Chapter 28

Weapons were extensions of a person's hands and feet. Following that line of thought, Bai Lang felt that blunt weapons were probably best suited to him for now. He could slowly work on his saber skills afterward; first, he needed to find a blade that suited him. Choosing a blunt weapon was simple enough. "They say a General of Whip and Mace is no match for brute force. For convenience, there's no doubt an iron mace is the way to go."

An iron mace also had the advantage of letting him practice some moves from saber techniques. "Is there really that much difference between smashing down and chopping down?" Bai Lang said. He didn't have many expenses in his day-to-day life. His biggest one might have been occasionally going out to a restaurant for a good meal—but as one of the enforcers at the labor agency, he was often invited out to eat, so he'd managed to save up a little money.

Naturally, this wasn't the sort of thing you bought at a weapons shop. Those places sold famous sabers and treasured swords, with even the cheapest short blade costing at least ten taels of silver. So he needed a blacksmith. The Martial Way flourished in this world, and there were plenty of wandering fighters who wore swords and sabers at their waists, so it was perfectly normal for blacksmiths to forge weapons as well.

Bai Lang usually carried an iron ruler shaped like the character bu to parry and lock up the knives of the idle ruffians who caused trouble. More often, though, he moved so quickly that he'd subdued his opponent before they could even draw their weapon. The ruffians who dared to cause trouble at the labor agency had, at most, two or three moves that weren't even good enough to be called amateur tricks.

A wandering fighter with real ability probably wouldn't pick a fight with a labor agency. The truth was, the agency couldn't do all that much evil. Gambling dens and brothels were far more likely to attract trouble. Their enforcers were at least a level more skilled than those at a labor agency, and of course their pay and side income were better too.

With silver in his pocket, Bai Lang went to a blacksmith's shop. That was one advantage of working at a labor agency: he knew exactly which blacksmiths did good work. Liu the blacksmith could forge Hundred-Fold Steel sabers. They might not look particularly impressive, but they were more practical than the ten-tael short blades sold at weapons shops.

Liu charged only one tael and five mace of silver for a Hundred-Fold Steel saber, labor and materials included. The weapons Bai Lang wanted would require more material, but probably less work than a Hundred-Fold Steel saber. "Liu, make these two iron maces four-sided, and sharpen all four edges. Give the heads tapered points so they can pierce armor—they should also be useful against people who train in hard-body techniques. Here's one tael of silver as a deposit. I'll pay the rest when I pick them up. Oh, and make me a six-sided sword too. Don't make it too long—one and a half times the length of my forearm will do."

After Liu measured Bai Lang's forearm and hand, Bai Lang chose a suitable weight, paid the silver, and arranged to collect the weapons in a few days. Then he went straight back to practice. He needed to open up the meridians throughout his body, and he barely had enough time each day to train. Where would he find time to wander around?

Besides, he still had his regular work to do. At the labor agency, he had to help hold the ground and accompany brokers as a middleman. He could probably manage at most three hours of serious martial arts practice each day. Bai Lang didn't want to stand out—but the key problem was that members of a gang couldn't simply quit. They could wash their hands of the jianghu, but he was only an enforcer at a labor agency, and the gang hadn't even given him a position. What was he supposed to wash his hands of? What a headache.

Washing one's hands of the jianghu really did require a gold basin. That was the custom. Bai Lang could forget about it; all his assets probably amounted to about twenty taels of silver. That was a fortune for an ordinary unmarried man, but in the eyes of the martial world—hahahahahaha.

Bai Lang never wasted time. Even while walking, he practiced the motions with his hands. That was because the Golden Bell Shield was more focused on external and dynamic training—at least in the first few stages. Bai Lang had returned to his old routine, and to others he seemed dull in the extreme. He was an enforcer at a labor agency, yet he didn't visit brothels or go out looking for trouble or business. All he did was practice martial arts in his little courtyard. If he weren't the strongest fighter at the agency, no one would want anything to do with him.

As he cultivated the Golden Bell Shield, the flow of his inner energy would produce faint, deep bell tolls when it struck the acupoints. Fortunately, the sound was very quiet, and the agency's enforcers had only that much ability, so Bai Lang wasn't worried anyone would see through him. The Jade Fish had been mounted on a silver base, and Bai Lang wore it around his neck. He didn't know whether it would take him across worlds again. Even if nothing extraordinary happened, gaining extra time to practice in another world would be worthwhile.

A Xiantian Master could live nearly three hundred years, and a still more powerful master would surely live longer. Bai Lang felt he was still young and had plenty of time to take a chance. Five days later, he went to Liu's shop, where the two iron maces and a short sword were waiting for him.

The maces weren't pitch-black; instead, they gleamed with a silvery sheen. The blacksmith had carefully polished their surfaces—after all, if you were going to sharpen them, you might as well polish them too. Their four edges weren't especially sharp, but Bai Lang thought they were sharp enough. Each mace was four feet long and about as thick as a wrist, yet weighed only a little over a hundred pounds because it was hollow.

With the first stage of the Golden Bell Shield under his belt, Bai Lang could swing one of the maces one-handed without finding it heavy. In fact, it felt quite comfortable. The short sword was half a palm's width across and weighed about twenty pounds, making it a fairly heavy sword. In terms of length, it was a short sword; in terms of weight, it was a heavy one.

The maces came with leather straps to loop around his wrists, while the short sword had a scabbard. Bai Lang was quite pleased, so he paid the remainder and carried the maces back to his courtyard. He could practice with them at the same time as the Golden Bell Shield, as if he'd simply added a pair of dumbbells to his routine. He could also use them as extensions of his fists when striking.

Mace techniques were relatively simple. They consisted of smashing, hooking, thrusting, and various variations on those moves. The weapon relied on strength to injure an opponent and was more forgiving than a saber or sword. In a fight, controlling a blade so that its edge faced the right way wasn't easy.

"The Twelve Primary Meridians and Eight Extraordinary Meridians... So far, I've only opened the Ren Meridian and six primary meridians, along with two other channels. My progress isn't slow, but my inner energy feels rather insufficient. The Golden Bell Shield places great importance on the depth of one's inner energy when breaking through. It seems I'll have to slow down and focus on building up my strength and vital essence before I can make another breakthrough." Bai Lang was thinking this as he sat cross-legged in his room, having just completed a Cosmic Circulation. Just then, he sensed something strange. His chest burned as if on fire. He looked down and saw what seemed to be a face on his chest, there one moment and gone the next. Then Bai Lang's vision blurred, and he fell unconscious.