blade hung steadily in his hand, bearing his magic power safely, without cracks, without shattering.

It was a success.