The return of the crippled mercenary leader to the Wang Clan’s central pavilion was like a drop of cold water falling into boiling oil.
The old elder with the scarred jaw stared down at the bleeding, tendon-severed wrist of his finest vanguard.
His face twisted into an expression of absolute, pale disbelief.
Four hardened Fourth Layer killers were gone—their bodies left to rot in the northern ravines.
And the monster who had dismantled them had done so without even drawing his steel weapon.
The warning left by Ye Chen echoed through the high stone pillars of the palace, chilling the elders to the very marrow of their bones.
“Tell their elders that their contract has failed. And tell them that when the Great City Tournament begins… I will personally clean their entire lineage from the records of this city.”
“He is no ordinary stray,” the Wang Clan Leader muttered, his voice flat and heavy with calculated dread.
“An iron body that can shatter spiritual steel spears with raw skin… if he enters the Great City Tournament, he will tear our younger lineage apart.”
He turned to the shadowed corner of the pavilion, where a messenger waited silently.
“We must communicate with the City Lord’s mansion. Xue Ironwood must be informed of this anomaly before the stage is built.”
Meanwhile, far away from the political panic of the city ruling families, Ye Chen walked through the low, industrial alleys of the Lin Clan’s outer estate.
The air here was thick with the suffocating smell of burning coal, sulfur, and raw iron.
The rhythmic, heavy thuds of steam-hammers and hand-anvils resonated through the stone walls, creating a constant, deafening wall of sound.
This is where the real weapons are made, Ye Chen thought, his eyes sweeping across the soot-stained workshops.
Not in the polished pavilions of the inner sect.
Here.
In the fire and the filth.
He looked down at the basic iron sword hanging at his waist.
Your time is running out, old friend.
Though his Asura Iron Flesh was now dense enough to withstand ordinary blades, his basic iron sword was beginning to fail him.
The backward-flowing vacuum energy of the Shadow-Sunder Slash put too much structural pressure on the cheap mortal metal.
If he were to execute his strongest stance against a Fifth Layer genius like Xue Ironwood, his own sword would likely explode into fragments from the sheer kinetic velocity.
He needed a heavy, reinforced blade that could handle the absolute vacuum of his power.
And I know exactly where to find it.
His steps led him to a small, dilapidated blacksmith shop at the very edge of the forge district.
Unlike the flashy armor pavilions of the inner sect, this shop was dark, covered in thick layers of soot, and empty of customers.
A faded wooden sign hung above the door, its letters barely legible: Tang’s Ironworks.
Ye Chen pushed open the creaking door and stepped inside.
An old, cyclopean man with a heavily scarred right eye and a wooden prosthetic left leg sat on a low stool, slowly sharpening a rusted iron plowshare against a giant grindstone.
His hands were gnarled, his back bent, his breathing slow and labored.
To any ordinary observer, he was just a crippled drunkard—a useless relic of a bygone era.
But Ye Chen’s refined soul awareness saw something else entirely.
His core is suppressed, Ye Chen thought, his eyes narrowing.
But it is not broken.
Beneath that mortal shell lies the spiritual signature of a master forge-cultivator.
A man who once forged weapons for kings.
This was Old Man Tang.
A man the clan deemed a useless, crippled drunkard.
A man whose hidden spiritual signatures revealed a completely different history to Ye Chen’s refined soul awareness.
Ye Chen stepped inside the shop, his boots clicking softly against the coal-dusted floorboards.
He did not speak.
He unclipped his basic iron sword from his waist and placed it gently onto the iron anvil before the old man.
Old Man Tang did not look up immediately.
He finished the long, scraping stroke down the flat of the plowshare before shifting his single, clouded eye toward the basic weapon.
“Outer court grey robes, but your footsteps carry the weight of a mountain, boy,” he said, his voice rough as gravel.
“If you are here to look for a shiny silver rapier like those inner court dandies, you have crawled into the wrong hole. I only forge iron for the fields.”
Ye Chen did not smile.
“I do not need a shiny blade to cut a path, Master Tang,” he said softly.
His dark, ancient eyes locked onto the old man’s scarred face, stripping away the illusion of his drunken facade instantly.
“I need an unyielding weight. I need an iron blade that has been hammered ten thousand times, infused with the black ore of the deep ravines. A blade that can hold a vacuum without shattering its spine.”
The old blacksmith froze.
The hand holding the plowshare tightened until his thick knuckles turned stark white.
He slowly rose from his stool, his wooden leg thudding heavily against the floor as he stood to his full height.
The weak, trembling aura of a crippled mortal vanished.
For a split second, a deep, suffocating heat radiated from his massive chest—the sign of a master forge-cultivator whose core had been suppressed but never broken.
“A vacuum?” Old Man Tang whispered, his single eye narrowing with intense curiosity and sudden, dangerous suspicion.
“There are only three techniques in the entire southern realm that require a vacuum of energy to strike. And all of them belong to the long-dead Eclipse sects of the upper continents.”
He stepped closer, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper.
“Who are you, boy? How does a minor stray of the Lin Clan know the vocabulary of the high smiths?”
“Who I am is of no consequence to this lower realm,” Ye Chen murmured, stepping closer.
His presence unleashed a brief, localized wave of his supreme soul pressure—stabilizing the old man’s volatile energy, but also reminding him of the abyss that stood before him.
“But I know that twenty years ago, you were the Chief Artificer of the Azure Cloud Sect before your core was pierced by Su Meng’er’s father. I know you hide here, waiting for a fire that will never return.”
He paused.
“I am offering you that fire.”
Old Man Tang staggered back a step, his breath catching in his throat.
A primal, naked shock filled his face.
The secret of his past was something he had buried deeper than the roots of the mountains—yet this sixteen-year-old boy had spoken it as if it were common knowledge.
“You… you know of the Azure Cloud Sect…” the old man stammered, tears of raw emotion welling in his scarred eye.
Twenty years, he thought, his heart pounding.
Twenty years I have hidden here.
And this boy… this boy speaks of it as if he was there.
“Forge me the blade,” Ye Chen said, his voice carrying the calm, absolute authority of a monarch.
“And when I ascend to the city throne, I will hand you the head of the man who pierced your core.”
Old Man Tang stared at the young man before him for a long, silent minute.
He did not see a fragile outer disciple.
He saw an unstoppable storm cloaked in human skin.
He knows, the old man thought, a deep, long-forgotten fire igniting within the deepest embers of his soul.
He knows who I was.
And he is offering me what I have wanted for twenty years.
Revenge.
“Very well!” the old blacksmith roared, his voice shaking the soot off the rafters as he grabbed a massive, hundred-pound iron hammer from the wall.
“I have a block of Black-Meteorite Iron hidden beneath the forge floorboards—an ore so dense it absorbs the heat of the furnace without melting. It has waited twenty years for a master worthy of its weight.”
He slammed the hammer against the anvil, sending sparks flying.
“Stand back, boy! Tonight, we forge a weapon that will make the heavens bleed!”
For the next six hours, the interior of the small shop turned into a raging crucible of fire and liquid iron.
Old Man Tang hammered the black metal with frantic, monstrous strength.
Sweat poured down his face.
His wooden leg creaked under the strain.
But he did not stop.
Ye Chen stood by the edge of the forge, his hands tucked inside his wide sleeves.
His silver Qi subtly flowed into the air to stabilize the cooling arrays of the metal, weaving his own energy directly into the spine of the black blade.
This is not just a weapon, Ye Chen thought, watching the old man work.
This is a piece of his soul.
His last gift to the world.
He understood.
Old Man Tang was not just forging a blade.
He was reclaiming his identity.
His pride.
His purpose.
I will not let him down.
As the morning sun began to pierce through the soot-covered windows, Old Man Tang plunged the glowing red steel into a vat of cold spiritual water.
A massive explosion of white steam filled the room, hissing loudly as the metal hardened into its final shape.
When the steam cleared, a heavy, unadorned greatsword lay upon the anvil.
It had no gold trim, no glowing gems, and no polished reflection.
It was a solid, matte-black slab of meteorite iron—four fingers wide and twice as heavy as an ordinary broadsword.
Yet, as it rested there, the air directly around the edge seemed to warp faintly, as if the weapon itself was drawing the ambient light into a black void.
Ye Chen stepped forward.
He extended his right hand and gripped the rough leather-wrapped hilt.
The moment his fingers locked onto the iron, the black veins on his arm throbbed violently.
The Asura Iron Flesh and the heavy black blade formed a perfect, seamless bond of kinetic mass.
He lifted the hundred-pound weapon with a single, effortless motion, swinging it in a short, horizontal arc through the empty shop.
WHIP!
There was no sound of rushing wind, no reflection of light.
A clean, silent vacuum of air cut through the space, cleanly shearing a massive iron anvil thirty yards away into two perfect halves before the sound could even register.
Old Man Tang fell to his knees, his single eye wide with profound, religious awe as he looked at the clean cut on the anvil.
“Flawless…” he whispered.
“It is a true Eclipse Blade. It has no rank, yet it can split the spiritual shields of the True Element realm by raw mass alone.”
Ye Chen slid the massive black greatsword onto his back, the heavy leather strap anchoring it against his blue robes.
He looked down at the old blacksmith, his face perfectly serene, his dark pupils carrying a terrifyingly ancient depth.
“The tool is ready,” Ye Chen whispered, walking toward the exit of the shop.
He paused at the door and looked back over his shoulder.
“Two months remain. Lin Hao, Wang Qiang, Xue Ironwood… bring whatever armies you possess.”
His eyes glinted with cold fire.
“The harvest of the city is about to begin.”
Author’s Note:
Old Man Tang has been hiding for twenty years.
And Ye Chen just gave him a reason to live again.
🔥
The Eclipse Blade is forged — a weapon that can split spiritual shields by raw mass alone.
The tournament is two months away.
And Ye Chen is finally armed for war.