Chương 82: A Body That Shouldn’t Exist (3/3)

"But iron can block a sharp edge," Shi Yan said, his voice level beneath the shadow of his bamboo hat, each word falling like measured footsteps on stone. The forge's orange glow flickered across the lower half of his face, catching the faint scar at the corner of his mouth.

"And still fail against brute force."

He shifted his weight slightly, the packed earth beneath his boots grinding against scattered coal fragments with a faint, gritty whisper.

"If a massive demonic beast crashes into me, or a cultivator's heavy strike lands full on, the outer plates may remain whole while the bones beneath are shattered." His gloved hand rose briefly, fingers spreading as if to illustrate the invisible force traveling through layers of metal and flesh.

"Armor that saves the skin but breaks the ribs is still flawed."

The blacksmith's scarred expression grew solemn, the firelight deepening the lattice of old wounds across his brow. The single pale gray eye beneath his thick, ash-dusted brow narrowed thoughtfully. This customer… was complicated.

This young Immortal had openly admitted he was neither a pure Qi cultivator chasing enlightenment nor a traditional body cultivator relying on raw flesh, but a man who killed in the mud. The blacksmith's calloused fingers drummed once against his massive bicep as he processed this admission, the rhythmic tap-tap barely audible above the hiss and crackle of the furnace.

But to openly admit that his bones could shatter? What kind of Immortal worried about blunt-force rib fractures? If he possessed the Late Tier-1 aura he was currently radiating—that oppressive, simmering pressure that still hung in the air like heat shimmer above the forge—his bones should be as hard as refined copper.

Did he fight so violently, against things so much larger than himself, that even a cultivator's resilience was not enough? The thought lodged itself uncomfortably in the blacksmith's mind, like a stone caught in a boot. Isn't he just… a mortal then?

The blacksmith swallowed his doubts, his throat working beneath the soot-streaked skin of his neck. Even though he was blunt, the question in his mind doubted not only the path but the very existence of cultivation, and usually a craftsman who asked too many questions of an Immortal died holding a hammer. He'd seen it happen twice in his fifty years at the forge—men who spoke too freely, whose bodies were carried out wrapped in canvas while their blood still pooled on the packed earth.

"Then what does the Venerable intend?" the blacksmith asked, with one brow raised—the scarred ridge above his remaining eye lifting just enough to wrinkle the leather of his eyepatch.

Shi Yan turned. His gaze swept across the roaring forge once more, moving with the deliberate, clinical precision of a man cataloging resources on a battlefield. The furnace's heat washed over his broad frame, causing the air around him to shimmer faintly, while the cloak's waxed canvas faintly reflected the orange firelight. As if searching not merely among iron and leather, but among all the materials with which men of this world resisted death.

"I need layers," Shi Yan said, raising a gloved hand. The leather of his glove creaked softly with the motion, fingers forming a shape as though holding something fragile between them.

"A shell that yields, a core that endures, and enough space between them to disperse force."

His fingers closed slowly into a loose fist, demonstrating the concept with his body rather than words alone.

"The outer defense must not be too rigid, the inner defense must not be too thin, and neither can obstruct the circulation of heat." His voice remained utterly flat, clinical. Professional.

"If you understand this principle, then we may continue speaking."

The forge fell quiet for a breath, the ambient ringing of hammers suddenly fading into the background. Even the furnace seemed to roar more softly. The apprentice, still kneeling in the dirt with his thin shoulders trembling, dared not lift his head. A single bead of sweat rolled down the boy's temple, carving a clean line through the soot smeared there.

This…? Then the blacksmith's lone eye brightened. It was as though a hammer had struck a spark directly inside his mind—sharp, sudden, illuminating.

His posture straightened with an audible crackle of his spine, ash falling from his forearms as his stance shifted. The dense hair along those scarred, soot-latticed arms bristled slightly as understanding flooded through him. He recognized instantly that he was no longer dealing with a vain Immortal seeking a beautiful, useless spiritual robe, but a professional. A man who understood violence not as spectacle, but as engineering.

At once, the doubt in his eye vanished, replaced by a new light—bright and sharp as molten iron—as he looked at Shi Yan. His massive chest expanded as he drew in a deep breath, the scent of coal smoke and hot metal filling his lungs.

The blacksmith coughed, a rough bark of sound that scattered ash from his beard.

"Ehm… then, so that is your meaning," the blacksmith murmured, his voice taking on a tone of newfound respect, almost reverence.

"Not merely armor for cutting and piercing, but armor that turns force aside and lets the body live beneath it." He paused, then added with a faint, grim smile that showed teeth yellowed by decades of forge smoke, "An intimate, violent tailor." Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Shi Yan gave a faint nod, the brim of his bamboo hat dipping once in acknowledgment.

"Exactly."

The blacksmith stepped out from behind the anvil with purpose, his boots—still slick with the spilled black quenching oil—squelching against the packed dirt. He sharply waved away a terrified apprentice carrying a bucket of quenching oil, the motion of his scar-knuckled hand brooking no hesitation. The boy scrambled backward, clutching the sloshing bucket to his chest, fresh tears cutting lines through the dirt on his face.

The master smith walked to a heavy, iron-bound chest in the back of the soot-stained forge, his broad shadow stretching long and distorted across the stone wall. The chest sat partially obscured by hanging tools and coils of chain, its surface pitted with age and use. He unlocked it with a heavy brass key that hung around his thick neck on a length of worn leather cord, the metal warm from resting against his skin.

The lock gave way with a deep, satisfying clunk, and the hinges groaned as he lifted the lid—a sound like an old beast waking.

When he returned to the workbench, he carried several massive rolls of dark, cured hides and thick bundles of rough-spun silk, their weight causing his massive arms to flex visibly. He laid them out before Shi Yan like a jeweler presenting his most priceless gems, arranging them with surprising care despite his calloused, blunt-fingered hands. The materials landed on the worktable with solid thumps, raising small puffs of disturbed dust that caught the firelight.

"To satisfy the inner layer—the core that yields," the blacksmith began, his calloused hand patting a roll of thick, gray-brown hide covered in coarse bristles that rasped audibly beneath his palm. The bristles were stiff as wire, each one catching the forge-light with a dull gleam.

"I recommend a gambeson tailored from the hide of a Stoneback Boar."

The blacksmith looked up to gauge Shi Yan's reaction, his single pale eye searching the shadows beneath that bamboo hat.

"It is a Feral-Rank demonic beast. We hire mercenaries to hunt them in the rocky crags to the west." His voice carried the weight of experience—years of dealing with the products of those bloody hunts.

"The hide is notoriously stubborn to cut, but its true virtue lies in its density. It possesses a natural, spongy thickness that eats impact." He pressed his thumb hard against the rolled hide, demonstrating. The surface gave slightly, compressing with visible resistance before slowly rebounding when he lifted his hand.

Unrolling a section of it with both hands, the blacksmith continued. The hide unfurled with a low, leathery whisper, releasing a faint earthy musk—like damp stone and old blood—into the forge's smoky air.

"We tailor it into a sleeveless tunic, quilted tight, and pack the inner channels with raw pond-spider silk and bundled ox-hair."

His scarred fingers traced the natural grain of the material, following the direction of the coarse bristles.

"It breathes reasonably well, but more importantly, if a cultivator strikes you, the silk-stuffed boar hide will rapidly compress, expanding outward to disperse the shockwave across your entire torso before it can snap your ribs."

The blacksmith ran a hand over the hide once more, feeling its texture as though confirming its quality through touch alone. Then he looked at Shi Yan once more, his expression deadly serious, the forge-light carving deep shadows beneath his scarred brow.

"Please pardon me, Great Venerable, but I must be blunt. Even a cultivator of your caliber will find it difficult to tear this with bare hands."

At this statement, Shi Yan only looked at the blacksmith's single eye—an eye that held no deceit, only absolute confidence in his craft. The pale gray iris was steady, unflinching, illuminated by the orange glow of the forge.

Shi Yan fell silent, though beneath his hat, his mind was spinning rapidly. His posture remained utterly still, but the faint tension in his shoulders suggested intense calculation beneath the surface calm.

Back then, Phantom-Rank, and now Feral-Rank?

When he had spoken with Su Yin at the Vermilion Pavilion, she had casually referred to the monster he killed as a "Demonic Beast King"—the absolute peak of Tier-1. The memory flickered through his mind with the clarity of a mission debrief: her elegant fingers wrapped around the jade cup, the faint curve of her lips as she'd named the creature with such careless ease.

Since this blacksmith believed Shi Yan was a Late-Stage Tier-1 expert, and still felt this Feral-Rank hide would challenge him, it meant "Feral" was likely the native classification for an Early- or Mid-Tier-1 threat. A ranking system. Another piece of intelligence filed away.

More importantly, it solved Shi Yan's most glaring economic flaw.

During his fight in the swamp, trading a single blow with a Tier-2 cultivator had shattered the radius bone in his left arm. He could still recall the sensation—not pain, the System had suppressed that—but the sick, grinding wrongness of bone fragments shifting inside his forearm, the sudden loss of structural integrity that had made his hand useless for three critical seconds.

The System's [Emergency Vessel Triage] had successfully rebuilt the bone, but it had cost him nearly 450 Dao Embers to forcefully weave his biology back together. 450 embers he could have spent on cultivation, on techniques, on survival.

Hmm… If a thick layer of this so-called Stoneback Boar demonic beast hide could disperse the kinetic shockwave of a cultivator's blunt-force attack before it cracked his bones, then it was worth buying. Cost-benefit analysis favored investment. Preventative armor over emergency healing.

Perfect.

After a brief moment of thought, Shi Yan gave a single nod, the motion economical and decisive.

"Excellent." Yet his gaze remained on the armor, calm and sharp as a blade's edge, already moving to the next consideration.

"The outer layer—if it is wrapped in ordinary cloth, then once it enters rain or mire, it will drink in water and foul earth alike."

His gloved fingers made a brief, dismissive gesture, as though pushing away something unacceptable.

"In the marsh, such a thing is no different from binding stones to one's body. I have no desire to wear an armor robe that grows heavier with every storm."

The blacksmith's eyes brightened at once, that same spark of professional recognition flaring anew. His lips pulled back in something that might have been a smile, revealing teeth stained by years of smoke and forge-dust.

Without further delay, he spread open a sheet of pitch-black hide upon the forging table with both hands, the material unrolling with a soft, serpentine hiss. The moment it unfurled, it seemed to drink in the firelight of the furnace—not reflecting, but absorbing—leaving even the surrounding glow dimmer by a measure. The effect was subtle but undeniable, like a shadow given physical form. Even the orange flames seemed reluctant to touch its surface.

"If Great Venerable finds woven cloth unfit, then we need not use cloth at all," the blacksmith said with a faint smile, his voice carrying the quiet pride of a man revealing a treasure.

"This is the hide of an Ironfang Panther, a Feral-Rank demonic beast born in the deep marshes. It treads the black waters year-round, yet neither damp rot nor muddy filth can cling to its skin." His palm smoothed across the surface, and even in that simple gesture, it was clear: no moisture clung to his hand. The hide remained utterly dry, almost slick, as though coated in invisible oil.

"Once refined, this hide rejects water by its own nature, and its surface swallows light rather than casting it back." He gestured toward the unfurled sheet, inviting inspection.

"Whether beneath moonlight or firelight, it is difficult for the eye to seize."

As he spoke, he drew out a palm-sized armor piece—a curved section, already shaped and hardened—and placed it before Shi Yan with the careful reverence of a man handling something valuable. His scarred finger tapped lightly against its surface, producing a low, dense ring—not the bright ping of thin metal, but a deeper, more resonant sound, like striking a hollow stone. The vibration traveled through the worktable, felt more than heard.

"Within the panther hide, one may set plates forged from Blood-Quenched River Iron. This material may not compare to deep-mountain divine iron, much less spirit jade or artifact tempered by spiritual fire, yet among mortal metals it is counted as excellent."

His tone carried the weight of a craftsman who knew both the limits and the worth of his materials—neither overselling nor underselling.

"Its nature is tough, but not dead and rigid. Once forged properly, it yields where it should yield and hardens where it must harden." The words came with the cadence of a lesson repeated a hundred times to apprentices, polished smooth by repetition.

The blacksmith lifted the sample piece in his massive, scar-knuckled hand and bent it slightly—just enough to show its resilience.