Friends and Family (Revised)

As Shi Fen lay dying.

Shi Fen instantly recalled his life, the friends and family he had in this life, and that wretched inheritance.

He didn't have many friends and family in this life. There were only six people closest to him: his father, his mother, his older brother, Luo Feng, Luo Hua, and Wei Wen, his three good buddies. Then there were the elders of the Luo Family and the Wei Family.

His father in this life was named Shi Tie.

He currently had the strength of an intermediate Martial Arts Hall student.

When Shi Tie was very young, he began learning blacksmithing from his father. Old Master Shi was highly intelligent. Relying entirely on his own aptitude and experimentation, he had mastered the Pseudo-Patterned Steel Forging Technique and could make valuable dining knives, greatly improving the family's circumstances.

Shi Tie had been the recipient of great expectations from a young age. Under Old Master Shi's careful instruction, his blacksmithing skills had improved rapidly. Old Master Shi had seen in Shi Tie the hope of a master weapon smith, believing that Shi Tie could reach the level he had always dreamed of.

He would be able to forge Huaxia's divine weapons and blades.

Unfortunately, the appearance of the RR Virus had shattered both their dreams. After the calamity, Shi Tie was the only survivor of the entire Shi Family.

Old Master Shi's fond wish had become an unfulfilled dying wish.

Shi Tie was stubborn and set in his ways, but very clever. To honor his father's dying wish, he had changed his own name to Shi Tie, constantly reminding himself to strive with all his might toward his father's dream.

After enduring countless hardships, he had opened a repair shop, struggling to make a living with his blacksmithing and mechanical repair skills. He had encountered the RR Virus crisis before graduating high school, and had figured out mechanical repair on his own.

It took half-baked blacksmithing skills and half-baked mechanical repair skills just to scrape by.

Later, he met Shi Fen's Mother, Li Ziyi. They fell in love and soon had Shi Fen's older brother, Shi Tian.

Nourished by love, and drawing on the foundation his father had imparted to him, Shi Tie worked hard and studied diligently. His blacksmithing skills improved rapidly, soon reaching the level of Old Master Shi's, and the family's circumstances soared.

It was under these circumstances that Shi Fen was born.

After Shi Fen's genius-level intelligence emerged, he began teaching Shi Tie how to forge. Shi Tie saw a glimmer of hope in Shi Fen.

Sure enough, when Shi Fen was around ten, Shi Tie finally fulfilled Old Master Shi's dying wish. After Three Stones opened, Shi Tie began striving for an even higher level of weapon making!

His mother in this life was named Li Ziyi.

Li Ziyi was clever too. Though she was weak, with only the strength of a beginner Martial Arts Hall student, she had still been underage before the RR Virus outbreak and had picked up some accounting skills by osmosis while living with her parents.

When the RR Virus broke out and her parents died one after the other, Li Ziyi relied on her intelligence to find an accounting job at a small factory, barely making ends meet. Life was very hard.

After meeting Shi Tie, the two spent many years struggling through poverty together. It wasn't until Shi Fen came along that their hard days finally ended.

Their first child was Shi Fen's older brother, Shi Tian.

Shi Tian was ten years older than Shi Fen and a textbook case of a lousy student. His clever parents had somehow managed to have a "fool."

Shi Tian had poor grades and little talent for martial arts. He had barely reached the level of an intermediate Martial Arts Hall student by eighteen, and only attained the level of an advanced student at twenty-six. If nothing unexpected happened, that was as far as he would ever go.

Fortunately, Shi Tian had a good aptitude for forging, and Shi Fen helped his older brother change all that.

Shi Fen cared a great deal about his older brother.

That was because in his previous life, Shi Fen had an older brother who had died young, before he was even ten. His name had also been Shi Tian. Only later, when his parents had a child in their old age, was Shi Fen born. Before his parents died, they had mentioned Shi Tian countless times. They had always felt they had let him down.

At first, Shi Fen didn't think things could possibly be such a coincidence. It was very likely that some great being had "conveniently" saved Shi Tian's life.

On the off chance that was true, Shi Fen tried every way he could think of to treat his older brother well.

After Shi Fen's genius emerged, he often tutored his older brother. In the end, he got him into the prestigious university his brother had always wanted to attend, where he studied cold weapons forging. Later, as his forging skills improved, Shi Tian even successfully got into graduate school to continue his studies.

With the study materials Shi Tian brought home, combined with the information from the Treasure Refining Inheritance, Shi Fen helped Shi Tie and Shi Tian raise their forging skills by several levels.

After Shi Tian earned his master's degree, his poor martial arts talent worked against him. He hadn't reached the level of an advanced Martial Arts Hall student until he was twenty-six, and failed to attract the attention of a master forger, so he couldn't become an apprentice.

Shi Fen returned home to look for work, and Three Stones came into being as a matter of course.

Three Stones was now thriving, with a very substantial income.

Shi Fen had done right by his family in this life.

Even if he died, his family's future wouldn't be bad. He had already laid a solid foundation for them. Thanks to Three Stones' reputation, they would have enough to live on in the future.

Compared with his family, Shi Fen regretted even more that he couldn't explore the universe with Luo Feng. Through a careless mistake, he had become a passing figure in Luo Feng's life.

Because they were neighbors, Shi Fen and Luo Feng had grown up together in diapers, as close as brothers.

Ever since they were little, they had been "each other's teacher."

Shi Fen taught Luo Feng academic subjects, while Luo Feng taught Shi Fen martial arts.

Because of habits deeply ingrained over the sixty-odd years of his previous life, Shi Fen wasn't as talented as Luo Feng at learning practical martial arts and strength training. Luo Feng had started from scratch.

It was embarrassing to admit, but Shi Fen had studied ancient martial arts for over thirty years and practiced killing techniques for just as long, yet had never once had a proper "match." Though every one of his moves was a "killing blow," he had no intention of attacking an opponent at all.

Ancient martial arts had remained useful only for keeping fit.

Modern practical martial arts.

Every move was a deadly attack. Otherwise, they wouldn't be called practical martial arts. Because of his ingrained habits, Shi Fen found it difficult to adapt to this contrast and change his ways.

So Luo Feng became Shi Fen's martial arts teacher.

The two often "sparred," improving together.

Shi Fen tutored Luo Feng in academic subjects, and they had always helped each other in turn.

Over time, thanks to Luo Feng, Shi Fen became friends with Luo Hua and Wei Wen.

Shi Fen couldn't change Luo Hua's fate. All he could do was make more time to help him. With Shi Fen's "lessons in economics," Luo Hua took off in the stock market, and his future looked bright.

Teaching Luo Hua on purpose was one thing; Wei Wen learning forging had been an accident.

Wei Wen heard Shi Fen's family was opening the Three Stones forging workshop. Curious, he looked up some information online and discovered that forging was a "super lucrative" industry.

When Wei Wen learned that even Shi Tian's cheapest handmade patterned steel dining knife set cost at least several thousand, he latched onto Shi Fen and begged him to teach him forging.

Shi Fen patiently talked it over with Wei Wen.

He made it clear that forging required years of hard work to build a solid foundation and learn all kinds of techniques.

Even after learning the basics and starting to work with patterned steel knife forging, it would take several more years of study—and unless he was a natural, there would still be a very high failure rate. Even so, Wei Wen remained interested.

With no choice, Shi Fen bought some pig iron and taught Wei Wen the basics of forging.

To his complete surprise, Wei Wen's forging talent was on par with Shi Tian's. With the help of his decent aptitude, Wei Wen's blacksmithing skills improved rapidly.

Shi Fen found this a little troubling. He had changed Wei Wen's future without meaning to, and was afraid something bad might happen.

But seeing how excited Wei Wen was, Shi Fen really couldn't bring himself to say anything.

After practicing for a few days, Wei Wen felt that forging was a particularly interesting craft, as if he had been born for the job.

So he called Luo Feng over too.

Shi Fen was already conflicted. When he discovered that Luo Feng wanted to try forging as well, he felt like his whole world had fallen apart.

But seeing the expectant look in Luo Feng's eyes, he couldn't exactly refuse to teach him. He could only show Luo Feng the basics of forging.

Shi Fen was relieved to find that Luo Feng didn't like the feeling of hammering iron. Luo Feng preferred using a blade. After trying it once, he stopped thinking about forging and focused on martial arts and swordsmanship.

That made Shi Fen breathe a huge sigh of relief.

If Luo Feng had become a blacksmith, Shi Fen really would have gone crazy.

In these eighteen years, since he had opened the inheritance not long after arriving in this world, he had found a new goal in life.

He didn't want to repeat his old path of studying and doing research.

To escape the fate of having to go back to school, he had shown freakish intelligence from a young age.

Before he was three, he had learned to speak, read, and write. He began studying every book in the house on his own. His father's books about forging and mechanical repairs, as well as all of his older brother's study materials, had become his "leisure reading."

Once he had figured them out and learned what they had to teach, he began tutoring his older brother and father in turn. Under his diligent "tutoring," his older brother eventually earned a master's degree, and his father finally fulfilled his grandfather's long-cherished wish.

At seven, he began learning forging alongside his older brother and father. Drawing on the specialized knowledge from his older brother's university program in cold weapons manufacturing, combined with his own Treasure Refining Inheritance, he had spent a while putting on an act of "gradually learning" before taking over and teaching his father and brother to forge.

As for his own strength.

By sixteen, he had nearly reached the level of an advanced Martial Arts Hall student. At eighteen, his physical fitness was not far from the Quasi-Fighter threshold.

The year he hit a bottleneck, his older brother graduated from graduate school. Because he lacked talent for cultivation and hadn't caught the eye of any important figures, he had to find work on his own. After the family discussed it, they used most of the savings they had earned over the years, along with the money Shi Fen had made from stocks, to open a patterned steel knife-making workshop called Three Stones.

His family rented a pretty large storefront and, after carefully renovating it, all began working there.

Shi Tie, Shi Tian, and Shi Fen were in charge of forging.

Li Ziyi handled the accounts.

They also hired a cameraman to film and edit videos.

Three Stones sold not only standard dining knives and utility knives, but also custom-made items at high prices. Every knife was handmade, and each purchase came with a "birth certificate" for the knife.

The birth certificate was an edited record of the knife's entire manufacturing process, sold along with the knife. This showed how the knife had been made and proved it was genuinely handmade.

Three Stones became an instant hit as soon as it opened.

Among the four of them at Three Stones, including "apprentice" Wei Wen, Shi Fen was unquestionably the best at forging.

However, to keep a low profile and focus on researching the Qualification Trial, everyone wore masks while forging knives to conceal their skill. To outsiders, Three Stones' smith was a single person wearing a mask.

All the cameramen involved in filming had signed confidentiality agreements and weren't allowed to reveal anything. Only a few people knew that there were actually three masked smiths.

If nothing unexpected happened, the truth would gradually come out after he died.

After all, without Shi Fen at the helm, all of Three Stones' highest-tier orders would gradually disappear.

The customers would notice something was wrong.

With his astonishing forging skills, his remarkable ability to make money in the stock market, and his talent that would surely make him a Martial Artist by the time he was in his twenties, Shi Fen had earned special treatment from his family.

Ever since Three Stones had opened, he had even been allowed to live by himself in a room. He could do whatever he wanted. He could spend all day secretly taking trials in his mind and sleep all day in the outside world without anyone bothering him.

These eighteen years had been remarkably carefree for him.

As for school?

He had always been enrolled in name only. He had hardly ever set foot on campus.

Eighteen years had been brief, but they had been exciting enough.

Shi Fen had actually been quite content to have been reborn. He had gotten to live for eighteen years in the world of his dreams and fulfill his wish from his previous life. What more could he have wanted?

But having come all this way.

Shi Fen felt, at least a little, that he had some regrets.

He regretted not being able to take good care of his friends and family, and regretted not seeing the outcome of that wretched inheritance.

At least, over these eighteen years, everything had gone in a good direction.

Even now, with death close at hand, Shi Fen wasn't afraid. He had already died once. Why should he be afraid of dying a second time?

Shi Fen had a clear conscience in this world.