Studying at Western University starts with a knife-forging competition

Lin Yuan received the email on Wednesday afternoon.

When he returned to his dormitory from the workshop, it was already completely dark, and the corridor was filled with Matt Wayne's signature smell of potato chips and energy drinks.

Pushing open the door, Matt was still in his signature pose—slumped on the sofa with a bag of potato chips on his lap, and a replay of a game playing on the TV.

"Back already?" Matt didn't even turn his head, his fingers rummaging inside the bag of potato chips.

"Um."

"Your computer just beeped. It sounded like an email."

Lin Yuan placed his backpack on the chair, walked to his desk, and pressed the power button on his computer. The screen lit up, and the fan whirred. He waited a few seconds, then checked his email.

An unread email.

The sender was the official email address of the "Knife Forging Competition" program. The subject line consisted of only one line: Congratulations.

Lin Yuan's finger paused on the mouse.

"What's wrong?" Matt peeked out from behind the sofa, still chewing on potato chips.

"Results of the preliminary selection."

Matt sprang up from the sofa instantly. He nearly knocked over the bag of chips, frantically catching it before rushing to Lin Yuan's side. On the screen, the email contained only a few lines: "Congratulations on passing the preliminary round. The time and location of the official competition will be notified by email next week. Please keep your communication channels open."

"Did you pass?" Matt patted Lin Yuan's shoulder with such force that he leaned forward.

Lin Yuan did not answer. His gaze was fixed on the semi-transparent system panel unfolding in the center.

The main quest "Embarking on the Journey" has been completed.

[Forging skill level upgraded to: Master (1/100000).]

[Current proficiency level is locked. Special restriction detected: Skill level has been raised to Preliminary/Master level. Full permissions will be unlocked after completing the regular season.]

[New main quest triggered: Trial of Fire. Objective: Win the regular season of the "Forging Competition" and prove your skills are worthy of the title of Master. Reward: Unlock proficiency, fully unlock Master-level forging skills, and 1 random special forging blueprint.]

[Note: You've stepped into the realm of mastery, but there's still a long way to go between the threshold and the hall of fame. Being a near-master means you possess the vision and feel of a master, but not yet their full power. Go win a match.]

Lin Yuan stared at the line "Quasi-Master Level" for a long time.

His fingers hovered above the keyboard, neither typing nor turning off the panel. Matt's voice came from behind him, tinged with a smug "I knew it": "What did I tell you? You definitely passed."

Lin Yuan turned off the system panel and slowly exhaled. Then he turned to look at Matt, a smile on his face, not strong, but he couldn't suppress it.

"Passed."

"Duh." Matt grinned and patted him again. "Are you cooking to celebrate, or should I order takeout?"

"I'll cook."

"Braised pork?"

Braised pork belly.

At eight o'clock the next morning, Lin Yuan pushed open the workshop door.

Robert hadn't arrived yet. The red-brick building was still warm from the charcoal left in the furnace the previous night, and the air was filled with the usual smell of rust and machine oil. Lin Yuan placed his backpack on the workbench and walked to the materials rack.

Master level. Near-master level.

Last night, he lay in bed tossing and turning for a long time, deep in thought. The system's description was clear—his current state was somewhere between an expert and a true master. He had the vision and the feel, but something was still missing. It was a bit like a knife that had been quenched halfway through; the edge was hardened, but the body hadn't been tempered yet.

To break through this barrier, the system alone is not enough. He needs to integrate three things: the modern metalworking theory he learned in university, the ancestral forging skills his father taught him in Longquan, and the special skills granted by the system.

These three things had always been separate in his mind. Theory was theory, the data and charts in textbooks—metallographic structures, heat treatment curves, stress distribution. Craftsmanship was craftsmanship, the hammering techniques, temperature control, and feel his father taught him; it was the instinct to tell the temperature level just by looking at the color of the furnace. The skills provided by the system felt like another system, layered on top of it. It was useful, but there always felt like something was missing, like a seam that hadn't been properly smoothed out during assembly.

They blended together.

Lin Yuan took a piece of 1084 high-carbon steel from the material rack and weighed it in his hand. He used tongs to clamp the steel billet and put it into the furnace. The blower hummed and flames emerged from the gaps in the coke, turning from red to orange.

He didn't rush to strike.

As the steel billet heated up in the furnace, he mentally went through the entire process. Not by feel, but by calculating step by step. What range of forging temperature should be controlled? What final forging temperature cannot be lower than a certain degree? How should the point and force of each hammer blow correspond to the deformation direction of the billet? How should the arc of the hammerhead guide the flow of the metal?

[Forging (Approx. Master Level): 1/100000]

The values ​​on the system panel did not change, but when he picked up the bright orange steel billet and placed it on the anvil, he felt something different the moment the hammer fell.

It's not a judgment of "right" or "wrong." It's something much more proactive; he knows before the hammer even hits the billet—where the hammer will land, in which direction it will compress the metal, and where the next hammer should land. This sense of certainty isn't calculated or developed muscle memory; it's a third thing that naturally arises from the combination of the first two.

"Dong—Ding—"

The sound of hammers echoed through the red brick house.

He doesn't plan to make knives today. He wants to review the basics first. Forging, normalizing, annealing, quenching, tempering—he's done these processes hundreds of times, and he knows the intricacies of each step. But today he wants to connect them in a new way, not in a procedural way, but by twisting the three threads of theory, craftsmanship, and systematic skills into one rope.

The steel billet deformed under the hammer. He controlled the point and force of each strike, and the metal on the anvil gradually stretched into a rectangular billet. The forging rhythm was steady and powerful, the sound of the hammer was neither too fast nor too slow, and each strike landed precisely where it should, from thick to thin, from coarse to fine, and the cross-section of the billet gradually showed a uniform arc.

After forging, the next step is normalizing.

He reheated the billet to a bright orange color, then removed it and placed it on refractory bricks to cool naturally. The purpose of this process was to refine the grains and eliminate forging stress. When his father taught him, he didn't look at the grains, but at the fracture surface—breaking open a piece of material, the finer the fracture, the better the normalizing. In university labs, using a metallographic microscope, the higher the ASTM grade of grain size, the better. Both standards point to the same result.

The system also has corresponding skills. According to the system's description, the skill "Spirit Tempering" is a tool for tempering the internal structure of metals, activating them to stimulate their potential.

He had never tried the quasi-master level of spirit tempering.