Unintended Cultivator

V13 Chapter 28 – It’s A Chore

While the first few days in the forge had been marked by lengthy periods where Sen did nothing, the final day was much busier. He spent much of the day standing near the anvil, pressing his qi and killing intent into the forming blades. While he didn’t know what was happening inside the metal, he did sense that the resistance in the metal ebbed each time he did it. His qi flowed into the blades faster and more smoothly each time. It was a kind of proof that his old swords had been impeding his techniques. Knowing that wouldn’t be the case anymore was exciting. It also meant he’d need to be even more careful with Heavens’ Rebuke until he fully understood how much the new blades would change the technique.

That wasn’t the only thing he was sensing. His repeated applications of qi and killing intent had, somehow, given the forming swords a presence he couldn’t explain. With his old lightning iris blades, they had been inert. The weapons were of excellent quality and had worked better than other weapons, but that was all. These swords felt like…Sen struggled to identify it. With no better explanation, he would have said that they almost felt like they had the presence of early-stage spirit beasts. He knew that wasn’t right, but it was as close as he could come to identifying the feeling. Even more intriguing, or possibly worrying, was that he could sense the blades absorbing tiny bits of environmental qi.

It was subtle. If he weren’t so familiar with lightning qi, Sen doubted he would have noticed it at all. Even so, it was more than what inert objects normally absorbed just by existing. The process resembled what his shadow constructs did to sustain themselves. That raised a lot of questions about what, exactly, he and Master Feng were creating here. Could these swords actually be alive in some way? It sounded absurd, on the surface. Of course, creating constructs that could absorb environmental qi and demonstrate some independent thought was equally absurd, and he’d done that.

It was also hard to know what to expect when they were working with a metal that literally came from beyond the world. What was heavenly steel in truth? Master Feng said it was exceptionally rare. So, did anyone know the true scope of what it was or could do? Could that strange metal adopt some of the attributes of life? As the swords grew closer and closer to being finished, though, Sen’s intuition was nudging him. It wasn’t anything at all like what he experienced during alchemy. Those intuitions were potent, and all he could really do was surrender to them. This intuition was just a nagging feeling in the back of his head. A sense that there was something he needed to do, or…No, it was something he would need to do.

Unfortunately, he didn’t know what action his intuition was prompting. There was just a sense that the swords wouldn’t be complete until he did it. As much as Sen relied on his intuition, he found it frustrating at times. It wasn’t really a guide outside of performing alchemy. The feelings were amorphous, incomplete, and that vagueness frustrated him. If there was something that only he could do to finish the swords, he was willing to do it. But willingness could only carry him so far. Lacking something more definitive than a nudge, he was at an impasse. It also seemed that his role was largely over.

Master Feng had been heating, cooling, and reheating the blades for hours. When Sen had asked about it, his teacher had absently mumbled something about tempering. He’d heard smiths talk about that before and was pretty sure it had something to do with making the metal more durable. Then again, maybe it wasn’t that at all. Sen hadn’t been paying close attention, which he supposed was another sign of his middling interest in the subject. He was very interested in having swords that could put up with the kind of abuse he’d subject them to. Making them, on the other hand, was something he was happy to leave to others. Much as he imagined that others were happy to leave alchemy to him. Why seek to do something badly when others could do it well?

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Unfortunately, that nagging sense that the swords were incomplete continued to vex him. It was more frustrating precisely because he wasn’t a smith. What could he possibly do to or for the swords that Master Feng, an actual master smith, would neglect? He had plenty of time to ponder that question as his teacher began what looked to be the torturous process of sharpening the swords. As with every other cultivator who favored the jian, Sen had been taught how to sharpen them. After all, it wasn’t just a thrusting or just a slicing blade. It was both. That made it a profoundly versatile weapon. It was that very versatility that appealed to Sen and kept him from switching to the heavier dao saber.

Watching the elder cultivator sharpening the new swords, however, was very different from Sen’s experiences sharpening blades. The metal resisted the process at every turn. It looked like his teacher was making progress only due to the pure brute strength enjoyed by peak nascent soul cultivators. It the sharpening process took, in Sen’s estimation, nearly twelve full hours. The sun was rising when Master Feng finally stepped back, took a deep breath, and spoke.

“They’re done. Well, the important part is done. I still need to fashion some hilts for them, but that’ll be easy now that the damnable things are sharp.”

Sen took that opportunity to make some tea and pull some food out of his storage ring. Master Feng grunted in approval and sat down. He didn’t say a word as he devoured plate after plate of food that was still hot, courtesy of the storage ring. Sen also made two more pots of tea as the elder cultivator drank cup after cup. Eventually, Master Feng pushed away the most recent plate of food and nodded.

“I don’t usually get hungry,” said the elder cultivator. “Working with that metal, though. It’s a chore even for me.”

“I know I said it before, but I really do appreciate you making those for me,” said Sen. “I can’t imagine where I would have found swords that I can use, otherwise.”

“To be fair, I’m the one who put you on this path. If you’d been anything like a normal cultivator, you’d have had millennia to acquire what you needed for serviceable weapons. Not a handful of years. It only seems fair that I take a little responsibility.”

“Maybe so,” said Sen with a smile, “but I appreciate it all the same.”

Master Feng gave Sen a searching look before he grunted again.

“Well, let’s finish making these.”

Making and affixing the hilts felt shockingly brief after the extensive forging and sharpening process. When Master Feng finished wrapping the hilts with silk, he gave Sen a small smile. For the first time, Sen took a good look at his new jian. They looked almost identical to the lightning iris blades, except for the color. Where those older blades had been a vibrant blue, the blue of these new blades was so dark they looked black. Sen reached out and picked them up. Their weight felt off to him. They were lighter than his old swords.

“They don’t feel heavy enough,” said Sen.

“That heavenly steel is strange stuff,” said Master Feng. “Light or not, you’re not going to find anything stronger.”

Sen considered the blades before he just accepted his teacher’s words. It wasn’t like Sen knew better about the metal. He had to resist the urge to swing them around or push qi into them. He trusted himself not to hit anything he didn’t mean to hit, but these were unfamiliar swords. It wasn’t smart to use weapons he wasn’t completely comfortable with in a relatively cramped space. Master Feng must have guessed at Sen’s thoughts.

“You should take them outside. Get a feel for them. I’ll get started on some scabbards.”