The final breath left Yoriichi's lungs not as a gasp of exhaustion, but as a measured, steady stream of white vapor that seemed to cut through the oppressive heat of the Smithing Hall.
He didn't waste a fraction of a second. The hammer rose.
This time, the rhythm was different. It was not just the solitary beat of a lone craftsman fighting the steel; it was a duet.
Tie Shan stood at the edge of the anvil, his massive hands hovering over the crucible. The Grandmaster Smith did not touch the metal, but his 8-Star Dou Shi aura flared with absolute precision. He blanketed the immediate area in a dense, heavy layer of Earth-attribute Dou Qi.
This invisible pressure chamber acted like a vice, forcefully suppressing the volatile, explosive nature of the Solar Ape core as it was submerged once more into the molten crimson sludge of the Solar Flare Ore.
"He is neutralizing the ambient instability," Yoriichi realized, his crimson eyes tracking the microscopic shifts in the metal's grain. "It allows me to focus purely on the structural alignment."
The hammer fell.
CLANG.
A shockwave of sparks erupted, but the core did not rebel. The Earth Dou Qi held it in place, acting as a temporary, stabilizing matrix.
Yoriichi fell into a trance. The Selfless State washed over him, erasing his fatigue, his pain, and the stifling heat. He saw the microscopic air pockets—the tiny flaws that would compromise the blade's integrity under the stress of Sun Breathing. He hunted them down with relentless, pinpoint strikes.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
He drew the metal out. He flattened the sides. He angled the strike to force the dense core energy toward the edge, leaving the softer, more flexible iron along the spine. Slowly, agonizingly, the stubborn ore began to yield. It began to curve upwards, forming the elegant, lethal geometry of a Katana.
"Now! Quench it!" Tie Shan roared over the din of the forge, sweat pouring down his own face from the immense strain of maintaining the Dou Qi suppression.
Yoriichi gripped the glowing, cherry-red blade with his tongs. He didn't use water. He plunged it directly into a barrel of specially prepared Tier 1 beast oil.
HISSSSSSS!
A massive plume of thick, black smoke rocketed toward the ceiling, smelling of charred bone and ozone. The oil boiled violently, but Yoriichi held the blade perfectly still, ensuring the cooling rate was uniform.
The hissing slowly died down.
With trembling arms, Yoriichi pulled the metal from the oil.
It was magnificent.
The blade was roughly three feet long, curving perfectly into a razor-sharp single edge. The metal was not a standard gray; it possessed a deep, mesmerizing crimson hue, and a distinct, fiery temper-line (hamon) ran along the edge, looking like a captured solar flare. It was missing a handle, only possessing a bare tang, but the soul of the weapon was there.
Yoriichi dropped the heavy tongs.
The Selfless State shattered. The adrenaline that had been keeping him upright vanished in an instant.
His knees simply melted. He collapsed onto the ash-covered floor of the Smithing Hall, his chest heaving violently as his lungs desperately pulled in oxygen. His bare skin was flushed, radiating intense heat, and every muscle fiber in his arms screamed in agony. He couldn't lift a finger if his life depended on it.
Yet, as he gazed up from the floor at the crimson blade resting on the anvil, a profound sense of satisfaction washed over him.
"It is born," he thought, his vision blurring slightly. "It was all worth it."
Tie Shan let out a massive, booming laugh that shook the soot from the rafters.
"By the Heavens, kid!" Tie Shan wiped his soot-stained face, staring at the katana with unadulterated awe. "You actually did it. The geometry... it's bizarre, but the edge alignment is flawless. This isn't just a Tier 1 weapon. With that Solar Ape core fused inside... this is pushing the boundary of Tier 2."
Tie Shan couldn't resist. The instinct of a Grandmaster Smith demanded that he appraise the creation.
He picked up the bare tang of the blade with a leather cloth to protect his hand. He held it up to the dim light of the forge.
"Let's see how it conducts," Tie Shan muttered.
It was standard practice in the Dou Qi Continent. A weapon's true value was measured by how efficiently it could channel a cultivator's Dou Qi. Tie Shan carefully injected a tiny, hair-thin sliver of his Earth Dou Qi into the base of the blade.
Instantly, a faint, glowing orange light ignited at the very tip of the katana.
Yoriichi, lying on the ground, watched the glow. A sudden, terrible instinct—honed from decades of fighting demons—screamed in his mind.
"The resonance is wrong."
Tie Shan's triumphant smile vanished. His expression hardened into a mask of pure terror.
The faint glow at the tip didn't just stay there. It reacted violently with the foreign Dou Qi. The wild, untamed energy of the Solar Ape, which had been forcefully compressed into the atomic structure of the steel without the aid of an Alchemist's neutralizing fluid, suddenly found a catalyst.
The glowing orange light violently intensified, turning a blinding, unstable white. It shot down the surface of the blade like a lightning bolt, emitting a high-pitched, screeching sound that made the air itself vibrate.
"KID, GET BACK!" Tie Shan roared.
Yoriichi tried to move. He sent the command to his legs to execute the Shadowless Sun Treas, to throw himself out of the blast radius. But his body betrayed him. His Dou Qi was completely empty; his muscles were torn and locked in extreme fatigue. He couldn't even twitch.
Seeing the boy paralyzed, Tie Shan didn't hesitate.
He threw the screeching, glowing blade as hard as he could toward the far, reinforced brick wall of the station. In the same fluid motion, the burly blacksmith lunged forward, grabbing Yoriichi by the belt of his trousers, and violently hurled them both backward, diving behind the massive iron bulk of the main forge.
SCREEEEEEE—
BOOM!
The explosion was deafening. It wasn't a massive, hall-destroying blast, but a highly concentrated, localized detonation of pure thermal and kinetic energy.
A shockwave of blistering heat and concussive force ripped through the small station. The heavy wooden workbench was instantly vaporized into splinters. The smaller anvil was lifted off the ground and thrown like a toy. A localized hurricane of fire roared outward, turning the area into a blinding inferno.
Behind the main forge, Tie Shan grunted as a wave of heat washed over them, shielding Yoriichi with his massive body.
But shrapnel is unpredictable.
A tiny, jagged piece of the shattered crimson blade ricocheted off a stone pillar and shot past Tie Shan's guard.
Slice.
It grazed Yoriichi's bare chest, cutting a shallow, diagonal line across his pectoral muscle before burying itself in the dirt floor. Blood, stark and bright, immediately welled up from the wound, trickling down his ash-covered skin.
For a moment, the only sound was the roaring of the flames devouring what was left of the station.
Tie Shan scrambled to his feet. Cursing violently, he rushed to the large emergency water vats kept near the quenching stations. He hoisted a massive barrel that would require two normal men to lift and hurled the water directly into the heart of the fire.
HISSSSSS!
A blinding cloud of white steam filled the hall. After a few tense, frantic minutes of kicking dirt and pouring more water, the angry flames finally succumbed, leaving behind a smoking, ruined crater where Yoriichi's station had once been.
Tie Shan dropped the empty barrel, panting heavily. He coughed, waving the steam away.
He turned around.
Yoriichi was sitting on the ground. The blast had blown away what was left of his ruined upper garments; he was clad only in his tattered trousers, which stopped at the knees. The shallow cut on his chest bled sluggishly, painting a stark red line over his heart.
But Yoriichi didn't seem to notice the pain or the blood.
He was staring listlessly at the smoking crater. Scattered among the black ash and broken brick were tiny, dull shards of crimson steel. The Sun Blade was gone.