The underground magma foundry beneath the central ridge of the Myriad Spirit Safe hall was alive with the roaring heat of underground earth-fire and the steady, rhythmic clang of two hundred anvils. Yet the air, channeled through a fine, detailed network of cooling air water chutes designed by Lin Xiao, smelled not of sulfur and scorched iron. But of sweet cedar oil, steamed dumplings, and hot tea.
Patriarch Lu Feng followed Lin Xiao, Su Ling’er, and Old Man Tie down the broad stone stairs. She grabbed his thick woolen blanket around his shoulders.
In any standard traditional sect’s ordnance hall—such as the Crimson Flame Foundry or the Grand Armory of Heavenly Sword Manor—the underground vaults would be terrifying slaughterhouses. Students would be forging serrated soul-cleaving axe-spears, cooling curved butcher knives in toxic beast blood, and hammering barbed iron snares designed to crush limbs and rip flesh.
Here, however, the scene was entirely different.
Dozens of towering bear-beast smiths, their thick fur braided with copper wire and aprons stained with charcoal, were clustered around massive cast-iron workbenches. But they weren’t forging blades.
They were hammering seamless bronze pressure cylinders, winding thick spiral twisting force-springs from hardened star-iron, and sewing huge circular diaphragms from hardened rubber-leather. Across the wide stone floor, twenty-four bizarre siege contraptions stood assembled in two neat rows.
They were ten-foot-tall wheeled giant crossbows. But instead of steel-tipped giant crossbow bolts or jagged fire-pots, their firing troughs were fitted with giant, hollow bronze canisters shaped like plump watermelons.
“See, Sect Master!” Tie Shan boomed, his deep rumbling off the vaulted granite ceiling as he proudly slapped the polished wooden frame of the lead catapult. “The Mark-Three Pneumatic Honey-Pod Artillery! Built strictly according to your non-lethal defensive specifications!”
Lu Feng approached the contraption cautiously, squinting at the strange gearwork. “Elder Tie... Where are the iron harpoons? Where are the soul-piercing spikes? How does a siege engine defend against thirty thousand flying swords without a single sharpened edge?”
Tie Shan laughed, his belly shaking with loud mirth as he stroked his braided gray beard. “Sharpened edges? Pah! Sharp steel is for butchers who don’t know how to work metal! A dull hammer reshapes iron, merchant, but a clever mind catches flies with honey!”
The bear smith unscrewed the threaded brass lid of one of the hollow canisters. He showed its internal payload.
Inside was a tightly coiled matrix of shimmering, semi-clear blue-white threads. The fibers were impossibly fine, glistening with a rainbow-bright sheen that gave off the faint, crisp scent of wild mountain mint and pine sap.
“The secret is the ammunition,” Tie Shan explained, his single eye gleaming with craftsman’s pride. “Our fox maidens harvested silk from the thousand-year jade-spiders on the southern ridge. But ordinary spider silk snaps under high moving heat. So Sect Master Lin provided the binding agent—three barrels of his own refined ancient slime fluid, mixed with boiled peach sap and tree resin!”
Lin Xiao, currently walking in his human scholar avatar, stepped forward and tapped the sticky payload with a curious index finger. A tiny thread adhered to his fingertip, stretching two yards without snapping before snapping back with elastic snap.
“The stretchy matrix has non-Newtonian dilatant properties,” Lin Xiao explained, smiling at Lu Feng. “When the canister reaches the apex of its arc, an internal clockwork spring triggers a small burst of tightly packed air. The canister pops open, deploying a fifty-yard web. When it hits the ground, it doesn’t crush anyone. But the harder you struggle against the silk, the firmer it grips. It acts like a huge sheet of flypaper.”
“Flypaper for fighters?” Lu Feng whispered, his eyebrow twitching. “Foundation Establishment and Golden Core swordsmen can sever iron chains with their protective body-qi!”
“Hah! Let’s see them sever this!” Tie Shan roared. “Baozi! Da Xiong! Get the test squad out here!”
From the barracks behind the forge, ten burly bear-beast warriors marched onto the testing grounds. Each warrior stood over six and a half feet tall, clad from neck to heel in heavy, linked plate armor of triple-forged iron. Their muscular paws holding was heavy tower shields. They looked like walking fortresses of steel and fur.
“Form test shield wall!” Tie Shan commanded.
The ten bear warriors slammed their shields together. They locked iron flanges with an ear-splitting metal crash. Their collective earth-qi formed a glowing ochre protective barrier over their heads.
Tie Shan walked to the catapult release gearwork. He grasped the heavy oak lever and hauled it downward.
CLANK! WHOOSH!
The air-powered piston released with a sharp hiss of escaping steam. The bronze canister shot into the vaulted air, arcing seventy feet across the proving grounds. At the peak of its flight path, fifty feet above the armored shield wall, a crisp snap echoed as the canister halves parted.
A amazing, shimmering azure web blossomed outward like a blooming lotus, spanning nearly fifty yards across the chamber.
It dropped silently.
The moment the web touched the ochre energy shield, the magical barrier didn’t shatter with a violent explosion. Instead, the non-Newtonian slime-silk absorbed the striking force. It wrapped the shield like a soft woolen blanket. The sheer adhesive weight dragged the barrier down.
In less than three breaths, all ten massive bear warriors were glued flat to the granite floor.
Their shields were pinned to their breastplates. Their gauntlets were stuck to their shin guards. And their boots were anchored firmly to the stone flags. The warriors strained, grunting with huge physical effort. But the more they twisted, the more tightly the elastic blue fibers wrapped around their limbs, immobilizing them in a harmless, cushioned cocoon.
“Report status, Baozi!” Tie Shan barked, marching over to the wriggling mound of iron and fur.
“I can’t move my elbows, Chief!” the lead bear warrior called out from beneath his visor, his voice muffled but cheerful. “Legs are fully stuck! Protective qi won’t ignite because the silk is grounding the channels! But... Hey, Chief, did you put mint in this? It smells really nice in here!”
Lin Xiao walked over, crouching down beside the pinned warriors. He gently touched the edge of the silk near Baozi’s ear to make sure the adhesive wasn’t pulling any loose fur.
“The mint extract was a good addition,” Lin Xiao observed, nodding in satisfaction. “In my old logistics warehouse, adhesive tape always left a nasty chemical smell that gave the workers headaches. The wild mint keeps their airways clear. And how does the skin feel? Any itching or rash?”
“None at all, Sect Master!” Baozi replied through his helmet grill. “It actually feels kind of cool and soothing on my bruised shoulders. Like a herbal healing wrap! Can I take a nap while I’m stuck here?”
“Go right ahead, Baozi,” Lin Xiao laughed, patting the bear’s iron shoulder plate. “The dissolving solvent takes twenty minutes to brew anyway.”
Patriarch Lu Feng stood frozen in place. He stared at ten elite bear warriors—each capable of crushing an ox with a single blow—wriggling harmlessly on the floor like giant caterpillars in a jar of mint honey.
“It... It fully neutralizes their physical leverage,” Lu Feng murmured, his merchant intellect rapidly analyzing the implications. “And without breaking a single bone! But what about the flying swords? The Heavenly Sword Manor’s vanguards won’t charge on foot. They will attack from the sky!”
“Ah, the flying needles!” Tie Shan grinned, leading the merchant toward the far wall of the foundry.
Suspended from heavy timber gallows were twelve massive bronze bells, each measuring six feet in width. Their surfaces were not carved with Buddhist sutras or demonic runes, but with precise, sharp-angled spiral grooves calculated by Lin Xiao and the Dao Spirit.
“The Mark-Two Bone-shaking Resonators,” Tie Shan said. He tapped the lip of a bell with his knuckle, producing a deep, rich hum that shook in the soles of Lu Feng’s boots. “Sword fighters maintain flight by projecting a nonstop hum of spiritual qi into the flight magic charms on their sword sheaths. If you hit them with a low-hum sound wave at exactly the right ringing hum—”
“Their flight balance collapses,” Lin Xiao finished smoothly.
“The sound wave doesn’t rupture ears,” Lin Xiao explained, smiling warmly. “It just makes the sword blades wobble and feel greasy in the air. The students will feel slightly dizzy, their swords will lose lift. They will glide gently down into the tall meadow grass—where Tie Shan’s honey nets will be waiting to catch them like ripe plums falling into a blanket.”
Lu Feng swallowed hard. He looked from the twenty-four honey catapults to the twelve sound bronze bells, and finally to the smiling azure-robed youth.
“You have turned the entire defile into an inescapable nursery,” Lu Feng whispered in pure, awe-struck respect. “A thirty-thousand-man holy war... Stopped by honey, mint, and lullaby bells.”
“Nobody gets hurt, Patriarch Lu,” Lin Xiao said softly, his sapphire eyes bright with quiet determination. “A good defense doesn’t prove how many people you can kill. It proves how many lives you can save.”