Chương 81: A Body That Shouldn’t Exist (2/3)

His voice was flat, stripped of inflection, yet it cut cleanly through the roar of the flames and the piercing, rhythmic peal of steel striking steel—a blade drawn through silk.

The hammer hung suspended in the air for a fraction of a heartbeat, its shadow frozen across the glowing metal, before descending again with a resounding clang that sent a fresh spray of orange sparks skittering across the anvil's surface.

"Then you want a Spirit Artifact? I don't craft those either. They require demonic beast-blood quenching and a spiritual array."

"I need tactical armor. I mean real armor," Shi Yan corrected himself, his jaw tightening briefly as he shifted into the local vernacular, the word zhen rolling off his tongue with deliberate weight.

"Something that stops a blade from opening my stomach and a hammer from pulping my ribs. Nothing more. Nothing less."

The blacksmith finally paused.

He slowly lowered the twenty-pound forging hammer, the motion controlled and deliberate, letting its massive iron head rest flush against the anvil with a dull, final thud that resonated through the stone floor. A faint tremor rippled underfoot.

He straightened his back—vertebra by vertebra—a towering mortal who had spent fifty years breathing fire and coal dust, his spine crackling faintly with the motion. The single eye beneath his thick, scarred brow—pale gray as winter fog—stared right through the shadow of Shi Yan's bamboo hat, piercing and unyielding.

The master smith's gaze swept over Shi Yan's broad frame with the slow, methodical assessment of a man appraising raw ore. He took in the waxed-canvas cloak, its folds heavy and dark as storm clouds; the scuffed, mud-caked heavy boots that sat square and grounded against the packed earth; and the oppressive, simmering pressure of the Late Tier-1 aura Shi Yan was projecting via his [Phantom-Ash Veil]—a presence that pressed against the air itself like heat rising from sunbaked stone.

Most cultivators who possessed that much Qi wore robes of frost-silk or unyielding cloud-cotton, garments that shimmered faintly with woven spiritual threads and flowed like water over skin.

They did not wear crude iron. Crude iron was heavy, entirely devoid of spiritual resonance, and fundamentally obstructed the smooth flow of Qi through a cultivator's meridians like mud clogging a mountain stream.

"If I may be blunt, Venerable," the blacksmith rumbled, crossing his massive, scar-latticed arms over his broad chest. Ash and soot clung to the dense hair along his forearms, and his calloused fingers drummed once against his bicep—a slow, thoughtful rhythm.

His tone was not mocking, but it carried the blunt, uncompromising edge of a man who knew his craft better than the Heavens and feared neither immortal nor flame.

"You project the aura of a high-stage Qi cultivator. But your shoulders sit like a soldier's—squared, braced for impact. Your steps leave deep prints in the mud, yet you barely make a sound."

He tilted his head slightly, the leather eyepatch shifting over the hollow where his left eye had once been.

"Speaking truthfully... you are not a body cultivator, are you? Nor are you a pure Qi cultivator." His voice dropped a fraction, more curious now than confrontational.

"Why does an Immortal of your capability need to strap a hundred pounds of dead iron to his chest?"

The moment the words left the blacksmith's mouth, the ambient noise in the front of the shop completely vanished.

The clatter of hammer on anvil ceased. The rustle of movement stilled. Even the hiss of water on hot metal seemed to fall into stunned silence.

The nearby mortal mercenaries froze mid-motion, their weathered faces draining of color. A hardened bounty hunter—his jaw slack—slowly lowered his drinking skin, leather creaking in his white-knuckled grip. His eyes widened in sudden, animal horror, the kind that comes when a man realizes he is standing too close to a collapsing cliff.

A young apprentice, no more than fifteen summers, carrying a sloshing wooden bucket of quenching oil nearby, let out a choked gasp—a strangled, airless sound. He dropped the bucket as if it had burned his hands. It shattered against the packed dirt floor with a splintering crack, black oil spilling in a wide, spreading pool over the blacksmith's boots and seeping into the coal-dust-caked earth.

"M-Master!" the boy cried out in sheer panic, his voice cracking high and desperate. He threw himself to his knees right in the dirt, heedless of the sharp stones and shattered wood. He slammed his forehead against the floor with a sickening thud—once, twice—his entire body trembling violently as he looked up at Shi Yan through tear-blurred eyes, his face twisted in abject terror.

"Great Venerable! Please, forgive my master's insolence! His mind has been baked by the forge for too many years! He does not know how to speak to an Immortal! Please do not be angered!" Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

The boy's voice cracked again, and he pressed his forehead harder against the ground, dirt smearing across his brow, his thin shoulders shaking like leaves in a winter gale.

To the mortals in the Outer Wards, insulting a cultivator's path—questioning their cultivation base or calling them out in public—was a crime punishable by an instant, horrific death. A flick of the wrist could summon fire. A single word could invoke a sword that moved faster than thought.

Cultivators were creatures of immense, fragile pride. Mortals had seen men flayed alive for less—for a misplaced glance, a stutter, a breath too loud in the wrong presence.

The mercenaries in the back began to quietly shuffle toward the exits, their boots scraping softly against stone, not wanting to be caught in the blast radius of a Fire-Palm or a sweeping flying sword. One man clutched a talisman beneath his cloak, his knuckles bone-white. Another mouthed a silent prayer to ancestors long dead.

Shi Yan didn't move. He stood perfectly still, his posture unchanged—calm, grounded, unshaken. He looked down at the weeping apprentice, his gaze steady and clinical beneath the brim of his hat, then back up to the one-eyed blacksmith, who had not flinched, had not bowed, and whose scarred face remained set in the same unreadable, weathered mask.

"There is no need for apologies," Shi Yan said evenly, his voice cutting through the silence like a blade sheathed in silk. He did not flare his aura or raise his voice. No pressure rolled outward. No killing intent sharpened the air.

"Pride does not deflect swords. Your master's eyes are sharp."

The collective breath of the foundry rushed out in a synchronized sigh of relief—a wave of exhaled tension that rippled through the room like wind through grass. Shoulders sagged. Hands unclenched. The apprentice remained on his knees, still shivering, his head bowed low, but the sobs caught in his throat began to quiet.

The blacksmith's single eye widened by a fraction of an inch, a flicker of something rare and genuine passing through that pale gray iris—newfound respect, perhaps even surprise.

"You are correct. I am not a traditional body cultivator. But I fight closer to the mud than most," Shi Yan admitted, his tone dropping into a clinical, businesslike cadence—the voice of a soldier discussing equipment requisitions, not a cultivator defending his Dao.

"That is exactly why I came. Common blades cannot endure my strength, and ordinary robes are no different from paper before my movements. I need a set of gear made for me alone."

The master smith lifted a coarse cloth from the edge of the anvil and wiped the ash and sweat from his beard, the fabric coming away blackened. His calloused fingers worked slowly, methodically, as if buying time to think.

"Then speak, Venerable one. Tell this old man what kind of iron dares accompany you into battle."

Rather than remaining before the counter like some arrogant guest looming over a lesser, Shi Yan stepped beyond the furnace's heat-shimmering threshold and slowly circled the forge, his boots crunching softly against scattered coal fragments and grit.

His gaze passed over the weapons and armor hanging from the stone walls—some complete and polished to a dull sheen, some yet awaiting the hammer's final judgment, their edges rough and unfinished. Blades gleamed faintly in the forge-light. Breastplates hung like silent sentinels, their surfaces scarred from testing strikes.

"There is no need to begin from nothing," he said as he reached a hanging breastplate—a heavy, dark thing with riveted edges—and lightly rapped two fingers against its surface.

At his tapping, a clear metallic cry rang out through the room, a pure, singing note that vibrated through the air and faded slowly, like a bell struck in a distant temple. Several heads turned toward the sound.

"Time does not permit the forging of a fresh masterpiece. If the stock in your forge can be altered according to my instructions, it will suffice."

He pressed his palm flat against the breastplate, feeling its weight, its balance, the way it hung slightly forward on its chain. Then he withdrew his hand, fingers trailing across the surface with a faint scrape of skin on metal.

"This one will not do."

The blacksmith knit his brows, the thick gray wisps above his scarred brow drawing together like storm clouds.

"That is cold-forged deep-mountain iron. Even a halberd swung with the strength to split a warhorse would struggle to pierce it."

Shi Yan shook his head once, a short, decisive motion.

"To others, it is armor. To me, it is a sealed cauldron."

The reason was simple: once he circulated the [Black-Iron Body Art] at Level 2, his blood would surge like a flood released from a broken dam, roaring through veins that had been restructured at the cellular level by the System's relentless mutations.

The tyrannical burden brought by his Daoless body and the [Sieve Effect] forced his strength to escape through flesh and pore alike—an uncontrolled hemorrhage of power. Heat gathered within him like a furnace stoked beyond its limits, while superheated vapor poured from his skin without cease, rising in visible waves that distorted the air.

If he wrapped himself in solid steel, that blazing force would have nowhere to disperse. Pressure would build. Temperature would spike.

He would not be struck down by an enemy. He would cook alive inside his own armor, his flesh boiling, his blood steaming, his organs failing one by one in a coffin of his own making.

"Let's just say... when I fight," Shi Yan said, lowering his voice so only the master smith could hear, the words carried on a breath barely louder than the crackle of the forge, "I run hot, and it distracts my concentration, so I need something that can guard the body while still allowing it to breathe."

Of course, Shi Yan did not explain in detail—did not speak of mutations or systems or the monstrous reality of a body that burned power like kindling—but he could not be too vague either. As a blacksmith, the man needed part of the truth to craft the equipment properly. A craftsman worked best when he understood the why beneath the what.

Next, Shi Yan moved on, his boots scraping softly against the gritty floor, and stopped before a row of heavy dark coats hanging from iron hooks driven into the stone wall. Their surface was stiff and treated, the fabric thick as hide, and when his fingers brushed them, he could feel the hidden weight beneath the cloth—something dense, something layered.

His eyes sharpened, the faint scar at the corner of his mouth twitching slightly as his focus narrowed.

"Inner armor," Shi Yan said, his tone shifting—more interested now, more intent.

"Do you have one?"

The blacksmith lightly snorted—a rough, gravelly sound—then hummed low in his chest, a rumble like distant thunder. He reached up with one massive, scar-knuckled hand to take down a sleeveless black coat from a high wooden peg, the motion practiced and sure. The coat came free with a faint creak of leather cord.

At a glance, it seemed no different from a thick outer garment—functional, plain, the kind a soldier might wear on a long march. But when he dropped it onto the worktable, it struck with a dense metallic crash that echoed through the room, far heavier than cloth had any right to be. The table shuddered beneath the impact.

"This one," the smith said, patting it with some pride, his palm striking the fabric with a muted thump.

"Its outer layer is fire-treated canvas—proof against embers and sparks—but beneath it are overlapping black-iron plates fixed by rivets."

He ran a thick finger along one seam, tracing the hidden line where metal met fabric.

"When the wearer moves, the plates shift with the body. Wind may pass through the seams, yet when a blade falls, the iron beneath catches its bite."

Shi Yan nodded slowly, his expression unreadable beneath the shadow of his hat.

"Good."

He stepped forward and lifted the inner armor with both hands, testing its weight, feeling the way the plates shifted beneath the canvas with a faint metallic whisper. He turned it slightly, examining the stitching, the rivet placement, the way the iron was layered like scales. Then he set it down again with a controlled thud, his palms resting briefly on its surface before he withdrew.