Frost Sword

"Old Li, are my things ready yet?" Huo Hai shouted as soon as he entered, throwing back his cloak. He was already very familiar with this smithy.

Seeing Huo Hai, the blacksmith looked up from his work, but his hammer never stopped striking. "Ah, Huo Hai. You've certainly been making a name for yourself lately, brat. Your things are ready. I'll get them for you in a moment. I really don't know what you want all those steel needles for." Old Li hammered a few more times, finishing the task at hand before finally stopping.

Huo Hai bristled like a cat whose fur had stood on end. "I told you, they're not steel needles! They're Steel Stingers! Steel Stingers!" Old Li gave him a puzzled look, wondering why he was so sensitive about the name. How strange.

"All right, Steel Stingers it is. I still don't know why you need so many." Old Li went into the back and carried out a wooden crate. Inside, Steel Stingers as thin as toothpicks gleamed with a faint, cold light.

One glance was enough to tell that these Steel Stingers were deadly weapons. Faint spiral grooves were even visible on their surfaces. Huo Hai had deliberately included those in his design. They reduced air resistance and increased the Steel Stingers' speed in flight. Most importantly, his tests had shown that the grooves amplified the vibrations of the Blood-Shaking Thorn.

This neatly compensated for the Steel Stingers' small size, which limited the spiritual power carried by the Blood-Shaking Thorn and weakened its vibrations. By Huo Hai's rough calculations, a Blood-Shaking Thorn launched with one of these steel needles would leave a person numb for quite some time if it struck.

When he first brought this design around, Huo Hai had approached quite a few