Stamping Art

As soon as he stepped through the workshop gates, the thick smell of wood shavings mixed with the pungent scent of spirit oil hit him head-on, choking Lu Li into a fit of coughing. He had not arrived too late—there was still the time it took to burn a stick of incense before work began. At this hour, the day-shift hands had not yet clocked out.

The stamping workshop ran two shifts, each lasting six hours. There was a break every two hours, and cheap late-night meals were provided in the middle.

Night-shift hands like Lu Li received an extra hundred copper coins a month as a night-shift allowance, which was quite conscientious. Of course, that was only if they had perfect attendance. Miss even one day, and the allowance was gone.

Before dinner was even over, Lu Li had tugged back and forth with the servant in charge of porridge. After much difficulty, he managed to buy on credit two copper coins' worth of food: half a flatbread and two taels of fruit peels.

Melon rinds, pear peels, orange peels... all kinds of fruit peels were mixed together. The pear peels were the tastiest of the lot. The stamping workshop bought these peels cheaply from the restaurant next door. Lu Li wanted to buy directly from the restaurant too, so the workshop would not profit off the difference.

Unfortunately, Lu Li had no connections.

After taking on the enormous debt of thirty-six spirit stones, Lu Li had entered a state where so many lice bit him that he no longer felt the itch. The twenty copper coins he had borrowed in total this month barely seemed worth mentioning.

He could not skip meals. Lu Li had no confidence in his frail body; if he passed out at his station later and lost his perfect attendance, the loss would outweigh the gain.

At that moment, Lu Li took a battered booklet from the nearby shelf, leaned against the wall, opened it with one hand, and ate his flatbread with the other.

Five large characters were written on the booklet's cover—Stamping Art · Upper Volume.

On the first page of the Stamping Art were two lines of mnemonic verses.

[The iron pivot becomes the mold; a hundred refinements forge the blank.]

[A thousand jun's true form is fixed; in a single thought, ten thousand forms are crushed.]

The Stamping Art was the foundational cultivation method for clamp masters. It was divided into upper, middle, and lower volumes, corresponding respectively to the human, earth, and heaven grades of clamp masters. All three volumes were books provided free of charge by the stamping workshop.

The cultivation method was simply left there for the hands to consult as they pleased. It was as basic as basic could get—there was no reason not to read it.

The first time Lu Li came here, he had heard the old masters in the workshop say that the Stamping Art had been created by a great master of the construct path in ancient times. On the surface, it taught one how to use tools to stamp out mechanism components, but it supposedly contained a set of martial techniques. If one could comprehend them, one would be able to stamp mechanism components with bare hands.

"A thousand jun's true form is fixed; in a single thought, ten thousand forms are crushed..."

Lu Li muttered the two lines over and over. He thought they sounded incredibly cool, full of imposing grandeur. Though he could not do it at this stage, that did not stop him from fantasizing.

Once he comprehended the true meaning within, he would hold an irregular lump of iron in his hand, circulate the Stamping Art, and squeeze hard. Steam would billow forth, and the surrounding temperature would rise sharply.

When he opened his hands again, the lump of iron would have become a neatly shaped steel blank. If he thought the blank was not round enough, he would simply squeeze it again and make it rounder.

Then his powerful fingernails would turn into drills. A quick gouging over the steel blank would leave holes of varying sizes, whether through-holes or blind holes.

Finally, with a few rubs across the component's surface, he would polish it bright with the ridges of his palm.

Fantasy was fantasy. At his current stage, Lu Li still had to rely on tools to forge only the most basic and simplest mechanism components.

Lu Li had read this booklet no fewer than ten times, and he had long memorized its contents by heart. Yet he had never been able to grasp its true meaning. The more he read it, the more he felt that it was simply about stamping mechanisms. There was no martial technique hidden inside at all.

Lu Li suspected the old masters had been stringing him along. After all, he had yet to see anyone stamp mechanism components barehanded—not even earth-grade clamp masters could do it.

The workshop employed a heaven-grade clamp master, but Lu Li had never seen him make a move. Perhaps it was because the man had his own separate workstation. An apprentice like Lu Li, who did not even count as a human-grade clamp master, probably had no qualifications to watch a heaven-grade clamp master at work.

A heaven-grade clamp master was so formidable that his monthly pay started at five spirit stones. Even the workshop master had to treat him with utmost respect. If Lu Li earned five spirit stones a month, he could clear his debt in just over half a year.

How enviable...

The enormous pressure of debt weighed on him until he could barely breathe.

Suddenly, Lu Li's fantasies were interrupted by the workshop master's angry shout.

"Hey, newbie! What are you squatting around there dawdling for? Get your ass over here! You expect all these people to wait for you alone?"

The workshop master's surname was Tang. He was a broad-shouldered, fat middle-aged man. It was said that he himself was an earth-grade clamp master, and all the hands in the workshop feared him.

Helplessly, Lu Li tipped the crumbs in his palm into his mouth and went to his station. He skillfully picked up a file and was just about to start work when Workshop Master Tang cleared his throat behind him and said:

"I'll just say a few words. Certain people have been getting rather slack lately. They keep using the excuse of answering nature's call to loaf around in the latrine. You need to treat the stamping workshop like your own home."

As he spoke, it sounded as though a mouthful of thick phlegm was lodged in his throat, making everyone uncomfortable just listening to him. The workers exchanged looks. Though dissatisfied, none dared speak up.

"What kind of faces are those? Even when you go to the toilet, put some effort into it! That's all I have to say. Work if you want to work. If you don't, there are plenty of people outside who will."

Having said that, Workshop Master Tang turned and walked into the inner room.

Lu Li truly needed money now. Remembering what Wood Crow had said would happen if he defaulted—his soul extracted and refined, his kidneys harvested and his spiritual roots dug out—made his entire body go cold just thinking about it.

So he wanted to ask for an advance, enough to repay at least part of it first. That way, the disciples of Azure Sun Hall would not actually come knocking at his door.

After carefully considering his wording, he called out to Workshop Master Tang.

"Workshop Master Tang, didn't you say we should treat the stamping workshop like our own home? So I was thinking... I've been a little short on funds lately. Do you think you could advance me some money?"

"Hm?"

"What do you need an advance on your wages for?"

"Twenty spirit stones... Ah, ten spirit stones would do too."

"How much?"

Workshop Master Tang frowned and shot Lu Li an impatient glare.

"Get back to your station. Your pay will naturally be issued at the beginning of the month. You'll get exactly what you're owed."

"Oh."

Seeing that the workshop master would not agree, Lu Li dejectedly returned to his station and began the day's work.

When work ended, it was just the Hour of the Rabbit. Lu Li rubbed the sore back of his neck, rose to leave, and planned to head home for some sleep first. In the afternoon, he would see whether he could sneak into the private school to sit in on another lesson.

Speaking of stealing lessons, Lu Li felt rather disheartened. Instead of clinging to fantasies of secretly learning from others, it would be more prudent to find another job during the day and pay off his debts as quickly as possible.

When he had first arrived in this world and learned that immortals existed, Lu Li had once been overjoyed, imagining that one day he, too, might set foot upon the path of immortality.

Yet next month, he would turn sixteen. He had neither a Sword Qi Great Wall that came at his call nor a ring containing an old grandpa; neither did he have some great willow tree at the village entrance to cleanse his marrow and reshape his bones, nor any of those gu insects that let one shamelessly restart.

If there was anything he had in common with those webnovel protagonists from his previous life, it was probably that both his parents were dead.

Of the six paths of reincarnation, none was more bitter than the human path. He wanted to climb upward, to see the scenery of the upper levels, but no matter how hard he tried, he never had such an opportunity.

On the streets of Southern Sun Town, the morning sun had yet to rise. Lu Li walked through the cold, damp dawn mist, exhaling a breath of vapor as his body trembled faintly.

He suddenly remembered that he seemed not to have collected his mother's corpse yet.