Chương 28: Forgegod

Rowan At the break of dawn, Rowan stood in the center of the training field, covered in sweat. He had already been training for hours. Finally, when his qi recovered enough, he tried Germination once more. His fingertips glowed for a moment. Then a pellet of green light shot out, embedding into the straw man. The straw glowed eerily then the glow slowly dissipated. Rowan braced his hands on his knees. He did it. A Germination that only used a quarter of his Qi Sea. He could be more efficient. He knew it.

His Waking Spring Breath Technique still wasn't perfected, and he was still manually cycling his qi to the correct meridians in order to cast Germination. It was particularly hard to transform Bright Yang Wood qi into Lesser Yin on short notice. And that was just to stabilize the shape of the qi. It could all be much better. Still, he had taken the first step to mastery. A frown ghosted over his lips. This technique wasn't as flashy as the ones his peers were learning. A straw man didn't have any qi to disrupt.

So, even though his Germination could now fly out twenty feet and embed into a dummy, he had no idea how effective it would be on a real person. Rowan doubted anyone would volunteer to have their qi disrupted - he had heard the sensation was extremely unpleasant, like rolling down a hill and having stomach cramps from eating bad seafood all at once. Rowan took a moment to watch the sun break across the horizon, yellows and pinks brushing across the clouds. He wasn't alone on the training field.

A ways away from him, Lee was officiating a duel. For once, the Wandering Bulb was not snoring gently in Rowan's sleeve. Instead, she was perched on top of a large rock, across from Princess Feathertail, who - as usual - taunted the bulb for her ancestry.

"Your mother was a potato and your father never had any salt!"

"What does that even mean?" Lee muttered.

"Quiet, Assistant. You are contractually obligated to laugh at my jokes, which are very funny!" The bulb folded her arms, looking away.

"Ahahaha," said Lee, flatly.

"Thank, you Chief Assistant."

"It appears you've been promoted," said Rowan.

"Look," Lee said, taking the Eastern Winged Basilisk aside.

"I don't know if this relationship is really going to work out. I clearly don't have the means to feed you what you need to grow-" To everyone's horror, the bird started sobbing.

"You're just like mother. You don't want me either-""That's not what I meant, that's not what I meant," said Lee, sounding distraught.

"Listen, I'll go get you some worms." He started to dig at the ground listlessly. While Lee wasn't looking, the basilisk flashed what looked very much like a chicken's version of a thumbs up using a wing at the Wandering Bulb and winked. The bulb squeaked in indignation, roots at its hips. A small dark shape threw a shadow across the training field. As it got closer, Rowan noticed it was a pigeon with a small note attached to its foot with twine. The pigeon landed on Rowan's shoulder, offering out its foot.

Ready -Luzon A grin broke out across Rowan's face.

"Lee, Master Luzon is ready to forge my sword! I've got to go!"

"Awesome!" Then, Lee's nose wrinkled.

"But, fellow sect brother, please take a bath first… you smell like a forest floor." Rowan smelled his robes, realizing that Lee maybe had a point. The pigeon shifted its body so it directly faced Princess Feathertail and bowed deeply in her direction. Then, it took off back down the mountain. Interesting.

"How about you stay here and keep training with Princess? You've been improving too," Rowan told the bulb. The vegetable snuck a root along his arm and wiggled like it wanted to crawl back into his sleeve.

"I knew your type were cowards," said Princess Feathertail, curtsying.

"It appears that it is my victory once again." The bulb squeaked and attacked immediately.

"You know, shouldn't you have given your pet a name by now?" whispered Lee.

"You might give her a complex." Rowan sighed.

"How about you give her one? Names aren't my strong suit." Lee perked up.

"Round Sixteen between the beautiful and illustrious Princess Feathertail, and the vicious yet loyal Fang. The Wheel of Fate is turning! Fight!" The newly named Fang bared her sharp, beak-like roots and waved them about. Rowan dragged a hand down his face and left the training field. He quickly bathed and changed into a fresh set of robes - white, still, for his mother - and tied up his hair with the same white ribbon he'd been using lately. Without delay, he went into the city. Love this novel?

Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. The people of Righteous Mountain City were already awake and active, opening their stores and organizing the day's wares in shelves and baskets. He noticed a familiar woman heating up a giant pot of oil. Her face was drawn, dark lines underneath her eyes. Rowan jerked to a stop, remembering the vision he'd had from the Bodhi Leaf while breaking through to the second layer of Qi Condensation. She seemed more tired than last time.

Older, like the image of her in his mind. He stopped himself. He did not know the woman. He had seen something that borrowed her face. It hadn't been real.

"Greetings, ma'am. Has your daughter been found yet?" asked Rowan.

"Not yet, my lord," she said, her voice faint, like she was barely able to speak.

"A few people from the sect came around asking questions. I'm sure… I'm sure we'll find out what happened to her soon." It had already been a few days. Demonic cultivators didn't keep their "stock" around for long. If the girl hadn't been found by now…

"Can you draw me a portrait of the girl?" asked Rowan.

"I have a few more connections. I'll ask around." She nodded dispiritedly. Rowan had the sense that if he wasn't so obviously a cultivator, she might not have indulged the request at all. This mother already seemed to have lost hope in finding her daughter. That only made Rowan more intent on finding her. Or, at least, figuring out what happened to her. He was finding that he had a lot less patience for cultivators taking advantage of mortals.

If a cultivator took your child, if a cultivator directed the fish you needed to survive elsewhere, what recourse did mortals have? Nothing. As a cultivator, Rowan felt the responsibility to step in and assist. Once the portrait had been drawn, Rowan thanked the woman and left. The girl was young - maybe twelve or thirteen. She had a rangy look to her, like a colt that hadn't eaten in a few days. The Tally Book said there were several notable demonic cultivators in Righteous Mountain City.

One, The Red Groom, who was at the peak of Qi Condensation and way out of Rowan's league. Daoist Silverteeth, who was in the late stage of Qi Condensation. Another, Daoist Apex, was in the middle stage of Qi Condensation. But one of them, Daoist Spellsteal, was still in the first or second layer of Qi Condensation. Hadn't Rowan just been wishing he had a real person to practice his Germination on? Why not kill three birds with one stone?

Hunt down this Daoist Spellsteal and use him as a practice dummy, while also figuring out the mystery of what was happening to these girls? He would score some shop credit with Ostra too, allowing him to buy more arts and scriptures. When Rowan stepped into the Stone Dragon Refinery, it was still early enough in the morning that most of the people there were forge apprentices heating their smelting stations and cleaning their anvils. Rowan saw Lavinia's older brother, who carefully avoided his gaze.

Rowan was sure that, to the man, he had somehow ruined the engagement between his little sister and the Fross family. In his heart, Rowan wasn't entirely sure how much he had to do with it. It wasn't like Lavinia had moved her affections onto him. Before he could even consider having words with Lavinia's brother, Master Luzon's voice rang out across the forge.

"Helsing. Come in." The blind forgemaster was hunched over an anvil, with a palette of different metals sheathed in a leather and velvet case. The samples were organized in lines and lines, each of them no thicker than a sheet of paper.

"We are going to determine right now which metal will be the most suitable to make your sword with." Master Luzon picked a milky silver out of the palette and rang it against the anvil. A muted thunk.

"Note the sound of that. Tell me if the next one is higher or lower, clearer and brighter, or more muted. As you grow in your cultivation the correct metal for your sword will change with you. When I make a sword for someone, I make it for life, so every time you've progressed in your cultivation, you will come back to the refinery and I will recast it for you. In turn, your old metal will be donated to another carrier." Rowan stared at the palette of metals.

"Go ahead, pick one." Rowan's fingers found a shard of what was labelled as meteorite silver. Luzon chuckled, knowing which one he'd gone for.

"Everyone wants to try their luck with that one. It's belonged to many different girls, all of them named—but no matter," he said.

"It is a Greater Yin metal, which lives in the idea of nullification. A star streaking across the sky in defiance of the sun, a comet that returns again and again. Brittle and unyielding." The metal didn't produce as much as a thunk for him. It was high and tinny, vanishing after one ring.

"Terrible. Try another." Rowan's eyes found a hunk of blackened metal that drank in the light. It reminded him of the molten wake that his mother had left Lieren Nostraga and his belongings.

"I don't think so," muttered Luzon, as Rowan put his fingers on it. He hit the dark iron against the anvil. Clack. A hairline crack formed on the ingot.

"Oh no," Rowan muttered.

"It's fine," said Luzon, chuckling.

"This is just a sample of the material, for ease of selection. The ingots themselves are stored in the cupboards around us. I didn't think you would find any promise in Demonsteel. In fact, sometimes I wonder why I offer it to begin with. No one who's bought it has had a positive impact on the world that I know of." He sighed.

"Maybe one day, a hero with a light heart and dark cultivation will come to my doorstep and change that." Rowan went through sample after sample. A white-colored Yang metal, which burned in his hand had the best resonance as of yet, but Luzon still shook his head.

"This is too familiar to your cultivation. Sometimes that is good. In this case, it will be stifling." He was starting to feel a bit worried. What if he wasn't compatible with any qi metal? After all, he was cultivating a Wood technique, and Metal was the enemy of Wood. Luzon braced his hands on his lap, groaning as he stood up.

"I haven't had to do this for someone so early in their cultivation yet, but I have some rarer metals in the back that are a little tougher to work with. I'll let you have a try at them." Rowan's eyes shone.

"Don't look so excited," said the blind Master Luzon.

"They're just as picky." The man left, the air filling with the sound of drawers opening and rummaging. After a few moments, Master Luzon returned with a tray of five metals.

"Go on," he encouraged Rowan. These metals seemed to emanate qi more readily than the previous selection. One metal in particular drew his attention - it was pure silver, with a strange iridescent sheen to it. His Qi Sea fluctuated slightly in anticipation. Rowan wrapped his fingers around it.

"Five Color Qi Metal. Nice and balanced with the qi of heaven and earth. That sword will lean neither this way nor that, making it harder to cut with and harder to drop." Harder to drop?

"That's only a manner of speaking," said Luzon.

"A sword that is easy to cut with generally follows a nature and is extremely effective against natures it can defeat. A sword that is easy to drop is one that has weaknesses when hit at certain angles - not physically, but by paths it is weak to. For most, it is good to have a sword that compliments his weaknesses or a sword that magnifies his strengths. For you, perhaps it would be preferable for your sword to do neither." Luzon looked troubled.

"I've never made a sword like this before, in all my years. Even I am not sure what will happen." That was just the metal. Next came the wood for the hilt, and the focus for channeling spell arts.