Chapter 60: Attempt, Difficult

Not long after, Pure Entertainment and Belonging to Heart each obtained a set of three-star purple equipment from Fu Chen.

Qin Yumoke reminded the two at this point, "Red Dust suggests that you had better refine your equipment and enhance its attributes."

Pure Entertainment smiled and nodded, "No problem. I saw Red Dust talking about it in the world chat earlier, but I still had no idea how to refine and enhance equipment."

Helpless, Qin Yumoke took advantage of the fact that everyone in the party was present to explain the refinement process step by step.

Finally, Fu Chen added a warning: "Refinement is an uncertain business. The higher the refinement level, the lower the success rate, so don't get carried away when refining. Reaching plus three is already quite good."

Hearing this, Belonging to Heart's competitive streak flared up once again. He couldn't help laughing and said, "Red Dust, now that you put it that way, I'm even more interested. Let's go and try it right now."

"Remember to go and buy [Mirage Fairy Stones] first; they are essential materials for refinement," Qin Yumoke reminded.

She couldn't be bothered to care about Belonging to Heart's petty urge to measure himself against Fu Chen.

After a brief discussion, Belonging to Heart and Pure Entertainment concluded that one hundred Mirage Fairy Stones should be enough to refine a full set of equipment.

So, after each purchasing one hundred Mirage Fairy Stones, they excitedly sought out the Elder to begin refining.

Belonging to Heart first placed his heavy armor into the enhancement furnace and initiated his very first refinement.

It was an instant success right out of the gate, with a prompt reading: "Refinement successful."

Seeing this, Belonging to Heart felt his confidence surge and boldly struck while the iron was hot, starting the second refinement.

One had to admit that Belonging to Heart's luck was quite good; the plus two upgrade succeeded directly as well.

He couldn't help letting out a scornful chuckle in his heart: "It's not as difficult as they said at all. I knew Red Dust was just exaggerating to make himself look capable."

Thinking this, Belonging to Heart didn't hesitate to start the third refinement.

The prompt message popped up right before his eyes: "Refinement failed. The level has dropped back to the initial level."

Belonging to Heart was completely stunned: "What the hell, it actually drops! What a pity! Let's go again!"

Belonging to Heart couldn't help but turn serious, staring intently at the furnace as he restarted the refinement.

This time, even for the plus one upgrade, "Refinement failed" flashed continuously five times, and it was only on the sixth attempt that the refinement finally succeeded.

"Phew~~~ It finally succeeded!" Belonging to Heart couldn't help exhaling a long breath.

He took a moment to relax and adjust his state of mind before continuing his refinements.

The prompt message for "Refinement failed" immediately appeared before his eyes once more. The "plus one" that had just succeeded dropped back down again, resetting everything to zero.

At this moment, Belonging to Heart finally put away his contempt, becoming completely focused and intensely concentrated as he started over.

Failure after failure, followed by an occasional rare success, only to be immediately trailed by more failures.

As the number of refinements increased, Belonging to Heart's heart began to pound with uncontrollable tension.

When he finally achieved another plus one success, Belonging to Heart took several deep breaths to steady his emotions. Just as he finally managed to psych himself up to continue refining, he saw a prompt message: "Missing corresponding materials; refinement temporarily unavailable."

"What the hell, one hundred Mirage Fairy Stones are gone just like that?" Belonging to Heart couldn't help his inner astonishment.

He then looked over at Pure Entertainment and asked, "How is your refinement going? I've used up all one hundred of my Mirage Fairy Stones and I haven't even reached plus two yet."

Pure Entertainment's results from attempting refinement weren't much better, but he remembered what Fu Chen had said.

Each piece of equipment should stop once it reaches plus three, at which point one should move on to the next piece of defensive gear and start over.

Unfortunately, even after finally hitting plus two, every attempt to reach plus three failed, ruining all previous progress.

After two consecutive failures, Pure Entertainment lowered his standards: as soon as an item hit plus two, he would switch to the next piece.

Even so, his Mirage Fairy Stones were about to run out, and he had only managed to successfully upgrade two pieces of equipment to plus two.

Hearing his friend's question, he smiled bitterly, shook his head, and sighed, "I have a little over a dozen Mirage Fairy Stones left. Two of my pieces are at plus two, and the rest are only at plus one."

Belonging to Heart came to a sudden realization, his face full of regret as he said, "Damn it, why didn't I think of that? I kept refining the exact same piece of equipment. This thing consumes Mirage Fairy Stones way too fast—one hundred of them were gone in under five minutes. I'm planning to buy some more. Do you want any?"

Pure Entertainment decisively nodded and replied, "Yes, let's go buy some together. These things get used up way too fast."

The two of them went together to find the Sundry Merchant in Sword Immortal City, each directly spending another ten thousand coins to buy one thousand Mirage Fairy Stones.

A mere ten thousand coins was a huge sum to Fu Chen, but to these two individuals who were friends with Qin Yumoke, it was completely negligible.

With their newly purchased Mirage Fairy Stones, the two returned to the Elder to continue refining their equipment.

This time, Belonging to Heart changed his strategy as well, switching to a new piece of equipment every time he hit plus two.

Doing it this way, it took fewer than fifty Mirage Fairy Stones to finish refining all six pieces of defensive gear.

Belonging to Heart felt he had figured out a bit of the trick, so he began making another push for the plus three refinement level.

Every time he confirmed the "refinement," it instantly prompted a failure. After failing three pieces in a row, the fourth piece finally succeeded in reaching plus three.

This success further boosted Belonging to Heart's confidence, convincing him that he had grasped a bit more of the knack.

He first took the three pieces of equipment that had just failed and re-refined them one by one back to plus two, then made another push for plus three.

Meanwhile, Belonging to Heart kept summarizing the patterns of success and failure.

He discovered that these patterns were fluid; sometimes it would succeed after two consecutive failures, and other times it would succeed after four consecutive failures.

Moreover, these patterns changed very quickly, or perhaps there was no pattern at all.

Ever since discovering this trend, Belonging to Heart began intentionally compiling these patterns.

In the end, he found that while there was no overall pattern, there was indeed a short-term pattern—either two, three, or five attempts.

There was also another scenario where consecutive successes would occur, sometimes even hitting four in a row.

Unfortunately, these all happened at the plus one stage. If he could get that kind of streak on the same piece of equipment, he could have pushed it to plus five.

Pure Entertainment beside him was in a similar boat. Although he hadn't summarized things as meticulously, he had roughly noticed some patterns as well. Even so, successfully refining to plus three remained extremely difficult.

While the two of them were completely absorbed in their refinements, Fu Chen's [Seize the Heavens] skill had finally cooled down and become usable again.

Because he only had one minute, he had to quickly prep his materials and select the type of defensive gear to craft.

Fu Chen could only prepare all the required materials in advance before once again starting the gear crafting process.

Magical defensive gear was needed for Qinglan, Yao Siqingmei, Yu Meiren, and Heavy Pupil—four complete sets in total.

Crafting four identical pieces of equipment consecutively would save him the time of swapping out materials, so Fu Chen started with magical gear first.

Activating the [Seize the Heavens] skill, he immediately began crafting the equipment.

Having used a little over half of his time to complete the four sets of magical gear, Fu Chen swapped out the materials with the utmost speed and immediately began crafting light gear.

Rushing against the clock, he finally finished crafting the last set of light gear just before the [Seize the Heavens] skill expired.

Only then did Fu Chen check the quality and attributes of the gear, and upon looking, he couldn't help breaking into a smile.

Every single piece was of three-star purple quality, and their bonus attributes were flawless.

To cover up the truth, Fu Chen deliberately stayed inside the tailoring shop for a long time.