On the evening of the eighteenth day of the first month, Qin Tiexin's eyes shone after he had eaten his fill. He had brought his mind and body into perfect condition.
The furnace fire stretched and shortened Qin Tiexin's shadow, casting it across the walls and piles of iron, where it swayed.
Several piles of materials lay sorted on the ground before him. The largest pile, on the left, consisted of neatly stacked wrought-iron billets weighing a hundred and twenty jin in total-some were refined stock he had saved over the years, while others had been reforged from iron purchased over the past few days. Every piece was dark and heavy, showing a subdued luster in the firelight, like a beast with its claws and fangs tucked away.
The slightly smaller pile in the middle consisted of two unusually colored pieces of metal. One was a dull blue-gray, about two fingers thick and half a foot long, its surface covered in fine, scale-like markings. It felt icy to the touch and weighed considerably more than an equally sized piece of iron. The other was only thumb-sized, yet had a peculiar reddish-copper color with a faint golden gleam. Held between his fingers, it felt almost weightless, yet was extraordinarily hard. These two treasures had been wrapped in layer after layer of oilcloth at the bottom of a chest in the deepest corner of his master Qin Feng's storeroom. Qin Tiexin remembered clearly that only when the old man accepted major commissions worth hundreds of taels of silver, forging heirloom blades for the city's finest martial masters or wealthy travelers, would he carefully pinch off a rice-grain-sized fragment with iron pincers and mix it into the edge or sandwich it within the steel core. From what his master had once mumbled while drunk, the blue-gray metal was called "cold scale iron," harvested from the depths of the frozen sea in the far north, cold in nature and tough. The reddish-copper metal was called "phoenix beak copper," supposedly obtained from the remains of some strange bird, as light as nothing yet indestructible, with the wondrous ability to channel force. After half a lifetime of saving, this was all the old man had accumulated. Qin Tiexin knew how precious these two pieces of metal were. Even in his hardest times, he had never chosen to sell them.
On the far right, resting alone on a thick piece of cowhide, lay that fist-sized, pitch-black, pitted "iron lump"-the one his master had given him before dying.
Qin Tiexin's gaze now rested on this black lump.
He reached out with his right hand-his left had not fully healed, and a dark-red scab covered his palm-and picked it up.
It was still absurdly heavy in his hand. This tiny piece weighed down his hand more than a wrought-iron billet as wide as a bowl's mouth beside it. He hefted it, estimating that it indeed exceeded thirty jin. This weight defied everything he knew about metals. Even the legendary "Mysterious Iron" was only described in the records as "several times heavier than ordinary iron." How could it be this outrageous?
Stranger still was its "temper."
When he first received it, Qin Tiexin had tried heating and hammering it. He had stoked the furnace to its hottest and buried it deep in the coals for a full two hours. When he pulled it out with tongs, the surrounding air warped from the heat, yet the black lump had barely changed color. It remained that deep black that swallowed all light. He brought his hammer down with a tremendous clang, sending sparks flying and numbing his arm. Looking down, he found a shallow dent in the anvil, while the black lump had not budged or even acquired a pale mark. At the time, he had thought hunger had weakened his hands. Later, he tried again after eating his fill, with exactly the same result. He had then treated it as a curiosity and piled it together with several pieces of his best refined iron.
Until two days ago, when he happened to pick it up again while tidying the storeroom after repairing the neighbors' knives.
That was when he noticed the difference.
First came the feel of it. Before, it had been nothing but cold hardness. Now, holding it, he vaguely sensed an extremely faint... "tepid" feeling against his palm? It was not warmth, but something more like an old piece of waterlogged wood, heavy, with what seemed to be the slightest trace of life within.
Then there was its relationship with the pieces of refined iron beside it. Qin Tiexin clearly remembered piling them together at random. Now, however, the boundaries where the black lump touched two pieces of refined iron were no longer distinct. They had not melted and stuck together. It was more as though the two metals had "grown" into each other during prolonged contact, each mingling with the other along their edges to form an interlocking, utterly natural joint. He dug hard at it with his fingers, but it did not budge, as solid as though it had always been that way.
When he picked up the black lump, an exceedingly vague sensation crossed his mind without warning-something hard to describe. If he had to put it into words, it was a little like... the hollow cramping in the belly of someone who had gone hungry for days upon smelling meat stewing next door? Yet the feeling did not come from him. It seemed to faintly "seep" from the cold metal in his hand.
Was it... "hungry"? Did it want to eat iron?
The thought was so absurd that even Qin Tiexin froze for a moment. But his years of working with iron, feeling metal stretch and fuse beneath his hammer and listening to its faint ringing during quenching, had long cultivated an almost instinctive intuition for the "state" of metal. This black lump seemed to have undergone some indescribable change after he finished restoring General Li's old saber, steeped in the power of "Intent"-or rather, after he underwent that deep simulation and initially awakened his [Appraisal] ability.
It was no longer a dead object. At least... not entirely.
Tonight, when he decided to forge a saber for himself and examined all his materials again, he ultimately found himself unable to look away from the black lump. A voice in his heart said: Use it.
Not because it was heavy, nor because it was hard.
It was because when he held this metal and concentrated his [Appraisal] ability to "look" at it, what he sensed was not the structure of any known metal, but a deep "emptiness" that seemed capable of absorbing everything. Yet in the depths of that "emptiness" lurked an exceedingly faint affinity for "iron," and... a craving.
Qin Tiexin hesitated no longer. He decided to use this mysterious black iron as the "bones," the core and soul of his saber.
But "bones" alone would not do. The black iron was too heavy, too hard, and too "strange." He needed other materials to balance it, support it, and bring out its properties.
Cold scale iron was cold in nature and tough. It could increase the blade's toughness and temper an edge that might otherwise be too fiercely unyielding. Phoenix beak copper was light and hard, with the ability to channel force. Perhaps it could serve as a bridge, better translating the black iron's terrifying weight and hardness into destructive power when swung, while reducing the overall burden.
The two hundred jin of refined iron would serve as abundant "flesh and blood," giving it shape, increasing its weight to his intended target of a hundred and fifty jin, and fusing with the core materials through repeated hammering to form a blade that combined hardness with flexibility.
A vague forging plan gradually took shape in his mind.
He placed the black iron lump in the center of the anvil. Then he set the blue-gray cold scale iron and reddish-copper phoenix beak copper snugly against its left and right sides. Finally, he brought over ten of his finest wrought-iron billets and stacked them in layers around the three core materials, forming a rough "iron-wrapped core" blank.
He had already driven the furnace fire to its limit. Blue-white flames churned silently inside the specially made, heat-resistant clay chamber, their heat so intense that even the air several paces away warped.
Qin Tiexin was bare-chested, wearing only a pair of unlined trousers. In the firelight, his tall, powerful body resembled a bronze statue, every muscle tensing slightly in anticipation of the heavy labor ahead, its lines hard and distinct. He drew a deep breath. The scorching air stung his lungs, yet sharpened his concentration.
Using specially made, long-handled heavy tongs, he carefully eased the composite iron blank, weighing more than a hundred and fifty jin, into the deepest part of the furnace.
He waited.
Time passed little by little. At this temperature, ordinary iron should long since have turned red throughout or even begun to soften. But through the furnace's inspection hole, Qin Tiexin saw that while the outermost refined iron had begun to redden and glow, the black iron at the core remained as dark as ever. Only within the pits and pores on its surface did extremely faint, dark-red gleams seem to flash and vanish, so quickly they might have been an illusion.
The cold scale iron began to emit a blue halo, while a speck of golden red lit up on the phoenix beak copper.
Still not enough.
He steadied his breathing and increased the airflow. The furnace temperature climbed again, and the flames gradually shifted from blue-white to an almost transparent brilliance. The shop grew frighteningly hot. Sweat evaporated as soon as it emerged, leaving white salt stains on his skin. He stared into the furnace, his eyes watering from the intense light, yet did not blink.
Finally, when the outermost refined iron had become blindingly white and stood on the verge of melting, an exceedingly dull layer of dark red, like clotted blood, at last appeared on the surface of the black iron core. Icy-blue radiance flowed throughout the cold scale iron, while the phoenix beak copper resembled a tiny, dancing golden flame.
Now!
Qin Tiexin gave a low roar. The muscles of his arms suddenly bulged, and thick veins rose along his arms and neck. Gripping the heavy tongs with both hands, he united his waist and stance and unleashed his full strength, violently dragging the immensely heavy blank, radiating terrifying heat, out of the flames and setting it firmly on the extra-large, thickened, reinforced anvil!
Boom-!
Heat struck him in the face, and the air cracked explosively! The entire shop glowed crimson!
Qin Tiexin did not even have time to wipe away the sweat blinding his eyes. His left hand, barely usable, steadied the iron blank, while his right had already seized the eighty-jin, two-handed forging hammer he rarely used!
"Hah-!"
He exhaled with a shout like muffled thunder! His waist and back drew sharply rearward like a bow, then sprang forward with even more ferocious speed. His whole body's strength took root in his soles, passed through his iron-taut waist and legs link by link, and finally poured entirely into that heavy forging hammer!
Clang!!!!!!!
The hammer's ring sounded nothing like a noise of the mortal world! It was as though thunder from the ninth heaven had crashed straight onto the ground of Soot Alley! Accompanied by a shock wave visible to the naked eye, the tremendous sound burst outward from the anvil, shaking the shop's doors and windows and sending years of dust showering from the roof beams and pillars! Even the glass in the second-floor windows of the Heavenly Craft Workshop opposite gave an aching, vibrating hum!
On the anvil, sparks did not merely scatter-they erupted wildly like exploding fireworks! Crimson, icy blue, golden red, pitch-black... flecks of several colors mingled with the white-hot iron sparks, dazzling and uncanny! Beneath that terrifying blow, the enormous composite blank finally deformed visibly. The outermost refined iron, heated to white incandescence, spread outward like soft mud. The black iron at the core, though still outrageously hard, also "sank" an infinitesimal fraction, pressing more tightly against the cold scale iron and phoenix beak copper beside it. Along their edges, exceedingly fine threads of differently colored light even began trying to intertwine!
After that single blow, the recoil drove Qin Tiexin half a step backward, and the gray bricks beneath his feet groaned with a creak. His arms ached and tingled, the webs of his hands split, and blood instantly stained the hammer handle red. Yet his eyes shone frighteningly bright. There was no pain in them, only utterly focused, almost burning excitement!
It could be forged! Though it was harder than he had ever imagined, this black iron was not immovable! And beneath the heavy hammer, it seemed to be beginning some strange interaction with the other materials around it, at a pace that was exceedingly slow yet utterly unwavering!
He shook his numbed arms and raised the heavy hammer again, heedless of his bleeding hands.
Clang!!!!!!!
The second blow landed harder and more accurately, striking beside the first hammer mark!
The iron blank deformed again, and another strand joined the interweaving threads of differently colored light.
Clang!!!!!!!
The third blow!
Clang!!!!!!!
The fourth blow!
The hammer rang again and again. No longer as earth-shaking as the first strike, the blows became denser and steadier, their intervals almost constant, like a giant god's heartbeat pounding heavily into Ink City's night.
Qin Tiexin completely forgot time and everything else. His world held only this strange metal slowly "wriggling" and "fusing" beneath his hammer, only the repeated rise and fall of his arm, only the rhythm of his breathing merging with his hammer blows. Sweat streamed from every inch of his skin and instantly evaporated in the heat into white vapor, shrouding his tall body, its muscles knotted and constantly trembling from exertion at their limit. Heat and sweat had reddened his face, and his dry lips cracked and bled. Only his eyes, like stars tempered in fire, remained fixed on every minute change in the iron blank.
The blood on the webs of his hands had long since clotted, split open again under the shocks, then clotted once more. His arm muscles went from aching to numbness, then into a strange state beyond fatigue, as though they no longer belonged to him. But he could not stop. If he stopped and the blank cooled, this attempt at fusion, into which he had poured everything, might come to nothing.
He could only hammer, one blow after another.
Under hammering that drove him beyond his limits, the hundred-and-fifty-jin blank slowly changed shape like a huge, untamable living creature. Through countless blows, the once-clear boundaries between its different materials gradually blurred and merged.
The blank needed constant reheating in the furnace. Whenever its color began to dim, he had to return it to the furnace as quickly as possible, heat it to that critical temperature again, then pull it out and resume hammering. Each reheating squeezed his strength and spirit to their limits.
Soot Alley had long since been awakened by the terrifying hammering. Lights appeared in many homes, and people pushed open their windows to look toward the Qin family's shop in bewilderment and uncertainty. The ceaseless hammer blows, like the roars of a giant beast, and the strange, multicolored light occasionally escaping through cracks in the doors and windows made this night distinctly different.
Across the way at the Heavenly Craft Workshop, Zhao Ming had also been awakened. Draping a robe over himself, he went to the window and looked at the shop diagonally opposite, which seemed to be burning, his expression shifting with bewilderment and uncertainty. What was that sound? What was that brat doing? Forging iron? What kind of iron could make such a racket? An inexplicable unease stirred in him, yet he forced himself to remain composed. "Just his dying struggle! However much noise he makes, it won't change anything!"
Aunt Wang, Uncle Li, and the others were even more anxious. Standing in their doorways, they watched the shop flicker brighter and dimmer in the firelight. They wanted to approach, but the frightening heat and commotion held them back. All they could do was murmur silently to themselves.
Qin Tiexin was wholly unaware of any of this.
Pulled between extreme exhaustion and total concentration, his consciousness seemed to partly leave his body, "watching" from above as he swung his hammer mechanically yet precisely. At the same time, his [Appraisal] ability was driven to its utmost, striving to sense the exceedingly complex material changes and flows of energy inside the iron blank.
He "saw" the black iron's deep "emptiness" slowly "suckling" the purest "iron substance" from the surrounding refined iron like an incomparably greedy yet incomparably fussy infant, incorporating it into itself. Its pitch-black color seemed to deepen a shade. The icy-blue presence emanating from the cold scale iron resembled a flexible net, attempting to envelop and balance the black iron's "devouring" and "heaviness." The golden-red streams of light from the phoenix beak copper moved like the most dexterous weaver, shuttling among the refined iron, black iron, and cold scale iron, striving to guide force and clear its pathways.
It was a process both brutal and delicate, both frenzied and restrained. Every hammer blow interfered with and guided this fragile balance. He had to promote fusion while preventing any one material from being excessively devoured or rejected.
Without his noticing, the faintest fish-belly white appeared along the eastern horizon.
The hammering continued.
Only its frequency had slowed. It was not because Qin Tiexin had exhausted his strength-though he was indeed on the verge of having his oil spent and lamp burned dry-but because the blank's fusion had reached a relatively stable stage. It now required finer, more targeted hammering to shape it and adjust its internal structure.
The enormous blank, originally a disorderly stack, had now been forged into a massive slab roughly four feet long, nearly a foot wide, and three inches thick. Its surface was no longer a patchwork of different metals. Instead, it displayed a strange texture with a deep black-gray base, within which faint icy-blue threads and fine golden-red gleams flowed and crossed. It was heavy, ancient in appearance, and held a sense of power that made the heart tremble.
Qin Tiexin stopped hammering and leaned on the hammer handle. His chest heaved like broken bellows, every breath carrying the taste of rust and blood. He was drenched, as though hauled from the water, and his muscles twitched faintly beyond his control. Yet as he looked at the blade blank beginning to take shape on the anvil, the corners of his mouth pulled upward uncontrollably into an almost savage grin mingling exhaustion and exhilaration.
It worked... the first step, the hardest fusion, had worked!
He staggered to the water vat and plunged his entire head into the icy well water. A violent shiver finally cleared his nearly burning mind a little. Washing them down with cold water, he swallowed several hard pieces of dried meat and flatbread without sparing any thought for their taste, merely chewing and swallowing mechanically to replenish a pitiful amount of energy for his overdrawn body.
He could not stop. The blade blank was only a preliminary form, still far from the enormous two-handed blade he envisioned. It needed further thinning, lengthening, shaping into a saber, forming of the edge, adjustment of its center of gravity, quenching, tempering, grinding... not one step allowed the slightest error.
Especially quenching. What medium, temperature, and technique should he use to quench a blade blank combining several strange materials? He had no experience whatsoever. Faced with this unknown combination, even the simulations within the Void Realm could not provide a definite answer.
He needed time to think. He needed one final deep simulation.
But first, he had to hammer the blade blank into a rough form close to its final shape and prepare its surface for the steps to follow.
After resting for less than an hour, Qin Tiexin felt a trace of strength return to his arms and stood before the anvil again.
The furnace fire blazed anew.
Clang... clang... clang...
The hammering rang out again, only much slower now, its force restrained, with greater emphasis on shaping and fine adjustments. Every blow carried a considered caution.
After countless rounds of heating and careful hammering, the blade blank was finally lengthened to over six feet, about one and a half meters, its width narrowed to a palm's breadth and its thickness evenly reduced to around an inch. The shape of a heavy, broad, slightly curved saber was now clearly visible. The straight portion of the blade was longer, facilitating the exertion of force with a two-handed grip, while the tip curved more sharply to aid chopping. Though it had yet to be edged, its solid contours already faintly exuded a ferocity that would cleave through everything.
Qin Tiexin carefully inspected every face of the blank, using a whetstone to remove the burrs and oxide layer left by forging, exposing the strange grain beneath, where fine icy-blue and golden-red gleams flowed through a black-gray base. He nodded in satisfaction.
He carefully placed the preliminarily shaped blade blank into a wooden box prepared beforehand and filled with dry, fine sand, allowing it to anneal extremely slowly to eliminate internal stresses and prevent it from bursting during the subsequent quenching.
After all this, he barely had the strength to stand. He staggered over to his plank bed and collapsed directly onto it, heedless of the filth on his body.
Before his consciousness sank into darkness, his final thought was: Tomorrow... the final simulation... quenching...
Inside the shop, the furnace fire gradually died, leaving only the dark red of embers.
Buried in fine sand, the strange blade blank lay quietly, like a slumbering savage beast awaiting the moment of its final awakening.
Outside the window, the sun rose on the nineteenth day of the first month.
Two days remained.