The scrap pile at the mouth of the Grand Defile was a gleaming mountain of discarded pride.
Fourteen thousand low-tier flying swords, three thousand iron spearheads, eight hundred broken giant crossbow gears, and mountains of bronze armor plates had been gathered by the safe hall’s cleanup crews. In any other training territory, such a haul would have been hoarded in sect armories, melted down into headsman’s blades, or sold off to rogue mercenary bands.
Tie Shan, however, looked at the mountain of metal with the hungry, discerning eye of a master civil engineer.
“Look at all this high-carbon frost iron!” Tie Shan roared, lifting a handful of discarded sword blades that clattered like silver coins. “Good steel! Hardened in mountain water and folded six times! It’s a crying shame those sect elders wasted such fine metal on weapons meant to cut people’s bellies open!”
He turned toward his forty bear smith apprentices, who were already stripped to their leather aprons. Their thick fur shone with sweat in the morning sun.
“Light the blast furnaces!” Tie Shan commanded, slamming his twenty-ton star-metal anvil into the bedrock with a ringing BOOM. “Listen up, lads! Today we aren’t forging blades or arrowhead spikes! We’re forging tension brackets, foundation anchor bolts, and load-bearing collars! A fool thinks the greatest smith is the one who makes the sharpest edge. But a true master knows the greatest smith is the one who makes the joint that never cracks! We’re going to turn these fourteen thousand weapons…
