Shattered Lands: Book 8 of Painting the Mists

by Laplante, Patrick

  The man’s memories and thoughts ran through Cha Ming’s mind. There was truth to his words, but not the full truth. Cha Ming weighed his options and placed a second top-grade spirit stone on the table. “I want this workshop, your attendant’s employment contract, your materials, and your forge. You can keep your hammer and all the weapons you’ve made. You need to leave the city within three days and not return.”

  The man hesitated. He’d spoken truthfully about his situation, but it was a hard world out there. How often did opportunities like this come by? He winced before pushing the two stones back toward Cha Ming. “Your offer is very generous, but I’ll have to pass.”

  Cha Ming placed a third stone on the table. “In addition to these three stones, I’ll give you a smithing inheritance. The inheritance will only be complete to initial master grade, but it should still be useful to your advancement.”

  These last words struck a chord with the man. His eyes shot up and focused on him. “You’d sell a smithing inheritance? For a workshop?”

  “Yes,” Cha Ming said. “Do you accept? I don’t want to waste any more time.”

  “Yes, I accept,” the man said immediately. He ignored Cha Ming’s outstretched hand—perhaps the gesture had no meaning here—and walked over to the back where he found the deed to the property. “I’ll need some time to prepare a writ of sale.”

  “No need,” Cha Ming said. He looked through the documents the man presented him and used creation qi and creation essence to make a similar document in an instant. He bit his finger and infused a hint of Pai Xiao’s presence onto it, which imbued it onto the page where his name was already written. He then passed the document to the man, whose name he still hadn’t bothered to ask.

  “There’s a mistake here,” the man said, pointing to a spot on the page where the date was written. “This is dated ten years ago.”

  “That’s correct,” Cha Ming said. “You sold this business to me ten years ago. That shouldn’t be a problem, should it? You’ve owned it for twenty.”

  The man licked his lips again. He’d begun sweating, despite the absence of the heat from his forge. “That’s fine, but there will be discrepancies. I can’t retroactively change every transaction I’ve made, every registration I’ve filed with the city, and so on.”

  “You don’t need to concern yourself with all this,” Cha Ming said. “I’ll take care of it, and I’d be liable for this mistake anyhow.”

  The man nodded. He bit his finger and sent an infused droplet of blood onto the sheet before signing his name, Li Ning. He then took the spirit stones and gave the ownership documents to Cha Ming, who stored them away in the Clear Sky World.

  “Will you be needing anything else?” Li Ning asked.

  “I’ll be all right,” Cha Ming said. “Oh, what’s the girl’s name from downstairs?”

  “Guo Xiang,” Li Ning replied. “And the blacksmithing inheritance you promised?”

  Strangely, the man didn’t seem concerned about Cha Ming possibly backing out. People in the South had an unusual faith in contracts, it seemed.

  “Right here,” Cha Ming said. He shot his finger out with lightning speed. The man couldn’t even react before a stream of information poured into his head. His eyes went blank for a moment before he finally regained his wits.

  “Thank you,” the man said hoarsely. Though what Cha Ming had given him was worth little in the North, the man was almost tearing up. It seemed simple knowledge like this was worth far more than Cha Ming realized.

  “Pleasure doing business,” Cha Ming said. “Remember, you must leave town within three days.”

  “I will,” the man promised before walking down the steps. As he did, Sun Wukong appeared beside Cha Ming.

  “We could have just stolen his things and changed his memories,” Sun Wukong muttered. “It would have been easier and less time-consuming. More fun too.”

  “But that would have made me a thief,” Cha Ming said. “It’s bad enough that I’ll taking on a part of his identity, his memories of this place, and their memories of him as a basis for my identity. Compensating him generously for it was the least I could do.”

  “Bah, you’re too soft-hearted,” Sun Wukong said. “Then again, I like a challenge. I refuse to believe you can’t be corrupted.”

  “I heard you were quite the trickster in your days,” Cha Ming said.

  “If I called myself the second lord of mischief, no one would dare call themselves first,” Sun Wukong said, grinning from ear to ear. “It’ll take me a few weeks to work my magic on these people. Changing memories and rearranging karma is no easy task. As for the paperwork, you’ll need to pay someone to take care of that.”

  “You just worry about your end of things, and I’ll take care of mine,” Cha Ming said.

  “And what will that be?” Sun Wukong asked.

  “Why, forging, of course,” Cha Ming said. “I’ve done so much reading on the subject. If I’m going to pass myself off as a smith with the Wang family, I might as well do a good job of it.”

  “It’s your time, so you can waste it however you like,” Sun Wukong said, yawning. He disappeared from the room but didn’t reappear in the Clear Sky World. Given his tremendous workload, he wouldn’t return for quite some time. So, Cha Ming no longer paid attention to the spirit. Instead, he began studying a small gem he’d summoned from the Clear Sky World. It was a transcendent-grade hammer focus.

  Though Cha Ming had seen his disciple Ling Dong working with metal, he’d never personally tried to make anything himself. According to all the books he’d read, casting your own hammer was the first step. He poured his transcendent soul into the clear, unaligned gem. He was surprised to see that the gem was, in fact, a soul-based metal inscribed with a formation and a spatial fragment.

  By linking the hammer focus to his soul, he could summon and dismiss it at will. In addition, he could imprint the image of a hammer on it. By infusing his soul force into the gem, it could take on any imprinted shape, like a hammer, a chisel, or knife. Not only would the tool be strong, it would also be highly resistant to heat.

  If I want to learn, it’s probably not a good idea to start off with a transcendent crafting tool, he thought. Before he could put it away, however, the Clear Sky Brush came rushing out from a gray slit in space and devoured the transcendent hammer focus in a single gulp.

  Cha Ming slapped his hand to his face. Of course it wanted to eat it. Unsurprisingly, the Clear Sky Brush had changed forms yet again. It was now a clear smithing hammer with black and white highlights. A faint five-colored light danced inside it, and in the very center, where the gem had once been, was a soft gray mist.

  “You’ll need to change your appearance if you want me to use you,” Cha Ming said. The hammer shook in defiance. “I’m serious. I can’t be seen swinging a clear hammer. It’ll give me away.” It shook again, not giving an inch.

  “Fine,” Cha Ming said. He banished what he now called the Clear Sky Hammer—that counted as fair use, didn’t it?—and summoned a second gem. This time, it was a mid-grade magic focus. He used his strong soul to fight off the Clear Sky Brush, preventing it from darting out and devouring it as he poured his soul into its runic diagram.

  The formation drank in a small stream of his transcendent soul, which caused the gem to balloon in size. He wasn’t surprised, as transcendent force was much more potent than the incandescent force the hammer focus was meant for. Cha Ming squeezed out whatever transcendent force he could until the ball finally shrank down to a manageable size. He shaped it into a smithing hammer and activated a second formation on the gem, locking it in place. A gem of this level could lock in two forms, so for the other form, he chose a carving knife. Though a chisel was better suited to making large items, a carving knife was better for detail work. The hammer’s shape distorted, and he ejected even more transcendent force from it until it became a simple curved blade. Then, locking it into place, he switched back to the hammer.

  “A blacks
mith needs a flame,” Cha Ming muttered. He summoned the Grandmist flame but immediately banished it. If anyone saw the unique flame, his cover would be blown within seconds. No, he needed to do things the hard way here. In the South, he was not Cha Ming but Pai Xiao, a fire-and-metal dual cultivator. He summoned two flames, a gold one and a red one, and forced them together into an orange-gold flame. It would possess superior temperature control while also possessing the ability to mold and shape metal to some extent. It wasn’t a common flame, but neither was it rare. It was a perfect fit for Pai Xiao, an undiscovered talent who’d come very far on his own with little formal training.

  Nodding in satisfaction, Cha Ming walked downstairs where the worried Guo Xiang was waiting for him as the old smith, Li Ning, was packing as quickly as possible.

  “Relax, there’s no need to fear for your job,” Cha Ming said. “I’ll need someone to keep people away while I work.” She relaxed visibly when he said this, but much of the discomfort remained.

  “Now where did Li Ning put the blacksteel?” he muttered.

  The attendant jumped at his words and immediately babbled out a string of incomprehensible words.

  “Sorry, what did you say?”

  “So sorry, Master,” Guo Xiang said. “It’s in the warehouse, third row from the back. I’ll lead you there right away.”

  “Please,” Cha Ming said. The words they exchanged were few but very telling. She wasn’t just his employee; she was his servant. Or so he thought, until he spotted a mark on her forearm near her wrist. It contained a number, a pictograph, and many interconnected lines.

  He realized he’d seen that mark somewhere before. It had been on one of the documents Li Ning had passed on to him as part of the sale.

  Guo Xiang, it seemed, was his slave.

  Chapter 6: Reaping

  Black rocks melted in a golden cauldron, which hung atop a fire in the back of Cha Ming’s workshop. The ore in the cauldron, a dark-gray rock marbled with lighter gray impurities, was eighty percent blacksteel. The dark metal was one he’d grown familiar with over the past two weeks. It was strong, had a low melting point, and was abundant everywhere on the continent. He’d also seen it used in the other smithies in town, which gave him a reference point for his work.

  The black liquid that ran off the gray remnants of the ore was the result of the first step in spiritual blacksmithing: extraction. Like alchemy, each step was crucial in the smithing process. Cha Ming stirred as most of the ore was reduced to a thick black liquid speckled with gray solids. Other ores didn’t melt so readily; they could only be partially separated, the remaining impurities needing to be hammered out at higher temperatures to complete the purification process.

  Melted blacksteel, on the other hand, could be directly cast into a workable metal. The solid black material could be used to make least-grade or lesser-grade magic weapons, depending on the skill of the smith.

  After giving the melting pot another half hour, Cha Ming used his soul force to retrieve the grit, which he placed in a second pot. There, he intensified the temperature. A quarter of the gray flecks melted into a liquid silver puddle in the smaller pot. This metal, true silver, was useless to his current project, so he poured it into a small brick cast, smacking it out with his hammer into a quench barrel upon cooling. He stored the resulting silver brick on a shelf before returning to the golden pot, which contained the melted blacksteel he desired.

  A hundred percent black iron is no good for a high-quality blade, he recalled from a book he’d read. Runes inscribed on the metal are too susceptible to qi erosion. The quenched metal was also too soft to make higher-grade magic treasures. Unlike mortal swords, runic ones were better off being hard. There were exceptions to the rule, of course. Things like heavy blades and great axes, whose large size allowed for a more spread-out runic diagrams, benefited from a tougher, softer metal. But he’d already fulfilled his childhood fantasy of making a giant sword earlier this week, so for now, he’d make a longsword.

  How much more time are you going to waste here? Sun Wukong asked, appearing beside Cha Ming as he worked. I finished planting the memories two days ago, and your paperwork was finalized a week ago.

  Not much longer, Cha Ming replied. I just want to finish this blade for the city lord. Consider it my final apology. He motioned to a shelf on the side and summoned a small dark-gold brick and a larger dark-silver one. The first was an alloying metal called geralsium. He took the brick of metal, which was soft in its pure form, and cut it in half with a single swipe of his soul-alloy knife. He plopped one half of the gold bar into the pot and stirred it quickly. The metal goop within thickened as the bar melted, forcing him to increase the temperature. The two metals would strengthen and harden as they bonded, allowing Cha Ming to forge a much stronger weapon from the base metal.

  An hour later, the last of the gold bar finished dissolving. Cha Ming took the dark-silver bar and began whittling away shavings of it into the golden pot. The shavings quickly dissolved into the molten black metal. There was no change in color or texture of the liquid mixture this time—the changes would only materialize on hardening.

  Cha Ming rolled up a cast to the side of the hanging pot once the shavings finished melting. He tipped the pot, and the red glowing metal inside poured into the mold, solidifying into a soft but rectangular shape on contact. The cast grew warm from the excess heat but was otherwise unaffected. He nodded in satisfaction.

  You needn’t go so far for an apology, Sun Wukong said. You didn’t do anything bad to him. You just tampered with a few memories, meaningless ones at that. Plus, who knows what the man is really like? Maybe that façade of his will crumble away the moment he meets anyone strong enough.

  Call it my gut feeling, Cha Ming said, summoning his spiritual hammer, which he used to knock the crude sword out from the cast. He placed it on a soul-alloy anvil with a pair of tongs and began hammering. Sparks flew for the next quarter hour as, little by little, a blade edge took shape. By then, the metal had cooled back down to an oily black color. Cha Ming stuck it back into the furnace and used his golden flame to heat it once more. The blade glowed red within minutes, and he continued the shaping process. Two days isn’t a lot of time. I owe him this much.

  The next city will take longer, Sun Wukong cautioned. Will you spend two days for every major player you affect there?

  If it lets me sleep at night, Cha Ming said. He summoned his carving knife and began tracing runic patterns into the soft red blade, which now fully resembled a sword. Some of the runes were for strength, while others were for swiftness and sharpness. The city lord cultivated fire, so he added runes that made the blade better at channeling fire techniques. When the last of the lines were finished, Cha Ming reheated the blade. He waved his hand, and three containers filled with elemental dust flew out and opened above it. The elemental dust sprinkled onto the blade and clung to the inscribed runes, lighting them up in a brilliant pattern.

  Once the blade had taken in as much dust as it could, Cha Ming stopped sprinkling and took it over to the quenching barrel filled with liquified elemental essence and other alchemical reagents. He plunged the blade in, and the mixture hissed. He used his control over fire to cool the metal as quickly as possible, sending the excess heat into a nearby heat-trap formation.

  Cha Ming ran his finger along the blade edge. It cut his skin easily, though the wound healed over almost instantly. He then walked over to the wall where he kept an assortment of hilts. He picked a golden one with no guard and inserted the blade between its two halves. Then, using his blacksmith’s flame, he welded the metal together, finishing the sword.

  Aside from the golden hilt, the weapon was mostly black. It also contained hints of red that spread out in a billowing pattern. The blade was a half-step core-grade treasure, the best blade he’d ever made. The hilt was weaker, but it was replaceable.

  “Guo Xiang!” Cha Ming called out.

  The attendant, who usually avoided his forge due to the high t
emperatures, poked her head inside.

  “Yes, Master?” she asked.

  “Come to the back,” Cha Ming said. She did as she was told. Cha Ming summoned a sheet of white paper that held a picture of her servant mark. “I’m releasing you from your contract. You’re free to go.”

  Previously, he’d thought about the situation long and hard before ultimately deciding to keep her during his stay, if only for appearance’s sake. In return for her service, he would now compensate her with her freedom.

  Guo Xiang, the servant girl, widened her eyes in surprise. Contrary to the look of exultation he expected, however, a look of horror appeared on her face. “You mean I’m fired?” she said in a disbelieving tone.

  “What?” Cha Ming asked, confused. “No, you’re not fired. You’re free.”

  “But that’s my employment contract,” Guo Xiang said, swallowing. “If you cancel the contract and remove my mark, I’ll no longer be bound to serve you. You also won’t be bound to pay me. I’ll need to go searching for other employment in the meantime, and this town isn’t as booming as it once was.” She started pacing, fidgeting as she spoke to herself. “This is terrible. How will I survive?”

  Cha Ming looked at her blankly. He hadn’t expected this situation. He’d been so caught up in his smithing, with most of his time spent in the Clear Sky World, that he hadn’t bothered to learn more about the situation. Slavery was slavery, was it not? He used his mind-skimming technique, which he tried using as little as possible, and extracted some details about these “employment marks.”

  What a strange place, Cha Ming thought as he reviewed the information. In the South, rather than dealing with the whims of mortals, employees were bound by strict contracts using marks. These contracts were all issued by clerks of the Spirit Temple. Unlike serf brands, these weren’t permanent. If Cha Ming, her owner, dissolved her mark, she would need to go searching for another job.