Polishing All Things Under Heaven

At the fourth quarter of the Rat hour, the moon shone bright and the stars were sparse.

Du Chengfeng sat up in bed. Having slept through the entire day, he was brimming with energy, yet he did not hurry to rise. Instead, he recalled what he had seen while sharpening the sword earlier.

Not those sword moves Cui Yuan had honed to terrifying sharpness, but Cui Yuan's actions themselves.

Du Chengfeng did not know who Cui Yuan's teacher was, but he found that person's method of teaching Cui Yuan quite interesting—after all, any ordinary person, once their teacher had left and no one remained to keep watch over them, would soon grow lax in their studies. Yet Cui Yuan was completely different. He had stubbornly maintained the immense training regimen of three thousand sword swings a day for fifteen years. The perseverance this displayed was truly admirable.

This was no longer merely practicing the sword. It was practically treating himself as a sword to be forged.

"Right! That's it!"

In an instant, Du Chengfeng seized that fleeting spark of inspiration.

That was it. That was what had inspired him during the day. Du Chengfeng might not understand martial arts, but he knew how to sharpen a blade—put another way, if repeatedly pushing a blade across a whetstone counted as polishing its edge...

Then could swinging a sword three thousand times each day also be considered polishing oneself?

Was it polishing the body? Or polishing the will? Du Chengfeng could not tell for the moment. Perhaps it was both.

But none of that mattered.

What mattered was that this flash of insight had opened the gates to a new world in Du Chengfeng's mind.

"If blades can be sharpened, then can people be sharpened too?"

With that thought, Du Chengfeng rolled out of bed and grabbed the heavy saber.

Beneath the moonlight, Du Chengfeng raised the saber high, then chopped downward.

It could not even be called a move. He simply brought it down with all his strength. Back when Fatty Yang had owned this blade, he had chopped down countless pig heads one stroke at a time just like this.

"He must have made mistakes too."

As he swung the saber, Du Chengfeng recalled Fatty Yang's broad face.

Although Fatty Yang had already been able to sever a pig's head with a single stroke when Du Chengfeng first met him, he must have undergone a great deal of painstaking practice before that.

Mistake after mistake, adjustment after adjustment.

Memorizing the gaps between bones time and again, correcting his feel for the blade time and again.

What was truly right? Fatty Yang might once have been lost as well. Just like Cui Yuan, who swung his sword three thousand times every day—were all three thousand of those swings correct?

No. He had made mistakes and lost his way as well. After all, knowing the sword moves and being able to execute them were two different things. But it was precisely through that repeated polishing and correction that rough burrs and blunt edges became sharp, that the most basic sword moves became keen enough to kill.

Just as Fatty Yang had done after acquiring this heavy saber.

With one stroke, a pig's head fell at once.

The blade wandered through the gaps between bone, neither chopping nor slicing.

"Whew..."

He exhaled a breath of stale air as the heavy blade passed by the wooden table beside him.

At that moment, Du Chengfeng completed his first polishing of himself.

Putting away the saber, Du Chengfeng turned around, his footsteps tapping softly.

Behind him, half the wooden table silently slid to the floor.

It landed with a dull thud.

Following the sliver of inspiration he had just grasped, Du Chengfeng did not stop walking and made his way straight to the storeroom.

This was where the large pile of weapons was kept. Some were curved sabers commonly used by the Hu people, while the rest were spiked war hammers favored by the grassland people—though calling them war hammers was generous. In essence, they were merely cast-iron spiked heads fixed onto wooden clubs. Some of the less particular ones even used bone.

Once, Du Chengfeng had not known how to polish these spiked war hammers. After all, these things had neither points nor edges, only iron heads. He wanted to use a whetstone on them, but there was simply no way to handle them.

But thinking about it now, was a whetstone truly what he needed?

Just as when he had polished his body earlier, did he really need to rub a whetstone against himself?

No, obviously not.

When he swung the heavy saber, that saber and that move, Butcher's Pig Dissection, had been the whetstone that polished him.

So did polishing necessarily require a stone?

"Perhaps I can try this."

Thinking so, Du Chengfeng found a piece of deerskin.

Soft deerskin was often used to wipe down weapons. Now, however, Du Chengfeng crouched and gently wiped the caked blood from the war hammer in his hand, feeling every line upon it, every nick, every crack, whether bright or dim.

Every crack was a pattern woven from stories.

As he wiped, Du Chengfeng seemed to see the martial life of a grassland warrior.

That impoverished grassland man could not afford swords or sabers, which required great quantities of iron. He could only buy a little iron and mount it onto a wooden club, making this cheapest of weapons—but no matter how crude a weapon was, it could still smash bones and shatter skulls. It was enough for him to follow the chieftains on eastern campaigns and western conquests, enough to save up a little family wealth for himself.

Yet after that grassland warrior took part in several raids and finally earned enough to buy a sword or saber, he discovered that he had long since grown accustomed to the spiked war hammer in his hand.

A sharp blade would wear down after only a few collisions, but a hard spiked war hammer remained unchanged no matter how many times it battered and smashed. An inexpensive war hammer found everywhere was like the life of every grassland warrior. Having grown up amid cold winds, they no longer feared any hardship, for the weak had already died in the wind.

And so, only the strong remained.

"We deserve to have everything!"

Within the great camp packed with grassland warriors, they raised their arms and shouted.

"We deserve to have everything!"

At the front of the crowd, the man named Hexi Qing shouted loudly as well.

"Why must we suffer? Why must we freeze? Why must our elders and children die in the cold wind? Why do disasters always fall upon us? Why?!"

"We want grain to eat too! We want great houses to live in too! We want warm lands too! We want to live too!"

"We want to live too!"

The grassland warriors looked at the man named Hexi Qing, their eyes filled with fervor.

It was then that the man named Hexi Qing lowered his arm.

"Bring your weapons. Practice your skills well."

"What Heaven will not give us, we will take for ourselves."

At this command, the grassland warriors headed for their respective formations. One unit after another would march south, to the lands inhabited by the weak Chen people. With the weapons in their hands and lives that even the cold wind could not kill, they would take from the weak Chen people everything they desired.

As for the original owner of this war hammer, that grassland warrior was assigned to Hexi Xuan's unit. He was quite excited. He knew that Hexi Xuan was Hexi Qing's younger brother. Being able to train in this unit meant he was very likely to be chosen for Hexi Qing's personal guard, becoming an eagle soaring beneath the blue sky.

But what that grassland warrior had not expected was that Hexi Xuan, a man as strong as a giant bear of the snowfields, would have his head severed in a single exchange.

Then, within that memory, Du Chengfeng saw his own face.

I've settled in the friend who came to stay and drank himself into a stomach bleed, so updates can return to their normal schedule. Also, thanks to reader 202207313125419467 for the recommendation vote. Everyone's support is what drives me forward. Thank you all.

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