Eight-Star Saint Craftsman

Cen Yue stared at the pair of hammers in Tang Wulin's hands, his expression visibly changing.

Thousand-refined Tungsten Steel Hammers.

And they were not just for show.

The boy's wrists were steady as he held them, his shoulders and back settled. There was not the slightest unnecessary movement between the handles and his palms. That alone already said a great deal.

Each thousand-refined Tungsten Steel Hammer weighed forty kilograms. Never mind a nine-year-old—even some adults who had just passed their Level One assessment might not be able to wield them for long. Forging had never been a matter of simply being able to swing a hammer. The real challenge was maintaining rhythm, precision, and stamina under that kind of weight.

And Tang Wulin was clearly not using them for the first time.

Cen Yue said nothing.

The Evaluator didn't speak either.

Because Tang Wulin had already begun.

After two hammer blows, he was completely in the zone. From the faint vibrations the Heavy Silver sent back to him, he immediately determined that its quality was very close to the piece he had worked on in Aolai City, and its grain was similar as well. As that familiarity took hold, he grew even steadier.

He swung the hammers up one after the other, their blows rapidly coming closer together.

"Bang, bang, bang!"

"Bang, bang, bang, bang!"

The sounds remained orderly, the rhythm unbroken.

The Heavy Silver continued changing beneath his hammers. Impurities were gradually forced out of its surface, and its edges slowly began drawing inward. Tang Wulin's ears kept twitching faintly as he listened to the hammer blows, the returning vibrations, and the increasingly distinct response from within the Heavy Silver.

Almost everything he had encountered since arriving in Eastsea City had been new.

A new city, a new academy, a new dormitory, new classmates.

Even the troubles were new.

From registration to moving into the dormitory, then the Academic Affairs Office and that compensation payment, he had barely had a chance to breathe all day. Yet now, standing before the Forging Platform with his familiar thousand-refined Tungsten Steel Hammers in hand, listening to the heavy silver ring beneath them, he suddenly felt some of those burdens retreat.

This was a place he understood.

The Forging Platform would not dream up ways to make life difficult for him, nor would metal dirty his quilt with its shoes for no reason. If it was hard, it told him it was hard; if he struck accurately, it answered him. Forging had its own rules, and Tang Wulin knew those rules well.

As the hammer blows continued ringing out, the Evaluator's expression gradually grew more serious.

She had seen countless candidates: nervous ones, ones who pushed beyond their abilities, ones with good technique but unsteady minds, and ones with enough strength but erratic rhythm. Yet very few were like the boy before her, able to settle so completely into their work the moment they began.

More importantly, he was familiar with Heavy Silver.

He did not merely know that the metal was heavy, hard, and valuable. He truly knew how it needed to be worked.

After watching another few dozen blows, she had reached her conclusion.

The level-one standard was probably too low for this boy.

A Level-One Blacksmith assessment tested whether someone could purify metal. But what Tang Wulin was doing now went beyond simple purification. He was aligning the grain, controlling the contraction, and minimizing the losses caused by each ineffective blow.

This was already approaching the methods of Level Two.

Cen Yue stood to one side, silent throughout.

But the look in his eyes was now completely different from when he had first entered.

From Tang Wulin's very first blow, he had stopped seeing the boy as "a nine-year-old novice trying his luck." The longer he watched, the clearer it became that Mang Tian had not sent him here to ask the association for a favor. This boy genuinely qualified.

The hammer blows came faster and faster.

Yet Tang Wulin's rhythm did not fall apart with the increasing speed.

The marks of impact spread ever more evenly over the Heavy Silver's surface, its edges drew inward little by little, and subtle changes began appearing in its color. This was not simply a brightness produced by fire, but the clean luster of the metal itself emerging as impurities were gradually forced out.

The Evaluator glanced down at the time.

Not even twenty minutes had passed.

Yet he had already brought this piece of Heavy Silver well along the path of purification.

A faint tremor of surprise stirred within her.

That was no small degree of efficiency.

Just then, the rhythm of Tang Wulin's hands changed again.

His hammer blows grew no heavier, but they became steadier. Each strike seemed to pick up the force left by the one before it, neither wasting it nor rushing ahead. Within that rhythm, the Heavy Silver slowly "settled," its returning vibrations growing firmer and its sound clearer.

At first, the sound had merely been crisp. Then it gradually became pleasing to the ear, until finally it carried a remarkably clean sense of depth.

By this point, Cen Yue knew what to expect.

This boy would pass level one without question.

And not by the skin of his teeth, either.

He was even considering whether to have him take an additional Level Two assessment immediately afterward. Given the standard Tang Wulin was displaying, a Level One assessment could not truly test him at all.

But Cen Yue did not interrupt.

He wanted to watch.

Tang Wulin had no idea what the two people beside him were thinking.

He was completely immersed.

The hammers fell again and again in his hands. His shoulders and back supplied the power, his waist and legs supported it, and he made minute adjustments to the angle and force of every strike. The thousand-refined Tungsten Steel Hammers were heavy, but in his hands, that weight was not a burden—it was substance. The heavier the hammer, the more solidly it landed, and the faster the purification went.

Time passed little by little.

The Heavy Silver's volume had begun to change noticeably.

Not by much, but enough to see.

The Evaluator's recording pen slowly came to a stop.

At this point, there was little purpose in continuing to write down those basic observations. All she wanted to know now was whether Tang Wulin could, within this one hour, truly push this piece of Heavy Silver past the Level One threshold and reach the doorway to Level Two.

In the outer lobby on the third floor.

The elevator doors opened, and two people stepped out.

Leading the way was a middle-aged man. Dressed in a fitted silver-gray outfit, he stood tall and straight, with a calm, composed bearing. A hammer-shaped badge with a gold background was pinned to his left breast, eight black stars arranged neatly upon it.

An Eight-Star Saint Craftsman.

There was only one in the entire Eastsea City Blacksmith Association.

He was the Branch President, Mu Chen.

Beside him walked a teenage girl. Her long golden hair was tied in a ponytail, and she was tall, with striking features. Her steps were steady and her expression calm. She showed no deliberate display of pride as she followed Mu Chen, yet the familiarity and confidence of someone raised among blacksmiths came naturally to her.

"President." The receptionist immediately stood.

Mu Chen nodded.

"Mu Xi is here for her Level Two assessment. Just arrange an assessor for her."

"Yes."

As the receptionist answered, they could not help smiling. "Miss Mu Xi is already taking her Level Two assessment. That was fast."

Mu Xi showed no smugness at the compliment, merely nodding slightly.

To her, passing Level Two was something she ought to do. It hardly warranted much emotion.

Just then, Mu Chen suddenly stopped.

"Wait."

He tilted his head slightly.

The receptionist froze in surprise.

"President, what is it?"

Mu Chen did not answer immediately.

His ears twitched faintly, and his gaze had already turned toward the corridor leading farther into the third floor.

Hammer blows were coming from there.

Rapid, yet steady.

They were not a disorderly racket, but carried a distinct rhythm, ringing out one after another. More importantly, there were no extraneous sounds among them. That meant the strikes were accurate and the force solid, every collision between hammer and metal landing exactly where it should.

Mu Xi heard them too.

Her previously calm gaze grew more intent.

"That isn't the sound from an ordinary assessment room," she said quietly.

Mu Chen nodded.

He heard more than Mu Xi did.

That was not the sound of ordinary metal. It was highly dense, with heavy returning vibrations, so it was probably a rare metal. Moreover, whoever was wielding the hammers had clearly already attuned himself to it. He was not simply "hitting" it, but pressing inward along its grain.

At the very least, that was not a state someone could achieve after only a few months of forging.

Mu Chen turned to the receptionist. "Is anyone taking an assessment for level four or above on the third floor today?"

The receptionist paused, then hastily shook their head.

"No."

Mu Chen's brow shifted slightly.

No?

Then that sound was even more interesting.

He wasted no more time, merely telling Mu Xi, "Go get ready first. I'll take a look."

Mu Xi wanted to look too, but she knew she would soon be taking her Level Two assessment and could not afford to become distracted now. She could only nod.

"All right."

Mu Chen turned and followed the hammer blows farther inside.

The closer he came, the clearer they sounded.

Every blow was solid, neither wavering nor erratic. More impressive still, the smith maintained control of the rhythm at such a rapid pace. That meant whoever was wielding the hammers had not only sufficient strength, but stamina and control to match.

Mu Chen stopped outside Test Room Three.

Even through the door, he could already hear it clearly.

Thousand-refined hammers.

And the metal beneath those hammers had already begun to become one with the person wielding them.