The rhythmic, earth-shaking clang of a five-hundred-jin forging hammer echoed through the fiery ravine, drowning out the roar of the nearby mountain waterfall.
Inside the cavernous rock shelter beneath the southern cliffs, Tie Shan stood before his massive clay-and-granite fire. The towering eight-foot Divine Titan Earth-Bear was stripped to his leather apron, his thick iron-gray fur damp with sweat that glistened in the crimson hearth-fire. His right arm—the radiant golden titan limb grown from refined boar-iron marrow and Lin Xiao’s ancient qi—gripped the heavy hammer tongs with casual, easy mastery, flipping a red-hot iron agricultural plowshare upon the anvil with a flick of his wrist.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
With three thunderous blows that sent golden sparks showering across the stone floor, the plowshare assumed a razor-sharp, flawless curved edge.
“Ha!” Tie Shan boomed, tossing the finished plow into a trough of bubbling stone spring water. A cloud of fragrant steam billowed toward the smoke-hole. It carried the crisp scent of cooled iron. “That’s forty plowshares for the south terraces! The badger clan can turn the stubborn clay plots before the autumn rains arrive!”
The bushes outside the ravine rustled, and Xiao Hei stepped into the forge yard. His midnight coat shone in the warm firelight. Perched comfortably between the wolf king’s ears, Lin Xiao gave a bouncy hop, sailing through the air to land with a soft squish on a clean wooden workbench beside the anvil.
“Hard at work as always, Tie Shan,” Lin Xiao greeted him cheerfully, his blue jelly mantle wobbling in greeting.
Tie Shan set down his forging hammer, wiping his soot-streaked brow with a hairy forearm. He looked at Lin Xiao, his golden bear eyes twinkling with deep affection and respect. “Lord Xiao! Xiao Hei! I heard a great commotion from the northern gorge half an hour ago. Sounded like someone set off a fireworks festival in the clouds. It was followed by a dragon roar. Did some rogue beast stray too close to the boundary mist?”
“Not a rogue beast,” Lin Xiao replied, opening his Void Dantian with a wet pop. “Just an arrogant young master from the Crimson Flame Pavilion and a rather haughty envoy from the Heavenly Sword Sect. They arrived in a giant gold-trimmed carriage and demanded twenty thousand jin of our rice, Xiao Hei’s winter coat, and wanted to lock a slave collar around my neck so I could catch melon seeds at their birthday party.”
Tie Shan froze. The huge bear’s jaw dropped slowly, his furry ears standing straight up in sheer disbelief.
“A slave collar? On you?” Tie Shan’s voice rumbled with rising fiery fury, his golden titan arm clenching into a fist that creaked like granite. “Those arrogant human worms! Where are they?! Give me my war-hammer! I’ll crush their carriages into copper plates and bury them under twenty feet of rock!”
“Calm down, big guy,” Lin Xiao laughed softly. He extended a slime arm to pat the blacksmith’s golden wrist. “Nobody is getting buried today. Xiao Hei flattened their bodyguards with a little gravity tap. When the young master tried to burn the forest down with his family’s old family flying sword... Well, I had a snack.”
Lin Xiao tipped his internal void pocket forward.
CLATTER! CLANG! THUD!
Tumbling onto the stone workbench was a glittering pile of materials that made Tie Shan’s breath catch in his throat.
First came thirty-eight pounds of dense, box-shaped metal bars. Each bar gleamed with a deep, ruby-scarlet luster, pulsing with faint, blasting heat that smelled of fiery stone and ancient star-fire. Beside the metal bars fell the heavy crossguard and handle knob of the Crimson Flame Sword. Sculpted from pure molten ruby and gold-leaf, depicting two coiled fire-wyrms clutching a blazing pearl. And finally, twenty dense bars of refined pig-iron and a shimmering bag of spirit stones clattered onto the table.
Tie Shan dropped to his knees before the workbench. His massive paws shook as he reached out toward the red metal bars. He picked up one bar. That turned it over under the hearth-light, sniffing the metal grain with an expert smith’s respect.
“By the earth-veins of the ancestor mountains...” Tie Shan whispered, his booming voice reduced to an awed squeak. “Lord Xiao... This is Scarlet Star-Iron! Pure astral meteorite ore fallen from the heavens, refined in deep fiery magma for ten thousand years! And this crossguard... The runic thickness... This came from a Grade-4 sovereign flying ancient object!”
Tie Shan looked up at Lin Xiao with his eyes bulging. “Master... You ate their Grade-4 old family flying sword?!”
“Swallowed it down like a pretzel,” Lin Xiao confirmed with an amused wobble. “The fire was tasty—nice cinnamon notes, good heat. But the steel itself was pretty bland on the intake. So Dao Spirit stripped out the iron and stored it. I figured we had no use for another decorative sword. But we desperately need better cookware for the harvest festival.”
Lin Xiao tapped the scarlet metal bar with a pseudo-finger. “Can you reforge this into cooking woks?”
Silence dropped over the forge, broken only by the crackle of pine charcoal in the fire.
Tie Shan stared at the Grade-4 star-iron, then at Lin Xiao’s innocent blue face. Then threw his head back in a roar of laughter that literally shook loose dust from the ravine ceiling.
“WAHAHAHAHA!” Tie Shan’s laughter bounced off the cliffs like rolling thunder. He slapped his furry thighs, tears of mirth streaming down his whiskered cheeks. “Reforging a Grade-4 sect master’s heirloom flying sword into kitchen woks?! WAHAHA! In two hundred years of blacksmithing, I have forged sabers for warlords, shields for tribal chieftains, and spears for beast kings... But never in my wildest dreams did I imagine hammering a three-thousand-year old family divine sword into soup pots!”
Tie Shan pounded his chest with his golden titan fist, his eyes burning with boundless craftsman pride. “Master, you’re the most amazing being in the three realms! Hand me the star-iron! I’ll forge you cookware that would make the Royal Palace chefs cry with envy!”
Tie Shan right away kicked the fire air-bellows with his foot. He shoveled three baskets of hardwood charcoal into the crucible, preparing the hearth.
“The only problem,” Tie Shan grunted, adjusting his heavy iron tongs, “is melting heat. Scarlet Star-Iron has a melting point of over twelve hundred degrees. My charcoal fire can only reach nine hundred. It usually takes three days of nonstop hammering to soften star-iron even an inch.”
Lin Xiao hopped onto the rim of the fire hearth.
“Leave the heat to me,” Lin Xiao said.
Extending a semi-clear slime arm over the charcoal bed, Lin Xiao channeled the newly got [Crimson Flame Manipulation].
FWOOOOOOSH!
A column of pure, ruby dragon-fire erupted from Lin Xiao’s limb, bathing the crucible in packed draconic heat! The heat inside the stone fire skyrocketed within three breaths. The dull red charcoal turned blinding white-hot. It hummed with the clean, smokeless infrared fury of an ancient Fire Wyrm!
Tie Shan let out a wild cheer of triumph. “THAT’S IT! PURE DRAGON-HEARTH FLAME!”
Using his golden titan arm, Tie Shan dumped the scarlet metal bars and the ruby handle knob into the crucible. Under Lin Xiao’s sustained, pinpoint dragon-fire, the iron-hard Grade-4 star-iron softened. It glowed like semi-clear cherry nectar, before melting down into a pool of radiant, bubbling liquid metal.
Tie Shan poured the molten star-iron into a series of prepared sand-and-clay molds, then hauled the glowing blanks onto the great anvil.
CLANG! CLANG! RRRR-CLANG!
With Lin Xiao maintaining the precise annealing heat with his crimson flame and Tie Shan swinging his five-hundred-jin hammer with the monstrous care of a Divine Titan Bear, the forging was a loud mix of ancient creation. Under the bear’s rhythmic blows, the dense astral metal was drawn, thinned. Then he shaped with tiny uniformity.
By the time the afternoon sun dipped behind the western ridges, four glorious creations rested on the cooling racks.
The centerpiece was the Grand Scarlet Star-Iron Culinary Wok. Four feet across, its surface was hammered into thousands of micro-facets that gleamed with a deep, rainbow-bright ruby gloss. The star-iron lattice conducted heat with ninety-nine percent perfection, ensuring that a single flame beneath the center would distribute warmth instantly and evenly all the way to the rim. Food cooked within it would never stick. It scorched was practically impossible. It was so durable that even a Core Formation strike would bounce harmlessly off the bottom.
Beside the grand wok rested three heavy chef’s cleavers forged from the ruby handle knob and crossguard, their edges sharp enough to sever mountain bamboo with a whisper, and two long-handled cooking ladles. The leftover metal was hammered into sixteen heavy iron-hard metal pivot-pins and deadbolts, ready to reinforce the safe hall’s boundary gate.
Tie Shan carried a bucket of rendered wild boar lard and a bundle of mountain scallions. He placed the grand wok over a bed of coals, coating the hot red metal with bubbling pork fat.
TSSSSSSSSSSSS!
A glorious, savory cloud of caramelized scallion fragrance billowed into the dusk air, seasoning the star-iron until it shone like a mirror of dark jade.
A sweet-sounding chime echoed in Lin Xiao’s mind:
At that moment, soft footsteps rustled along the path.
Su Ling’er stepped into the forge yard, her three snowy-white tails swaying gracefully behind her vermilion scholar robes. She held a smooth cedar ledger board tucked under one arm, her violet eyes twinkling with affectionate amusement as she took in the sizzling wok and the proud blacksmith.
“Lord Xiao,” Su Ling’er said, her musical voice carrying a teasing chime. “I leave for two hours to survey the grain terraces. You manage to repel a sect armada, rob their tea supplies, and turn their old family sword into a stir-fry pan?”
Lin Xiao wobbled happily, admiring his glow in the polished wok.
“Not just a stir-fry pan, Ling’er,” Lin Xiao beamed. “The best stir-fry pan on the continent. Tomorrow, we start harvesting the sweet potatoes!”