The soot-stained cave in the western ravine was silent save for the crackle of earth-heat embers and the ragged, emotional breathing of the old bear blacksmith.
He sat on a block of rough dark rock. He stared at the little blue slime resting on his anvil. For ten years, the world had offered him nothing but cruelty, poison, and the cold indifference of human sects. Yet in the span of a few breaths, this semi-clear azure sphere had cleaned the soul-corroding melted rock waste venom from his flesh as easily as wiping dust from a windowpane.
“Master Lin,” the bear rumbled, his deep voice thick with awe, “you said... Making me a new arm? How can that be? Even if an immortal plucked a thousand-year Ginseng Root from the divine peaks, the arm grown would be weak as a newborn child’s. A blacksmith’s arm must bear ten thousand hammer-blows a day. It must withstand molten bronze and roaring flame!”
Lin Xiao gave an elastic, confident bounce on the anvil. “Who said anything about ordinary flesh? In my last life, we had things called silver-steel prosthetics and advanced bio-printing. And here, I have something even better. Pure ancient chaos qi, eighty pounds of high-thickness bone-iron marrow from that razor boar I had for lunch. An Omniscient Dao Spirit with flawless computer-aided design.”
“Omniscient Dao Spirit,” Lin Xiao whispered into his mental sea. “Generate bio-metal blueprint for an Earth-Bear chest limb. Let’s make it strong enough to forge stars.”
A crisp bronze bell chimed in his mind:
“Blueprint checked,” the Dao Spirit reported smoothly. “Starting atom-deep extrusion.”
“Brace yourself, big guy,” Lin Xiao said aloud. “You’re about to get the ultimate upgrade.”
Lin Xiao sprang from the anvil, launching his jelly-like mass directly onto the bear’s left shoulder socket. His semi-clear blue body flowed over the smooth, healed stump. It stretched into a thick, glowing sapphire cocoon that fully wrapped around the left side of the bear’s chest.
Inside the blue fluid cocoon, a blinding golden light began to ignite.
Lin Xiao opened his internal void reserves. The refined bone-iron marrow pulled out from the Iron-Tusk Boar’s metal skeleton—melted and purified at the sub-core level—flowed into the fluid matrix. Controlled by the Dao Spirit’s precise exact instructions, the molten sky metal didn’t burn. Instead, it was cooled to exact living heat by Lin Xiao’s heat regulation.
Zzzzz-hiss!
Tiny needles of golden liquid metal began to anchor themselves directly into the bear’s collarbone and shoulder blade. The metal filaments didn’t merely attach to the surface. They fused seamlessly with the living bone marrow, weaving through the existing cellular structure to form an iron-hard, honeycomb-lattice skeletal framework.
The old bear let out a low, trembling gasp. He felt no pain. Instead, a surging wave of intense, fiery warmth rushed through his left side. It felt as though an ancient, dormant river of liquid gold was pouring directly into his dormant spirit veins, waking nerves that had been cold and dead for a decade.
Around the golden metal bones, Lin Xiao extruded layers of stretchy organic polymers. That created artificial muscle fibers with five times the pulling strength of natural bear sinew. Finally, he coated the surface in a thick layer of dense, black glass-gold fur, perfectly matching the bear’s natural coat while infusing it with subtle, gleaming titan runes that pulsed with the deep heartbeat of the earth.
“Now,” Lin Xiao commanded his core, “ancient chaos origin qi, wake up the circuit!”
A brilliant flash of azure and gold lit up the entire cave, casting long, dancing shadows across the rock walls.
Lin Xiao hopped back, landing lightly on the dark rock floor with a soft gloop.
The golden cocoon dissolved into thin air.
Standing before the anvil, the old bear slowly, disbelievingly looked down at his left side.
Where a ragged, empty sleeve had hung for ten painful years, an amazing, huge arm now rested. It was massive—thick as a hardwood log, rippling with dense, sculpted muscle covered in glossy, black glass-gold fur. Across the forearm and shoulder, faint golden veins pulsed beneath the skin, thrumming in perfect synchrony with the underground earth-heat leylines of the mountain.
The bear raised his left hand. The five massive claws, gleaming like polished sky black jade, opened and closed with flawless, fluid speed. There was zero lag. There was zero numbness. Every single nerve, tendon, and muscle fiber responded instantly to his thought.
He reached down with his new left hand. He closed his claws around a solid, two-foot-wide boulder of jagged dark rock sitting beside the hearth.
He gave a slight, casual squeeze.
CRUNCH!
The dark rock boulder crushed instantly, reduced to a shower of fine, powdery gray dust that sifted through his golden claws.
Tears, thick and hot, welled in the old bear’s amber eyes and poured down his soot-stained cheeks into his braided beard. He dropped to his knees, his massive frame shaking with uncontrollable, heart-wrenching sobs.
“My arm...” the bear cried, his forehead touching the cave floor before Lin Xiao. “My forge arm... It’s whole! It’s stronger than it was in my youth! Lord Lin Xiao... You have granted this broken beast a second life!”
Lin Xiao bounced forward, extending a gentle blue tendril to pat the weeping giant’s knee.
“A master craftsman should never be without his tools,” Lin Xiao said warmly. “And speaking of who you’re... You told me the beast clans cast you out and the poachers tried to steal your spirit. Do you have a True Name?”
The bear shook his head sorrowfully against the stone. “In the beast clans, True Names are bestowed only by Clan Patriarchs or Divine Kings. I refused to forge slave chains. Then, they struck my name from the old family stones and called me an outcast dog. I’m merely Old Man Tie.”
Lin Xiao smiled, his blue membrane glowing with radiant warmth.
“Old Man Tie is too modest for a craftsman of your character,” Lin Xiao declared. His voice took on a clear, ringing chime that echoed through the mountain defile. “Your heart is steadfast as hardened iron, and your spirit is unbending as an ancient peak. From this day forward, under the witness of the azure sky and the deep earth, your True Name shall be Tie Shan—the Iron Mountain!”
The moment the words left Lin Xiao’s mouth, the heavens responded.
BOOOOOOM!
An ear-splitting thunderclap cracked across the clear sky above the ravine! A pillar of blinding, sky golden light pierced through the natural chimney of the cave, wrapping Tie Shan in a swirling vortex of ancient origin qi!
Deep within Tie Shan’s chest, an ancient, dormant seal—shackles that had suppressed the bloodline of the Earth-Bear clan for ten thousand ages—shattered into cosmic dust!
His skeletal frame swelled with a terrifying, rhythmic creak of shifting earth-shaking plates. His height surged from seven feet to an imposing, muscular nine feet tall! His graying fur shifted fully into an iron-hard, glistening coat of midnight black glass laced with threads of molten gold. Across his broad chest, an ancient, roaring titan-bear totem ignited in blinding sky flame!
The spiritual pressure streaming from his body shot up fast, blowing away the soot and melted rock waste in the cave like dry leaves: Early Foundation Establishment... Mid Foundation... Peak Foundation... Until it shattered through the threshold into Tier-3 Early Beast Sovereign!
A ringing bronze chime rang within Lin Xiao’s mind:
“Notice: Host has established an iron-hard Ancient Soul Circuit with Tie Shan,” the Dao Spirit reported. “Tie Shan’s loyalty to Host: Infinite. Earth-shaking Leyline Deep hum actively channeling surrounding earth qi into Host’s core.”
Tie Shan stood upright, his nine-foot titan frame exuding the unmoving majesty of an ancient mountain range. His eyes glowed with pure, amber-gold divine fire.
Yet despite this terrifying, world-shaking power, the giant titan bear right away fell back to his knees. He pressed his forehead against the stone before the little blue slime with total, tearful respect.
“Lord Lin Xiao!” Tie Shan roared, his voice carrying the booming deep ring of an earthquake. “You gave me back my arm! You shattered my bloodline curse! You gave me a True Name that awakens the ancient Titans! From this breath until the stars turn to ash, Tie Shan belongs to you! My hammer shall strike only for your will, and my chest shall shield your peaceful domain!”
Lin Xiao gave a bashful, slightly overwhelmed wobble.
Good grief, Lin Xiao thought. Every time I give someone a cool name, they turn into a mythical deity and start pledging eternal fealty to the death. I just thought ‘Tie Shan’ sounded cool! But hey, having a nine-foot Titan Bear blacksmith on the team is incredible.
“All right, all right, stand up, Tie Shan,” Lin Xiao chuckled. “We’re family now. No need for all the dramatic kneeling. But since your arm is working and your forge fire is warm... Do you think you could do me a huge favor?”
Tie Shan leaped to his feet, his golden arm flexing with enough force to shatter a castle gate. “Lord Xiao, speak the word! Shall I tear down the mountain castle of the Crimson Flame Pavilion? Shall I exterminate the Iron Vulture Gang?”
“No, no, nothing like that,” Lin Xiao said quickly, waving an azure tendril. “I have three hundred and twenty pounds of marbled wild pork belly down at the campsite, and Old Ba and I are starving. But we don’t have a proper cooking vessel. Can you forge me a giant wok?”
Tie Shan froze. His glowing amber eyes blinked twice in utter confusion.
“A... A wok?” the newly awakened Tier-3 Beast Sovereign asked, his massive ears twitching. “A cooking pan, my Lord?”
“A very large, hand-hammered red-bronze wok,” Lin Xiao specified with great enthusiasm. “About five feet wide, with dual rolled handles, a smooth curved bowl for high-heat stir-frying. A matching wooden cedar lid. Can you do it?”
A wide, joyful grin broke across Tie Shan’s grizzled snout, exposing two massive white fangs.
“Lord Xiao,” Tie Shan boomed, his laughter rattling the cave ceiling, “for two hundred years, kings and warlords demanded that I forge swords to spill blood and collars to enslave beasts. You’re the first sovereign to ask this hammer for a vessel to feed the hungry! It shall be the greatest culinary wok ever forged under heaven!”
With a mighty roar of laughter, Tie Shan seized two heavy metal bars of raw star-bronze from his scrap pile and tossed them directly into the earth-heat fire. With his golden titan arm holding the tongs and his right hand swinging the three-hundred-pound hammer, the cave erupted into a joyous, thunderous mix of sparks and creation!