The western forge smelled of crisp autumn stone and pure heat.
In the dark rock firebox that Tie Shan had reconstructed near his workshop terrace, a deep bed of black-silver white charcoal glowed with blazing bright, steady radiance. There was neither acrid soot nor yellow licking tongues of smoky flame. Instead, the odorless charcoal generated a shimmering aura of violet-white heat that distorted the mountain air for twenty paces around. It hummed with the contained fury of an underground magma chamber.
Tie Shan stood over his granite-mounted iron anvil block. His thick leather apron was tied securely across his broad chest. His golden titan arm reflected the white-hot forge light, its earthen runes pulsing in rhythm with the blacksmith’s steady, deep breaths.
Lin Xiao bounced up onto a waist-high cedar workbench beside the forge. That let out a ripple of culinary excitement.
“Uncle Tie,” Lin Xiao said, his clear voice brimming with excitement. “Until today, we have been carving our dinner like barbarians. We sliced boar meat with rough bronze scrapers, hacked turnips with hunting knives. Then he relied on my high-pressure waterjets to dice scallions. But a proper kitchen can’t thrive on makeshift butchery.”
Tie Shan chuckled, a deep rumble that rattled the tongs in his left paw. “Aye, Lord Xiao! A good cook is only as sharp as his iron. I was apprentice to the Old Bear Clan. Then, the elder smiths used to say that a warrior’s sword only takes lives. But a kitchen knife feeds ages. What kind of blades does the Master’s kitchen need?”
Lin Xiao extended an azure slime arm, tracing three distinct shapes in the clean air:
“We need The Master’s Trinity of Blades,” Lin Xiao declared with solemn respect. “First: a heavy bone-splitting cleaver, the Zhandao. Thick across the spine, hefted with balanced mass, with a convex cutting edge designed to sever dense leg bones and joint padding without chipping. Second: the care slicing knife, the Caidao. Broad, box-shaped, thin as a willow leaf, flat-ground to produce paper-thin shavings of meat and semi-clear radish ribbons. And third: a nimble curved paring knife, the Xiedao, for deboning fowl, peeling fruits, and trimming fine herbs.”
Su Ling’er stepped up to the bench. She laid out three billets of seasoned mountain rosewood that she had planed and polished for the knife handles.
“A trinity of blades,” Su Ling’er murmured, her fox ears perking with genuine fascination. “One for bone, one for flesh, one for delicate garnish. Such elegance in domestic purpose.”
“And to make sure they hold an edge for a century,” Lin Xiao added, “we’re going to forge them from the finest layered steel this forest has ever seen.”
Lin Xiao opened his internal void dantian.
With a soft, golden shimmer, two dense, purified metal bars materialized upon the workbench. The first was a dense billet of refined bone-iron marrow pulled out from the Iron-Tusk Boar—tough, shock-absorbent, and tough against brittle fracture. The second was a gleaming bar of cold-cooled black steel, smelted from the forty-two pounds of slaver chains he had digested in the ravine. It was high in carbon, intensely hard, and capable of taking a tiny razor edge.
“Omniscient Dao Spirit,” Lin Xiao queried. “Calculate optimal lamination stonework.”
A bronze chime sounded softly in his mind:
“Lamination blueprint checked,” the Dao Spirit reported smoothly. “San-Mai three-plate sandwich configuration recommended. High-carbon cold-iron core flanked by shock-absorbent boar-iron marrow cladding. Target edge hardness: sixty-three HRC.”
“Uncle Tie,” Lin Xiao said. “We forge a three-layer sandwich. The hard slaver-steel forms the razor core. The flexible boar-iron wraps both sides like a protective blanket. Hardness in the center, toughness on the outside!”
Tie Shan’s fiery eyes blazed with intense skilled excitement.
“A San-Mai laminate!” the titan bear roared joyfully. “The secret technique of the ancient royal armorers! Lord Xiao, keep the water ready for the cool! The fire calls!”
Tie Shan gripped the heavy iron tongs. He plunged the three stacked plates into the white-hot heart of the charcoal forge.
The high-thickness white charcoal didn’t sputter. It delivered a furious, uniform heat wash that brought the composite billet to a glowing, semi-clear cherry-red within three minutes. Tie Shan pulled the glowing steel from the coals. He swung it onto the anvil block with a heavy THUD.
Raising his five-hundred-jin meteor-iron hammer in his golden titan arm, Tie Shan struck:
CLANG!
The bone-shaking blow echoed down the river canyon like a temple bell. Golden runes flared along Tie Shan’s titan forearm, channeling pure earth-affinity qi directly into the metal. The blast wave tightly packed the glowing crystal lattices together at the core level, expelling tiny dirt in showers of dazzling golden sparks.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
With rhythmic, musical care, Tie Shan hammered the steel. He drew the metal out into a long bar, folded it back upon itself, fluxed the joint with white quartz powder. Then he returned it to the roaring coals. Over the next two hours, the smith folded and forge-welded the composite billets thirty-two times. That created thousands of micro-layers of alternating steel that swirled across the surface like gentle river eddies.
From the glowing billet, Tie Shan sculpted the three knives.
First came the Zhandao. A tough, seven-pound bone cleaver with a half-inch-thick spine, narrowed down to a robust, convex cutting edge. Next was the Caidao. A broad box-shaped chef’s knife, its blade thin as parchment, flat as a frozen pond, balanced perfectly over the blade collar. Finally, he drew out the slender Xiedao. Its curved spine swept gracefully into an acute, needle-like piercing tip.
Now arrived the critical moment: the heat cool.
“Cooling steel in ordinary river water can cause heat shock, warping the blade or fracturing the edge into spiderwebs,” Lin Xiao instructed. “Leave the coolant to me.”
Lin Xiao hovered over a large, carved dark rock cooling trough. He drew upon his internal reserves of ice-slow spring dew. He filled the basin with crystal-clear stone water. Using his [Thermal Regulation], Lin Xiao chilled the bath to a crisp, refreshing autumn-stream chill, infusing a nonstop micro-current of chaos dew to act as a heat buffer.
Tie Shan brought the thin Caidao to a dull orange heat in the embers—a glowing, glowing forge-fire glow.
“Cool!” Lin Xiao called out.
Tie Shan plunged the glowing box-shaped blade edge-first into the chilled chaos bath:
SHHHHHHHHH-SSSSSSSSSSS!
A cloud of sweet-smelling, fragrant white steam erupted from the trough. Lin Xiao’s fluid matrix actively circulated the water. It drained away the vapor barrier around the hot steel to ensure a uniform, instant cooling rate across the entire cutting edge. Within five seconds, the steel passed through the martensite transformation threshold without warping by even a fraction of a tiny fraction of an inch.
Tie Shan pulled the blade from the water. Then, the steel was a deep, rainbow-bright gunmetal grey, etched with the shimmering, flowing watermark pattern of thirty-two folded damascus layers.
“Not a single warp!” Tie Shan gasped, his breath catching. “Straight as a sunbeam!”
The finishing touches went on swiftly.
Tie Shan fitted the tangs into the seasoned rosewood handles, securing them with three hand-turned bronze rivets before sealing the wood with warm mountain beeswax. Then, Lin Xiao and Tie Shan moved to the sharpening bench. Sharpening the cutting bevels across a row of coarse, medium, and mirror-fine river siltstones, Tie Shan worked the edges until the blades reflected the clouds like polished mirrors.
Su Ling’er plucked a single, silken white hair from her sleeve. She held it horizontally over the box-shaped Caidao.
She let the strand fall.
The moment the weightless silk hair touched the blade’s edge, it parted silently in two. The cut halves drifted to the cedar shavings without the slightest pause.
Su Ling’er’s amethyst eyes shone with wonder. “It cuts without touch. It parts the air like water.”
Lin Xiao bounced enthusiastically off the bench. “The blades are ready! Now, let’s see what they can actually do!”
Dinner preparation that evening became an exhibition of culinary art.
Lin Xiao had Tie Shan bring out a ten-pound slab of cured, marbled wild boar pork belly, three bundles of crisp mountain scallions, fresh wild ginger knobs, and sweet red winter radishes harvested from the upper gully.
Taking up the box-shaped Caidao with an elastic azure tendril, Lin Xiao went to work upon a broad cedar cutting board.
Tuk-tuk-tuk!
The rhythmic, musical tapping of the knife against the wood was so fast it blended into a nonstop drumroll. The ultra-thin blade glided through the crisp scallions without bruising their cell walls, reducing them to semi-clear ribbons of pale green that curled into neat spirals. The ginger was julienned into needle-thin golden threads, releasing a bright, peppery perfume into the air.
Lin Xiao turned the knife upon the pork belly. Then, the blade parted the marbled fat and chilled meat with zero pushback, producing semi-clear, paper-thin sheets of pork that were fully uniform from end to end.
“Look at that care,” Lin Xiao marveled aloud, his fluid form rippling with pure joy. “No tearing, no ragged edges, no squashed juices. When meat is sliced this thin and even, the heat penetrates in three seconds, locking in the natural sugars without turning tough!”
Next, Lin Xiao picked up the heavy Zhandao.
Laying a dense, thick pork marrow bone across the butcher block, Lin Xiao brought the cleaver down with a clean, confident stroke:
THWACK.
The five-pound cleaver split through the dense bone like a wooden wedge splitting kindling. The bone separated into two clean halves, exposing the rich, creamy golden marrow inside. Meanwhile, the cutting edge of the cleaver remained utterly flawless, without a single micro-chip or rolling of the edge.
Over the roaring charcoal fire, Lin Xiao set Tie Shan’s five-foot bronze wok into motion.
A ladle of wild pig lard sizzled in the wok, coating the hand-hammered bronze with a glistening golden patina. Lin Xiao tossed in the julienned ginger and scallion threads. They erupted in a fragrant cloud of savory steam that made Xiao Hei whine in desperate longing from the porch steps.
In went the paper-thin pork ribbons!
CHRRRRRRRRRRR!
The blistering heat of the wok, fueled by the white charcoal, seared the meat in seconds. Lin Xiao added dark mountain soy, a splash of aged rice wine, and a pinch of crushed rock sugar. With a flick of the bronze spatula, the shredded pork tossed through the air in a shimmering arc of caramelized amber glaze.
Minutes later, three massive cedar bowls of stir-fried shredded pork with scallions and ginger were placed upon the pavilion table, steaming alongside bowls of hot millet porridge.
Tie Shan scooped up a heaping spoonful with a carved wooden ladle, shoving the sizzling pork into his mouth.
The titan bear froze. His eyes widened, his ears perking up as his jaw chewed slowly. The pork was unimaginably tender, crisp at the edges yet melting like warm butter across his tongue, bursting with the sweet heat of fresh ginger and the deep, savory caramel of the wok.
“Heaven and earth...” Tie Shan groaned, slapping his thigh in pure ecstasy. “The meat doesn’t chew like leather! It melts! It actually melts on the tongue!”
Su Ling’er tasted a delicate mouthful, her three white tails swaying in rhythmic delight. A soft purr rose in her throat. “The scallions are still crisp, yet sweet. The knife preserved the essence of the vegetable instead of crushing it. Lord Xiao, this isn’t mere cooking... This is alchemy of the palate.”
Lin Xiao, resting comfortably in his wooden bowl atop the table, took in the happy, contented smiles of his companions. His fluid core glowed with deep, calm satisfaction.
A warm cedar roof over our heads, a kiln full of silver charcoal, three perfect knives, and a wok full of sizzling pork, Lin Xiao thought with a contented fluid hum. Our little mountain camp has officially become a proper home.