There was a roaring in the air akin to the sound of a rushing storm. Heat like the fires of the underworld blasted outward from the restricted opening on the furnace. If a normal person were standing even in the main room of the workshop it was likely they would suffer burns all over their body, and if they approached within a few feet of the forge their clothing and even their hair would combust into flames. Sage was pushing the fire to a crazy temperature with the constant use of Divine Breath, stoking the fire stones into an inferno.

Such crazy temperatures weren’t necessary for forging either type of steel, it was instead to collect a special form of Qi. Sage used a pair of tongs to move a small, specially built crucible into the furnace. Array symbols all over its surface started to light up. In order to forge special materials like demonic beast parts the physical heat of the flames wasn’t the important part. Instead the flames gave rise to their own energy. Similar to the natural power of the heaven and earth, it was a natural power of the flames. Since he hadn’t cultivated a flame of his own, he had to use fire stones as a power source. Divine Breath only served to amplify them both in power and efficiency. The small crucible he was moving into the flames had arrays on it to harness the power of the flames channeling it into the pile of Manticore claws contained within.

The Manticore claws, and the Grimfire Gryphon talons, were intended as a supporting material. Each set came from a single beast, creating a unity between each part. In addition, by melting them down it evened out the material, creating a better unity between them. While he thought it might remove an individual flare from the many claws or talons, he wasn’t a grandmaster creating a set of living blades. He needed each blade to be as similar and unified as possible. Sage felt carefully with his spirit sense, pulling the crucible out of the flames as soon as it had been saturated with fire energy. The claws within melting into a strange liquid. Spinning around he positioned the crucible over a tray that looked like an odd muffin tin. There were many small depressions, each of them having a little symbol inlaid. He began to pour the liquid, filling the small disc shaped depressions with the unusual liquid. Once that was done he set the crucible aside and placed his hands onto the floor, bringing to life a formation that was inscribed beneath the trays. The Quenching Formation. Sage didn’t know the specifics of metallurgical science from modern day Earth, but he did know that the quenching of heated metal was an integral step to impart desired qualities to a finished metal. Instead, he was quite familiar with the quenching abilities of this world. Instead of crudely dunking the hot metal into a bath or water or oil, a Quenching Formation was used. All sorts of temperatures or liquids could be produced, instantly bombarding a work from above, below, any one side, multiple sides, or even all of them at once. He had no idea how it compared to the technology from Earth, but he did know that extremely powerful cultivators had vision as powerful as a microscope and they had access to materials many times more powerful than anything he’d heard of on Earth. The formation stopped glowing and the trays filled with small discs finally cooled. Each disc was imprinted with a single character: ‘Sword’.

Now we’re getting somewhere.

A few hours later the sound of rhythmic clanking of metal to metal rang out within the workshop. Sage wore a special set of gloves on his hands, found in the workshop, that protected him from the extreme heat and let him forgo the use of a set of tongs. Merely reaching into the flames and pulling out a length of red hot metal. He set it atop an anvil, currently covered in glowing formations, and then brought down his other hand, swinging a hammer down against the piece of glowing Spirit Steel. After a dozen strikes he lifted the metal and pushed it back into the forge, drawing out another piece of metal from just beside it and repeating the process.

Currently, there were twenty pieces of metal inside the forge. As he’d got enough materials to forge twenty Cloudsteel swords, he was working with the Spirit Steel in batches of twenty as well. After five practice runs, he was sure he’d be competent enough with the real work on the final set. He split his time equally between all twenty blades, gradually shaping each blade. His hammer struck down and started to flatten out the first round bar. Then he drew out the next bar and started to flatten it. Each one following to match the progress of the first sword, and then slightly changing the first sword and starting the whole thing over again.

While that workshop was inundated with activity the attention of city, and the whole province, was focused on a large stage where thousands of young geniuses had gathered. It was the beginning of the tournament and the excitement in the crowd was apparent from the sheer volume of noise in the surroundings. Finally, the appointed time had begun to near and upon that stage filled with young geniuses an older gentleman suddenly appeared. The picture of an eminent scholar he had fine robes, simple in style yet perfectly clean, and long; like he could sweep away the concerns of the world with a wave of his sleeves. He was immaculately groomed with a fu manchu mustache and an equally long narrow goatee. He wore a cylindrical hat, shorter in the front and peaking upwards in the back. As he appeared on the stage a hush fell over the crowd, those who knew who he was showing respect with silence. Others who didn’t know quickly found out from the wave of whispers and they too shut their mouths.

“The Trial Master is here!”

A gasp of exclamation was heard from one excited villager. A villager that was quickly slapped a few times by the nearby locals, embarrassed by the outburst and working to quiet the rude fellow. With such a large and diverse crowd the same thing happened a few times before finally there was complete silence among this sea of spectators. They were all gathered in the largest city square, spilling into the neighboring businesses and filling up the massive set of stadium seating that had been erected across two of the largest city streets specifically for this tournament. The ‘Trial Master’ cleared his throat and the sound echoed across the whole of the city square, the stadium seats as well as down the two still open main streets that were flooded with people. Even if they couldn’t be in the square to watch the tournament they were packing the streets to try and get a glimpse of the proceedings.

“Everyone participating in the tournament, please step onto the stage.”

The Trial Master wasted no time, getting directly to the start of the show and calling up everyone to participate. A few of the young geniuses started to slowly walk out of the crowd, strutting up to the stage in order to get everyone’s attention. They wanted everyone to look at them and have rumors spread about their names. Some had even had all their friends and lackeys spread out in the crowd in order to cite their accomplishments just at this point. Wanting their reputation to grow by taking the spotlight. The problem was, this wasn’t a singular person’s idea. Easily dozens of these spoiled attention seekers were wanting to do the same thing. As such, they started to take turns, only one of them choosing to walk out of the crowd at a time. Treating this as their own personal ‘ring entrance’. The Trial Master was no stranger to these arrogant little upstarts.

“Only those who are on the stage within the next thirty seconds will be able to participate in the tournament.”

This sudden announcement lit a fire under the many arrogant young masters and genius cultivators, each of them not only having to forgo their vain entrances, but also having to use movement techniques to weave through the huge crowd and reach the stage before the time ran out. Many in the crowd couldn’t help but laugh. These supremely arrogant ‘young geniuses’ were running as fast as they could and dodging around even normal civilians trying to reach the stage in time. One of them wasn’t going to make it in time so he chose to break the rules and instead of avoiding civilians he smashed his way through them, killing a half dozen regular people in his haste to reach the stage.

Just then, before he could kill anyone else in his direct path, he suddenly stopped in place. A thin vertical red line appeared on his forehead and slowly grew longer, down his nose, over his lips, down his chin and neck. A few seconds later, that red line grew wider until a horrifying sight appeared. The rushing young genius was split directly in half. The two parts of his body falling directly to the left and right.

“Those who break my rules will be punished without exception!”