“Nuthin’,” the man said. “Nuthin’, unless you light the wick.”
“Right,” the man continued. “Sparks, friction, and the like. Tell me, how many sparks and how much energy do you think a peak-bone-forging cultivator can deliver into a chuck of metal by smacking it? If it was at room temperature, it might not do anything, but this metal is near its melting point, so it’s especially easy to set off. There’s no telling what would have happened if the grandmaster hadn’t caught his hammer.” He bowed to Cha Ming. “Many thanks, Grandmaster Pai Xiao.”
The smith who’d been about to strike the cast sword paled. “My apologies, Grandmaster. What I’ve done is inexcusable.”
“No harm, no foul,” Cha Ming said. “Next time, read up on the metal you’re working with. A little reading never killed anyone. You’re all free to use my reference library. As for how much damage it could have caused, I know a little about that.” He winced and put his hand to his left arm. “I once did something similar when I was an initial-marrow-refining cultivator. Let’s just say I didn’t recover from the damage until I broke through to early grade.”
The implication was clear. If the man had struck it, anyone below core formation would be dead.
Suddenly, as many of them were leaving to return to their workbench, a gleam appeared in Cha Ming’s eyes. “Interesting,” he thought out loud. “Can I take that from you?” he asked the smith, who wasn’t quite sure what to do with his mold. Should he throw the metal out together with the mold or try to separate them once the blade cooled?
“Please,” the man said, glad to be rid of it.
Cha Ming lifted the mold and blade, and to everyone’s surprise, he took it to the furnace. Then he activated a formation he had engraved in the stone floor. It hummed to life, and a thin shield of force now stood between everyone and Cha Ming’s work area.
“The metal is mildly pyrophoric,” Cha Ming mumbled. “Does that mean the metal would be different if allowed to react?” He tapped the mold lightly with his finger, and the piece of cast metal fell onto a cushion of transcendent force in the bottom of a large cauldron. Then he activated his orange-gold flame and heated it from below.
The metal had already been near its melting point, so it only took a quarter hour to melt. Soon it was nothing more than a soupy mixture with floating red flakes. Nodding, Cha Ming increased the heat. The reason the flakes hadn’t melted was because the smith heating the mixture hadn’t been strong enough. So he increased the intensity of his flames and continued until the red flakes dissolved into the mixture, which hissed and crackled as it did.
“This part might be dangerous, so put up your personal shields,” Cha Ming instructed the growing audience.
The many smiths did as they were told. They activated smaller shields in front of each of their workbenches, then continued observing from a distance. Once each of the shields were up, Cha Ming separated a small portion of the pyric iron and azure nickel alloy. The molten metal seemed to pulse and sizzle. With just a little more energy, something would happen, so Cha Ming closed the cauldron, which then grew transparent so he and everyone could see inside. He then heated the small block to increasingly high temperatures, until finally, it began to pop and spark.
The small explosion, fortunately, was no match for the cauldron. The blob continued to spit and crackle until finally, it stopped. He continued increasing the temperature, and after a few rounds of subsequent crackling, the metal stopped reacting so violently. After reaching a certain point, a component in the metal evaporated, leaving behind only a translucent red blob.
Encouraged by this result, Cha Ming opened the lid, retrieved the purified blob, and threw in another one. He repeated the process from before, adding the purified product into an increasingly large blob of transparent metal.
“Now what to do with the metal?” Cha Ming muttered after he’d purified everything. The transparent blob was completely different than any metal he’d ever worked with. In fact, its melting point had greatly increased, so its other properties probably had as well.
Shrugging, Cha Ming poured the blob of metal back into the cauldron and summoned a few other alloying metals. Instead of rejecting the materials like it usually did, this newly refined metal took them all in like long-lost cousins. Once he finished making up for the metal he’d removed in the purification process, Cha Ming poured the mixture into the mold of a sword. The metal cooled, and when it finally solidified, it glowed a light pink color.
Cha Ming proceeded to hammer away at the blade, forging it into a proper sword blade. When he finished, he began carving intricate flame-based runes. They weren’t weak runes he’d normally use on such a metal, but the type he’d use on a late-core weapon. He’d personally seen what temperatures the metal it was made of could withstand.
Once he finished carving the weapon, he threw it back into the fire and went over to a rack of premade hilts. He hated crafting them, so he made them in batches. After mulling over his choices for a while, he ultimately picked a hilt made of cold iron essence with blue-gold gilding. A cultivator would want the blade to be hot, so keeping the hilt cool was paramount. Just to be sure, he carved some protecting and insulating runes into the hilt. Then he threw the hilt into the flames as well. After it reached a certain temperature, he joined the hilt with the blade using tongs and heated them even further. The metal sweated together, forming a strong seal that aligned with the runes he’d carved.
Having completed the body of the weapon, Cha Ming didn’t summon
