The handle assembly of a twenty-two-pound cleaver was not an ornament. It was a clockwork signal system.
Inside the forge shed, Mo Tie laid the components out on a clean pine bench:
Two slabs of cured mountain ash wood, three years seasoned in salt air to prevent shrinkage, carved to fit the wide, flat tang of the forged blade.
A single sheet of dried white sharkskin imported from the southern maritime traders, its surface studded with thousands of tiny, tooth-like hardened denticles that provided an unbending, non-slip friction grip even when drenched in grease or bright red blood.
Twelve feet of blackened, heat-softened copper wire, four copper mounting pins, and a heavy brass handguard.
The handguard was a solid oval of cast brass, three-eighths of an inch thick and three inches wide. It had no delicate quillons or decorative filigree. It was a heavy barrier designed to stop a sliding axe-spear blade from severing the wielder’s fingers.
Pei Jing heated the tang of the Cloud-Splitter over a bed of low charcoal embers until the metal reached two hundred degrees. It was warm enough to melt pine resin. But well below the heat that would draw the temper from the hardened ricasso.
He coated the tang with boiled pine rosin mixed with crushed deer horn glue.
Then he seated the ash wood slabs onto both sides of the steel tang.
Thunk.
The cured wood settled against the hot metal. The rosin melted, flowing into every tiny pore of the ash and iron, creating an airtight, waterproof seal that would prevent moisture from rusting the hidden steel.
Pei Jing lined up the three square mounting holes.
He drove three square copper pins through the wood and steel with a light peen hammer, then flared the protruding copper ends against brass washers, riveting the slabs permanently in place.
Next came the sharkskin.
He soaked the dried skin in warm vinegar until it became pliable as wet leather, wrapped it tightly around the wooden handle with an overlapping seam along the underside. Then he bound it from blade collar to handle knob with the blackened copper wire.
The wire was drawn tight using an iron winding peg, biting deep into the sharkskin denticles until the wraps were flush with the surface.
Finally, the handle knob.
A solid eight-sided block of forged iron, weighing two point two pounds, slotted over the end of the tang. Pei Jing peened the end-post nub of the tang over the iron block with fifty overlapping hammer strikes, riveting the entire assembly into an indivisible unit.
He picked up the completed weapon.
He held it horizontally by the handle, resting the blade flat across his index finger.
The weapon tilted slightly forward, then balanced.
The balance point sat exactly two point five inches forward of the brass handguard.
On an ordinary dueling sword, a forward balance point was considered a flaw. That made the tip sluggish in fencing lunges. But on a chopping cleaver designed for heavy impact, a balance point two point five inches forward multiplied angular driving force during spinning swings. It packed sixty percent of the weapon’s mass directly into the striking sweet spot of the flared chisel head.
Pei Jing weighed the weapon on Mo Tie’s brass balance scale.
The balance weights leveled out.
Exactly twenty-two point zero pounds.
Total length: three point two feet.
Blade width at waist: two point five inches.
Chopping head width: four point zero inches.
Spine thickness: twelve tiny fractions of an inch at blade collar, seven tiny fractions of an inch at chisel tip.
Mo Tie walked out into the cold morning air of the yard.
In the center of the gravel clearing, the smith had driven a seasoned four-inch post of dried mountain oak into an iron ground-socket. Around the oak post, Mo Tie had wrapped three heavy rice-straw mats, each two inches thick, soaked in water overnight to mimic the thickness and heavy drag of human flesh and muscle tissue.
“Three soaked rice-straw mats wrapped around four inches of cured mountain oak,” Mo Tie said. He stood ten paces back with his arms crossed over his chest. “An royal sergeant with an eight-pound cavalry saber might cut through one and a half mats before the blade binds in the oak. If your edge is too brittle, the chisel head will shatter. If your handle pins are loose, the shock will snap the rivets clean off.”
Mo Tie pointed with a calloused chin.
“Show me what your daily ledger has bought.”
Pei Jing stepped to the mark, three paces from the target post.
The morning wind blew down the ravine, cold and sharp, rustling his grey homespun trousers.
He didn’t adopt an exaggerated, dramatic combat stance.
He stood with his feet shoulder-width apart, knees slightly bent. His right hand gripped the sharkskin wrap with a loose, relaxed hold. His left hand rested against the iron handle knob.
The twenty-two pounds of steel felt neither heavy nor light.
With his newly unlocked Tier 3 Python Tendon Whip, his body sense mapped every grain of the folded hard dark metal lattice as if it were an extension of his own hand bones.
He took a slow, silent breath.
First Form of the Gale Saber: Cleaving the Riverbank.
The initiation was barely noticeable.
His left foot didn’t take a wide, telegraphing step. His left heel simply pressed into the gravel, rotating inward ten degrees.
The moving chain erupted from the ground.
The ground-reaction force surged through his calf, snapped through his knee tendon, rotated his pelvis. Then it whipped through his thoracolumbar muscle tissue. The elastic potential energy stored in his spinal rotators released with the blinding gaining speed of a released catapult.
Pei Jing’s right arm didn’t pull the blade.
The Cloud-Splitter was launched by the turning force of his core.
WHOOOOOSH.
The 22-pound hard dark metal blade sliced through the morning air with a deep, bone-shaking deep roar—not the high whistling hiss of a light dress sword, but the terrifying, low-hum of a falling guillotine.
The flared four-inch chisel head struck the target.
Sshhh-THUNK.
The sound was shockingly muted.
There was no violent crash of wood and metal. There was no shower of flying splinters. There was only a clean, water-flow hiss as the twenty-two-pound blade, moving at ninety feet per second, parted the soaked rice straw.
The double fullers removed empty pocket suction instantly. It allowed sky air to flood the cut channel.
The high-carbon martensite edge, backed by twelve tiny fractions of an inch of hard dark metal shock-absorbing spine, sliced through the four-inch seasoned oak post without losing a single foot-per-second of spinning speed.
The blade passed fully through the post, exiting the far side in an unbroken, level arc.
Pei Jing’s left hand caught the handle knob, his tendon stretch arresting the weapon’s driving force three feet past the target with easy, shock-absorbing control.
He stood motionless.
His wrists experienced zero shaking. The copper wire wraps and sharkskin had sent zero bone-shaking shock into his joints.
For two full seconds, the target post remained standing.
Then, the top two feet of the four-inch oak post, still wrapped in three layers of soaked rice straw, slid smoothly off the stump along a forty-five-degree edge, crashing into the gravel with a heavy splash.
Mo Tie walked over to the cut post.
He knelt, running his soot-stained thumb across the freshly cut wood.
The surface of the seasoned oak was not splintered or crushed.
It was smooth as polished green marble, the grain cut cleanly across every stringy ring without a single tear or frayed fiber.
Mo Tie looked up at Pei Jing. His single eye was wide with a mixture of awe and cold dread.
“In forty years of forging weapons for the border army,” Mo Tie said softly, “I’ve never seen a handheld blade cut cured oak like fresh curd.”
In Pei Jing’s eye field, the monospace ledger flared with bright, deep-amber glyphs:
Pei Jing lowered the blade, admiring the dark, oily gunmetal surface.
Not a single nick. Not a scratch on the edge. The high-carbon edge remained sharp enough to split a falling hair.
Before Mo Tie could speak again, the sound of wild, stumbling footsteps echoed from the trail at the mouth of the ravine.
A young man in torn Pei Clan livery stumbled into the forge yard. His knees scraped across the sharp gravel. His face was covered in black charcoal dust and streaks of sweat, his breath coming in ragged, bloody gasps.
“Third... Third Young Master!” the runner wheezed, collapsing onto his hands and knees before Pei Jing.
Pei Jing recognized him: Xiao Wu, a nineteen-year-old kiln worker from the South Hill smelting yards.
Pei Jing stepped forward, his voice level and steady. “Breathe, Xiao Wu. What happened at the kilns?”
Xiao Wu coughed, spitting a glob of black thick spit onto the stones.
“The Black Tiger Gang... They struck an hour before dawn!” Xiao Wu gasped, clutching Pei Jing’s felt boot. “Scar-Faced Liu came back with forty men! They brought torches and jars of pitch! They overturned five coal wagons on the South Hill road, beat Captain Cao’s guards with iron gaffs. Then they set fire to the main charcoal stacks! They’re marching on the smelting kilns right now!”
Xiao Wu looked up with terror-stricken eyes.
“They said... They said if Clan Head Pei doesn’t hand over the deed to the South Hill deep shaft by noon, they will burn every worker in the kiln sheds!”
Mo Tie spat into the dirt, his leathery hand clenching around his master sledge.
“Hu Biao has made his move,” the smith growled. “He wants to starve your kilns of coal, force your clan into bankruptcy, and buy the mines for copper scraps.”
Pei Jing didn’t show anger.
His features remained cool, detached, and utterly still, like a clerk closing a book after discovering a fatal deficit.
He reached down, taking a strip of dark oiled linen from the workbench. Then he wrapped the three point two feet of the Cloud-Splitter Cleaver-Saber until only the sharkskin handle and blackened brass guard were visible.
He tied the weapon across his back with a wide hemp shoulder strap, letting the twenty-two pounds of hardened steel rest diagonally against his left shoulder blade.
Beside it, in his inner belt pouch, sat the Black Mountain Whetstone and twelve carbon-steel flying needles.
Pei Jing turned to Master Mo Tie.
He reached into his robe, withdrawing an oiled leather pouch containing twenty-five silver coins, and laid it on the anvil horn.
“The contract for labor and materials,” Pei Jing said. “Settled in full.”
Mo Tie looked at the silver, then looked at the dark weapon strapped to the youth’s back.
“Keep five coins for yourself, boy,” Mo Tie said, his voice low. “You’ll need it to buy medicine after you cross blades with Hu Biao.”
“I’ll not need medicine,” Pei Jing replied, turning toward the mouth of the ravine. “Hu Biao’s account has accrued too much interest. Today, I collect the principal.”
He walked down the mountain path. His steps light and was silent on the gravel, disappearing into the autumn mist.