Chương 103: Forge It (3/3)

To the Jiuli Fiend, however, that flat, synthesized rasp was the voice of the abyss itself—a soundless void given terrible form, each syllable scraping against the edges of comprehension like iron dragged across frozen stone. It sounded like an edict handed down from a cosmic executioner, the kind of pronouncement that preceded the wholesale erasure of bloodlines and the collapse of ancestral halls into smoldering ash.

The Fiend scrambled forward from where it had been cowering against the cavern wall, its chitinous plating scraping and grinding against the rough stone with a sound like grinding millstones. Its massive, soot-stained knees slammed into the bedrock with the weight of falling anvils, cracking the stone beneath in splintering fractures that spiderwebbed outward through the layer of bone dust.

Small fragments of shattered rock skipped and tumbled away from the impact points, disappearing into the pale powder carpeting the floor.

All six of its arms shook with profound, reverent terror—not the trembling of cold or exhaustion, but the deep, involuntary shudder of a creature that had glimpsed its own annihilation and found it staring back. It lowered its heavy, leather-stitched head in absolute, groveling submission, the cracked and weathered surface of the mask dipping until it nearly touched the ground.

The blind, sewn face turned deliberately away, actively refusing to look directly at the dark slits of Shi Yan's mask, as though even the briefest meeting of gazes—however impossible through that stitched leather—might invite some unspeakable calamity.

"R-Right away, Great Senior!" the Fiend croaked, its rumbling, guttural voice cracking with poorly concealed panic, each word tumbling over the next in desperate haste. The sound echoed strangely in the enclosed space, bouncing off stone and stalactites overhead.

"At once! This lowly slag will not delay the Great Senior's business for even a single breath!"

It did not reach for the silver taels or the spirit stones lying near the beast arm, their surfaces still faintly gleaming in the phosphorescent glow that shifted across the cavern. The coins lay untouched, their metallic faces catching and reflecting the unsteady light.

In its current psychological state—soul still raw and bleeding from the System's merciless purge—taking payment before the work was done felt like asking an emperor for alms before performing a parlor trick, or demanding tribute from a war god while the blade still hung poised above one's neck.

The Fiend sought only to complete the transaction as flawlessly and quickly as possible, desperate to appease the unfathomable anomaly commanding this flesh-vessel and banish him from its sight before that terrible presence decided to reach deeper, to peel back more layers of its fragile existence and unravel what little remained.

The lowest pair of arms—thick as tree trunks, blackened with centuries of accumulated soot and carbon—grabbed the massive iron levers of the forge bellows with white-knuckled desperation. They pumped furiously, driving torrents of pressurized air into the subterranean vent with mechanical intensity, the great leather bladders wheezing and groaning under the sudden assault. The metallic screech of rusted hinges and stressed iron filled the cavern, mixing with the rush of forced air.

The Yin-fire of the corpse-gas geyser roared to life with a sound like tearing silk magnified a thousandfold, transitioning rapidly from a sickly gray-blue—cold and corpse-pale—into a blinding, searing white that cast stark, chaotic shadows across the cavern walls. The temperature in the enclosed space spiked instantly, the oppressive sulfurous heat pressing down like a physical weight. The air shimmered and distorted above the flame, wavering like water.

The middle pair of arms snatched up the heavy, rune-carved iron tongs with a desperate clatter, the ancient tools rattling in the Fiend's trembling grip. It grabbed the bundle of shattered Cloud-Mirror swords Shi Yan had dumped on the workspace—fractured blades that still gleamed faintly with residual spiritual tempering, their broken edges catching the white firelight in harsh, metallic glints.

"If this lowly smith may be so bold as to inquire..." the Fiend said, its voice growing ever more cautious, humble to the point of trembling like a leaf before the storm, as it fed the orthodox high-grade steel into the very heart of the flame. The metal hissed and began to glow almost immediately, the color shifting from dull gray to cherry red to brilliant orange.

"The Exalted Master behind you... does that venerable one favor a heavy blade fit for severing heads upon the execution ground, or one better suited for rending through the enemy's front line?"

The question hung in the sulfurous air, tentative and probing.

"Should the back of the blade be broad and flat, that it may bear against the shoulder with ease, or should it be forged with a blood groove, that the slain may bleed out more swiftly?"

Hmm?

It was Shi Yan's turn to be confused for a brief moment. He narrowed his eyes behind the mask's dark slits, his bloodshot gaze sharpening as he looked at the fiend—at the way its massive frame had gone unnaturally still despite the frantic pumping of the bellows, waiting for an answer with the desperate focus of a condemned man awaiting reprieve.

So it thinks the weapon is for my so-called master?

Behind the mask, his eyes tracked the melting point of the steel with clinical precision—watching the color shifts, the way the metal began to soften and lose its rigid structure, the faint shimmer of liquefaction beginning at the thinnest fracture points. But he did not utter a single word in response to the demon's question. The silence stretched, thick and oppressive as the forge heat itself.

Didn't I already tell you earlier?

The Jiuli Fiend swallowed hard, its thick throat bobbing beneath its heavy apron—a visible, convulsive motion that sent a ripple through the leather garment. The wailing faces stitched into its leather garment whimpered softly, their contorted mouths moving soundlessly, sharing in their master's intense anxiety. Dark fluid continued to weep from their sewn eye sockets, steaming faintly as it trickled down the apron's surface.

As if it could read Shi Yan's mind—or perhaps simply terrified by the crushing weight of that wordless silence—the Fiend babbled quickly, attempting to fill the oppressive void before it could be construed as an offense, before that terrible stillness transformed into judgment.

"A foolish question. A vessel of such peerless density, forged from... materials this lowly one cannot even fathom... naturally requires a weapon of absolute kinetic devastation. No elegant grooves. No flimsy blood-troughs. Pure, unadulterated mass. Yes. Yes, Great Senior. Forgive my ignorant tongue." A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

The words tumbled out in a desperate rush, each syllable laced with mounting hysteria barely held in check.

He watched the Fiend pivot to the biological butchery, its movements gaining a manic efficiency born of pure survival instinct. The entity did not possess a secondary blade, but against raw physical force, it didn't need one. With its bare, upper hands—each finger thick as a man's wrist, tipped with blackened nails like iron spikes—it grabbed the severed demonic beast arm.

The grotesque, scaled limb Shi Yan had sawed off Physician Li's corpse in the Black-Ash Marsh lay there on the dark shell surface, its claws still slightly curled, the faint warmth of corrupted life not yet fully fled from its dense tissue.

With a sickening, wet tearing sound that echoed uncomfortably against the stone—like fabric ripping underwater, amplified and made visceral—the Jiuli Fiend physically stripped the dense, toxic scales and corrupted muscle tissue from the limb. Each scale came away with a wet sucking noise, revealing the dark, marbled flesh beneath. Putrid fluids oozed from the exposed tissue, thick and black, steaming where they dripped onto the heated anvil surface.

It discarded the soft, ruined flesh directly into the white-hot corpse-gas flame, using the demon meat as a carbonizing agent to fuel the intense heat. The flesh crackled and popped as it burned, releasing a noxious black smoke that added new layers of acrid stench to the already foul air—burnt corruption mixed with sulfur and molten metal.

Well, that looks interesting.

Witnessing all of this, Shi Yan's eyebrows raised fractionally behind the mask, a subtle shift invisible to the Fiend but significant in his own internal assessment. He found himself recalling a comparison between this blacksmith on the ghost market and the old mortal at Iron-Ash Furnaces—the latter worked with careful, methodical precision and traditional techniques passed down through generations, while this creature...

It's even utilizing the beast's own decaying biology to chemically carbonize the steel while simultaneously overclocking the flame's temperature.

The method was crude, barbaric even, but undeniably effective. The flames surged higher, burning with renewed ferocity as the demon flesh fed the fire, the white light intensifying until it was nearly unbearable to look at directly.

Next, the fiend gripped the thick, underlying femur of the beast arm—a dense, blackened length of bone radiating residual Yin-chill that made the air around it shimmer with unnatural cold even in the forge's blistering heat, and the lingering resentment of the blood array that clung to it like invisible, grasping fingers—and slammed it onto the fossilized anvil with tremendous force.

CRACK!

The impact sent a shudder through the entire shell-anvil, vibrations traveling through the ancient fossilized surface and into the bedrock below. Bone dust jumped and scattered in small clouds around the base. Small stone fragments that had fallen earlier from the ceiling rattled and shifted.

"Perhaps..." the Fiend ventured once more, its voice quivering slightly as it raised its twin forging hammers—each weapon massive, the heads pitted and scarred by countless centuries of use, the handles wrapped in leather stained dark with sweat and blood. The hammers trembled minutely in its grip.

"Might the Great Senior's exalted sect... or honored domain... possess some particular spiritual inclination?"

The question was posed with the delicacy of a man defusing a formation array, each word carefully chosen, the tone pitched with desperate deference.

"Should this lowly one turn the grain of the steel to accord with the spiritual currents of the Central Zenith, or attune it toward the Void of the Outer Heavens? I ask only that the blade not impede the supreme arts your Master works through your venerable person."

Again, Shi Yan gave no reply.

He neither folded his arms nor shifted his stance, remaining as still as a statue carved from dark iron. His boots stayed planted in the bone dust, his right hand still resting on the warm leather of his empty scabbard, his left hand lowered now from its earlier pointing gesture. He merely inclined his head by the slightest measure—a bare few degrees of motion—the dark slits of the Iron-Yaksha mask settling upon the Fiend's stitched face with the weight of a falling mountain.

The Fiend shuddered at once, a full-body convulsion that rippled through all six arms simultaneously.

That minute, wordless motion was far more dreadful than any roar of anger, more terrifying than any shouted condemnation or spiritual technique. It was as though a mountain of death itself had turned its gaze upon it—cold, implacable, and utterly devoid of mercy. The phosphorescent glow seemed to dim in that moment, the shadows deepening around Shi Yan's armored form.

The demon nodded frantically, its heavy leather mask bobbing up and down in rapid, desperate affirmation, its instincts for survival shrieking that to pry further into the origins of such a being was to invite the scattering of its soul across the winds and the end of all reincarnation—to be erased so thoroughly that even the Yellow Springs would forget its name.

"Understood! Understood!" the Fiend cried, the words nearly cracking into a wail.

"No spiritual tempering, no directional attunement—only pure weight for slaughter! This lowly one will not dare speak further of the Master's lineage. Great Senior, please forgive my offense!"

The words echoed in the cavern, desperate and final.

CLANG!

The right hammer fell like divine judgment.

The sound was enormous, a clear ringing note that resonated through the stone walls and made the stalactites overhead quiver. Sparks exploded from the point of impact, bright orange-white stars that arced through the sulfurous air.

Shi Yan watched the blow with cold, unwavering attention, his steel-gray eyes tracking every detail with the precision of a battlefield analyst. The Fiend was not merely hammering dead bone and molten steel into rough shape—not simply beating materials into submission through brute force and repetition.

This looks interesting...

By some strange union of demonic instinct and Netherworld craft—techniques that likely predated the current cultivation sects by millennia—it folded the flowing orthodox steel directly into the porous, calcified body of the demonic bone. The glowing metal, still semi-liquid from the white-hot flames, poured into the microscopic channels and cavities of the bone structure, filling them, bonding at the molecular level.

It was taking the lingering ferocity of the dead beast—the accumulated resentment, the Yin-chill that had frozen flesh and stopped hearts, the savage hunger that had driven it in life—and driving it into the weapon. Under the smith's hammers, the poisonous, freezing Yin chill hidden within the bone and the tempered, high-grade Yang steel of the sect swords were forced together, pressed into one murderous whole.

Opposing energies that should have rejected each other violently were instead being bound in an unholy marriage of destruction.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

The ringing blows came faster and faster, building into a rhythm that transcended mere craftsmanship and entered the realm of frenzied ritual. The Fiend's four working arms moved in perfect synchronization—two pumping the bellows without cease, maintaining that searing white flame, while two wielded the hammers in alternating strikes that seemed to merge into a single deafening storm.

Blue-white sparks burst forth with every strike in cascading showers, scattering across the cavern walls like fireflies before dying out against the thick Stoneback Boar hide of Shi Yan's gambeson with tiny, harmless impacts that left no mark.

The heat in the cavern climbed higher still, oppressive and suffocating. Sweat would have poured from a normal man's brow, but Shi Yan stood unmoved, his breathing controlled and even behind the mask.

Shi Yan's gaze remained fixed on the forging, unblinking despite the bloodshot strain in his eyes. The force of each strike was precise—neither excessive nor insufficient—the joining of bone and steel exceedingly stable. There was no wasted motion, no hesitation. Each hammer blow landed exactly where it needed to, compressing, folding, binding.

The demon bone served as an inner core, bearing and dispersing the shock like a ship's keel absorbing the impact of waves, while the outer steel wrapped around it in hard layers—folded again and again, each fold adding strength and resilience. Such a weapon would be exceedingly difficult to break, even under monstrous force. It would bend before it shattered, absorb impacts that would snap lesser blades like dried twigs.

The Fiend forged not a refined scholar's saber—no elegant curves meant for ceremonial display or the precise cuts of dueling—but a battlefield weapon meant to smash through armor and flesh alike, to cleave bone and shatter shields, to function when covered in blood and gore and still swinging after a hundred kills.

As the metal darkened—cooling from white to yellow to orange to a deep, sullen red—and was struck anew, plunged back into the flames and drawn out glowing once more, the bone beneath the hammer blows grew denser. The porous structure compressed under the relentless impacts, the calcium matrix restructuring itself under impossible pressure and heat. The shape upon the anvil lengthened little by little, becoming heavier, broader, and more brutal with every breath.