Studying at Western University starts with a knife-forging competition

Chapter 112

Zhang Yue posted the "Divine Skin Stitching" forging edit version on Bilibili at 8 PM on Saturday.

She clearly did her homework on the timing she chose—a weekend evening when students and office workers have time to watch videos, a peak time for data usage.

The video is nine minutes long, nearly three minutes shorter than the original YouTube version. Some repetitive forging shots have been cut, while key moments such as the billet entering the furnace, hammering and stretching, and the emergence of patterns after pickling have been retained.

The Chinese dubbing was done using AI, which is quite convenient these days. The subtitles are on a white background with black borders, making them clearly visible even in the bright areas of the forged image.

For the first two hours after the post was published, the data remained stable. Zhang Yue refreshed the page every half hour in the background, and the number of views rose from a few hundred to a few thousand, with only a few scattered comments like "Holy crap," "Awesome," and "That pattern." She didn't pay much attention to it, turned off her computer, and went to make dinner.

When I opened it again at 11 o'clock, the data had changed.

The number of views jumped from a few thousand to over twenty thousand, and the number of comments multiplied several times. She clicked on the video and glanced at it. The comments floating at the top of the screen were so dense that she had to turn off part of them to see the picture clearly—"Was this made by a Chinese person?" "Wait, is this account the same person?" "Is it a repost?" "I checked, there is indeed a LinyuanForge on YouTube, but I'm not sure if it's the same one."

The comment section also became lively. The top comment read, "This account was only registered a few days ago and has already posted a video. Are you sure it's not a marketing account?" It already had over five hundred likes.

Someone replied that they watched the original video on YouTube and the image quality and content matched, but they couldn't confirm whether the account operator was Lin Yuan himself.

Zhang Yue scrolled through several pages of comments and found that the issues all revolved around the same point—questioning the authenticity of the account. It wasn't a question about the video content itself, but rather a suspicion that "Lin Yuan himself is actually operating this account."

Some people said directly, "If this is the real person, they should have been certified long ago." Others said, "Even if it's just reposting, I support it if it's done well, but don't impersonate the real person."

She sent Lin Yuan a message with a screenshot of the comments section. "Some people on Bilibili are questioning whether the account belongs to you. You need to record a clarification video, showing your face, speaking Chinese, and holding that sword."

Lin Yuan's reply came in five minutes later. "Okay. Record it first thing tomorrow morning."

At seven o'clock the next morning, Lin Yuan arrived at the forge. Daniel hadn't arrived yet, and Matt was still sleeping in the dormitory. He was the only one in the workshop; the residual heat from the overnight furnace hadn't dissipated, and the air still smelled of a mixture of coke and machine oil.

He propped his phone up on the workbench, adjusting the angle several times so that the viewfinder perfectly framed the tool wall behind him and the test pieces hanging on the wall. The anvil was partially visible on the right side of the frame, while the cast iron furnace door was on the left, its surface still bearing traces of oxide scale left from yesterday's forging.

He pulled the protective sheath of the divine leather sewing needle from the corner of the wall, unzipped it, and took the sword out of its sheath. The cold white blade gleamed with a very faint blue hue in the morning light, and the layers of cloud patterns were clearly discernible.

He pressed the record button.

"Hello everyone, I'm Lin Yuan." He spoke slowly, his pronunciation clearer than usual, as if he were talking to someone who wasn't very familiar with Chinese, but his tone was natural. "I'm the champion of the knife-forging competition and the owner of the account LinyuanForge. The video I posted before about forging divine leather needles was made by myself. The workshop is in Clemson, South Carolina, and the equipment is all in the video."

He held the sword up to the camera and flipped it over so that the cloud patterns and details of the fittings on the sword could be seen clearly.

"This sword was forged by my own hand, a silver-iron alloy with cloud-patterned steel, nine-stage forging, over 3,500 layers. The fittings are 3D."

The aluminum alloy printout was modeled by my colleague Li Wei in Longquan.

If anyone still doesn't believe it, they can check out the YouTube channel; the videos there were posted earlier and the content is more complete.

He paused, then put the sword back in its protective sheath.

"Thank you all for your support. I will have the operations team manage the domestic account, and the content will be updated simultaneously. I won't say too many fancy words, but every knife and every sword was forged by me, hammer blow by hammer blow, standing in front of the forge. That's all."

The video was less than two minutes long. He didn't re-record it and sent it directly to Zhang Yue.

Zhang Yue was having breakfast when she received the video. She watched it once, confirmed that the picture and sound were clear, and that the content was sufficient to respond to the doubts. Then she immediately edited an intro, added subtitles, and posted it simultaneously on Bilibili and Douyin.

The announcement was made at 9:30 a.m.

The effect was almost immediate.

Within the first hour after the clarification video was released, the Bilibili account gained nearly 10,000 followers.

The sentiment in the comments section quickly shifted, with dissenting voices being drowned out by comments like "Confirmed by the person," "Support originality," and "This workshop looks authentic." Someone spammed the phrase "Longquan sword-making family" in the live chat, from the beginning to the end of the video.

Zhang Yue watched the data curve rise from a flat line to a steep one backstage, and lightly tapped the mouse twice. She sent Lin Yuan a message: "The clarification video is working very well, and the number of followers is increasing."

It trended on Bilibili's knowledge section, and the views on Douyin are also going up. The effect of your face being shown is better than I expected.

""

Lin Yuan's reply was just one word: "Okay."

That evening, the Bilibili video featuring the amazing leather stitching technique had surpassed 500,000 views, with over 10,000 comments and bullet comments combined. The editors in the knowledge section proactively contacted Zhang Yue, asking if the video could be featured on the homepage. Zhang Yue replied that it was possible, but requested that the original title and description of the technique be retained.

The data on Douyin is even more astonishing than on Bilibili. The traffic distribution mechanism of short video platforms determines that content spreads much faster. The edited version of Shenpi Sewing Needle was cut into three vertical videos of no more than 30 seconds each, corresponding to material preparation and forging, bending, forging, pickling, and finished product display, respectively. The three videos combined have garnered over one million views, and in the comments section, some people are asking about the price of custom orders, while others are urging for the next episode.

Zhang Yue compiled the data from domestic platforms into a spreadsheet and sent it to Lin Yuan and Matt. The spreadsheet included data from Bilibili, Douyin, and...

The core data for the four platforms, Xiaohongshu and Weibo, included views, likes, comments, and follower growth. She added a note at the end of the email: "Customization demands from domestic fans have already begun to emerge; we need to determine a pricing strategy as soon as possible."

The video conference is scheduled for Monday afternoon.

Lin Yuan was in the forging workshop's office area, his laptop on the table with a webcam pointed at his face. Behind him were tool racks and a half-open material cabinet, several rolls of sanding belt stacked on the shelf, and pliers and steel brushes arranged by size.

Matt was in his dorm room, with a messy bookshelf and the back of a monitor in the background. He was wearing headphones, and a notebook full of operational plans lay open in front of him.

Zhang Yue is in Hangzhou. The background is a white wall, and there is a cup of tea and an external monitor on the table. She is wearing a dark gray sweatshirt, and her hair is tied in a low ponytail, making her look more neat than during the previous video call.

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