The metal clangor that echoed down from the western crags was rhythmic yet strained. It carried the uneven rhythm of a craftsman pushing his body past the limits of mortal tiredness. Between the strikes of iron on stone came raspy, painful coughs that made the river reeds shiver in sympathy.
Lin Xiao paused on the polished quartz path, tilting his sapphire dome toward the rocky heights.
“That sounds like someone attempting blacksmithing with a shattered rib,” Lin Xiao noted, his fluid surface rippling with curiosity. “Old Ba, do you know who lives up in those western gullies?”
Old Ba slowly extended his wrinkled neck, his amber eyes clouding with sorrow.
“Ah,” the old tortoise sighed, his gravelly voice dropping to a somber rumble. “That would be Old Man Tie. He’s an Earth-Bear beastman who was driven out of the southern crags ten years ago. A master smith, they say, who could coax songs from raw iron ore. But he was cornered by the slave-hunters of the Iron Vulture Gang. When they ordered him to forge soul-shackling slave collars to bind his own kin, he refused and struck their leader with his sledgehammer.”
Old Ba lowered his head, his beak clicking softly. “In retaliation, the poachers ambushed him with cursed corpse-iron spears. They cut his left arm and flooded his shoulder stump with rotting melted rock waste iron venom. He crawled into that sulfur ravine to die, but somehow his stubborn spirit has kept him breathing, hammering away at scrap metal with one arm while the poison eats his heart.”
Inside Lin Xiao’s clear blue belly, Xiao Long fluttered its golden fins, emitting a gentle pulse of water that rang with Lin Xiao’s core.
A craftsman with a backbone, Lin Xiao thought, a surge of deep, quiet respect warming his fluid matrix. In my old life, you saw plenty of managers who would bend their morals for a quarterly bonus. But an artisan who would lose his arm rather than forge chains for slavers? That is a soul worth saving.
“Old Ba, watch the campsite,” Lin Xiao said. “I’m going up to take a look.”
“Master, be cautious,” Old Ba warned. “Old Man Tie is proud and half-crazed from the pain. He doesn’t take kindly to intruders.”
“Don’t worry,” Lin Xiao replied with a floating bounce. “I’m extremely squishy. It’s hard to take offense at a blue blob.”
Leaving the calm bamboo grove behind, Lin Xiao bounded up the steep western slope. Carrying Xiao Long safely inside his clear belly like a gold-trimmed passenger, Lin Xiao climbed through jagged outcroppings of dark fiery dark rock. The sweet scent of river jasmine faded, replaced by the acrid, metal tang of sulfur, burnt charcoal, and scorched stone.
Tucked into a narrow granite defile beneath a natural chimney was a soot-blackened cave.
Scattered across the gravel floor were mounds of melted rock waste, cracked clay crucibles, and rusted iron scraps. In the center of the cave, a makeshift stone hearth burned with faint, sputtering embers fed by an underground earth-heat crack. Beside the hearth stood a huge, crudely carved granite anvil block.
And behind the anvil stood the blacksmith.
He was a towering figure, easily seven feet tall, with a broad, barrel-chested frame covered in coarse, iron-gray bear fur matted with soot. A thick, braided gray beard reached halfway down his chest, stained with coal dust. But what drew Lin Xiao’s immediate attention was the tragedy of his physical form.
The bear’s left arm was entirely gone, cut just below the shoulder joint. The wound had never healed. Instead of clean scar tissue, the shoulder was swollen into a blackened, weeping mass of black rot. Jagged, crystal-clear black veins—resembling frozen lightning made of rusted iron—crawled outward from the stump across his chest and collarbone, actively pulsing with a sickly, purplish foul fog.
With his lone right arm, thick as a tree trunk, the bear raised a huge three-hundred-pound iron sledgehammer. His breathing was a ragged, wheezing whistle as he brought the hammer down onto a glowing orange iron bar resting on the anvil.
CLANG!
The hammer struck with tremendous force, sending a shower of sparks across the cave walls. But the impact sent a violent burst of agony through the bear’s chest. He dropped the heavy hammer, stumbling against the stone wall with a hollow groan, clutching his blackened shoulder as dark, tar-like blood dripped from the wound onto the ash-covered floor.
“Curse this rotting flesh...” the bear growled in a deep, thunderous deep that shook with tears of helpless rage. “Ten years... Ten years I have hammered with one hand... But the melted rock waste venom has reached my lung veins. Is this where my forge fire dies?”
“Omniscient Dao Spirit: Scan target right away,” Lin Xiao commanded.
A crisp bronze chime rang in his mindscape. It was followed by a cold and exact medical analysis:
“Analysis complete,” the Dao Spirit reported calmly. “The subject is suffering from an advanced bio-metal curse. The poachers infused their weapons with corpse-fat and rotting iron melted rock waste. The stone toxin bonds to bone calcium and consumes life-essence, slowly turning living muscle into brittle stone melted rock waste. Without intervention, heart ossification will occur within seven days.”
Seven days? Lin Xiao’s core tightened. Not on my watch.
Lin Xiao rolled into the cave. His floating azure body glowed with gentle, glowing sapphire light that pierced through the gloomy soot.
“Excuse me, Master Blacksmith,” Lin Xiao called out politely, his clear voice echoing through the cave like a bronze chime. “You really shouldn’t be swinging a three-hundred-pound sledgehammer with an open infection like that.”
The old bear jerked upright. His bloodshot amber eyes snapped toward the cave entrance, his lone right hand snatching up a jagged iron crowbar from the floor with startling speed.
“Who goes there?” the bear roared, his voice trembling with feverish hostility. “Another hound from the Iron Vulture Gang? Have you come to harvest my bear core at last? Come then! Even with one arm, this old beast will crush your skull into iron dust!”
He raised the crowbar, preparing to strike. But when his gaze lowered and focused on the floor, he froze.
There was no armored fighter. There were no barbed chains, no crossbows, and no swords.
There was only a plump, semi-clear blue jelly ball resting peacefully on the ash. He looked up at him with two curved, cheerful white eyes. Inside the blue sphere, a tiny golden fish was happily blowing bubbles.
The bear’s brow furrowed in utter confusion. He lowered the crowbar an inch, sniffing the air with his scarred black nose.
“A... A water slime?” the bear rumbled, blinking his bleary eyes. “Am I hallucinating from the melted rock waste fever? Did a river puddle sprout eyes and wander into my forge?”
“I’m Lin Xiao,” the blue slime said, hopping forward with a friendly squelch. “And you’re bleeding corpse-poison all over your workshop floor. Put the crowbar down, friend. I’m here to clean that wound.”
The old bear let out a harsh, self-deprecating bark of laughter. “Clean it? Little water ball, you don’t know what you’re looking at. This is Corpse-Refined Slag Venom! Human alchemy elders couldn’t purge it without burning my soul to ash. Water will only make the iron rust faster!”
“Ordinary water, perhaps,” Lin Xiao replied smoothly. “Fortunately, I’m not ordinary water.”
Without waiting for permission, Lin Xiao bounced forward. Extending two thick, elastic azure tendrils, he pinned the bear’s legs gently against the stone wall.
“What—!” the bear roared, attempting to pull away.
He threw the full weight of his seven-foot, eight-hundred-pound frame against the blue tendrils. But to his utter shock, the elastic blue cords didn’t snap. They yielded like soft rubber. They took in his massive physical strength and instantly locking into iron-hard pulling stiffness.
“Hold still,” Lin Xiao instructed gently. “This will tickle for a second, then it’s going to feel like an ice-cold dip on a summer day.”
Lin Xiao launched his main body into the air, landing softly on the bear’s broad right shoulder. Extending his semi-clear fluid mass, Lin Xiao wrapped around the blackened, swollen stump of the bear’s cut left shoulder entirely within his azure body.
The moment the contact was made, the old bear prepared for blinding agony.
Instead, an indescribable sensation of deep, heavenly coolness washed over his rotting flesh.
Lin Xiao activated his Primordial Chaos Void. The boundless gravity pull of his inner dantian opened at tiny resolution across his contact surface. Like a million tiny vacuums running all at once, Lin Xiao’s fluid matrix began drawing the rotting black venom out of the bear’s flesh.
HSSSSSSSS!
Black, oily steam billowed from the wound. The cursed melted rock waste iron specks were stripped from the bear’s bone marrow. The jagged black veins crawling across the bear’s chest began to recede. It dissolved like spilled ink into Lin Xiao’s see-through belly.
Inside Lin Xiao’s void fire, the toxic corpse-fat was instantly boiled away and rendered inert. The rotting iron was disassembled into pure elemental iron marrow. And the lingering spiritual curse was crushed into sterile dust.
At the same time, Lin Xiao flooded the cleansed wound with clean, oxygen-rich spring dew soaked with ancient chaos life-force. The festering infection was sterilized in seconds. The ragged, blackened flesh smoothed out. That turned a healthy, vibrant pink as clean skin and healthy muscle sealed smoothly over the shoulder socket.
The chronic, painful fire that had burned in the bear’s chest for ten long years vanished.
The constant, choking pressure on his lungs melted away. For the first time in a decade, the old bear drew a deep, clear breath of clean air, his barrel chest expanding without a single stab of pain.
The crowbar slipped from his calloused right hand, clattering harmlessly against the granite floor.
The old bear slumped against the wall. He stared down at his cleansed shoulder in trembling, slack-jawed disbelief. The blackened corruption was gone. The foul odor of rot was gone. In its place was the sweet, clean scent of fresh mountain rain and wild jasmine.
He touched the smooth, healthy skin of his shoulder with his trembling right claws, his vision blurring with tears that dripped into his gray beard.
“The poison...” the bear whispered, his voice cracking with emotion. “The burning... It has stopped. Ten years of living hell... Gone in twenty breaths.”
The massive bear slowly lowered his gaze to the little azure slime, who had hopped back down to the anvil block and was currently wobbling with cheerful satisfaction.
“Who... What are you?” the blacksmith asked, his voice shaking with respectful awe. “Even an immortal potion-maker from the Central Realm couldn’t purge the Corpse-Iron Curse without destroying the spirit vein roots. Yet you swallowed it like morning dew.”
Lin Xiao gave an amused ripple. “I told you, I’m Lin Xiao. And that melted rock waste venom actually had a very high stone concentration. Very nutritious.”
Lin Xiao glanced at the smooth, healed shoulder stump, then at the heavy three-hundred-pound sledgehammer resting on the floor.
“Now then,” Lin Xiao said, a warm, confident smile rippling across his blue face. “A blacksmith can’t do much with only one arm. Let’s see about making you a new one.”