“I have,” Cha Ming said. He’d been bored, and reading had helped fill a void he hadn’t known existed. “Lifegiver steel coupled with ghostwood. With that amount of material, you could make an axe. Or a hammer. Given the quality of the material, you could make an initial-core-grade weapon.”
“Theoretically, yes,” Ling Dong said. “But I’m not going to make an axe. Or a hammer. You didn’t hear it, but these materials spoke to me just now. They asked me to make something completely new and different.”
“And what might that be?” Cha Ming asked.
“I’ll show you,” Ling Dong said. Instead of going to his forge, the large man took out a thin soul-alloy knife. He held the ghostwood over a small fire he summoned. The wood softened but didn’t burn.
After the wood reached a certain temperature, Ling Dong retrieved it. The piece was cylindrical, but instead of shaping it for a haft, he sliced it into irregular shapes. Small wooden medallions fell onto the ground between them, and to Cha Ming’s surprise, tiny violet lines wriggled around on their wooden surfaces. They looked familiar. He soon realized what they were: natural runes.
“Ghostwood isn’t usually used like this,” Ling Dong said, shrugging. “It seems like this branch was cut off and kept near a source of natural water energy. It laid there, forgotten, until someone who wasn’t sure what to do with it found it and brought it to me. I took it as payment for a peak-magic weapon. A steal of a deal in my opinion.”
“If it was normal, it would have been a fair exchange,” Cha Ming said.
“But no one could see its true nature,” Ling Dong said. “I couldn’t either, but I had a feeling it was a worthwhile trade.” He picked up one of the pieces and poured demonic energy into his soul-alloy knife. Then he cut into the medallion and added a few choice lines. According to normal runic rules, it was nonsense. But Cha Ming couldn’t help but feel there was a method to his madness.
As Cha Ming was busy staring at the single medallion, Ling Dong continued working on the other pieces. He did much of the same, but each time, the lines were different. Finally, he took the bar of lifegiver steel and used his natural qi to heat it. It was a very malleable metal that was only useful in weapons because of its self-restorative abilities. No matter how much it broke, the pieces would always find themselves and return to their original quenched form.
Ling Dong didn’t form a blade. Instead he tore off small pieces and forged links. He also tore off strips that wrapped around the wooden medallions. They began joining and linking together, and before Cha Ming knew it, he realized they were surrounded in violet mist. This cloud was much thicker than the one the dagger had attracted. In fact, it was bigger than the hundred others he’d seen before.
Under the larger man’s wild guidance, metal and wood interlinked. They came together and formed a sort of puzzle. When the last of the links came together, Ling Dong summoned a torrent of normal seawater. It was the crudest of quenching mediums, and even mortal blacksmiths would scorn it. But Cha Ming knew there must be a reason for using it. As wild as his creations often were, Ling Dong always knew what he was doing.
The metal cooled, and the violet mist rushed in. Like all demonic treasures he’d crafted, the ambient natural energy imbued his new creation with special properties. It let out a hum, and to Cha Ming’s surprise, it was a late-grade core weapon, two ranks higher than the man’s demonic blacksmith rank.
“This, Teacher, is why I made the dagger a top-grade weapon,” Ling Dong said. He passed the puzzle over to Cha Ming. “I made this for you. I’m not sure what it is, but I’m sure it’s what you need.”
Cha Ming accepted the puzzle but remained confused. Ling Dong continued speaking as he looked over each of the treasure’s rune-covered medallions.
“The way of a demonic smith isn’t to create artificially powerful weapons, but rather to unearth natural potential,” Ling Dong said. “These two materials were made for each other, which is why they joined so perfectly. The result is something several levels above what I’m normally capable of. I could never repeat the process. Seven hells, I don’t even know how I made it. The material guided me. It showed me what it wanted to be, just like the dagger did. I’m not a craftsman, Master—I’m a medium. Some things should be made simple instead of strong, end of story. Normal people may not understand, but I do.”
Ling Dong returned to the forge, crafting one masterpiece after another. Cha Ming simply sat there, entranced at the assortment of links, chains, and wooden medallions. Despite his transcendent soul, the runic lines were confusing. They made him question why they were there in the first place, but when he thought about it, he realized that it didn’t matter. The simple complexity of it was marvelous to behold.
If crafting a weapon was discovering the truth of the materials, did such a truth apply to other things? He pondered this question in silence, and days passed by as he did. Customers came to visit Ling Dong, and he would often craft them exactly what they asked for. Other times, however, he would take their order and make something completely different. They would argue with him, but in the end, he always convinced them he’d crafted them what they needed. He was right every time.
Every material has an ideal shape, and every person has a weapon that suits them, Cha Ming thought, looking at the wooden medallions in a daze. Then what about actions? Weapons shouldn’t change a person but
