The first mission on Haotian's list was deceptively simple: restore a damaged Flame Serpent Sabre to full combat readiness. Its curved blade lay on the workbench before him, scorched black along the edge, the once-fluid carving of a serpent's body dulled into near-oblivion. The weapon's qi channel was fractured in three places, its core metal warped from overuse.
Around him, smiths slowed their work to watch. Some leaned on their hammers, others crossed their arms. Outsiders rarely walked into the forging hall with confidence, and almost never with eleven tasks at once.
Haotian's right eye shimmered faintly — the Eyes of the Universe opening to dissect the weapon's every flaw. In his vision, the sabre's metal grain expanded into a lattice of light, cracks and weaknesses flaring red, the remaining strong lines glowing silver. He traced them with his gaze until the repair process was clear in his mind.
Without asking for advice, he began.
The sabre went into the forge, its surface drinking in the rising heat until it glowed a deep orange. As it warmed, Haotian sorted the materials — an ingot of sky-iron for reinforcement, a measure of powdered emberstone for heat conduction, and a strip of tempered starsteel to re-align the qi channel.
The rhythm of hammer strikes soon followed.Clang.Clang.Clang.
Each blow landed exactly where it needed to, the ringing note clean and sharp. He didn't waste movements or time — every strike either corrected the blade's warped spine, sealed a fracture, or reset the edge's curvature. Sparks scattered in bright arcs, fading before they hit the ground.
Smiths began to murmur."His grip's perfect…""Look at the heat control — it's even across the whole blade.""No apprentice works like that. Hell, some journeymen don't."
The forgemaster from before stood with his arms crossed, watching closely now.
Once the blade's structure was restored, Haotian turned to the qi channel. Using a chisel-fine tool, he inlaid the tempered starsteel into the weapon's spine, the glowing metal sliding into place like water into a mold. He then layered the powdered emberstone into the carving of the serpent, each motion guided by what his inner sight told him about the weapon's flow.
When he quenched it, the steam rose in a clean pillar — no hissing, no angry sputter from trapped impurities.
The finished sabre gleamed, the serpent's body restored in sharp relief, its eyes catching the forge-light as if alive. A faint, pulsing heat radiated from it, the mark of a repaired qi channel ready for battle.
The forgemaster stepped forward, running a practiced hand along the blade's length. He tested the balance with a few swings, then exhaled slowly. "Perfect."
That word spread quickly. By the time the forgemaster placed the sabre on the completed rack, several messengers had already left the hall to report upward.
Within the hour, two elders from the Forging Hall stood in the shadows near the gate, watching Haotian start on his second mission. One of them leaned toward the other. "The boy moves like he's been smithing for decades."
The other's eyes narrowed. "Elder Sun was right. The alchemists want him, but if he works like this, we might have to fight for him."
By the time Haotian finished the second task — repairing a fractured qi-harness plate — their expressions had shifted from curiosity to calculation.
Somewhere deeper in the sect, word was already spreading:An outer disciple was making the impossible look routine… again.
After the repaired Flame Serpent Sabre was set aside, Haotian moved seamlessly into the next task — reforging a cracked qi-harness plate. Then came the third mission, a battered starsteel spearhead whose tip had splintered from overchanneling. The forge's heat wrapped around him like a second skin, the rhythmic clang of his hammer folding time into steady, metered intervals.
The fourth mission was a personal commission: a light-forged gauntlet for an outer disciple who favored speed over brute strength. Haotian shaped the alloy mix himself, adjusting the mineral balance to optimize qi flow without sacrificing durability. When the gauntlet emerged from the quench, polished and perfectly balanced, the surrounding smiths murmured again — a mix of admiration and disbelief.
It was only when he set the gauntlet aside that Haotian straightened and, for the first time all day, glanced toward the high windows. The sun was low.
A sharp, familiar voice cut through the clangor. "HAOTIAN!"
He turned just in time to see Lianhua striding into the hall, her eyes narrowed, one hand on her hip. "Do you have any idea what time it is?!"
Around them, smiths looked on with open curiosity, some grinning at the sight of the composed young forgemaster-in-the-making getting scolded like a truant.
Haotian wiped his hands on a cloth and spoke calmly. "I do. That's why I'm stopping now." He turned to the forgemaster, bowing slightly. "I'll return to complete the remaining missions over the next few days."
The forgemaster studied him for a moment, then gave a single approving nod. "Alright. Your station will be ready."
With that, Haotian removed his apron and walked toward the exit, Lianhua shadowing him with a glare sharp enough to cut steel. They stepped out into the cooler evening air, and she wasted no time.
"You disappear again without telling anyone, and you spend the whole day here? I thought you were just going to check the mission hall!"
"I was," Haotian replied, his tone still steady. "I accepted forging missions. Four are done. The rest will be finished soon. I was watching the time, which is why I stopped and came back."
She folded her arms, unconvinced. "And if you hadn't looked up?"
"I did," he said plainly, then added, "You were coming to find me anyway."
Her sigh was equal parts irritation and reluctant acceptance.
"To make it up to you," Haotian continued, "I'll take everyone to eat. I'm holding all the contribution points — it's my treat."
That softened the glares. By the time they reached the meal hall, the guards were already in good spirits. The group found a long table, and the night filled with the clatter of bowls, the steam of roasted meats, and the easy rhythm of conversation.
Afterward, Haotian took out his emblem and transferred a portion of his points to each of them. "If I end up… occupied in my work, you won't starve. Use these as needed."
Lianhua's lips curved into the faintest smile. "You mean if you go into your shut-in mode again."
"Exactly," he replied without hesitation.
The others laughed, shaking their heads. But none of them refused the points.
The next morning, the clang of the forging division's hammers had already filled the air by the time Haotian stepped back through the wide gates. The scent of hot iron and burning coal hit him like a familiar wave.
But something was different.
More people were here. Not just smiths and apprentices, but disciples from other divisions — combat, alchemy, even a few robed attendants from the sect's inner halls — scattered around the periphery of the work floor. Conversations hushed the moment he passed, eyes following him with a mixture of curiosity and expectation.
The forgemaster from the previous day spotted him immediately, a knowing smirk on his soot-darkened face. "Your station's ready. Try not to make the others look too bad this time."
Haotian gave a short nod and moved to the central workbench. The first of the remaining missions was waiting — a set of damaged Twin Moon Axes used for paired combat. Both blades were chipped, the shafts warped from repeated qi surges.
The Eyes of the Universe flickered to life, showing the fractured grain patterns within the metal, the weakened points in the hafts. He dismantled the axes completely, retempering the blades with sky-iron reinforcement while shaping new hafts from treated ironwood. Each blow of the hammer rang clear and sharp, the motion so precise that even apprentices who had seen smithing all their lives paused to watch.
By the time the axes were reassembled and polished to a mirror sheen, a small cheer went up from the gathered onlookers. The forgemaster tested the balance, grunted in approval, and set them aside for delivery.
The second mission was a full armor refit — a battered set of Crimson Scale Lightplate that needed both structural and qi-flow repairs. As he worked, more people drifted in, drawn by the steady rhythm of his hammer and the way each project seemed to take shape faster than expected.
Whispers spread among the onlookers."That's his second one this morning…""They say he's an outer disciple.""No outer disciple works like that."
By midday, Haotian had completed three more commissions, each placed carefully on the completed rack. His movements never hurried, yet no moment was wasted — an efficiency that unsettled the older smiths who thought they'd seen every style of forging there was.
From the shadows near the hall's entrance, a pair of Forging Hall elders watched. One leaned toward the other. "The boy's pace is accelerating."
The other's gaze didn't leave Haotian's back. "And he hasn't made a single flawed piece. Elder Sun wasn't exaggerating."
The murmurs in the crowd grew each time a finished weapon or piece of armor left Haotian's bench. Word was spreading quickly beyond the hall — not just about his work, but about the outer disciple who had now impressed two major divisions in as many days.
By the time the forge fires were stoked for the afternoon session, the crowd had doubled. Haotian barely glanced at them. His focus was on the next piece — a commission marked Experimental.
And that, more than anything else, made the elders lean forward.
The mission scroll's details were short but weighty:
Experimental Weapon Commission – Prototype PhaseRequested by: Elder Zhao of the Forging DivisionObjective: Produce a lightweight, high-durability polearm head capable of conducting both fire and lightning qi without degradation.Status: No existing forging method meets all requirements. Creative adaptation encouraged.
Haotian read it twice, then looked at the crate of raw materials provided. It was a mismatched assortment — sky-iron ingots, shards of thundersteel, coils of ember-gold wire, and a block of dense ironwood. Useful in parts, but nowhere near enough for a perfect build if handled traditionally.
The onlookers pressed a little closer. The murmurs shifted from curiosity to anticipation — repairing was one thing, but this was new creation.
The Eyes of the Universe opened, overlaying a lattice of possibilities across his vision. Each material lit up in varying colors, showing its inherent properties: sky-iron's structural resilience, thundersteel's energy conduction, ember-gold's qi amplification. More importantly, he could see how their grain patterns would mesh… and where they would fail.
He began by smelting the sky-iron and thundersteel together in calculated ratios, rotating the crucible at irregular intervals to align their crystalline structures in a way no conventional method would dare. Sparks sprayed upward with each turn, the glow inside the forge shifting from orange to white-hot blue.
Instead of pouring the molten alloy into a standard polearm mold, Haotian built a segmented casting frame on the spot, layering the ember-gold filaments between each pour. This created a composite head with multiple qi channels — each capable of carrying different elemental currents without interference.
One of the older smiths muttered, "That… shouldn't even hold together."
"Unless he's seeing something we don't," another whispered back.
When the final pour settled, Haotian set the mold into a controlled cooling chamber — a mix of mineral dust and slow-fed water vapor — to prevent microfractures. While it cooled, he shaped the ironwood shaft, inlaying slender strips of tempered sky-iron for structural reinforcement and wrapping the grip in layered hide cured for both sweat resistance and qi insulation.
When the weapon head emerged, it gleamed with a faint dual-hued sheen — red where the ember-gold was most concentrated, pale blue where the thundersteel lay closest to the surface. He mounted it on the shaft, the balance so precise that the finished polearm could stand upright on its tip without support.
The forgemaster took it, testing the weight with a few sweeps. The air hummed faintly as he channeled fire qi into the blade — a ripple of heat shimmering along its length. When he switched to lightning, the hum deepened into a sharp, crackling buzz. Both elements flowed cleanly, neither interfering with the other.
The crowd erupted into low, astonished murmurs. The elders exchanged a glance, one of them whispering, "He just solved a conduction problem we've been working on for three years."
Haotian simply wiped his hands, setting the unused scraps neatly aside. "Next mission?" he asked calmly.
The forgemaster's grin widened. "Boy… you just made history in this hall."
Over the next three days, the forge became Haotian's second home. Each morning he arrived before the fires were stoked, each evening he left with the scent of smoke and steel still clinging to him.
The remaining missions fell one after another — a full reforging of a shattered twinblade, a precision recasting of arrowheads meant for qi-infused archery, a structural rebuild of a warhammer so large it took two apprentices just to carry it to his bench. With each project, more disciples came to watch, their numbers spilling beyond the hall's wide gates.
By the time the final mission — a full ceremonial armor restoration — was completed, the entire forging hall had gone quiet to watch him attach the last polished plate. The armor gleamed under the forge-light, its qi channels glowing faintly with reawakened life.
The forgemaster stepped forward, a rare smile creasing his soot-darkened face. "Perfect. Every piece." He took the thick mission scroll from the rack, pressed the division's seal into the parchment with a heavy thunk, and handed it to Haotian.
"I've never been so satisfied with a completed commission run," the forgemaster admitted. Then his eyes narrowed in thought. "Boy, I want you here. I'll pay you two thousand contribution points a month — guaranteed. And any weapon or armor you make can be sold directly to the sect for more points."
Haotian considered it for a moment, then shook his head. "I'm not looking for a monthly post. But… if I could use your materials to craft weapons and armor for my friends, that would be worth my time."
The forgemaster tapped a calloused finger against his arm. "I'll agree — on one condition. They watch you work. The Hall could learn a thing or two from how you move a hammer." His grin sharpened. "But I still stand by my offer."
Haotian's reply was calm and even. "I already have an agreement with Elder Yao in the alchemy division. But… I'll make an exception. If your Hall ever takes a mission or request that you can't complete, you can seek me out. I'll assist."
The forgemaster's brows lifted, then he barked a laugh. "Deal."
They clasped forearms briefly, and Haotian bowed before turning toward the hall's gates.
No sooner had he stepped out than two elders of the Forging Hall strode in. "Where's the boy?" one asked.
"Gone," the forgemaster replied, still holding the stamped scroll.
Their expressions tightened. "What of the offer?"
He shook his head with a sigh. "Refused the post. But we have him for special requests beyond our capabilities — his words."
The elders exchanged glances, then exhaled. "It's something, at least."
The forgemaster allowed himself a small smirk. "More than something. We may not own him, but when the time comes… we'll have the only key that fits the lock."
The training yard was alive with motion when Haotian returned. Lianhua and the guards were mid-drill, blades flashing in the sun, their movements sharper and more fluid than even a week before. Sweat glistened on their brows, but the rhythm in their footwork told him they were settling into their tailored techniques with growing confidence.
They noticed him before he spoke. Lianhua slowed her swing, lowering her sword. "Back from vanishing again?"
Haotian stepped into the shade of the pavilion, the faint scent of forge smoke still clinging to him. "Yes. And this time, I have something for all of you."
The guards exchanged glances. "Something?" Fengrui asked.
"Equipment," Haotian said simply. "Weapons and armor. Not generic sect issue — pieces forged for you alone. Balanced to your techniques, your strengths, your way of moving."
The words hung in the air for a beat. Lianhua's eyes narrowed, though not in suspicion. "You're saying you can make us gear that fits better than anything the sect could issue?"
"I already arranged it with the forgemaster," Haotian explained. "I can use the forging division's materials — with one condition: the Forging Hall watches me work. They want to study my methods."
One of the guards let out a short laugh. "So we get new weapons, and the Forging Hall gets a lesson?"
"Not free," Haotian corrected. "They pay in materials. You benefit from the results."
Lianhua tilted her head slightly, studying his face. "And this isn't going to pull you away from our training?"
"I'll work around it," he replied without hesitation. "The point is to give you the tools that match the techniques I've built for you. Steel and qi need to move as one. Right now, you're wielding steel that wasn't made for you."
That earned a murmur of agreement from the group. Even the most reserved among them looked intrigued.
"When do we start?" Fengrui asked.
"Tomorrow," Haotian said. "We'll go together. You'll see the work as it's finished, and the Forging Hall will see how it's done. When it's over, you'll walk away with something no one else in this sect can wield like you can."
A faint smile curved Lianhua's lips — rare, but genuine. "Then I suppose we'd better be ready."