He turned to look at the blacksmiths watching him eagerly and snapped, "What are you looking at? Get back to work! If you delay the order, I'll whip the skin off you."
Though he cursed and grumbled, a faint smile still appeared on Xu Yunfan's face.
Lu Laotou had a sharp tongue but a soft heart. He commanded great respect in the smithy, and he had personally arranged the marriages of several blacksmiths.
"I'm leaving."
"Go on."
Watching Xu Yunfan's departing back, Lu Yi smiled and shook his head. Xu Yunfan possessed extraordinary talent; at twenty-one, he had already completed the second refinement of sinews and skin. It could be considered a good connection forged for Divine Weapon Ridge.
He lowered his head and continued swinging his hammer.
For a time, the smithy rang endlessly with clanging. Together with Lu Yi's broken-gong voice, it melted into a blacksmith's farewell song in the spring breeze.
"Forge iron into a bridge to cross the vast sea, temper weapons into boats to brave the martial world..."
The waves of sound shook the newly budding branches outside the smithy. Xu Yunfan's steps were steady, each one leaving an imprint as he headed toward Accumulating Cloud Mountain outside the city.
Just as Xu Yunfan left the city, Wan Miaoyin, wearing a bamboo hat with a thin veil hanging from it, slowly entered with the crowd.
The plain gauze hanging from her dark-blue bamboo hat rippled in the heat rising from the marketplace. Wan Miaoyin pressed down the trembling veil with her fingertips, while the cuff embroidered with silver-thread epiphyllum flowers barely covered the tip of her nose.
The cries of vendors, wrapped in the scorched fragrance of scallion pancakes, crashed into her ears. The white steam billowing from opened steamers carried fishiness and sweat,