On the thirteenth morning in the pit, Pei Jing pulled the bone charcoal away from the billet. The whole bar had cooled to the color of dark slate. He tapped its spine with an iron rod. The note hung in the warm air for seven seconds. He could hear the dragon bone and the star iron ringing together. The first bond had held.
He lifted the billet onto the stone workbench and clamped it in place. The past two days had given the new blade its backbone. On the third day he would give it channels for his qi.
His Nine-Zhang Crystal Dao Foundation drew on all five elements. An ordinary bar of iron could bear his weight and survive his swing. If he tried to send Chaos True Essence through it, the flow would wander until the metal cracked. He needed five separate paths from the grip to the far end of the blade, one for each element of his Chaos Spirit Root.
He took up a dark metal chisel and a small hammer. In the pit’s heavy gravity, even a small tool dragged at his shoulder. He rested his wrist until it stopped shaking. Then he began to tap. Each cut was shallow enough to leave the dragon bone underneath intact. He could see curls of iron collect around his knuckles, thin as gray thread. When the next blow began to feel harder than the one before it, he stopped, took a breath, and found his rhythm again.
