Chapter 32: Quietly Accumulating

"Iron is dead—are you too? The force has to be even; you need to control the weight of each hammer strike yourself!"

"Forging, the hammering comes first! Without a thousand hammerings and a hundred refinements, where would top-grade steel come from?!"

"You don't even know the steel-cladding method?! Carburization—you forgot that too!"

……

Once the New Year passed, the forging room became the busiest place of all; amid the clanging and ringing, a crowd of bare-chested burly men hammered away in full swing.

Zhang Ben was making his rounds through the forging room.

The old man was annoyed—these new helpers in this batch had far too shaky a grasp of the basics; they couldn't even manage the simplest ironwork.

"Where is Li Yuan?"

Picking up a small teapot and taking a sip, Zhang Ben glanced toward the corner—usually, at this hour, the hammering there was the densest and loudest.

"Just as you arrived, Junior Brother Li left!"

A blacksmith was quenching steel; hearing the words, he looked up and answered.

"Off to the private school again?"

Zhang Ben frowned, about to leave, when he suddenly caught sight of something. He froze for a beat, then walked straight to the corner.

On the rack atop the stone counter, a single blade sat conspicuously on display.

"A Jade-Green Blade?"

Reaching out to pick up the long blade, which had not yet been fitted with a hilt, and lightly running his five fingers across its surface, Zhang Ben couldn't help but narrow his eyes, a smile breaking across his face:

"It already has three parts of the look of a 'sharp weapon'—all it's missing is the material not being good enough. Good lad, your progress is actually this fast?

It wasn't for nothing that this old man stepped forward to play the villain and had that Qin Xiong transferred away…"

……

Not far from the inner courtyard lay the Weaponry Shop's private school, open only to the children of the shopkeepers and the apprentices of the inner courtyard.

The private school had only one old student of the imperial examinations, and could only provide rudimentary teaching—literacy and the ability to read.

"A dynasty that has stood for a good fourteen hundred years and more—Dayun, Dayun…"

Breathing in the faint scent of peach blossoms, Li Yuan, who had spent the whole day forging iron, rested on a reclining chair beneath a tree in a clean single garment, leafing through a volume of historical records.

He rarely came to the private school in the inner courtyard, but every few days he would drop by—not to learn any classics, but to browse through some books.

Apart from his martial training and ironwork, this was the only time he had to ease up and relax.

"This is a proper history book—yet it's this unrigorous?"

Although he had flipped through it many times, every time Li Yuan saw the founding chapter of the Dayun dynasty, he couldn't help but mutter as much to himself.

The records were, frankly, absurd.

"In the late years of the previous dynasty, the world fell into great chaos; heroes rose on all sides and warred for many years. The Founding Emperor did not raise his army until he was sixty-nine—ten years to pacify the realm, ten years to settle the people, ten years to usher in a golden age…"

Li Yuan had no interest in the praise that followed, but that "ten years to pacify the realm" never failed to make his mouth twitch every time he read it.

The Dayun Founding Emperor, Pang Pang Wenlong, was favored by the blessing of the Sun God. He led eight hundred riders out of 'Mingpo,' and in every fierce battle, divine fire would descend from the heavens.

"In the decisive battle at Tianyou Pass, the warlord Gao Gao Feiqing led thirty thousand of his elite troops in a surprise attack on the Founding Emperor. That day, divine fire rained down like a waterfall, like a tide, and all thirty thousand elite troops were annihilated before Tianyou Pass…"

The one who wrote this history book clearly held boundless admiration for the Founding Emperor; the preceding pages devoted long passages to the terror of that warlord Gao Gao Feiqing.

The man was a heaven-sent prodigy; from the moment he raised his army, he swept through ten times and decided ten times, victorious in a hundred battles. Of the five regions under heaven, he had already claimed four; beneath his banner, generals shone like clouds, and talent was in abundance.

His so-called thirty thousand elite troops were all martial artists, and for a time he was hailed as the strongest army in all of history.

"Thirty thousand martial artists, all wiped out by heavenly fire—how is that any more believable than the Great Meteor Art? After all, meteors are at least common; heavenly fire, falling like a waterfall, like a tide?"

Closing the book and returning it to the private school's tutor, Li Yuan only made his way back to the small courtyard when the sky had just begun to darken.

"Qin Xiong was sent off to Mount Fajiu Mountain?"

The moment he returned to the courtyard, Li Yuan learned the news from Fatty Sun.

"Yesterday, when the Head Shopkeeper returned to the shop and heard of the matter, he went to see my brother-in-law first, then summoned Qin Xiong—heard he gave him a thorough dressing-down.

They call it a transfer to be a steward, but really it's just exile!"

Fatty Sun made no effort whatsoever to hide his glee at another's misfortune.

Before Li Yuan, Qin Xiong had been the most talented at the Weaponry Shop in recent years—not yet forty, yet he had already cultivated internal force; once Zhao the Head Guard left next year, he would have been the Weaponry Shop's guard captain.

Whenever Li Yuan had seen him before, he had to curry favor a little—after all, his brother-in-law was more than thirty years older than Qin Xiong…

"Didn't they say Shopkeeper Cao valued him highly?"

Li Yuan thought it over briefly and already knew this must have been to placate Tang Tong.

After all, Qin Xiong had merely led the way, and the target had been only an apprentice like himself; transferring him to the mountain to mine ore would count as heavy punishment in anyone's eyes.

After that day, he had also made inquiries: that blade-bearer Yu Yu Xuanji had not only sought him out, but within a few days of Liu San's death, every person who had had dealings with him had vanished without a trace.

"If anyone else had dared to bite the hand that fed them, it wouldn't have stopped at a transfer."

Fatty Sun was in excellent spirits—something that showed plainly from the food and wine on the table inside the room.

Fine vermicelli soup, pepper-and-vinegar pork, big steamed buns, two jugs of medicinal wine.

"After all, he's an internal-force practitioner; if the punishment had been too heavy, Shopkeeper Cao probably couldn't bear to part with him either."

Moreover, he was a forty-year-old internal-force martial artist in the prime of life; for Cao Yan to be willing to punish him heavily was already enough to shut everyone's mouth.

Li Yuan had no complaints either.

He was a person who kept clear accounts of gratitude and grievance; whatever he had, he never spoke of, but in his heart he naturally kept a little ledger.

"Internal force!"

Fatty Sun sighed as well, slumping in his chair, his face a picture of dejection: "In this life, I doubt I'll ever see the day I reach internal force…"

Why don't you go wash off that stinking sweat of yours!

Li Yuan muttered to himself, but faced with his creditor, he naturally had to be polite—especially with this spread of food and wine on the table.

"Come on, bottoms up!"

The two kept their chopsticks moving and their cups going; after each had finished a pot of wine, the dishes on the table were swept clean, and they ate two big steamed buns each before going back to their own rooms.

"The kick of this medicinal wine is no less than Zeng Xue Dan!"

Closing the door, Li Yuan settled his waist and sat with his hips squared; with a stretch of his hand, the long-handled training hammer was already in his grip—he was used to holding the hammer while standing in stance.

He closed his eyes slightly, circulating his blood qi.

Blood qi comes from within the human body. A normal apprentice, without the boost of medicinal meals, can circulate it at most three times a day—any more and it harms the body.

But with medicinal meals, medicinal supplements, medicinal baths, and Zeng Xue Dan, combined with the variations of the first killing move of the Soldier's Path Combat-Slaying Hammer, Li Yuan could refine his blood over thirty times a day.

That was a gap of more than tenfold!

"I'm still quite a way off from minor completion in the Forging Art, but in a month and a half or so it should be about there… be content, be content. A normal apprentice would need at least fifteen years or more to reach this stage."

Squinting slightly, Li Yuan sensed the Arm-Taming Register.

Ordinary people had no way to judge their own progress precisely, but he could.

With the enhancement of a Great Perfection level hammer technique for comparison, he could naturally judge it clearly.

"Master gave me a blacksmith's pay—one ordinary saber or sword earns one qian of silver, but a sharp-weapon-grade one can earn one tael of silver…"

After circulating his blood qi to that day's limit, Li Yuan finally lay down with a warm body all over, only rising when the sky was just beginning to brighten, and continued his stance training.

Standing in stance to train the hammer, forging iron to train the hammer, medicinal supplements and baths, flipping through books…

Immersed in the feeling of learning martial arts and improving himself, Li Yuan didn't feel the slightest bit of boredom; every day was full, shuttling between the front and rear courtyards.

Cloak Hammer Technique, inner three harmonies, the killing move of the Soldier's Path Combat-Slaying Hammer, the Forging Art…

In the tedium of day after day, Li Yuan could feel his own changes.

His blood qi, under sufficient medicinal supplementation, kept rising; his stamina was also improving. Beneath his thin clothes, the muscles clinging tight to his frame were sleek and wiry.

Crack!

A spring thunderclap exploded.

Li Yuan, stripped to the waist, pushed open the window.

He saw rolling dark clouds, lightning snakes winding through them; the spring rain, arriving a bit later than in previous years, drew near from afar, carrying the scent of grass, trees, and earth, and came pattering down.

(End of chapter)