Thanks to the village craftsmen and Bai Sui's increasingly advanced training.
Bai Sui had painstakingly built a steam engine and a DC electric motor by hand. She had a reason for making these two machines.
That reason was the ninjas' Fire Release and Lightning Release. Bai Sui felt that if ninjas in this world were truly to develop, they needed a new profession—or, rather, a new role in which they could put their abilities to use.
Once these two machines were widely adopted, at the very least, ninjas who could use Fire Release and Lightning Release could serve as a renewable energy source and find a place in society once more.
The reason she said the machines were connected to her training was that the craftsman couldn't manage some of the more precise work. Bai Sui had to cut the parts with the Qi Sword she had nurtured, or use metal-natured qi to strengthen her hands and hammer them into shape.
She used her nurtured Qi Sword because, while experimenting with ways to use qi, she had tried drawing it into her lungs to nurture it there as well.
She discovered that not only did it nurture quickly, but its minimum power was also high. Even a freshly nurtured Qi Sword could split stone tablets and shatter rocks.
Bai Sui realized the results were so good because qi nurtured in the lungs naturally took on the nature of metal.
Moreover, thanks to qi's properties, the Qi Sword didn't merely gain greater power; it also became easier to control. After leaving her body, she could guide it with her thoughts, much like wielding a flying sword.
As a result, Bai Sui effectively had a carving knife that was so sharp it could slice through iron as if it were mud. It was difficult to control while carving and polishing delicate parts, but Bai Sui had plenty of time to spare.
Aside from her fixed daily training, most of the rest of her time went toward teaching the children and helping them grow. Yet Bai Sui no longer needed to eat or sleep, so she had a great deal of time at her disposal each day.
Even after setting aside the time she spent gathering herbs in the mountains and treating the villagers, she still had around five hours of free time each day to use however she pleased.
In this era, which offered little in the way of entertainment, ordinary people had only a few ways to pass the time. Bai Sui spent much of her free time revisiting the memories of her previous life.
In her previous life, Bai Sui had read a great many books to pass the time or lift her spirits. Now, those books brought her comfort once again.
But not every book had substance. When reading a book for the first time, the novelty could keep people going. But when she read them a second time, Bai Sui found that she could no longer get through many of the books she had once found interesting.
Either she had spoiled the story for herself, or she had lost interest in what came next. Before long, fewer and fewer books held her attention. In the end, she found that the books she could reread were the classics she hadn't been particularly eager to tackle before.
After spending over half a year poring over the classics of the Hundred Schools of Thought, Bai Sui decided she needed a change of pace. So she turned to handiwork, another way to while away the hours.
Besides the two mechanical devices mentioned above, Bai Sui also made herself an Eight-Faced Sword.
Thanks to the village's location, Bai Sui had brought back quite a bit of ochre while gathering herbs in the woods. She didn't have a proper furnace, but she didn't let that stop her.
She built a simple, disposable earthen furnace and used her qi to experiment, focusing her fire-natured qi inside and gradually raising the temperature. In the end, after three months of spare time, Bai Sui finally smelted an iron bar. She had no skill at smithing, but she had her Qi Sword. In the end, she used it to carve the iron bar into a fine sword.
Without the means to acid-wash it, Bai Sui carved patterns into the blade with her Qi Sword instead. She really didn't want to spend any more time making an iron scabbard, so she simply chopped down a small tree and made a wooden one.
One day, a samurai came to Bai Sui for treatment because his leg hurt. He immediately noticed the sword hanging on her wall.
When he learned that Bai Sui had made it for herself, the samurai was quite surprised. He could tell from looking at her that she was strong, but she showed none of the signs of having trained.
Her hands in particular had no cuts or calluses, despite all the years she'd spent gathering herbs in the mountains. They were unbelievably soft and pale.
So the samurai was thoroughly unconvinced that Bai Sui could use a sword. Though he'd come because of his leg pain, he promptly forgot about that and insisted on sparring with her.
It wasn't as if Bai Sui had ever learned a proper sword style. Usually, she treated the sword as a piece of exercise equipment. After all, it was made entirely of iron and weighed over four pounds, nearly five. It was only because Bai Sui had made some progress in her training and was now far stronger than Superman that she could wield it for long. In her previous life, she wouldn't have been able to hold it for very long at all.
After hefting the sword, the samurai, Kubota Noriyuki, remarked in surprise, "A weapon isn't better just because it's heavier. This isn't suited for actual combat, especially since your sword weighs more than twice as much as it should..."
Kubota Noriyuki didn't finish what he was saying, but the disbelief in his eyes made his meaning clear. He thought Bai Sui was lying to him and that she was just someone who couldn't use a sword!
Bai Sui didn't say much. She decided she'd show him what it meant to overcome skill with sheer strength. Though she didn't know any proper sword forms, she had practiced four fundamental techniques: striking, thrusting, parrying, and sweeping.
Some sword styles from her previous life divided these techniques into even finer movements: chopping, thrusting, tapping, crashing, striking, lifting, and flicking; slashing, intercepting, supporting, pressing, hooking, slicing, and sweeping upward; circling, threading, pressing down, clouding, wiping, blocking, and sweeping; drawing, pulling back, warding off, presenting, pushing, rubbing, and twisting.
But for all their many variations, they all came down to the same principles. Bai Sui had truly practiced the Four Mother Swords in earnest.
Bai Sui stood straight, facing Kubota Noriyuki. She held the sword in her left hand and curled her right thumb inward, forming a flat palm as she performed a sword salute.
After both had saluted, Bai Sui immediately flung away the scabbard with her left hand and lunged forward, leading with a downward strike aimed straight at Kubota Noriyuki's face.
Kubota Noriyuki had been planning to draw his sword in a flashy slash, but the sudden attack interrupted him. He hurriedly sidestepped and swept his blade across to deflect it, only for a tremendous force to hit him, nearly knocking the sword from his hand.
Her first strike missed. Bai Sui turned her forearm and swept her sword through in a bow stance, continuing her assault. Kubota Noriyuki hurriedly retreated and raised his sword to block.
Seeing that the first two attacks had thrown him off balance, Bai Sui pressed on. Lowering her center of gravity, she stepped into a bow stance and swept her sword upward toward his retreating right leg.
Kubota Noriyuki had been switching from a block to a horizontal sweep. Seeing that the sword was about to slice into his leg, he had no choice but to change moves at the last moment. He raised his right leg high and used the opening to hop backward, while drawing his sweeping sword back in front of himself to block Bai Sui's next attack.