Thousand-Refined Heavy Silver

The third strike, the fourth, the fifth.

The hammer no longer struck with a slow, even rhythm. Its blows began to build in layers, each pressing upon the last, each deeper than the one before. Tang Wulin stood firmly planted, driving through his calves, his waist and back drawn like a bow. Power traveled up his spine, then through his shoulder, elbow, and wrist into the hammer. Every time he raised it, his whole body moved; every time it fell, all his strength landed on a single point.

The Star-Sinking Hammer looked dark and weighty in his hand.

Firelight reflected off its face. Deep within the hammer, a few faint dark-gold lines flickered in and out of sight, like blood vessels buried in iron—quiet, yet impossible to ignore.

The Heavy Silver began to shrink.

It did not suddenly grow smaller. Instead, it visibly drew inward. Its edges tightened little by little, and the uneven surface gradually flattened beneath the heavy blows. The originally square block, a foot on each side, seemed to be slowly gripped by invisible hands, drawn inward inch by inch.

This was true purification.

He was not smashing impurities out through brute force. With every blow, he forced the excess, the disorder, the things floating on the surface away from its bones, little by little. The deeper he forged, the denser the metal became; the steadier his pressure, the clearer its grain.

Tang Wulin was in no hurry.

Even at this stage, he had not lost his rhythm.

He understood Heavy Silver's temperament. It was heavy and hard by nature. If he sought only the momentary satisfaction of hammering and crushing it fiercely, the first thing to break would not be its impurities, but the vital sinew within. At the stage of Thousand Refinement, damaging its grain would be a greater pity than failing to refine it at all.

So he remained steady.

His hands were steady, and so was his heart.

Every blow was heavy, yet every blow left something in reserve.

Mang Tian stood nearby without speaking. His gaze never strayed an inch from the Heavy Silver, but the look in his eyes gradually deepened without his realizing it.

This child had more than strength.

More precious still, he knew when to strike hard and when to strike lightly, when to press and when to wait.

That was not something anyone could teach with a few words.

That was insight.

And it was a blacksmith's rarest gift.

Time passed little by little.

Forty-five minutes.

Two hours.

Three hours.

Tang Wulin's shirt was soaked with sweat, and a broad patch across his back had long since become drenched. The furnace burned fiercely, and the forging room was so quiet that even the faint sound of sweat dripping from his chin onto the floor could be heard clearly.

Yet his hammer never faltered.

Not only did it remain steady, but its movements grew increasingly fluid.

Gradually, the Heavy Silver ceased to be merely a piece of metal in his eyes.

It could "breathe."

With each falling blow, it contracted slightly; a moment later, it breathed outward ever so softly. At first, that breathing felt unfamiliar, stubborn and unyielding. But as the hammer blows pressed down layer after layer, it finally began to match Tang Wulin's rhythm.

He exhaled, and it exhaled.

He inhaled, and it inhaled.

Eventually, between the falling hammer and the returning vibration, a tranquility approaching mutual understanding emerged.

The glimmer in Tang Wulin's eyes deepened without his noticing.

He could no longer feel time passing.

Nor could he feel his exhaustion.

Or rather, the exhaustion remained, but something stronger had suppressed it. Whenever his arms began to grow heavy and his shoulders and back tightened, a thread of warmth quietly rose from deep within his tailbone. It spread gently along his spine, then sank into his limbs, gathering back the strength that had been on the verge of scattering.

It was not an eruption.

Still less was it a loss of control.

It was like a spring buried deep underground, rising at precisely the moment he needed it most to hold him up.

His face gradually paled.

But his eyes grew brighter and brighter.

At some point, another figure appeared outside the door.

Tang Ziran stood there, one hand still resting on the doorframe. He had clearly come looking for him. But when he saw the scene inside, he stopped and did not take another step.

He had never watched his son forge like this.

This was not watching him head off to the workshop laughing and chatting, nor merely knowing from afar that his child could swing a hammer and endure hardship. He was truly standing outside the door, watching that small figure bring his hammer down again and again in the firelight, watching the sweat on his body and the almost obstinate concentration in his eyes.

That was no child at play.

Nor was it an apprentice practicing.

That was a true blacksmith wrestling with metal.

Tang Ziran suddenly felt warmth welling in his chest.

He did not interrupt, only stood there in silence. He even softened his breathing, afraid of disturbing the rhythm built up one hammer blow at a time.

Six hours passed.

The Heavy Silver had shrunk by nearly a fifth. The block no longer had its original sharply defined edges, but instead possessed a restrained solidity. Its surface was densely covered with circular hammer marks of identical size, overlapping in layers across almost every corner.

Those were not chaotic dents.

They were order.

Order that a boy had spent six hours pressing into it, inch by inch.

At some point, Mang Tian's hand had clenched inside his sleeve.

He had thought that letting Tang Wulin reach the threshold tonight would be the best possible outcome. Yet now, the child had not merely reached it—he was already stepping through the doorway.

And he was going farther than Mang Tian had imagined.

Eight hours.

Nine hours.

Tang Wulin's lips began to pale, and his breathing finally grew heavy. The ache in his arms built up again. This time, even the warmth deep within his spine, though still easing his pain, could not suppress the exhaustion of swinging a hammer with such intensity for so long.

At last, his hammer slowed a fraction.

But only a fraction.

He knew he could not stop.

Stopping now would mean all his previous efforts had been in vain. He had pressed the Heavy Silver to the brink of a certain limit. It was waiting for that final breath, that last heavy blow that would truly let it "turn over."

He gritted his teeth, his knuckles white around the hammer.

Down again.

Up again.

Down again.

The hammer blows no longer rang as clearly as before. They carried a muffled reverberation, like thunder rolling beneath the deep sea, layer after layer, pressed ever deeper.

Suddenly—

The Heavy Silver trembled faintly.

It was not a tremor caused by the hammer.

Rather, it seemed that after a long buildup of pressure, the metal itself had finally shaken open a tiny fissure within.

Mang Tian's gaze sharpened abruptly.

Now!

Tang Wulin felt it too.

In that instant, he gathered one last breath almost on instinct. The Star-Sinking Hammer rose high, then crashed down!

Boom—!

The entire forging room seemed to shudder faintly with that blow.

In the next instant, a nearly blinding silver light burst from deep within the Heavy Silver!

It was not firelight.

Nor was it the ordinary gleam of metal reflecting light at high temperatures. It was a pure silvery white, surging from within and breaking through the furnace flames' suppression. The light came so suddenly, so cleanly, that it overwhelmed the orange-red glow throughout the room in an instant.

Tang Wulin's eyes lit up, but his hammer did not stop.

The second blow followed.

With that strike, the silver light did not disperse. Instead, it swelled abruptly like a rising tidal crest, and the whole block of Heavy Silver gave a faint, resonant vibration within that radiance.

Yes, a resonant vibration.

At this stage, it was no longer cold metal. It seemed to have truly released a low song that had long been held back.

Mang Tian rushed to the forging table almost instantly.

His movements were astonishingly fast. A cold gleam flashed in his hand as an extremely thin knife slipped from his sleeve. The next moment, its edge flicked lightly across Tang Wulin's wrist.

Beads of blood welled up.

There was not much, but it fell squarely into the swelling silver light.

Hiss—!

A wisp of white smoke rose.

The blood fell onto the Heavy Silver like water dripping into a boiling furnace, swallowed in an instant. Yet at that very moment, the silver light that had still been surging outward seemed to be abruptly "pressed" back by something.

Mang Tian's other hand had already swiftly shut off the furnace.

The flames subsided, and the light slowly faded.

Tang Ziran's heart tightened as he watched from the doorway. He nearly cried out, but forced himself to hold it back. Though he did not understand the intricacies of forging at this stage, he could tell that Mang Tian was not hurting Wulin. He was helping him stabilize the metal at this critical moment.

As the final trace of fire faded, the Heavy Silver's true appearance was finally revealed.

It was much smaller than before.

It had not simply shrunk. The entire block seemed compressed, weighty and restrained, no longer possessing its original dazzling silver color. Instead, it looked somewhat gray—a plain, quiet gray that would seem almost unremarkable from a distance.

But one more look would reveal an exceedingly fine grain covering its surface.

Those lines were neither disordered nor fragmented.

Like tides.

Like waves.

Layer pushed upon layer, line overlapped line, slowly curling inward from the edges toward the center, as though an entire sea had been pressed into this single block of metal. Strangely, such a grain ought to have felt rough, yet its surface was astonishingly smooth. At a touch, coolness seemed to seep through the fingertips into the bones.

Mang Tian stared at it, saying nothing for a long while.

Thousand-Refined Heavy Silver.

It truly was Thousand-Refined Heavy Silver.

And this was not a finished piece that had barely squeezed over the line. Its grain was complete, its sublimation clean. It had even brought forth the tidal essence that belonged to Heavy Silver's truest nature.

This was not merely "success."

This was a beautiful success.

Ten hours.

A nine-year-old child, working with Heavy Silver for the first time, truly attempting Thousand Refinement for the first time, had forged it to this level.

The fingers of Mang Tian's hand around Tang Wulin's wrist tightened slightly.

The greatest regret of his life was that he had never stepped through the doorway to become a Saint Craftsman. Yet at this moment, standing in the Forging room heated by the furnace, looking at the newly formed Thousand-Refined Heavy Silver before him, a thought arose in his heart with unprecedented clarity:

Perhaps the one he had waited for had finally arrived.

After those last two blows, Tang Wulin was almost completely spent.

He still held the hammer in position, his chest heaving violently. Sweat streamed down from his temples and chin. His face was terribly pale, yet a lingering light remained in his eyes.

"Teacher..." he began, his voice already somewhat hoarse. "Did it work?"

Mang Tian slowly raised his head and looked at him.

Only after a long while did he utter his reply.

"It worked, Wulin."

His voice was quiet.

Yet it carried more weight than any hammer blow that night.