Studying at Western University starts with a knife-forging competition

On the morning of the fourth day, when Lin Yuan pushed open the door of the workshop, Mark was already there.

He switched back to coffee today, and the dark circles under his eyes have faded a bit, probably because he finally slept for more than four hours last night.

The cameraman is adjusting the white balance, and the sound engineer is changing the angle of the microphone boom.

The workshop was quiet. The tension from the forging and quenching a couple of days ago had passed, and only the slight hum of the equipment in standby mode remained in the air.

Lin Yuan placed his backpack on the workbench, walked to the workbench, and lifted the cotton cloth.

The uncut sword lay quietly in the morning light, its golden sheen, refined with two thousand polishing stones, more stable than yesterday.

He ran his fingertip along the positioning line of the blood groove to confirm that the blade surface had not changed color due to oxidation overnight.

The sword blade is finished; today's work isn't on the blade, but on the pile of unfinished parts.

He took a piece of high-carbon steel plate from the materials shelf; it was leftover material from when he was making practice sword blanks.

Robert's workshop always had its material shelves clearly organized. Each layer of steel plates was arranged by type and thickness, with scraps and leftovers kept on a separate layer. The pieces were too small to make larger items, but perfect for sword guards. He weighed the piece in his hand and headed towards the forge.

After the rough blank of the sword was formed, he moved to the sander to adjust its shape, and the curvature on both sides gradually became symmetrical as the sander belt pushed it forward.

He used a file to smooth the inner wall of the central opening, filing it a few times before fitting the guard onto the hilt of the sword to test the fit, until there was no wobbling when it was pushed in. The counterweight ball was machined on a lathe and given a black finish to match the dark gray of the guard.

The hilt was made of ebony. After it was finished, he took out the stingray skin from his backpack—he had taken it out of the system storage compartment before setting off in the morning and put it together with the tool bag.

The fish skin is hard and stiff when dry, with tightly packed scales that feel noticeably gritty to the touch. He cut the fish skin to fit the dimensions of the wood core, then filled a small basin with warm water and soaked the cut pieces in it.

The stingray skin gradually softened in warm water, its stiff texture becoming supple and malleable. He let the skin soak for a few minutes, until the layers between the scales had fully absorbed water, then took it out and used a dry cloth to absorb the excess moisture from the surface.

The softened fish skin can be bent into the wood core without breaking. The scales themselves do not absorb water; only the bottom layer of the skin will become smooth after being moistened.

He wrapped the fish skin around the wood core, pressing it gently along the curved surface of the core with his fingers to ensure there were no air bubbles or gaps between the skin and the wood. The scales were more distinct when wet, and you could feel each scale slightly protruding from the skin when you pressed it with your fingertips.

Then, use thin rope to wrap it tightly around the sword guard, from the end to the counterweight ball, pulling it to the same tension with each turn, so that the fish skin adheres tightly to the wood core and sets during the drying process.

While waiting for the fish skin to dry, he continued finishing work on the sword guard and the counterweight ball. After the fish skin was completely dry, he removed the thin rope and checked the fit between the skin and the wood core—the dried fish skin adhered tightly to the wood core, the scales regained their hardness and three-dimensionality in their dry state, and the seams were perfectly sealed.

He used a sharp leather trimmer to remove the excess material at the seams, applied a thin layer of glue to the surface of the wood core, and then reattached and pressed the fish skin firmly. Finally, he hand-sewn the edges, with fine and even stitches, ensuring a tight seal at the seam.

After the assembly was completed, he stepped back from the worktable and looked at it from beginning to end.

The sword is long and straight, with golden light shining evenly from beneath its finely polished blade. The guard is sharp, and the scales on the hilt have a matte finish in the light. The overall effect is already quite good, but it feels like something is missing—the functionality is all there, but the spirit hasn't quite finished.

Last night, while looking through the blueprints for the Paladin's Cross in his dorm room, he noticed a tiny note at the bottom of the design. It wasn't a technical specification, but a suggestion for an inscription. He looked up the words in a Latin dictionary on his phone, wrote them down several times in his notebook, and finally decided to have them engraved on the sword.

The holy silver effect of this sword carries a certain sense of judgment, and the inscription should echo this attribute, rather than starting a separate line with unrelated pretty words.

He walked to the materials cabinet and opened the bottom drawer. Professor Robert's drawer, where he stored experimental metal materials, contained few items: a few scraps of silver marked with their purity, a small roll of brass wire, and a few copper rods for metallographic analysis.

The silver and copper wire were leftovers from experiments, which the professor didn't usually need, but Lin Yuan knew the location of each piece of material.

He picked out a small, thin piece of silver from the edge of the silver slab and cut a small section from the coil of brass wire. The silver piece was used as a non-slip pad at the end of the sword hilt, and the brass wire was inlaid with inscriptions.

There was an extremely fine seam between the ebony at the end of the sword hilt and the counterweight. He cut a silver sheet into a ring the diameter of the seam, sanded the edges with fine sandpaper, and then inserted it into the seam.

The silver ring adds an extremely fine silver transition line between the dark ebony wood and the matte black of the counterweight ball—it's inconspicuous, but when you hold it, you can feel a very subtle difference in texture between the silver and the wood at the base of your thumb, which serves to prevent slipping and position the ball.

Next came the inscription. He fixed the sword to the workbench and used a marking needle to lightly trace the baseline of the letters on the blade near the guard. Then he picked up the chisel, aligned the chisel tip with the starting position of the first letter, and gently tapped the end of the chisel with a small hammer.

AEQUITAS.

Each letter was engraved slowly. The chisels left clean, clear marks on the steel surface, with uniform depth. The spacing between the letters was measured with calipers to maintain a consistent rhythm. He had practiced engineering drawing in university to prepare lab reports, so letter spacing and baseline control were fundamental skills for him. While engraving, the only sound in the workshop was the clinking of the chisels, a rhythm completely different from the forging a few days earlier—not a long, drawn-out thud, but a series of precise, light taps.

EX.

PALLORE.

After carving the last letter, he straightened up and gently brushed away the metal shavings from the letter slot with a steel brush. Then, he picked up the piece of brass wire, cut it into small sections matching the length of the inscription, and inserted them one by one into the letter slot with tweezers. Once the brass wire was in place, it protruded slightly above the surface of the sword. He then gently smoothed it with very fine sandpaper until the brass was flush with the blade. Finally, he used a cloth wheel dipped in a little polishing wax to lightly run it over the inscription area.

The inscription, inlaid with brass, shimmered faintly in the golden light. It wasn't the kind of conspicuous mark you could see from afar; it was a detail only revealed upon closer inspection—Aequitas ex Pallore. Pale Justice. The Latin letters were clean and crisp, the warm gold of the brass and the cool sheen of the holy silver meeting at the edges of the letter slots, creating a subtle contrast between warm and cool tones.

Mark stood outside the safety line, watching Lin Yuan finish the final stroke of the inscription before speaking. "Aren't you afraid the chisel will chip if you carve words on a sword? The steel will be too hard after quenching."

"Just carve slowly. Keep the chisel angle flat and use a low hammer." Lin Yuan wiped away the last bit of polishing wax residue around the inscription with a cotton cloth. "Also, this area isn't as hard as the cutting edge; the hardness will drop a notch after tempering."

Mark walked over and leaned closer to examine the inscription on the sword. "What does it say?"

"Aequitas ex Pallore. I spent ages checking the Latin dictionary before I could confirm this spelling."

"What do you mean?"

"Pale justice." Lin Yuan folded the cotton cloth and placed it on the side of the worktable. "True justice doesn't need fancy decorations. It's not as dazzling as vanity, nor does it rely on superficial power to intimidate people."

Standing next to those things, justice looks inferior and pale.

But conversely—in the face of true fairness and justice, all hypocrisy and brute force become pale and powerless. This is my expectation for this sword.

Mark stepped back two paces, and the cameraman instinctively zoomed in on a close-up of the inscription.

In the viewfinder, brass-inlaid letters are quietly arranged in the golden light. From a distance, they blend into the luster of the blade, and only when you get close enough can you see the strokes of each letter.

Lin Yuan put the tools away and filled the thermos with water.

Before opening the door, he told the camera his plans for tomorrow: final checks, fine-tuning, and then heading to Atlanta.