Tang San looked at the swords, sabers, and daggers hanging in the shop. Under the other two's gazes, he suddenly reached out and felt one. "Just as I thought."
A glint flashed through his eyes, and he said with a faint smile, "Didn't I just say so? The weapons here really are good quality."
"Huh?" The two were taken aback. Tang San had already found a blacksmith working at his forge and stopped beside him. "Master blacksmith, you must be the shop owner, right?"
At that, the blacksmith glanced at him without stopping his work. He said in surprise, "Oh, you've got a good eye, young man. Are you in the same trade?" Tang San was right. Ever since settling down here, the blacksmith had run this shop for over ten years.
"Mm. I looked around, and none of the others are as good as you. You put just the right amount of force into every blow, heavy when it needs to be heavy and light when it needs to be light."
"Hahaha, I didn't expect someone so young to be interested in this craft." The blacksmith's surname was Wang, and his nickname was Dachui, simply because his Martial Soul was a huge iron hammer. If it took physical form, it would weigh at least seventy or eighty jin. Unfortunately, his Innate Soul Power was low, and even though he was over fifty, he had only just passed level thirty.
He could tell at a glance that Tang San had a bearing similar to his own. To have attained smithing skills comparable to his at such a young age, could his Martial Soul be a hammer too?
"More or less. My father's Martial Soul is a hammer too, so you could say it runs in the family. By the way, shopkeeper," Tang San said briefly, pointing at the weapons, "these weapons look like ordinary iron, but they're very strong. You must have added some kind of rare metal, right? If you have any left, I'd like to buy some."
Wang Dachui hadn't expected him to be here to buy metal, and his hands slowed. "Well..."
Seeing his hesitation, Tang San raised the stakes. "I can pay more than the market price in Gold Soul Coins."
Rare metals were indispensable for high-level Hidden Weapons, and they were hard to come by. Over the past few years, he had only encountered two or three kinds. Although Xiang Yang had already told him that Hidden Weapons had been almost entirely phased out in "later generations," they had been the foundation of his convictions in his previous life. How could he give them up so easily?
On top of that, with no machinery for processing it, iron had to be forged one hammer blow at a time, and it was difficult to make ordinary iron strong enough.
So while studying firearms, Tang San had also been looking for ways to improve his original Hidden Weapon techniques. If he could perfectly combine the two, that would be better still. He had a few ideas so far and was only lacking materials. Now that he had happened upon a "rare metal," he naturally couldn't miss it.
"Ah, that's not what I meant. Wait a moment," he explained with a wry chuckle. Then he looked at the piece of iron he had nearly finished forging and called out, "A Yun, come here!"
He left the final bit of work to a young apprentice and gave him a few instructions before saying to Tang San, "Come with me." He also glanced at Xiang Yang and Xiao Wu behind him. "If you're interested, you can come and take a look too."
"Mm, thank you, shopkeeper." "Mm-hmm."
After turning a couple of corners, the three followed him into an enormous, partially open-air room piled high with ore, as big as a plaza. A small portion was raw ore, while the rest consisted of rough iron blocks that had undergone some basic processing.
Tang San took a quick look around, somewhat puzzled. Wang Dachui didn't stop, instead leading them to a corner on the right, where there turned out to be another small room.
He unlocked the door. "Come on, have a look inside." Tang San frowned and exchanged a glance with Xiang Yang. After a moment's hesitation, he went in, but kept his left hand beside his thigh.
He led the way at the front and quickly swept his gaze around after entering. Mm, good. There's no one else inside.
"Look, this is it." As those thoughts raced through Tang San's mind, Wang Dachui walked over with a dark-gold lump of iron about half the size of a fist.
A purple light flashed in Tang San's eyes as he cautiously accepted it. "This is... why is it so light?"
Tang San froze. Many things in this world were the same as in his previous life, such as people's appearances, the length of a day, the herbs growing on the ground, and metals like gold, silver, copper, and iron. They might differ inside, but at least on the surface, they were the same.
Take iron, for example. Generally speaking, a lump of iron the size of an adult's fist weighed around five or six jin. This one was about half that size, so it should have weighed at least two jin, but it didn't even feel like it weighed one.
Just as he thought he was being played, Shopkeeper Wang laughed and said, "Of course it's light. This isn't some rare metal. How could I afford that sort of thing?" Then, seeing the three's astonished expressions, he continued, "This is a Soul Beast's bone. You're all Soul Masters, I assume, so you know about Soul Bones, right?"
"Of course." "Mm."
"Although ordinary beast bones can't fuse with the body and provide powerful Soul Skills like Soul Bones, they can still be used to make soup or refined into medicine, or used for smithing, like I do."
Hearing his explanation, Xiang Yang suddenly remembered that, back when he had been obsessed with cold weapons, he had come across quite a few videos. Some used modern scientific knowledge to explain the principle behind the ancients' practice of sacrificing humans to swords.
The main point was that human bones contained elements such as carbon, phosphorus, and calcium. Carbon steel, carbon steel—surely plenty of people had heard the term? That was because adding the right amount of carbon when smelting iron could produce stronger steel. Apparently, it could also be used to remove impurities and the like, but he couldn't remember the rest very clearly.
Wang Dachui continued, "But this isn't just any Soul Beast bone. It's the bone of a Dark Gold Bear." He was visibly rather proud of it, so presumably it had something to do with him.
"Hiss!" "Holy crap!" came two voices at once.
The three were utterly shocked. Some people might only find the name a little familiar, but if one mentioned the Dark Gold Terrorclaw Bear, they would surely know what it was.
The two branches descended from the Dark Gold Terrorclaw Bear were the Dark Gold Bear and the Terrorclaw Bear. The Dark Gold Terrorclaw Bear itself was a super Soul Beast that stood well above even the Titan Giant Ape and the Sky Azure Bull Python. Its bloodline branches were top-tier Soul Beasts, and the species was fiercely protective of its young.
The three's expressions were just as he had expected. "Hahaha, good, you know what it is. This happened a long time ago. Back then..."
After hearing him out, Xiang Yang summed it up. Simply put, in order to obtain his Second Soul Ring, Wang Dachui and his companions had paid to hire a mercenary group. Then, late one night, they had run into a group of people fighting this thousand-year Dark Gold Bear. Top-tier Soul Beast bloodlines could easily support them in fighting above their level, to say nothing of the fact that Soul Beasts were usually stronger than Soul Masters at the same cultivation level. It would take at least a Soul Emperor to match a thousand-year Dark Gold Bear.
The strongest member of the mercenary group at the time had only been a Soul Ancestor, so they had trembled with fear and fled in terror, scattering in every direction. They hadn't regrouped until daybreak, when someone spotted the Dark Gold Bear's corpse. Although they didn't know why the hunters hadn't taken it, now that they had found it, they naturally couldn't go back empty-handed, so the mercenaries planned to take it away and sell it.
Wang Dachui originally wouldn't have received much of a share, but the mercenary group was fairly reputable. Since they planned to take the Soul Beast's corpse straight back and abandon their agreement to help him hunt for a soul, and since no one had recognized it as a Dark Gold Bear at the time, they gave him one of its ribs.
But Wang Dachui had been fairly diligent at the academy, and since his Martial Soul was a large iron hammer, he had specifically studied Dark Gold Bears. After returning home, he had made a point of confirming it, then decisively spent all his savings to buy more than half the beast's bones.
It had even delayed his acquisition of his Second Soul Ring and forced him to flee here, but he had never regretted it, simply because the weapons he later forged with Dark Gold Bear bone had earned him over a hundred times his investment.
Looking at Wang Dachui's rueful expression, tinged with pride, Xiang Yang could guess that he had shown this off to plenty of people.
He quickly interrupted the blacksmith's train of thought. "All right, uncle, how much do you want for it? After saying all that, you can't be planning not to sell it, right? Besides, there's only this little bit left."