A Mortal's Journey to Immortality: Starting as a Sword-Forging Servant and Ascending to Immorta

The punch dented a bowl-sized hole in the bronze furnace wall, and the furnace shook twice before settling back down on the ground.

Chen Baichuan's hand was still in the pit, his knuckles bleeding, but he didn't pull it out.

"You beast," he cursed again, this time in a lower voice, as if it were leaking from between his teeth.

Zhou Lingxuan did not try to persuade him.

He bent down and rubbed the corner of the wall where the two of them had been squatting a few times to smooth out the boot marks. Then he grabbed a handful of dust and sprinkled it on the spot where the boots had been.

Li Yuan cleaned up thoroughly, but he was cleaning up his own traces. The two of them had been standing here for almost half an incense stick's time; if someone had pasted something on the hot wall, there would inevitably be some trace left behind.

"You still do this?" Chen Baichuan finally pulled his fist out and turned to look at him.

"The fact that he came back to check on things just now means he's not at ease."

Zhou Lingxuan brushed the dust off his hands.

"Those who are not reliable will come back for a second visit."

Chen Baichuan opened his mouth, but couldn't say a word. His chest heaved a few times, and he sat back down on the futon.

He kicked the prayer mat askew, and he was too lazy to straighten it, so he just sat there crookedly.

"I've been with him for twenty-seven years."

He suddenly spoke.

"When he first started out, he didn't even dare to open the furnace door. If molten iron splashed out, he would cry for ages. I would cover his hand and scold him, saying, 'If you can't even handle this little bit of pain, you should go home and farm as soon as possible.'"

Zhou Lingxuan stood by the stove listening without interrupting.

"He trained harder than anyone else. One winter, he stayed in this Earth Fire Chamber for nineteen days straight to forge a dual-spirit sword."

"When he came out, he was so thin he looked unrecognizable. The sword was finished, and I was so happy that I gave him all the spirit wine I had hidden away."

At this point, Chen Baichuan suddenly gave a self-deprecating laugh.

"Back then, I thought that if I handed over the Qi Hall to him in the future, it would be a fitting end for him."

"Then why did he stop practicing later?" Zhou Lingxuan asked.

Upon hearing this question, the slight recollection on Chen Baichuan's face immediately vanished.

"I'm not practicing anymore."

He uttered those three words.

"More than 30 years ago, he reached the mid-stage of the Golden Core realm, but he hasn't moved forward a single step since. A few years ago, I thought he had hit a bottleneck. I helped him find materials and methods, and even went to the Scripture Pavilion to copy two volumes of mental formulas for him."

"And then?"

"Now I finally understand."

Chen Baichuan pointed to the door.

"He's not stuck. He's stopped practicing. In the past thirty years, has he produced a single decent item? No! Not a single one!"

"Where does he spend all his time? He spends it giving gifts to the elders of each peak! He spends it drinking with those outer hall stewards! He spends it watching to see when the old hall master will breathe his last!"

He spoke so urgently that his voice cracked slightly.

"I was wondering why his weapon-forging skills had deteriorated so much over the years, producing three batches of substandard products from one batch. Turns out, he simply hadn't been focusing on the furnace at all!"

"He spent thirty years climbing these few steps."

The heat in the fire chamber lingered, and when Chen Baichuan's internal energy became disordered, the heat became even stickier.

Zhou Lingxuan, however, didn't think much of it. He had spent ninety years of his life in blacksmith sheds, in places far more stifling than this.

"That's normal," he said.

Chen Baichuan suddenly looked up.

"What did you say?"

"The old man said that this is quite normal in the cultivation world."

Zhou Lingxuan tucked his hands into his sleeves, his tone no different from when he said there was powder in the cracks in the wall.

"Not surprising."

Chen Baichuan stared at him, his eyes still red.

"Normal? He destroyed the sect's supplies! If a hundred Frost Shields can't be delivered, and something goes wrong at the front, do you know how many people will die? Is that normal?"

"That's not what the old man meant."

Zhou Lingxuan went around to the other side of the furnace and squatted down to look at the crater that had been smashed open. The crack in the copper wall had rough edges. He reached out and touched it, then pulled his hand back.

"The old man has been in the outer gate for ninety years."

He said.

"The servants' quarters are much smaller than this equipment hall, and the people there are much lower in status. But the things they fight over are the same."

"Same?"

"Old Wang managed the roster in the servants' quarters for forty years."

Zhou Lingxuan said.

"For the past forty years, all he's managed has been who fetches water and who sweeps the dust for three meals a day."

"Seven people put something in his food before he got this position. One of them put something really bad in his food. Old Wang was sick for two months and lost three teeth."

Chen Baichuan frowned.

"For a menial clerk in charge of the roster?"

"For them, that's everything."

Zhou Lingxuan clapped his hands.

"The person in charge of the roster can carry one less trip of water, get a bed near the fire wall in winter, and get an extra low-grade spirit stone when they receive their monthly pay. You might think it's not worth it, but that's all the things they can get in their lifetime."

He stood up and looked at Chen Baichuan.

"Li Yuan wants something bigger, like a hall master position, but the principle is the same."

"In this life, focus your efforts on whatever area you choose to keep your eyes on."

"He's been eyeing that position for thirty years. It's only natural that his skills have declined; he doesn't care at all."

Chen Baichuan remained silent.

After a while, he said in a hoarse voice, "But he is a weapon refiner."

"He is the deputy hall master," Zhou Lingxuan said.

That one sentence left Chen Baichuan speechless for a long time.

"This old man has something I shouldn't say," Zhou Lingxuan took half a step forward, "Elder Chen, you're applying the sword cultivator's methods to him."

"What do you mean?"

"Sword cultivators speak of having a clear and bright sword mind. If there is even a little bit of dirt in your mind, your sword will not obey you and will not be able to move forward. Sword cultivators must force themselves to be clean."

Zhou Lingxuan paused for a moment.

"Those who can forge weapons don't repair swords; the furnace in your hand doesn't care whether you're clean or not."

"It only cares whether you're precise with the heat and whether the hammer is steady. Even if you're mentally a mess, as long as your hands are steady, you can still produce good stuff."

Chen Baichuan's breathing slowed down.

"So he hasn't suffered at all in these thirty years."

Zhou Lingxuan said.

"He didn't climb the ladder against his conscience. He just climbed up. Climbing up to control the resources and connections of the Qitang was his 'true nature'."

"His true nature?" Chen Baichuan seemed stung by those two words. "That's what he calls his true nature?"

"Why don't you call out?"

Zhou Lingxuan asked the question very softly, but Chen Baichuan froze on the prayer mat after hearing it.

The underground fire chamber remained silent for a long time.

In the distance, the earth's fiery veins moved within the wall, making a muffled sound, one after another.

Chen Baichuan slowly bent down, resting his hands on his knees and his head hanging down.

He remembered many things.

Three years ago, during the autumn examination, three deputy hall masters argued so much in the council hall that they overturned the table in order to compete for a share of azurite. Zhao Kuo smashed Li Yuan's teacup on the spot. Li Yuan wiped his clothes and laughed, saying, "Senior Brother Zhao, why bother?"

Last December, during the shift scheduling for the Class A Earth Fire Chamber, a junior steward in the Foundation Establishment stage asked someone to pass a message to him, offering to exchange half a year's salary for three days. Three days.

Recently, Li Yuan came to him several times to ask him to take sides, calling him "Master" repeatedly, speaking to him as if he were his own son.

He found it annoying and chased the person away.

He thought he was being aloof.

Looking back now, those people didn't suddenly turn bad.

Year after year, they just kept turning their eyes away from the stove and looking elsewhere.

And Chen Baichuan, who has been guarding a furnace all these years, is known as a smelly and hard old bear, not because he is particularly clean.

It's because he still wants to refine something.

"A complete mess." He squeezed out those four words from his throat.

Zhou Lingxuan did not respond.

"When I first entered the Weapon Hall..."

Chen Baichuan's voice was muffled between his knees.

"There were about thirty people in the hall. If someone produced something new in the furnace, the whole hall would rush to see it. After seeing it, they would scramble to try it out, then criticize it, and then work together to fix it. Back then, nobody cared about the deputy hall master."

He paused for a moment.

"If you ask anyone in this room who has the best cooking skills, no one can answer. But if you ask who will be the next in line, from the gatekeeper to the cook, everyone can give you a list of the top three."

Zhou Lingxuan then spoke up: "That's just their true feelings. They say what they care about."

Chen Baichuan suddenly raised his head.

He stared at Zhou Lingxuan for a long time, his anger seemingly suppressed by those two sentences.

It's not gone, it just sank.

"So if I had rushed out just now and slapped him to death at the door," Chen Baichuan said slowly, "what would the authorities have said?"

"They say Elder Chen has been clinging to the Earth Fire Chamber all these years, and his temper has grown worse every day. Now he's even turning against his own disciple," Zhou Lingxuan said. "If a few more people say a few words, it'll become a case of failing to seize power and killing someone on the spot."

Chen Baichuan tapped his fingers on his knees repeatedly.

"The shield has been handed over, and he just cleaned up the tail of this fire chamber."

Chen Baichuan sneered, this time his laughter was more sober.

"That bastard would never leave this one trick up his sleeve. He's probably already arranged how to talk about the warehouse accounts, the withdrawal records of the Crimson Flame Marrow, and those two negligent guards."

He raised his hand and wiped his face.

"If I investigate now, I won't find anything. If I find nothing, it's considered falsely accusing a fellow disciple, and being stripped of real power would be the least of my worries."

"right."

"So you can't move."

Chen Baichuan let out a long breath, and as soon as he finished exhaling, it felt like something had been lifted off his shoulder.

"I have to pretend I know nothing first."

Zhou Lingxuan nodded.

He looked at Chen Baichuan.

When this man was smashing the furnace, his internal energy was as chaotic as boiling water; now that his internal energy has returned to his dantian, his face is no longer flushed, but there is a layer of gray under his eyes.

An elder at the Golden Core stage was stabbed in the back by his disciple of twenty-seven years. It took him less than half an incense stick's time to calm down after going from furious to calm.

That's pretty fast.

Elder Chen.

"Um?"

"Now that you've seen through his hand," Zhou Lingxuan pulled his hand from his sleeve and pointed to the heavy stone door, "what are your plans next?"

Chen Baichuan did not answer immediately.

Zhou Lingxuan added another sentence, his voice not loud:

"Do you need my help, old man?"