Studying at Western University starts with a knife-forging competition

After eating half a plate of roasted ribs, Greg ordered a cornbread. He explained that the cornbread at this shop was baked in a pecan wood smoked oven, not an oven-baked one, and was crispy on the outside and sweet on the inside, definitely worth a try. When the owner brought the cornbread over, he also refilled each of their cups with sweet tea.

"Where are you from?" Greg wiped the grease off his hands with a napkin, leaned back in the booth seat, and relaxed. This was no longer the tense posture he had been in the car, still gripping the steering wheel, but rather the relaxed posture of someone who had finally said what needed to be said.

"Zhejiang. Longquan," Lin Yuan said, "a small city on the southeastern coast of China. The history of sword making here dates back over a thousand years."

Greg's eyes lit up. "So your cooking skills are really passed down through generations?"

"Three generations. My grandfather, my father, and me." Lin Yuan drew a line on the table with his finger, an irregular shape that resembled the outline of a mountain range. "My father still runs the sword foundry. My grandfather's generation stopped making farm tools and everyday ironware; they specialized in swords. I've been helping out at the factory since I was nine."

"What can a nine-year-old do to help?"

"We cleaned up the slag, changed the water in the quenching tank, and sorted and stacked the forged billets according to size. Back then, I wasn't even as tall as the forging hammer, so I had to use both hands to move the materials."

Greg looked at him with the same gaze he would give someone he knew but didn't fully understand. "So when you said you studied in the factory for eleven years, you weren't exaggerating."

"No. I made my first knife independently at the age of twelve. I started handling the entire process from start to finish myself at the age of fifteen." Lin Yuan picked up a napkin, folded it into a small square, and placed it on the table. "But what really connected me with so many things was after I went to university."

Clemson University.

"Yes. Materials Science and Engineering. I studied metalworking with Professor Robert," Lin Yuan said. "When I was in Longquan, my dad taught me how to do it—controlling the heat, hammering, checking the heat, and judging whether a piece of steel was fully heated. But he didn't explain why we did it that way."

It's not that he doesn't want to explain, it's that he hasn't studied it himself. His knowledge comes from my grandfather, who in turn came from even earlier ancestors. They all judged by sight and touch; they couldn't articulate those theories.

"What I learned in university was the principles behind these things—the laws governing changes in metallographic structure, the physical meaning of heat treatment curves, and the stress distribution within materials." He paused, "The two things combined—experience tells me how to make judgments, and theory tells me what is happening under those judgments. Every decision I made was based on evidence."

Greg rested his elbows on the table and listened attentively. "Most of us in this generation of knifemakers took a different path. We started as enthusiasts, spending weekends tinkering in the garage, then went to knife shows to learn from others, watching textbooks and videos over and over again."

Sometimes, you only realize the reason why a process is done this way after doing it many times—wait, so that's why. A lot of experience is gained through trial and error.

"The lessons learned from getting hurt are the most memorable," Lin Yuan said.

"But it was also the slowest. When I was in my twenties, I was quenching a hunting knife made of 1095 high-carbon steel, using water quenching. Nobody told me how water temperature affects the cooling speed, nobody taught me how to pre-cool it. I just put the bright orange-hot knife blank directly into a bucket of cold water."

He made an explosion gesture with his finger on the table. "The blade broke into three pieces on the spot. One of the fragments flew past my ear and embedded itself in the garage wall. I kept that hole for many years to remind myself not to make the same mistake."

"So you later switched to oil quenching."

"Yes. I haven't touched water quenching since then. I'm scared." Greg shook his head. "But seeing your water-quenched Damascus steel weapon today, I realized—water quenching isn't impossible, it's just that I didn't know how to do it back then."

"The water you used was too cold. For every few degrees the water temperature drops, the cooling rate decreases significantly. Plus, without pre-cooling, the temperature difference between the blade edge and the back of the knife is too great, concentrating stress near the blade's root, making cracking inevitable," Lin Yuan said. "Water quenching isn't a monster. All my knives are water-quenched."

"That's what I was saying earlier." Greg pointed at Lin Yuan. "You have the theory, the systematic knowledge, and the teachers who taught you these things. I spent twenty years, a large part of which was trial and error. There's nothing wrong with trial and error itself—but in a competition, trial and error means elimination."

"You're still learning," Lin Yuan said, unfolding the napkin and smoothing it out with his fingers. "Getting this far is already amazing. So many contestants get eliminated in the first round. And you have a good mindset, knowing you can't beat me." Lin Yuan sounded a little embarrassed at the end.

Greg knew Lin Yuan was joking, but he still said seriously, "I'm telling the truth. The dagger you made today—it's not just a difference in material processing. Your understanding of the entire process is on a completely different level from ours."

A person who possesses both the skills and the theory, and also knows how to teach them to others, is far more valuable than a mere swordsmith.

When the two stepped out of the barbecue restaurant, the air outside was a bit cooler than before. The faint smell of pecan wood still lingered in the air. Greg brushed a bit of wood dust off his coat, took the car keys out of his pocket, and then pressed the unlock button with his rough right hand, which still had borax powder embedded in his fingernails.

The headlights flashed twice, and the silver-gray pickup truck waited quietly under the streetlight.

Before Lin Yuan opened the car door, Greg leaned out from the driver's seat.

"Tomorrow morning at the hotel entrance—want me a ride to the airport?"

"The production crew will provide a car," Lin Yuan said. "But you can treat me to breakfast at the airport."

Greg laughed and started the car. The pickup truck drove out of the gravel road in the parking lot and turned back onto the main road leading to the hotel. The night in the Atlanta suburbs grew quieter, and the streetlights streaked across the car windows. Greg turned the air conditioning down a notch on the old Ford and then reached out to turn off the car stereo. The car became quiet.

The car headlights cut two bright arcs across the dark highway.

"There's one more thing," Lin Yuan leaned back on the passenger seat headrest, "has the grip strength in your right hand decreased?"

The atmosphere in the car changed in an instant. It wasn't tension, but something deeper than tension rose from the silence.

Greg didn't answer for a moment. He moved his hand on the steering wheel up a little, then loosened it, then gripped it again.

How did you figure that out?

"When you were eating the ribs just now, you switched hands once when you were using the fork. You started with your right hand, but switched to your left hand when you got to the bone. Also, when you were cutting the ribs with the knife, you were using the base of your thumb and forefinger to compensate for the grip strength after you were holding the knife with your right hand."

A person who holds a hammer wouldn't hold a knife like that, unless they couldn't use certain fingers on their right hand.

Greg was silent for a moment. The pickup truck's engine hummed steadily in the night.

"Three years ago." His voice was a little softer than before, not because of emotion, but because of the deliberate softness one feels when pouring out a memory one doesn't really want to touch. "I was making a large machete. After heat treatment, I clamped the blade in a vise and used a belt sander to do fine grinding."

When I got to the tip of the blade, the abrasive belt got stuck, so I reached out to adjust the angle of the clamp—my hand landed on the blade that hadn't completely cooled down.

"Right palm. Second-degree burns. Burned to the dermis. The doctor said no nerves were damaged, and it won't affect your daily life after the skin heals, but your grip strength will gradually recover."

Has it recovered?

"About 80% recovered." Greg lifted his right hand off the steering wheel and opened his palm in the dim light of the dashboard. There was a scar on his palm, darker than the surrounding skin, spreading downwards from the base of his thumb with irregular edges.

He had gotten used to showing this scar to others and saying the same calm, summarizing statement: "It doesn't affect my ability to hold a hammer."

But Lin Yuan noticed that the moment he opened his palm, his thumb instinctively curled inward. It wasn't a gesture of display; it was a defensive one. Lin Yuan had learned some chapters on ergonomics in Professor Robert's materials science class.

When humans display injured parts of their bodies, if the memories carried by the scars have not been fully processed, their hands will unconsciously make a protective inward retraction gesture.

"But it does affect the retouching process," Lin Yuan said.

Greg withdrew his hand and gripped the steering wheel again. He hadn't expected Lin Yuan to press the matter to this extent.

Most people wouldn't ask any more questions after hearing "it won't affect your normal life." But Lin Yuan wasn't an ordinary listener—he was a forger who could judge color deviations in the quenching furnace with the naked eye; his eyes were used to finding cracks in the details.

"Yes. Rough forging is unaffected; I can still swing the hammer. But—" He paused, turning the steering wheel, "but when it comes to the finishing stage, when I need to control the belt sander's feed with my fingertips, the grip strength of my right thumb and forefinger is not as good as before the injury."

These two fingers control fine-tuning, while the remaining fingers bear the weight. If the fine-tuning isn't precise enough, you can only compensate with more time and a higher grit of sanding tape. That's why my finishing speed in the competition was slower than other competitors.

"The handle you made this afternoon is very good. The rivets fit perfectly. So it's not that you can't do it, it just needs more time."

"But that's how cruel the competition is." Greg chuckled, not in self-deprecation, but as a statement. "The competition doesn't go according to your plan. You have an injury, but the belt sander won't slow down, and the timer won't spin an extra revolution for you."

Every time I've stepped onto this stage in my life—it's been to compensate for that one-tenth less preparation than others. But I still made it to the top.

Lin Yuan leaned back against the passenger seat headrest and glanced at Greg. The dim light from the dashboard illuminated the middle-aged man's profile; his expression was calm, not like he was confiding in someone, but more like he was submitting an honest work report.

Lin Yuan had heard Professor Robert mention something before—the senior machine tool operators in the Department of Materials Science would show the freshmen work injury cases during the annual safety training.

Behind every workplace injury case is a living, breathing person, most of whom never returned to the machine tool.

The person sitting next to him suffered second-degree burns to his right hand, and his grip strength has not yet recovered to its pre-injury level, yet he is still standing on the court to compete in the finals.

"You heard me say all this—what are you thinking now?" Greg asked. The question was direct, without any preconceived notions. He was probably used to the sympathetic looks people gave him after hearing about his workplace injury, that polite sigh of "Oh, man, that's tough."

But Lin Yuan's silence made him feel that this kid might have another side.

"I was thinking," Lin Yuan said, "that you were able to play in the finals even with an injury, so if you weren't injured—you were probably the one who put the most pressure on me on the court today."

Greg's fingers tightened on the steering wheel. His lips moved, as if he were chewing on the words several times, making sure it wasn't just a young man's polite flattery to an elder. Then he smiled.

It wasn't the polite smile I'd seen before, nor the weary grin of a middle-aged man, but a genuine smile that came from being moved by a truly insightful comment.

"You have a different way of comforting people than others."

"I'm telling the truth."

The pickup truck stopped in front of the hotel. Lin Yuan unbuckled his seatbelt and opened the door. The January night breeze blew into the car, distinctly cool. He picked up his backpack, stepped out, and then turned back.

See you at the airport tomorrow morning—you owe me breakfast.

Greg chuckled. "That breakfast place at the airport, the French toast with maple syrup, it's on me."

Lin Yuan closed the car door and stood under the warm lights at the hotel entrance, watching the silver-gray pickup truck turn around, its taillights shining as two red dots in the night, and turn onto the road leading to the cheap motel where Greg was staying.

He had seen it clearly when he set off in the morning—Greg's car was in the far end of the parking lot, the row where there was no extra parking fee. The car had several small dents from stones, and the edge of the rearview mirror was wrapped with tape. He carried his backpack into the hotel lobby, took the elevator to the seventh floor, and swiped his card to open the door.

The air conditioner in the room was still humming and blowing warm air. He put his backpack on the luggage rack, leaned against the window, and looked down at the scattered lights of the Atlanta suburbs in the distance.

A blacksmith who has made knives for twenty years. His right-hand grip strength has only recovered to 80%. He's slower than others at fine-tuning. After ruining his first blade under pressure in a competition, he started over in just over forty minutes. Despite living a very frugal life, he still insists on treating himself to a meal to express his gratitude, and he acknowledges that his opponents are stronger than him. Lin Yuan has rarely met such a person in his forging career. His father was one, Professor Robert was one. Today is the third.

A night breeze slipped in through the cracks in the window, ruffling the sticky notes on the table. My flight is tomorrow morning; I'll be working for five days in Professor Robert's workshop after I get back.

He had a general idea. He hadn't made a hand-and-a-half-sword before, but he had made Longquan swords—Chinese and European swords differ fundamentally in their design language: Chinese swords have a rearward center of gravity, a light and agile blade, and their core is the "thrust" technique; while European hand-and-a-half-swords have a forward center of gravity, a heavy blade, and their core is the "slash." But regardless of whether it's an Eastern or Western sword, it ultimately comes down to materials and heat treatment.

Spring steel 5160 is the safest choice, its balance between toughness and hardness has been proven countless times. But he wanted to try another possibility. Could a sword made of cloud-patterned steel—an initial structure of eleven layers, stretched to thousands of layers after forging—create the same flowing cloud pattern on the blade as on a dagger?

However, swords are much longer than daggers, so the deformation caused by forging and heat treatment is greater, and the quenching process is also a level more difficult.

He wasn't sure if he could get it done in five days, but he knew what Professor Robert would say: "How do you know if it will work if you don't try?"

He drew the curtains, sat on the edge of the bed, and opened the system panel.

The system panel unfolded before his eyes.

Main quest "Trial of Fire" completed. Proficiency lock removed. Forging skill level: Master. Full permissions unlocked.

The system shop is now open. Materials and forging blueprints can be purchased.

[Host has unlocked full Master-level privileges for the first time. Reward: 1 random forging blueprint.]

[Obtained blueprint: Paladin's Crossblade.]

A new line of text unfolded on the panel, accompanied by a detailed drawing—the sword's geometric data, material proportions, forging process, and heat treatment parameters, each item clearly marked. The sword shape on the drawing was exactly that of a half-sword, with a cross-shaped guard, a long and straight blade, and a blood groove extending from the guard to the middle of the blade. But what caught Lin Yuan's attention was not these details—but rather the special attribute descriptions at the bottom of the drawing.

Divine Attribute. Power to ward off evil. The full divine effect can only be activated by forging the sword with blessed holy silver, fusing it with the steel during the smelting process. Blessed holy silver—a special silver material offered and blessed before an altar. If unavailable, ordinary silver can be used as a substitute, but the added special attributes will be significantly weakened, retaining only the basic divine affinity.

Lin Yuan stared at that line of instructions for a long time.

He wasn't unfamiliar with weapons possessing special attributes—the cloud-patterned steel blueprint provided by the system was itself a technique somewhere between traditional forging and the system's special processes. But the Paladin's Cross Sword was a completely different concept. It didn't rely on forging and heat treatment to enhance its performance; instead, it injected something into the material itself—he wasn't sure what to call it. Strength? Attribute? These words sounded like game terminology, but the forging process parameters and material descriptions written in black and white on the system panel made it impossible for him to treat it as a simple game setting.

He opened the system shop. The shop interface unfolded before him, divided into two main categories—Materials and Blueprints. The Materials section listed various steels and alloys he recognized, as well as many names he had never seen before: Mithril, Adamantite, Zeolite, Dragonscale Iron. He had only seen these names in fantasy novels, but the system had labeled each material with detailed physical property data—melting point, density, hardness range, coefficient of thermal expansion, and compatibility parameters with different steels. This data wasn't something you'd find in fictional novels. It was forging process parameters—the very things any materials scientist would measure and verify the first thing upon receiving an unknown alloy.

He then browsed the blueprints panel. A neat row of names lined the interface—Elven Longbow, Mithril Scimitar, Dwarven Heavy Hammer, Dragonscale Armor, Shadow Dagger… Each name was labeled with its category and quality level, but the details were grayed out and couldn't be clicked to view further information. Clearly, these blueprints required purchase to unlock the full forging instructions. Judging from the names alone, these blueprints corresponded to equipment with special attributes, belonging to the same type of system-generated product as the Paladin's Cross Sword he had just acquired.

He closed the shop interface and reopened the blueprint for the Paladin's Cross Sword.

The sword is a half-sword. This is exactly the type of sword he will be working on in the finals. There's no need to hesitate about which design to choose anymore—the shape of this sword perfectly meets the competition requirements, and the forging techniques and material ratios provided in the blueprints are enough for him to make a half-sword that far exceeds the standard within five days.

As for blessed silver—he couldn't find silver that had been offered and blessed before the altar in a short time. But Professor Robert's workshop had ordinary silver. He remembered seeing several pieces of experimental pure silver in the lower drawer of the materials cabinet; they were leftovers from the professor's metal comparison experiments, very pure, and had been sitting there untouched. Using ordinary silver instead of blessed silver would weaken the holy and exorcising attributes, but for the competition, the sword's forging quality and performance were the key factors in the judges' scoring. Additional attributes were icing on the cake, not a necessity.

He lay on the bed, closed his eyes, and mentally went through the forging process again. The blueprints for the Paladin's Cross Sword required that silver be incorporated into the steel billet during the folding and forging process, so that the silver would be distributed in extremely thin layers in specific locations on the blade.

Silver has a different melting point than steel, and its forging and welding temperature window is narrower. Layered forging requires more precise flame temperature control. However, with full master-level access, coupled with the Quenching Flowing Blade and Inner Vision skills he had repeatedly used in the first round of the competition, he was confident.

His flight was at 8:20 tomorrow morning. He'd have five days back in Clemson. Five days, and a Paladin's Cross Sword. The markings on the blueprints, indicating special attributes, remained vividly etched in his mind even in the darkness; every crafting parameter felt as familiar as if he'd already practiced it in front of the forge. He rolled over, pulled the blanket up to his shoulders, and closed his eyes.