Chapter 56 Sword Forging (2)
The refined iron ore bought with seven ounces of iron ore, after being melted down, only yielded a blank weighing about five pounds. Since it had not been extracted, impurities would be continuously hammered out during the forging process. Li Xiaoxiao thought it would be good if three pounds remained after the forging was complete.
She didn't care about the stares of those around her. Instead, she picked up the tongs and took out the red-hot iron billet, placing it on the table. With her right hand, she easily picked up the hammer, weighed it in her hand, and found it weighed less than ten pounds. She could only make do with it.
She raised the hammer and brought it down with the first blow.
With a "clang," the perfectly round blank was immediately flattened by the hammer.
She sighed inwardly. This level of iron was considered refined iron; no wonder it could only be hammered with a ten-pound hammer. If the hammer were any heavier, it would probably break.
Well, she's out of money and can't afford more expensive refined iron ore, so she'll just have to make do with what she has.
She increased the speed of her hammering, striking the blank repeatedly with a series of sharp, relentless blows. Large chunks of charred impurities peeled off layer by layer. The ten-pound hammer seemed weightless in her hands, and even the speed of her swing remained unchanged.
Yang Shang's initial mockery had completely turned into shock. In order to slap Li Xiaoxiao in the face, he deliberately took out the heaviest iron hammer, weighing a full ten pounds. Even for him, hitting it ten or so times would leave him sweating profusely. But this skinny young man in front of him was able to use the ten-pound hammer as if it weighed only half a pound. Sparks flew, impurities kept peeling off, and the refined iron visibly shrank.
Before they knew it, all the blacksmiths in Zheng's blacksmith shop stopped what they were doing and gathered around, staring at Li Xiaoxiao as if she were a lump of meat.
Li Xiaoxiao focused all her attention on the increasingly smaller iron billet. She was getting more and more anxious as she worked on it. It had almost shrunk by half, so why were there still impurities?
Good swords and knives are forged through countless hammerings, but given the quality of this iron ingot, it would be completely ruined even after three hundred hammerings, let alone a thousand.
Finally, after losing almost half its weight, she struck with the hammer and felt a slight rebound. Hmm, the impurities had mostly peeled off, the iron was starting to harden, and she could almost shape it.
The billet needed to be reheated after shaping, so she used tongs to throw it back into the furnace, pulled the bellows handle, and started heating the billet.
The bright red glow of the stove sun shone on her face, and beads of sweat finally began to appear on her forehead.
All the blacksmiths in Zheng's blacksmith shop gathered around, not uttering a word, staring intently at the red-hot iron billet in the furnace, so translucent and crystalline. They could almost imagine how it would be after being shaped, cutting through iron like mud...
Is this forging? No, this is an art performance. Only highly skilled craftsmen can convince people, but Li Xiaoxiao's skill just now has completely stunned them.
Besides the quality of the blank, the craftsman's skill is also crucial in blacksmithing. The speed and force of hammering are inversely proportional to the number of times the iron is reheated in the furnace. The faster the speed and the stronger the force, the fewer times it needs to be reheated, and the better the quality of the ironware produced.
Li Xiaoxiao hammered the impurities hundreds of times in the first step of refining the clay without ever going back into the furnace. She managed to remove almost all the impurities from the clay in one go. The second step was to return it to the furnace, and the third step was to shape it. All of this was completed in just half an hour.
Li Xiaoxiao flipped the iron billet over. It had become almost transparent under the heat of the fire. When she felt the temperature was about right, she took it out with tongs again. She raised the hammer and took another look. Now that she had reached the shaping stage, this ten-pound hammer was a bit too heavy.
She looked up and asked the shopkeeper, "Shopkeeper, do you have a hammer weighing about two pounds? I need to shape something—" She suddenly stopped, wondering why there were so many people around.
The shopkeeper was stunned for a moment before he reacted: "Yes, yes, yes, two jin!"
Another master craftsman immediately said, "I have two pounds of hammer, wait a moment." He then returned to his workstation and handed over a small hammer.
Li Xiaoxiao thanked her and didn't pay attention to her surroundings. She felt that the ten-pound hammer was not heavy at all, and the two-pound hammer was as light as a rust needle, making it more flexible to shape.
Her hands kept turning, hammering from two-thirds of the length of the sword blank. The iron blank slowly spread out, forming a shape that was thin on both sides and thick in the middle. The sword body slowly took shape, then the tip, and finally she turned it upside down and hammered the hilt round. To prevent slipping, she even hammered out a few intersecting lines.
With the final hammer blow, the sword emitted a soft "ding" sound. Li Xiaoxiao placed it in the water, and with a hiss, a puff of smoke immediately rose. After a while, she retrieved the short sword from the water. In the sunlight, the foot-long sword appeared almost transparent, its edges thin and its blade small and exquisite.
Li Xiaoxiao weighed the iron ingot in her hand. Five jin of refined iron had yielded only a two-jin short sword – what a huge loss!
All eyes were fixed on the short sword. The shopkeeper couldn't help but ask, "Young man, why don't you try it? Is it sharp?" Actually, there was no need to test it. Judging from the extraordinary light it emitted, this short sword was already a superior weapon. The shopkeeper had witnessed its entire creation process and still wanted to see its destructive power with his own eyes.
Li Xiaoxiao gripped the hilt of the sword and casually thrust it into the table beside her. The sword disappeared into the table, leaving only the hilt.
She nodded in agreement; the sharpness was alright, wasn't it?
The onlookers finally exclaimed in surprise: "It's too sharp!"
"Is this the new blacksmith? Can I order farm tools from him?"
"Yes, if my sickle could be made like this, I would be willing to buy it even for twenty more coins."
"Yes, yes, my hoe too!"
The shopkeeper stared intently at the short sword, immediately signaling his assistant to stop the customers who kept rushing forward. He then pulled Li Xiaoxiao aside and asked, "Young man, are you selling this short sword?" As he spoke, his eyes were fixed on the sword in her hand with fascination.
Li smiled and said, "I'm not selling it. I'll keep it for myself." Seeing that it was getting late and she hadn't finished memorizing her lessons for the day, she turned to leave.
The shopkeeper grew anxious: "Young man, young man, don't leave yet. How about I offer ten taels of silver to buy your short sword? You bought it for seven taels of silver, and you'll make three taels in no time."
Ten taels of silver? Are you kidding me? Li smiled and said, "Not for sale."
The shopkeeper immediately raised the price: "Fifteen taels, double the price, are you selling or not?"
Li Xiaoxiao shrugged: "Do you think I look like someone who's short of money?"
The shopkeeper hurriedly replied, "We don't lack any, but we desperately need such sharp knives, and we also lack a forging genius like you. If you're not willing to sell this sword, how about you become a blacksmith in our shop? Room and board included, five taels of silver a month!"
Five taels of silver a month?! After being transferred to serve Meng Guanqi, Li Xiaoxiao now receives the monthly allowance of a second-class maid, eight hundred coins a month. Five taels of silver is seven times her salary! But she sighed, "Manager, what are your ideals?"
The shopkeeper was taken aback. What was his ideal? No one had ever asked him this before, but in order to retain this talent, he still said, "My ideal is, of course, to run this blacksmith shop well and help Master Zheng make more money." Then he could get a bigger share of the profits.
Li smiled and said, "What a grand ideal! Do you know what my ideal is?"
The shopkeeper guessed: "To become a world-renowned master blacksmith?"
Li Xiaoxiao sighed: "My ideal life is to live a life of ease and be taken care of, and for all my relatives and friends to benefit from my success. So I'm waiting for my son to become the top scholar in the imperial examination and carry me to new heights. This kind of hard work as a blacksmith is not suitable for me..."
The shopkeeper was dumbfounded. Was his hearing alright? This young man looked only fourteen or fifteen years old, yet he was thinking of just loafing around and waiting to die?
He wanted to try again: "No, buddy, you really are a genius blacksmith, please reconsider—"
Li Xiaoxiao righteously and firmly refused the shopkeeper's offer, casually tucked the short sword into her waistband, and left without even using a scabbard, her hands behind her back.
Yang Shang overheard their conversation from behind and was greatly relieved to learn that Li Xiaoxiao was not being recruited by the shopkeeper.
Luckily, he didn't agree, otherwise if that kid had really come over, where would they have room to stand in the shop?
The shopkeeper looked on with great regret, without even turning his head: "You saw that sword, didn't you? While it might not be able to cut through iron like mud, it's not far off. If it were made from a better piece of fine iron... what a pity. Can you even forge a knife like that?"
Yang Shang's face turned ashen, but he had to admit, "No, I don't have his strength. He must have been born with superhuman strength. He can hit a ten-pound hammer for half an hour straight. You can't find another one like him in the entire Biyang County."
The shopkeeper muttered, "If I could get my hands on that short sword and deliver it to the Lin'an branch, I could sell it for eighty taels of silver. Why wouldn't such a natural blacksmithing genius want to join the trade?"
As for Li Xiaoxiao's claim that her ideal was to live a life of leisure and idleness, he took it all as an excuse for her heartless refusal to join the industry.
Yang Shang glanced at the shopkeeper. Although this was his superior, the shopkeeper was just as ruthless as the boss. He wanted to buy something that cost eighty taels of silver for ten taels. Fortunately, the child refused to sell it.
When Li Xiaoxiao returned to the study, Asheng immediately noticed the short sword casually tucked into her waistband and stared wide-eyed: "Sister Xiaoxiao, is your sword finished?"
Li Xiaoxiao nodded: "Okay, it took an hour to finish typing."
Ah Sheng thought the color of the short sword was incredibly beautiful, and reached out to take it, saying, "Let me see it, let me see it."
Before Li Xiaoxiao could dodge, his hand had already reached out and touched the blade, causing blood to gush out immediately.
Ah Sheng cried out in pain, "Ah! It hurts so much!"
Li Xiaoxiao sighed: "How stupid! How could anyone try to grab the sword itself?"
Ah Sheng clenched his fist, and blood still dripped down his face. Tears welled up in his eyes: "Sister Xiaoxiao, is my hand broken?"
Li smiled and said, "It's just a hair breaking and a small cut. Wait here while I go get the medicine."
After applying the medicine and bandaging it up, Li Xiaoxiao warned, "This sword is very sharp, don't touch it carelessly."
He wouldn't dare touch it, but what if Sister Xiaoxiao accidentally cuts someone by exposing the sword like this?
Li Xiaoxiao thought for a moment and said, "That makes sense. I need to find a scabbard first."
She had almost spent all her money, and making a scabbard would probably cost a lot more. After thinking about it, she went back into the house, turned the wolf skin inside out, cut off a piece, and asked Mama Mao to sew a leather sheath for her. She usually hung it on her waist, and it didn't get in the way at all.
She used all the money to forge swords. When she asked Mao's mother to help make a leather case, she thought Mao's mother would grab her ear and scold her, but Mao's mother was in a good mood and didn't scold her at all.
Li Xiaoxiao couldn't help but ask curiously, "Aunt Mao, is there some good news lately? Why are you so happy?"
Madam Mao said, "Of course, great news! You went to the outer courtyard and didn't know that Steward Zhao asked Madam for a favor today, wanting to betroth Xiumei to Zhao Jian as his wife, and Xiumei agreed."
There hasn't been any happy event in the family for a long time, so everyone is delighted to see this.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com