The rhythmic clang of Nie Ruhai’s hammer against the anvil became the relentless pulse of Ma Jianzhou’s existence. Days blurred into weeks, each marked by the searing heat of the forge, the acrid bite of ash, and the bone-deep ache that gnawed at his seventy-year-old frame. Nie Ruhai, silent as the grave, worked him without cease. Not with words, but with an unrelenting gaze and a precise, brutal kick to the small of his back, to his hip, to his elbow – correcting, always correcting, the smallest imperfection in his swing. Ma felt less like an apprentice and more like a lump of raw ore, hammered and refined, his impurities purged by pain. His hands, once gnarled and frail, grew calloused beyond recognition. His muscles, once atrophied, screamed with a new, strange vigor before collapsing into exhaustion each night. He would wake to a body that felt both broken and remade, his brittle bones protesting one moment, then settling into an unfamiliar solidity the next. He coughed up black phlegm, sweat ran in rivulets down his soot-streaked face, and his mind, once filled with despair, fixed entirely on surviving the next strike, the next command communicated through a silent, unyielding shove. He hated the blacksmith, hated the forge, hated the endless cycle of agony, but something in the relentless discipline resonated with a buried part of him. He was becoming something else, something harder, though he knew not what. One sweltering afternoon, as Ma Jianzhou, stripped to the waist, hammered a stubborn piece of slag-iron on a smaller auxiliary anvil, the heavy oak doors of the forge creaked open. Four figures, draped in scarlet robes from the volcano's caldera, stepped into the dim interior. Their eyes, accustomed to the searing light of the main foundries, took a moment to adjust, but their arrogant smiles were immediate. “Look what the ash-wind blew in,” sneered the leader, a burly man with a chipped tooth. He swept a disdainful glance over Ma Jianzhou’s sweating, grimy form. “An old dog, still chasing the hammer. Has your sect finally started recruiting from ditch refuse, Master Blacksmith?” His tone was mocking, edged with a casual cruelty that made the other swordsmen snicker. Nie Ruhai did not respond, his back to them, lost in the precise dance of his own forging. The visitors fanned out, their gazes lingering on the various ironworks. They were here for the monthly tribute – raw smelted iron and custom-forged parts for the fortress's heat-drawn engines, a payment extracted from Ash-Bone for its continued existence beneath the mountain. Among them was a youth, no older than sixteen, with eyes like polished obsidian and a jade-forged blade hanging from his hip. He regarded Ma Jianzhou with a look of pure contempt. “Master Blacksmith,” the youth said, his tone smooth, deceptively polite, yet laced with an icy disdain. “Your… apprentice… moves like a snail. This batch of iron he’s working will be wasted. Such incompetence is an insult to our time.” He drew his weapon, its translucent green length humming with restrained power. It was a ceremonial weapon, but its edge was keen enough to part flesh and bone with ease. “Perhaps a lesson in efficiency is required.” Ma Jianzhou, startled by the sudden voice, paused mid-swing, turning slowly. The old instincts, ingrained from a lifetime of being dismissed, made him want to apologize, to cower. But the incessant hammering, the breaking and remaking of his body, had forged something new. His gaze, though still weary, held a stubborn glint. Wei Kang, without a flicker of emotion, raised his sword. “You move too slowly, old man. Such a waste of air. Let me cleanse this inefficiency.” The jade blade arced through the air, a whisper of pressurized heat trailing behind it, aimed directly at Ma Jianzhou’s throat. It was not meant as a warning, but a casual execution, a demonstration of authority. Time seemed to stretch. Ma Jianzhou saw the flash of green, felt the cold press of air. The old man, who had once been so desperate, so broken, reacted not with fear, but with an instinct that transcended thought. His right hand, a landscape of callouses and scarred knuckles, shot out. Not to parry, not to grab, but simply to block, a reflex born of endless, brutal strikes against solid iron. The green blade, honed to cleave bone, met Ma Jianzhou’s bare palm with a sickening *crack*. Instead of cleaving through flesh, a web of fissures instantly spiderwebbed across its pristine green surface. A second later, with a crack like collapsing river ice, the green stone exploded into a dozen glistening shards, raining down onto the ash-covered floor. One larger piece, the hilt, clattered at the youth's boots. The forge fell silent. The hum of Nie Ruhai’s anvil ceased. The burly swordsman and the others stared, their arrogant smiles frozen in place. The youth, his arm still outstretched in the follow-through of his strike, looked from the splintered remains of his weapon to Ma Jianzhou’s open, utterly unharmed palm. The old man’s hand, now held before him, seemed to shimmer faintly in the heat, every ridge of callus, every hardened knuckle, radiating an unsettling, immutable strength. A small tremor ran through the youth's frame, his pupils contracting into pinpricks. Nie Ruhai, still facing his anvil, merely tilted his head, as if listening. A faint, almost imperceptible curl touched the corner of his lips. Ma Jianzhou, for his part, stared at his own hand as if it belonged to another. The shock of the impossible feat had yet to register fully. The intruders, their faces pale, scrambled out of the forge, leaving behind the ruined jade and their monthly tribute uncollected. The silence in the smithy was profound, broken only by the distant, frantic footsteps of their retreat. They carried a tale of impossible defiance, of a geriatric commoner destroying an enchanted weapon with his bare hand, a humiliation that would not be tolerated. Within the hour, the news reached the Inner Peak, directly to the chambers of Elder Pei Lingshuang. Pei Lingshuang, a woman whose beauty was as sharp and unforgiving as the mountain peaks, listened to the youth's stammered account, her expression cold and impassive. Her blood-red robes seemed to absorb the light, her polished jade fingernails tapping a slow, deliberate rhythm against her armrest. “A seventy-year-old vagrant,” she finally murmured, her voice like frost on granite, “cracked a Peak-grade blade to splinters. With his bare hand. This isn’t skill, it’s an abomination. A stolen physical Dao, perhaps, or a forbidden cultivation technique transferred to a failing body.” Her eyes narrowed, gleaming with a dangerous intensity. “The Ash-Bone village, it seems, has harbored a thief. Send the Ironclad Enforcers. Raze that wretched hamlet. Bring me the old man. I will personally extract the secret of his ‘body art,’ even if I have to flay it from his bones.” Her command echoed through the vaulted volcanic halls, sealing the settlement's fate.

Slag and Bone