Chapter 149 - Dreadful Flames

  Hao didn’t falter under any scrutiny. His words from start to finish were slow and clear, not a detail missed. He made it short on purpose, though. The fewer details outside the robes themselves were more than he needed or wanted to say.

  “Hmm…” The Forging Hall Leader set the robe down. “Who can explain exactly what our Young Friend here just described?”

  Not sure what the Hall Leader was getting at. Hao slowly drifted back to where he had stood before he brought the pelt forward.

  The pelt stayed. Niu Lan Tian shuffled back as she let go of her corners. Suspended in mid-air, without even a wisp of fuzz on the ground, the Hall Leader moved around it, his hands hovering over a few spots as if a pattern was traced.

  Four disciples stood to answer the question. The closest to silence it would get in the hall only lingered for four or five seconds before the most impatient blurted out their thoughts.

  The clash of voices turned into a discussion. Eventually, the first one to rise stepped forward as the other three sat back down.

  He was short. Very short compared to Lan Tian, obviously, but short even compared to Hao and the rest of both men and women in the hall. Young, similar in age to Hao, yet there were bald patches on his head, covered by the long parts of his hair, which he pulled forward.

  “A Rank One Artifact, or elementary grade, low-tier magic item. An item that has natural attributes enhanced.”

  He sat and pointed to another, who stood in his place. “Treasures are naturally formed. An Artifact is made by hand, usually with a treasure material as its base. Elementary means basic, magic means beyond mortal means.”

  They kept answering like that. Hao learned something with each word spoken, even if most of it flew over his head. The Hall Leader seemed a little less impressed. Each time one of his trainees rose and said something, he squinted his eyes a little more.

  “Enough, enough…” the Forging Hall Leader looked up, “I’m glad you are all eager to answer. I think after hearing something different from all of you, our little friend understands…” he nodded his head, the pout on his lips made the sarcasm hit even harder.

  “Disciple Niu Lan Tian, if you will.”

  Niu Lan Tian had her fingers in the two large bowls of metal dust, satisfaction on her relaxed cheeks. When her name was called, she flicked some of the powder forward.

  They landed on the floor slowly, and without interference, the materials pushed away from each other.

  Hao spotted Tou Yiwei from the corner of his eye. The one who blocked him at the door slowly moved back until he was in the last row of still gathering people. He became imperceptible with a crouch.

  “Right,” Senior Sister Lan Tian cleared her throat, “The pelt is already weather-resistant. It’s sturdy, thick, hefty, but light. You can strengthen its natural attributes, its resilience to heat and cold, while making it impermeable to wind, fulfilling Junior Brother Hao’s primary request.”

  The Hall Leader nodded. His hand jumped to his short brown beard and pulled. “Well done.” He clapped, “It will naturally get tougher from the forging process. As for things like elementary and magic tiers and so on, that is more for the Artificer and Auctioneers.”

  He sighed, his fingers twitched as if he were counting. “Young Friend, everyone just calls it Rank One. Leave the long-winded to whoever is counting the coins, just make sure two or more people are counting at the same time if you’re the one selling.”

  The Hall Leader turned around. His nose slightly raised, with one corner of his mouth lifted, he must have thought it good advice.

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  As he walked over to the furnace, a whisper spun through the crowd.

  “That kind of thinking must be why he charges so much extra. He is the only one who can make anything better than a mortal treasure on the Lower-Peaks.”

  Everyone pretended not to hear it. The Hall Leader himself couldn’t have made it any more obvious. His hand pulled his beard too hard, and he looked like he tripped.

  “So? This Junior is lucky to have the Hall Leader work on his new toy. I’d trade my hammer for the chance.” He kissed the blunt end of the tool.

  Hao was impressed by how well the Forging Hall Leader recovered from the first remark and absorbed the second one. If Hao had the chance, he would have to learn this kind of shamelessness. As for Artifact forging, although he had a little interest, it was never going to be something he put his heart into the way these people did.

  The Hall Leader’s shamelessness and the words of the disciple were forgotten in the sudden heat that filled the room.

  They all stared as the Hall Leader moved.

  Other people, the ones that hadn’t gathered, snuck up behind the small crowd and tried their best to peek through the bodies. They were of a different kind than the seated disciples. More like the ones at Hao’s back and side, though these held their hammers rested in loops and their shoulders relaxed, while the ones called by Senior Sister Niu Lan Tian were at the ready, as if a race whistle was to blow.

  Heat wrapped around them. But in all the heat, they were so pulled up in tension they couldn’t joke.

  Most of the quips were inside jokes, but he understood a few. Their favorite was, “So what if Elder overcharges a little? It gets done in one day, no need to wait for a request to be picked up by one of us and completed for the pay, and praise Heaven, he’s got the whole hall working on two robes.”

  Each time they said something along the same lines, his apprehension grew. The time of his arrival must have been a poor one if it was time for jokes, lessons, or what would be the equivalent of shop talk.

  This place is way too different from the Medicine and Food Hall. Hao liked the environment, but the scent of sweat from the nearly two dozen people pressed in around him certainly left a bad taste in his mouth.

  Even the jokes stopped when the Hall Leader lifted his hand. The gesture was slight and sudden, but it nearly burned away any doubt that brewed in Hao.

  Fire spun in his palm. Controlled, precise, the flame seared away at the air with a subtle scream like a kettle forgotten on a campfire under the sun. The pelt floated up. It was white before, but the flames left the Hall Leader’s hand in a tendril and spun around the material as if it were an invitation to dance.

  With the start of the process, the Hall Leader turned aside. The flamboyancy that once adorned his bearded face was gone, replaced by an untouchable focus as he pulled at radiant orange fire and unsinged fur.

  The pelt split into two separate sheets and rolled up. It followed the wisps of inviting flame as they retreated towards the white, tripod cauldron-shaped furnace.

  “It’s always enjoyable to watch the Hall Leader prepare materials.”

  “Mm… even Mid-Grade Demonic Beast Materials look like something from the Divine Realm in the Hall Leader’s hands.”

  The pelts curled tighter. Hao could hear the strain of fibers as the balls of fur grew tighter beyond belief.

  Then, with the flame, they disappeared into the furnace. They began melting inside—perhaps it was just the heat haze.

  The fur didn’t burn, but dripped and coalesced as bright syrup, like an ice treat a child would carry on the day the merchants’ barge arrived.

  Hao couldn’t keep his eyes off it.

  With the downward flick of a finger from the Hall Leader, a hatch that was hidden on the inside of the furnace slammed closed, and with that, it was sealed. No hole on top for smoke, nothing to let heat escape.

  The temperature jumped. Before, the haze was an illusion, but now that the Hall Leader pushed his hand towards the spherical pit of concealed flame, it seemed the world was on fire. The haze was a curtain that fell over all of them.

  “Still, this doesn’t compare to the day the Hall Leader showed his metal melting method.”

  Artificers seemed to swoon at the thought of metal turned liquid.

  “Senior Sister is in charge of that today. I’m looking forward to it; it might be a method most of us can actually use.”

  Hao’s initial impression was that these people were strange. The sight of their pumped fists at the idea of different metalworking methods made it worse, not in a bad way.

  Still, he slid away just a little, for personal space.

  It was hard to ignore their fervor in their eyes, as if it wasn’t a middle-aged man making robes and controlling fire, but a blue-eyed goddess bathing in a pond, humming a song that had the rhythm that unraveled the Dao.

  It’s not the strangest thing I’ve seen in the Drifting Stream.