"I searched for a year and three months. Cangzhou, Jinan, Xuzhou, Jinling... I tracked them all the way." He spoke slowly, each word seeming to have been hammered over and over on an anvil, carrying the cold hardness of metal. "When I found them, I killed them. With these hands."
He raised his stick-thin hands, covered in age spots, before his eyes and stared at them, as though that shriveled skin still bore the bloodstains he had never managed to wash clean all those years ago.
"I killed six. The last was their leader, a man called 'Ghost Hand' Yan Qi. His martial arts weren't top-tier, but he had an insidiously vicious palm technique. Once it struck you, your meridians would slowly rupture. There was no cure." Old Qin lowered his hands, his chest heaving violently as he took several heavy, ragged breaths. "We fought to the death at Ten-Li Slope outside Jinling. With my final sword thrust, I pierced his heart. But in his dying counterattack, he also... landed a palm strike on my back."
Qin Tiexin abruptly raised his eyes toward Old Qin's back-the spot just below his right shoulder blade, where the skin was always darker than its surroundings, as though ink had seeped into the flesh. He had asked about it out of curiosity as a child, but the old man had merely brushed it aside as "an old injury from years ago."
"I used my internal power to forcibly suppress the poison from that palm strike for thirty years." At last, a weariness that penetrated to the marrow seeped into Old Qin's voice, a weariness that had exhausted everything, leaving not even ashes behind. "I can't hold it back anymore. Tiexin, your master... has reached the end."
Qin Tiexin opened his mouth, but it felt as though a red-hot branding iron had lodged firmly in his throat. It burned, yet he could make no sound. All he could do was reach out again and tightly grasp the old man's cold, withered hand.
"After killing Yan Qi, I used the silver I found on him... to bury your master's wife and my boy again." Old Qin suddenly turned his hand over and clenched Qin Tiexin's hand with unexpected strength, carrying a dying man's final stubbornness. "I didn't leave them in Cangzhou. They're there-"
With all his strength, he directed his gaze out the window, toward the south.
"At the foot of Emerald Cloud Mountain, on a south-facing slope, where you can see the sun rise. I cremated their remains... put them in a celadon jar, and buried them there. Beside them... I left an empty space." His gaze suddenly became extraordinarily clear and sharp, fixing unwaveringly on Qin Tiexin. "When I stop breathing, burn me to ashes, put me in a jar too, and bury me in that empty space. Our family of three... must be reunited."
Qin Tiexin nodded heavily. Once, then again. His eyes burned fiercely, and an ache surged from his nose to the crown of his head, but he clenched his teeth and forcibly held back the surging Qi and Blood until black mist clouded his vision.
"Yes." He squeezed just that one word through his teeth, decisive enough to cleave nails and sever iron.
Old Qin seemed finally to have laid down his last concern. The breath he had forced himself to hold abruptly dispersed, and he sank deeper into the pillow, the last faint traces of color rapidly draining from his face. He rested for a long time, so long that the sky beyond the paper window grew several shades brighter, before speaking again, his voice now as faint as a thread:
"The drawer... at the very back, there's another... oilcloth bundle."
Qin Tiexin bent down again and reached into the depths of the drawer, his fingers touching a small parcel tightly wrapped in oilcloth. He took it out, and its weight immediately sank into his hand.
"Open it."
The oilcloth peeled away layer by layer, revealing the two objects inside.
One was a fist-sized lump of... iron, black all over, its surface covered in natural pits and pores. Beneath the dim, flickering oil lamp, it showed a matte, all-devouring blackness, as though even light falling upon it would be swallowed. Qin Tiexin instinctively hefted it, and his heart jolted-at this size and weight, it was certainly no ordinary iron ore.
The other was a ring. Its band was also jet-black, made of something neither gold nor iron, its touch cold enough to seep into the bones. Its design was simplicity itself, without a single decorative pattern. Only inside the band could he faintly make out several strange markings so minute they were almost impossible to discern.
"This iron... I found it thirty years ago, in a cave deep in Emerald Cloud Mountain." Old Qin's gaze fell on the meteoric iron, his eyes growing distant. "It was embedded in the rock wall. It took me three days to chisel it out. It isn't ordinary iron... but I can't say exactly what it is. Still, I know... it's worthy of your craftsmanship."
His gaze slowly shifted to the black ring, his expression becoming complicated and unreadable, mingling puzzlement, a trace of reverence, and curiosity that even the passing years had failed to dispel.
"This ring... I found it together with that iron. It was lying right beside it. I wore it for thirty years. Apart from being warm in winter and cool in summer, I never noticed any other Divine Ability. But in my heart, I know... it's no simple thing." Old Qin motioned Qin Tiexin closer and, exhausting all his remaining strength, delivered his final instructions one word at a time:
"From now on... it's yours. Put it on... never take it off."
"If someday... you meet someone surnamed 'Ouye,' tell him that Qin Feng, unworthy disciple of the Hundred Refinements Sect, cannot apologize to his venerable master in person."
"The Hundred Refinements Sect, Ouye..." Qin Tiexin repeated softly, engraving those words in his heart.
Old Qin's voice grew lower and more elusive, like the last flicker of a candle about to gutter out in the wind. "Tiexin... there are two things I'm proudest of in this life. First, marrying your master's wife and having my boy. Second... finding you. Cough, cough..."
As soon as he finished, Old Man Qin began coughing laboriously again. Bright red blood flew from the corners of his mouth, spattering the quilt before him like scattered plum blossoms.
Seeing this, Qin Tiexin hurriedly picked up the cloth beside him and tried to wipe the blood from his mouth, but the more he wiped, the more blood came, as though it would never stop.
"Master... drink your medicine. Once you've drunk it, you'll be all right..."
At that moment, Qin Tiexin could finally hold back his tears no longer, and they burst through the dam. There were no whimpers, no sobs, only great, scalding teardrops falling one after another onto the back of his tightly clasped hand, and onto the old man's hand, dry as tree bark.
"Don't cry..." Old Qin tried to raise his hand, but could no longer move it, managing only the faintest twitch of his fingers. "We blacksmiths... have hard bones. Tears... have to be hotter than molten iron... before we let them fall..."
"You look slow-witted, boy, but you're more attentive at heart than anyone... Though I always made you... call me Grandpa, it was so the other children wouldn't bully you. You actually knew long ago, didn't you..."
"I knew... I knew..." Tiexin's tears soaked the blue shirt across his chest.
"Sixteen years ago... I went to visit... your master's wife's grave. You were... lying in a cave not far away, without a stitch on you... In that heavy snow... your cries were still so loud and clear. Right then, I thought... here's a good seedling for a blacksmith."
Old Man Qin could no longer finish a whole sentence without pausing for several gasping breaths. As though he felt he would carry a lifelong regret if he did not finish, Qin Feng clenched his teeth hard and swallowed the blood in his mouth.
"Back then... there was nothing beside you, and I couldn't determine who you were, so I had you... take my surname. If you find your birth parents someday... change your surname back. But you must keep your given name. It was... my son's name. I gave it to you..."
"No! Master, Grandpa, my surname will be Qin for the rest of my life! I'll always be Qin Tiexin!" His sobbing could not hide the resolve in his voice.
"Foolish child... foolish child..."
He let out a long, slow breath.
"The shop... is yours. Your craft... don't let it go. Help me over to the furnace. We blacksmiths... should die at the anvil."
Old Man Qin summoned the last thread of strength in his body. Despite not having left his bed for an entire month, he actually braced himself against it and stood.
He refused to let Qin Tiexin carry him on his back. Instead, he held his hand and walked toward the furnace one step at a time. A distance he could have covered in two bounds in his youth took him an entire incense stick's worth of time, slowly, but steadily.
When they reached the furnace, its fire had yet to go out, and the anvil still held a lingering warmth. Old Qin turned his head to look at everything around him, his gaze finally settling on Qin Tiexin's young but already sharply defined, tear-streaked face, as though he wished to brand every inch of its contours into the depths of his dissipating soul.
"Take care of yourself. Your master... is leaving..."
With those words, he closed his eyes.
His breathing gradually grew even and long, then... faded. It was not the peace of deep sleep, but the lightness of a kite whose string had snapped, drifting irretrievably away after losing every tether in the vast sky.
Qin Tiexin knelt bolt upright on the cold floor, his right hand clenched tightly around the icy black ring and the heavy piece of meteoric iron, his left still firmly holding the old man's hand, which had yet to turn completely cold. He simply gazed at the peaceful face of the man standing before him. His body had grown cold, yet remained upright, just like the old man's unbending character.
The medicine pot on the stove still bubbled tirelessly, sending up bitter steam.
But the man who needed that bowl of medicine no longer needed it at all.
Outside the window, the sky over Soot Alley had fully brightened. Cool morning light penetrated the yellowed window paper and spilled gently inside, illuminating Old Qin's peaceful face in death, and Qin Tiexin's tear-streaked young face, drawn taut as iron and stone.
He lowered his head and, with extreme slowness, slipped the black ring onto the middle finger of his right hand.
Unexpectedly, it fit perfectly.
Its icy touch instantly enveloped his finger, but soon his skin's warmth quietly seeped into it, turning it into a gentle warmth, a sense of solidity connected to his own blood.
He tightened his grip on the meteoric iron.
Heavy. So heavy.
From now on, he would have to shoulder this weight entirely alone.
Unable to hold back any longer, he supported the old man's body and burst into wailing sobs.
"Grandpa!!!!!!!"