Bai Ning glared at the map of the Netherworld Domain spread out before her. The tattered piece of paper lay innocuously on the table, its golden characters skittering across the surface as if determined to resist every attempt she made to decipher them.

  When she had first taken it from Mo Jian, she had assumed the challenge would be straightforward. Either she would make progress, gradually unraveling its mystery, or it would prove completely inscrutable, and depending on the outcome, she would either persist or set it aside.

  But what actually happened was far more frustrating. She had managed to eke out some progress, yes, but it always unraveled sooner or later. The map wasn’t a map in any traditional sense. It was no chart of roads or regions; instead, it was a sheet of shifting, ever-changing golden script in a long-lost language. The letters formed and reformed, changing constantly, as though actively mocking her efforts to make sense of them.

  Most of the time, whatever characters appeared were completely foreign to her. But every now and then, a familiar mark or symbol would flicker into existence, like bait dangling on a hook, and she would end up wasting hours chasing after it, hoping to unlock its secret, only to watch it slip away again.

  It was maddening. If not for the fact that she needed the occasional break from swordsmanship, she would have stopped wasting her time on it altogether. But that was a thought she kept to herself; if Master Mo Jian ever found out, he would be insufferably smug about it for days. Besides, he wasn’t even using the map; left in his hands, it would just sit in his storage pouch collecting dust.

  Still, she knew for a fact that he understood far more about it than he admitted, likely drawing on the same hidden source of knowledge that had first led him to the map and that he still refused to share with her.

  He had at least offered her one small detail: its location couldn’t be accessed in any conventional way. The Netherworld Domain did not exist anywhere in the physical world. It was a hidden realm, and the map served as a gateway to it. In essence, it was a kind of key, unlocking a passage rather than pointing toward a destination one could travel to normally.

  She had spent more time than was probably healthy wondering what might lie within that domain. After all, her master had gone to great lengths to obtain the map, even if the Ming family incident had overshadowed the entire affair. Whatever prize it led to had to be something extraordinary.

  But daydreaming had brought her no closer to her goal. Sighing, Bai Ning once again attempted to break the code, infusing qi into her fingertip and dragging it across the shifting characters in an effort to force them into some semblance of meaning. Most of the script remained in that strange, unfamiliar language, leaving her with nothing but instinct to guide her.

  For a fleeting moment, she managed to string two sentences together without the characters squirming apart. They held just for an instant, but their meaning still eluded her. She had no idea whether the phrases made any sense at all, or whether they were even meant to. Then they dissolved, the golden characters dancing away, breaking, and reforming into entirely new symbols. Huffing in frustration, she gave up for the day and shoved the map aside.

  As a distraction, it had proven to be a poor one. Maybe the Divine Water Lightning Technique would serve better? The moment the thought crossed her mind, Bai Ning shuddered theatrically – and what a pity no one was there to see it; she was getting quite good at that – and promptly dismissed the idea. No, thank you. Unless it became absolutely necessary, she had no intention of spending extra time on that technique. For something that relied on the same ineffable instinct that now guided her sword technique, it was utterly intractable, entirely unlike her sword arts.

  Singeing herself with lightning was something she could save for another time.

  But that raised the question of what to do now. Bai Ning wasn’t used to sitting still for long stretches, doing nothing. Master Mo Jian still gently chided her about it from time to time: patience was supposed to be a cultivator’s strong suit. Many cultivators famously shut themselves away for years, decades, even centuries of closed-door cultivation, all for the sake of reaching the next stage. Her own experiences, however, had been different enough that she had never developed that sort of mindset.

  All of her advancements had come with only moderate trouble, at worst. So, Mo Jian’s advice had mostly gone in one ear and out the other.

  Rising from the low table, Bai Ning stretched her arms above her head, pausing to glance up through the skylight. It revealed a patch of clear, cloudless blue, though the view was slightly marred by the great prismatic dome of light covering the entire island. That was the shield manifested by the Grand Effervescent Formation, now active at full power almost all the time, especially whenever Master Mo Jian was away.

  Given how badly the descent of a divine treasure, followed by the announcement of a tournament for its ownership, had thrown the Thousand Shattered Island into turmoil, she didn’t mind. In fact, she welcomed the sense of safety and security it offered. The Grand Formation was said to be capable of holding off cultivators even more powerful than her master for a time, so having it active was a tangible comfort.

  Looking at the formation and its shimmering barrier sparked an idea: should she start working on the Crimson Parasol? She had been itching to upgrade that magic tool for a while now, but Master Mo Jian always found some excuse to delay it. Privately, she suspected he was too busy repairing the Heaven Enshrouding Ding and didn’t want to risk her practicing alchemy with it in its current state, which she could understand, but still - rude.

  It wasn’t as if she were going to blow up the ding. The thought alone was ridiculous.

  Deliberately banishing the memory of the last time she had refined a magic tool; her copper shield, whose refinement had launched the ding’s lid into the ceiling of the cave residence, she decided against working on the Crimson Parasol for now. Dragon scales weren’t a material she could refine on her own, and she wasn’t about to let impatience ruin her future artifacts.

  Which brought her back to her dilemma: what was a bored cultivator to do? A voice surfaced in her mind, sounding suspiciously like Master Mo Jian: ‘A good disciple would study or cultivate, instead of creating headaches for her master.’

  She nodded cheerfully. Creating a headache, now that sounded like fun. It had been a while since she’d done anything truly enjoyable, so this was like hitting two birds with one stone. Besides, it served him right for once again going off without taking her along. Yes, the situation in the islands was fraught and tense right now, but she was a cultivator at the final stage of Foundation Establishment. Her parents were sect leaders at the same stage. She was more than ready for responsibility.

  Happily ignoring how that thought clashed with her plan to cause trouble, Bai Ning decided to do something that had been percolating in her mind for quite some time, but had been sidelined by larger concerns: forging a sword.

  It wasn’t an impulsive idea. The nameless swordmaster in the memory jade had recommended it as an essential exercise for any student who truly wished to master the sword. Only by breathing life into their own creation, he had claimed, could a swordsman understand the finer details of how to wield one. He himself had journeyed to Shanxian City, a place in his homeworld built entirely underground, with massive and elaborate courtyards that opened to the sky.

  There, under the tutelage of a blind master blacksmith – an undeniably cool detail – he had forged blade after blade until he was finally satisfied with a sword of his own making, declaring his mastery improved.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  After watching that particular memory, Bai Ning had done two things. First, she had chattered Mo Jian’s ear off about the wonders of Shanxian City and asked if he knew of, or had traveled to, any such place, to which he had responded with his usual amused tolerance. Second, she had decided she would forge a sword just like in the jade slip.

  Master Mo Jian had questioned whether she really needed to. He had pointed out that her circumstances were entirely different from those of the swordmaster whose memories she was studying, and that emulating every step might not yield the same results. Also, he had added sardonically, she already had experience forging a sword: the green sword she still used had been her own work. Bai Ning had declared, in what she was certain was a very superior tone, that it didn’t count. She needed to do the whole thing without qi, like a mortal, for it to truly matter.

  Master Mo Jian had not been impressed, shooting down the idea with remarks like “you don’t have the right tools,” or “it will make a mess,” or even “that sounds like a colossal waste of time.”

  So, creating a headache for her teacher as a welcome-back gift, and passing the time doing something worthwhile; this plan met both her criteria.

  Time to get started, then.

  Of course, there was one small obstacle: she had absolutely no idea where to begin.

  Forging a sword wasn’t as simple as grabbing a hammer and finding a convenient lump of metal to smack around. At least, she was fairly sure it wasn’t. The swordmaster in the memory jade had glossed over certain steps with the ease of someone who assumed his students already knew what they were doing, which, unfortunately, she absolutely did not. Even worse, the blind blacksmith’s lessons had been more philosophical than practical, framed in cryptic riddles Bai Ning suspected had sounded very wise in their original context but were now mostly useless without the accompanying years of blacksmithing experience.

  Still, she wasn’t going to let that stop her.

  She tapped her finger against her chin thoughtfully, pacing in a slow circle around her rooms in the cave. She needed metal. She needed a place to heat the metal. She needed tools. She needed… a lot of things, honestly. But one step at a time.

  For the metal, she was reasonably sure there was a batch or two of Bin Steel stored deeper in the cave from the last time her master had worked on a refinement. It technically broke the no-qi rule she had set for herself, but needs must. Besides, she wouldn’t be using qi in the forging itself, so it shouldn’t count too heavily against her efforts.

  As for fire, she still had the practice cauldron from her Qi Condensation days: the one she had used for early alchemy under Mo Jian’s guidance. Most of her actual projects had been done with the Heaven Enshrouding Ding, borrowed from her master because it was simply leagues better than anything she could obtain on her own, but for mortal smithing the practice cauldron should be sufficient. A proper furnace would be better, of course, but that required inner fire to operate, which would defeat the entire purpose.

  No qi unless absolutely necessary.

  Now for the tools. That was honestly the hardest part. As a cultivator, her alchemy relied on spells and the innate properties of the raw materials. She had never needed anything beyond that. She knew there were mundane techniques like hammering out impurities, folding the metal, shaping it, quenching it, and all the rest, so proper tools were essential. Could she borrow some? The Thousand Shattered Islands were not exactly poor or lacking in such basic resources.

  No, that was a reckless thought. Leaving the cave was a risk, and not one she was willing to take for something like this. Both her master and her parents would tan her hide if they ever found out. Worse, they absolutely would find out. They always did. It was uncanny.

  Which meant she needed to be clever about this.

  What if… instead of using qi during the forging itself, she simply used it to make the process easier? A rock infused with qi and controlled telekinetically could serve as a perfectly acceptable hammer. Sure, it broke the spirit of the exercise a little, but it wasn’t as though she would be infusing qi into the sword or employing an actual forging or alchemy technique. The same logic applied to quenching. She couldn’t say with certainty what sort of oil was traditionally required, but maybe the cooking oil would work. It was the only oil she knew they had on hand.

  Pretty much everything else in the cave was either spirit-infused or required qi to function, and the cooking oil only existed because Master Mo Jian preferred his meals to have more variety than spirit fruits or bland spirit beast meat. Although, knowing him, he would probably subsist on spirit tea alone for the rest of his life if given the option.

  Well, she had the bare bones of a plan. She could figure out the rest as she went.

  It was debatable logic, but good enough.

  She straightened and clapped her hands together decisively. “Right. First step: find the Bin Steel. Then, produce the first sword of the future swordmistress Bai Ning, a legend in the making.”

  She glanced around, cheeks warming. Thankfully, the cave was just as empty as it had been five seconds ago, so no one had heard her.

  With that reassuring realization, Bai Ning headed toward the inner chambers, already feeling a spark of anticipation warm her chest. This was exactly the distraction she needed: something hands-on, something challenging, and something her master had explicitly told her not to do.

  Truly, the perfect project.

  ……………………………….

  When Mo Jian stepped into the cave residence, he was met with a wall of smoke. He had already seen it from the sky on his descent: a wavering pillar rising from the skylight and dissipating high above. If not for the fact that the Grand Formation was completely untouched, and for his long, weary familiarity with his student’s antics, he would probably have been panicking.

  Instead, he summoned a barrier of qi around himself and strode deeper into the cave. The smoke was thick, cloying, and annoyingly eager to cling to his barrier. He waved a hand, sending a pulse of qi outward, but all it managed to do was push the smoke into a swirl before it settled back into the same choking haze.

  Abandoning the easy solution, and already planning to make the perpetrator clean the entire mess herself, Mo Jian entered the main chamber, only to find Bai Ning standing cheerfully in the middle of the room. A coppery barrier protected her from the smoke, and she held a… flattened rod of steel, while a half-melted lump of metal at her feet billowed yet more smoke.

  The instant she saw him, she flashed a brilliant smile, without a hint of shame. “Master, welcome back. I have discovered that mortal blacksmithing is far harder than it looks. Who would have thought?”

  The headache he had been fighting off came rushing right back. Mo Jian pinched the bridge of his nose, torn between exploding or simply sitting down and crying. Why? Why was this always what he returned to when he left her alone for more than a few hours?

  He quickly pieced together the scene, unfortunately. The “sword” in her hand meant she had attempted the forging exercise she had been talking about. The smoke-belching lump on the floor was clearly her old practice cauldron, though how she had ruined it that badly, he couldn’t begin to guess. And that infuriatingly bright smile told him she knew exactly what she had been doing and was entirely unrepentant.

  “My dear disciple,” Mo Jian began carefully, “remind me what you were supposed to be doing while I was away?”

  Unsurprisingly, Bai Ning pouted. With all the indignation of someone grievously wronged, she exclaimed, “Master, practicing swordsmanship was getting boring. I took a short break, and then I had a wonderful idea. You should be praising me for working so hard, even on my break.”

  Giving up, Mo Jian leveled an extremely unimpressed look at her. “What I should be praising is your ability to give me headaches. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that’s your true skill, not swordsmanship.”

  Bai Ning’s pout deepened, and she even attempted a few fake sniffles. Mo Jian was unmoved.

  “Clean it all up, and I mean all of it. And if my tea is ruined, you will be the one buying more with your allowance.”

  Predictably, that made her scowl. “Master! Is this how you treat your devoted disciple?”

  “It’s how I treat the one I have,” Mo Jian replied dryly. “A proper menace.”

  Bai Ning crossed her arms, the flattened metal bar still clutched in one hand like some tragic prop. “I am not a menace,” she protested, though her exaggerated expression of innocence did her no favors. “I was merely being industrious.”

  “Yes,” Mo Jian said, surveying the carnage of smoke, molten metal, and what he suspected were the remains of one of his good storage chests. “Industrious. That’s definitely the word.”

  She brightened again. “Well, you’re the one who told me that mastering the sword is of utmost importance if I want to participate in the tournament.”

  “I meant learning how to use a sword better,” he shot back, “not… this.” He gestured vaguely at the disaster, as if that alone could express the sheer scope of the mess better than words.

  Bai Ning didn’t miss a beat. “This was educational.” Her expression remained bright, determined, and annoyingly pleased with herself.

  He sighed again, long and resigned, but there was a faint, reluctant smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. And that, of course, was the problem. This was why she kept doing things like this; he was never quite as strict with her as he should be.

  “Next time,” he said, “warn me before you attempt mortal blacksmithing.”

  Bai Ning straightened, beaming. “So you’re not forbidding it?”

  He gave her a long, resigned stare. “I am forbidding doing it unsupervised.”

  Her grin widened. “Great! Then next time, you can supervise.”

  In response, he sent out another pulse of qi, targeting her barrier and dispelling it in a sharp burst of light.

  Bai Ning, who had just begun pumping her fist triumphantly, received a full wave of smoke directly to the face.

  Still, her voice emerged: “-cough-Worth it!”