903 Fully Tempered
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“Uhh… you know how to temper a metal?” Alex asked.
“Of course I do,” Godslayer said. “It’s not about how hard you hit, it’s about how frequent you are. You need to build up a tempo with your strikes. Don’t focus on the strength, focus on stability.”
Alex didn’t know why Godslayer was saying this or why he was even speaking for that matter, however, he decided to take the knowledge of someone from the immortal world by heart and did as he was told.
Instead of trying to temper a metal by striking it as hard as he could, he went slow and steady.
TANG! TANG! TANG!
“You’re still doing it wrong,” Godslayer spoke. “Same strength, same speed, every time.”
Alex nodded and improved his method. Alex tried his best to keep everything stable and soon the strikes fell into a pattern.
“Calm yourself. Let yourself fall into the rhythm of the metal. Hear its sound; understand what it wants,” Godslayer spoke.
Alex nodded. He didn’t even realize what he was doing as he kept hammering the metal, trying to feel its rhythm. At some point, per Godslayer’s teaching, Alex started heating the metal as he hit it.
The cooling metal once again heated up and no longer needed to be put back into the furnace for heating. So, as Alex hit it for a long period of time, he found himself falling into a trance.
The Saint cultivator who was working on his own thing, found himself getting drawn to the music that was hidden behind the noise of the smithy.
“Who?” he turned to look and couldn’t help but be surprised that it was Alex who was doing it.
He quickly walked up to ask what exactly he was doing but found himself unable to speak as he was drawn in by the method.
The red-hot sword brightened even further as every last bit of it was being purified by the hits.
Suddenly, a loud harmonic tone, like a ringing bell rang throughout the entire smithy, catching everyone’s attention including Alex’s.
Alex fell out of his trance and quickly tried hitting the metal again, but Godslayer spoke just in time. “Stop. You’ve tempered the metal.”
“I… I did?” he asked.
“That ringing you heard was the sound of the metal resonating after every last bit of impurities was removed,” Godslayer said. “With that, the strength and durability of the metal have reached as high as it possibly can.”
“I see,” Alex said, thinking back to the zoned-out state he had just been in. He was so focused on hitting the metal that he didn’t even keep track of how many times he hit it.
100? 200? 500?
“Kid!” the man spoke, making Alex jump from surprise.
“Yes?” he asked. Alex finally noticed that a group of cultivators was surrounding him, looking at him with surprise.
“What was that just now? What did you do?” he asked.
“I… I don’t really know,” Alex said. “I was just tempering the sword when I fell into a trance.”
“You don’t know?” the man frowned. “Alright, finish the sword. You can do it again later.”
Alex nodded and went on to finish the sword. He pulled the cold sword out and went to put it back into the furnace when he heard Godslayer stop him.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Putting it back into the furnace, so I can have an easier time contorting the shape to the way I want,” Alex said.
“And risk getting the metal in contact with other things that have been in the furnace? You want to keep tempering the sword your whole life?” Godslayer asked. “Just heat it on the anvil where you tempered it and fix the shape.”
“Ah, right. That does sound better,” Alex said and returned the sword to the anvil before trying to fix its shape to not be as uneven as it was.
“Stop hitting it so much, use your Dao to shape it,” Godslayer said.
“My… dao?” Alex was confused for a second. He had the Dao of Explosion, Heat, Heat Conduction, Plant growth, and Five Elemental Interactions. But then, which Dao was he to use to fix the shape?
“Yes, your dao,” Godslayer said. “The Dao of Metal you learned not long ago.”
“Ah, that’s not my Dao,” Alex said, after finally understanding what the sword spirit was talking about. “It was my cat that learned it.”
“Your cat? Why would your cat be so learned that it knows a Dao? That too in this backwater realm,” Godslayer said.
“Oh, that’s because… he has good metal roots,” Alex said, barely catching himself before he made a terrible mistake.
He was about to say that Pearl was a descendant of the White Tiger, and had a lot of its bloodline, but he caught himself before revealing that someone with a god-blessed bloodline was with him.
In front of Godslayer that acted like a maniac at the word ‘God’, that was a terribly bad idea.
“He learned Dao of Metal just by having good metal roots?” Godslayer sounded suspicious. “Well, I guess he’s quite lucky then. Do what you can then, although it is better to learn some Dao for forging while you can. I’m going back.”
“While I can? What do you mean while I can?” Alex asked, but Godslayer was no longer there to answer him. “Godslayer?”
Realizing that Godslayer was gone, Alex pushed the confusion back into his mind and continued making the sword. He put the Qi lines through the sword and didn’t bother making them curved.
Instead, he put as many as he could in them. Once he thought that the sword was done, He stopped and plunged it into the water.
He then went on to put the finishing touches on the sword and 15 minutes later, his sword was ready.
He took the sword to the Saint to show him if he passed.
The saint took the sword, looked at it, then looked at the machine, then looked back at the sword, and then hesitated.
“I… I don’t have the heart to put this sword in the formation,” he said. He tried bending the sword a little and stopped.
“I believe it suffices to say that you have succeeded,” the man said. “This is very much likely a True Heaven sword. If not for the materials used, I wouldn’t have been surprised if this was a Saint Earth-grade sword.”
The man admired the sword a little and gave it to Alex. “Take it. You made it, so it is yours,” he said.
Alex took the sword and nodded. “Thank you,” he said.
“Now, do you think you can show us what you did earlier?” the saint asked.
Alex thought for a bit and said, “I can try.”
So, the many forgers gathered around and watched as Alex took another portion of molten metal and started hitting it again.
At first, nothing happened, but as he continuously hit the metal with a rhythm, he once more fell into a trance, and everyone watched it happen.
The group learned that day how one could temper a metal to its purest and strongest form. However, even after learning it, barely anyone was able to replicate it, and that too not every time.
It would take them a long time to get used to it as not everyone had the same talent as Alex to do something just by learning it once.
Alex returned back to the tavern in the evening after finishing his work. As soon as he was back, he entered his mind and looked for Godslayer.
Alex had many questions he wanted to ask him. How did he know how to temper a metal? How did he know how swords were made? How did he know about the many daos one would need to learn for forgery?
Did he perhaps watch his crafter make many other artifacts after him?
However, when he asked those questions, Alex didn’t get a single answer in return. Godslayer only told him one thing.
“I don’t know.”
After that, he did not say anything and stayed away from Alex.
Alex returned back after getting no answer and stopped worrying about it. After all, there were many more things that Godslayer had simply never bothered explaining to him, and this one was just a few questions to add to that pile.
So, Alex went back to cultivating and continued his apprenticeship for the next couple of days.