Studying at Western University starts with a knife-forging competition

J. Nelson rested his hands on the judges' table, his gaze sweeping over Lin Yuan and Greg in turn.

Congratulations! You will meet in the finals.

The host walked over from the sidelines, followed by a staff member carrying a long, rectangular wooden box in both hands. The box was placed on the judges' table, covered with a dark velvet cloth.

"The topic for the final round is—" The host reached out and lifted the velvet cloth, revealing a sword lying in a wooden box. "A half-sword."

The sword lay quietly in its wooden case, its blade gleaming under the light with a warm, polished sheen that comes from forging. The guard was simple and straight, the hilt wrapped in dark leather, and the blade tapered evenly from the guard to the tip. This was a piece made by David Baker in the 1990s—devoid of superfluous embellishments, yet every detail was meticulously crafted.

"This sword was made by David Baker, and you can use it as a reference." The host gestured in the direction of David Baker. "You all need to return to your own forging workshops and spend five days forging a hand and a half sword that meets the reference standard."

The program does not restrict the materials or forging techniques, but the final product must meet the prescribed specifications and shape. Two film crews will accompany you to your respective workshops to record your five-day forging process.

Five days later, return here with your completed swords. The judges will conduct a final test on both swords to determine this season's champion.

Greg stood at the workstation next to Lin Yuan, and the moment he saw the sword in the wooden box, his shoulder twitched. It wasn't the tension from being startled by a question, but rather the involuntary physical reaction one has when seeing a question they've reviewed in an exam room.

He subconsciously rubbed the bridge of his nose with the back of his hand, a gesture that did not escape Lin Yuan's peripheral vision.

A half-sword. Greg made one.

Not only did he do it, but he also has a half-sword that he spent a whole month sharpening hanging in his small garage—it was an order he received a few years ago from a local medieval reenactment enthusiast.

Because I also like this kind of sword, I made one for myself while completing my order. The material is 5160 spring steel, as spring steel is the most reliable material for long-bladed weapons.

He knew exactly where the top-hand half sword was likely to go, from material selection to forging, hilt assembly, and polishing. He knew which parts were prone to problems, which parts could be skipped, and which parts absolutely could not be omitted.

He has experience with this problem.

But the slight upturn at the corner of his mouth faded before it could fully settle.

He glanced again at the reference sword in the wooden box—a work by David Baker, with a uniform and fine satin brushed finish on the blade, and a seamless transition between the guard and the hilt.

Compared to this, the hand-and-a-half swords he had made were as crude as farm tools.

Having experience and being able to reach David Baker's level are two different things.

But at least he didn't start from scratch with this problem. For him, that was already a stroke of luck.

Lin Yuan looked at the sword in the wooden box without making any special expression. The half-sword was indeed unfamiliar to him.

He learned Chinese swordsmanship in Longquan—Longquan swords, willow-leaf knives, ox-tail knives, and goose-feather knives. He started learning these things when he was twelve years old, and the curves, center of gravity, and weight distribution of each type of sword are etched into his muscle memory.

However, the hand-and-a-half sword is part of the European cold weapon system, and its design language is completely different from that of the Longquan sword.

He had never done it before and had no experience.

But he spent two years in the Department of Materials Science at Clemson University, doing two semesters of independent research in Professor Robert's workshop.

Every sword—whether Eastern or Western, one-handed or two-handed—ultimately comes down to materials, forging, heat treatment, and geometry.

He was confident about these things.

"Both of you contestants, you can go back to your hotels tonight to pack your luggage. Starting tomorrow, the production crew will accompany you to your respective forging workshops." Mark walked over. "Airfare and transportation will be arranged by the production team."

Lin Yuan nodded and began tidying up his workstation. He put the tools back in their proper places—pliers, steel brush, angle gauge—each item returned to its corresponding position in his leather tool bag. He placed the apprentice forging hammer into the outermost pocket of the bag and fastened the brass buckle.

He tidied up slowly, but did each task carefully, just like he always did after finishing his work in Professor Robert's workshop.

He put the leather tool bag into his backpack, zipped it up, and slung the backpack over his shoulder. Just as he was about to leave, a voice came from behind him.

"Lin Yuan".

Greg stood a few steps away, carrying his tool bag in one hand and rubbing his trouser seam with the other. He had clearly been waiting for Lin Yuan to finish packing, and had been waiting for a while.

"Do you have time tonight?" Greg's voice was still hoarse from the dry, hot air of the forge, but his tone was much more relaxed than when he was stopped during the first round of the competition. "I'd like to treat you to dinner."

Lin Yuan zipped up the side pocket of his backpack and turned around.

Greg extended the hand that wasn't carrying his tool bag and formally introduced himself. "Greg. I haven't said it yet—thank you. Thank you for helping me in the first round."

His movements were simple: he reached out, grasped, shook it twice, and released it. The hand was rough and strong, with thick calluses on the palm and knuckles.

Lin Yuan grasped his hand and nodded. "Lin Yuan."

"I know." Greg grinned, a smile that flashed across his face, weathered by decades of furnace work, tinged with self-deprecation. "From today onward, all the contestants on this show will know you."

Lin Yuan loosened his grip and tightened the backpack strap on his shoulder. He didn't answer immediately, but instead turned to look at Mark across the corridor.

"Could I check the flight details first?"

Mark was tidying up the score sheets on the judges' panel when he heard Lin Yuan call him. He quickly walked over. "What's wrong?"

What time is the earliest flight back to school?

Mark pulled out his phone and swiped a few times. "From Atlanta to Greenville-Spartanburg—there's one flight tomorrow morning at 8:20. Tonight there are only red-eye flights, I don't recommend you take them, you'll arrive at 3 AM and then have to take the film crew with you."

Lin Yuan nodded and turned to look at Greg.

"Sure. I have time tonight."

Greg's expression visibly relaxed the moment he heard "yes".

He had probably prepared himself for rejection before he even spoke—a young foreigner who had been closely observed by him on the show and whose every move he made completely outclassed him had every reason to politely decline a dinner and go back to his hotel to rest. But Lin Yuan did not refuse.

"Great." Greg slung his tool bag over his shoulder with a more agile motion than he had during the game. "I know a barbecue place nearby, a ten-minute drive from the film studio. Their beef short ribs are better grilled than most regular restaurants, and the portions are generous—not the kind where you have to go back and cook instant noodles afterward."

Lin Yuan realized he was indeed hungry. The coffee he drank during the first round of the competition had kept him full until now, and besides the coffee, there was only half a biscuit from the rest area in his stomach.

"OK."

The two walked side by side out of the workshop and through the corridor covered with posters from previous seasons. Most of the photography lights had been turned off, leaving only basic lighting in the corridor of the film studio. The cold, even white light overhead illuminated the acrylic-framed works from previous seasons on both sides of the corridor, giving them a silent, shimmering glow.

The residual heat of the forge was slowly dissipating in the workshop, and a faint smell of rust and propane lingered in the air.

Stepping out of the automatic doors, the January evening in Atlanta was distinctly cool. The gravel in the parking lot crunched softly underfoot, and the last rays of sunset were transitioning from orange-red to deep blue on the distant horizon.

Greg's car was a silver-gray Ford pickup truck that looked a bit worn. Inside the truck bed was a toolbox and a helmet, while the back seat was piled with several work jackets and a stack of Bladesmith magazines.

He opened the passenger door and moved a folder from the seat to the back seat.

"Get in the car."

The pickup truck drove out of the parking lot and turned onto the main road leading to the city center.

Greg wasn't driving fast, one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the window frame. The car stereo was playing an old rock album, the volume turned down low—just low enough to hear the guitar melody without having to shout.

The car remained quiet for about the time it takes to turn a traffic light.

"In the first round—" Greg spoke first.

He paused, as if reorganizing his words.

He gently turned the steering wheel two degrees, and the pickup truck smoothly rounded a gentle bend.

"When you called me over, you were the only one who noticed that I had mixed the ingredients incorrectly."

"Your solder joints are quite good," Lin Yuan said.

"What's the use of a good solder joint?" Greg chuckled briefly. There was no self-deprecation in that laugh; it was just an old blacksmith stating a fact: "If you choose the wrong materials, no matter how good the solder joint is, the finished product will still be scrap metal."

"If you choose the wrong material, you can start over." Lin Yuan leaned back in his chair, watching the streetlights flash by outside the windshield. "If you ruin a blade blank, you can start over. You made a new blade blank in the last thirty minutes or so, and even quenched it at the last second and delivered the finished product. Not everyone can do that."

Greg's Adam's apple bobbed, but he didn't reply. He tapped the steering wheel twice with his fingers, then released it and gripped it again.

The pickup truck stopped in front of a barbecue restaurant. The restaurant wasn't big, with a wooden sign hanging above the entrance, its paint faded by wind and rain. A pile of split walnut firewood, about half a person's height, stood in front of the entrance, and the air was filled with a mixture of fruit wood smoke and the aroma of roasting meat.

Pushing open the door, warm yellow light and deep blues guitar melodies flooded out. The booths inside were made of dark brown faux leather, worn smooth and shiny at the edges. Several old-fashioned hunting knives hung on the wall, their blades oxidized and darkened, but the patina on their handles gleamed.

Greg had clearly been here more than once. After pushing open the door, he gestured to the owner behind the bar—a simple two-finger flick from his chin to indicate "two people." The owner, a bald black man wearing an apron stained with soot, grinned when he saw Greg.

"The usual rules?"

"The usual. Two servings." Greg led Lin Yuan to a booth by the window. "And two cups of sweet tea."

The boss nodded, didn't ask any more questions, turned around and pushed open the kitchen door, the smoky smell of roasting meat wafting out from the crack in the door.

When the sweet tea was served, Lin Yuan glanced out the window. The night in the Atlanta suburbs was quiet, with streetlights sparsely lit and an occasional car driving by, its headlights sweeping across the glass facade of the barbecue restaurant and casting a fleeting shadow on the table.

The restaurant wasn't crowded; only a few workers in overalls sat in a corner, huddled around a plate of grilled ribs, saying little, occasionally letting out a low chuckle. The sizzling sound of the grill mingled with a faint blues melody from the kitchen.

Greg leaned back in his booth chair, his hands crossed on the table. His fingers were rough, with calluses on his knuckles—clearly the hands of an old blacksmith. He looked down at his hands, then looked up.

"I know I can't beat you," he said.

These words came directly, without any preamble. It wasn't an attempt to elicit sympathy or show weakness, but rather the way a man over forty, after making peace with himself, could utter these words as a simple fact.

Lin Yuan put down his cup of sweet tea and waited for him to continue.

"I stood next to you during the first round, watching you complete nearly three thousand folds in two hours. I was standing next to you watching you forge. When that blade blank was taken out of the furnace, I thought to myself, could I ever achieve that level in my lifetime?" He paused. "I'm forty-three years old this year. I've been making knives for almost twenty years. This is the first time I've felt old in a competition."

"Your basic skills are not bad," Lin Yuan said. "You've made this half-sword for the final before, which is your advantage. I'm using traditional Chinese forging techniques to make European swords, so there are some parts that I need to figure out from scratch."

"Yes. I've made two or three half-swords." Greg nodded, not denying it, but then changed the subject, "But the dagger you made—no one but yourself can beat you on the field. Including me. So all I can do in the competition is use everything I can and not let myself down."

Greg picked up his sweet tea, but didn't drink it; he just held it in his hand and swirled the bottom of the cup around.

"This afternoon—I mean during the first round of the competition—you saved me the time of reassembling the materials and even helped me choose a suitable material combination for forging. To be honest, if you hadn't been there, I might have been able to start over, but I wouldn't have made it to the finals."

"Material matching is the easiest thing to overlook," Lin Yuan said. "Especially when using the folding forging method. The blade you make with your original three soft and two hard materials will be soft—don't blame yourself, because that's a common mistake in stacking forging."

If you use the block-stacking method, the deformation between layers isn't as significant as with forging, so the error isn't obvious. However, forging changes the proportions between layers; the proportion of soft steel in the middle is stretched and amplified, resulting in the cutting edge being almost entirely soft steel.

"I understood as soon as you said it. But I didn't realize it at the time. When people panic, they can't think of anything."

He put down the sweet tea and looked up at Lin Yuan.

"You could have simply kept quiet. You could have stood by and watched me remake a worthless knife, thus eliminating one competitor. But you didn't."

Lin Yuan didn't avoid his gaze. "You're a blacksmith with twenty years of experience. If it weren't for a problem with your mindset, you wouldn't make such a basic mistake. So it's not that your skills are lacking, it's that the pressure is too great."

The proprietress came over with a baking tray, and the ribs were indeed as Greg had said—every bone was full of meat, and the smoky caramel-colored surface glistened with oil, served with fries and salad.

Greg picked up a rib, but didn't eat it right away. He placed the rib on the edge of the plate and wiped his fingers.

"How old are you?" he asked.

"Twenty years old."

Greg nodded. "When I was twenty, I also thought I could make a name for myself in forging. Later I found that skill alone is not enough. You also need someone to tell you—you can't just rely on intuition when matching materials. How deep should the cut be when folding and forging? What kind of material should you use for the rivets so that they won't have an electrochemical reaction with the blade? No one teaches you these details. It can take many years to figure them out on your own."

He picked up the fork, then put it down again, looking at Lin Yuan.

"I'm not saying this to gain your sympathy. I just want to say that your willingness to spend time helping a complete stranger on the field is more admirable than any forging technique."

Lin Yuan picked up his sweet tea, took a sip, and then put the cup down. "My father taught me—a blacksmith's hands may be dirty, but his heart must not. Craftsmanship and character are one and the same. Have you ever taught apprentices in the workshop?"

"I've taught two. One was a friend's son, who quit after six months. The other later changed careers and became a mechanic." Greg chuckled and shook his head. "I probably wasn't a good teacher."

"But you learned the bending and forging technique quite quickly this afternoon. I explained it to you once and you understood."

That's because you explained it clearly.

Smoke from the barbecue drifted in from the kitchen, mingling with the sound of blues guitar and the coolness of sweet tea. Greg placed the empty bones on the side of his plate and wiped his fingers with a napkin.

"No matter what the outcome of the finals is—" He raised his hand from the cup, turning his fist towards Lin Yuan, "I'm glad to have met you in the competition."

Lin Yuan reached out, made a fist, and touched him with the back of his fist.

"Me too."