Chapter 86: A Thousand Pieces
One day became two.
That had not been the plan.
The caravan was supposed to have left in the morning. Most of the wounded guards could travel again, the damaged carriages had been repaired well enough to survive the remaining road, supplies had been replenished, and even the weather had cleared. There was nothing keeping them in the little town anymore.
Except Yun Che.
He would not leave the smithy.
At first, Jin Wei had assumed this was temporary. Yun Che had spent nearly the entire previous day helping the local blacksmith, repairing tools, examining unfamiliar ores and arguing cheerfully about whether a certain mountain alloy should be quenched in oil or monster-fat. That had been encouraging. For several hours he had seemed almost normal. So when Yun Che returned the following morning and immediately picked up a hammer, Jin Wei had thought nothing of it.
Then noon came.
Then afternoon.
Finally, Jin Wei realized Yun Che had absolutely no intention of going anywhere.
"We need to leave."
The hammer stopped.
Yun Che did not turn around.
"I know."
Jin Wei waited.
Nothing happened.
"You said that ten minutes ago."
"I still know."
"That usually means you do something about it."
Yun Che stared at the half-finished piece of metal on the anvil.
"Can we stay?"
Jin Wei's amusement disappeared.
"For how long?"
Yun Che hesitated.
"A month."
Jin Wei stared at him.
"A month?"
"Maybe."
"Yun Che."
"Just give me some time."
His voice was quiet.
The local smith and his apprentices had discreetly moved to the other end of the workshop. The smith had been extraordinarily patient with Yun Che. Partly because the boy came from Mistforge, whose blacksmiths possessed an excellent reputation, and partly because Yun Che had spent the previous day improving several of his techniques without asking for payment. Even so, this was another man's workshop. They could not simply live here.
Jin Wei sat on a stool.
"If things were normal, I'd stay."
Yun Che finally looked at him.
"I mean it," Jin Wei said. "If you needed a month, we'd find somewhere. Two months, even. I'd complain every day and make you pay for my food, but I'd stay."
That earned nothing resembling a smile.
Jin Wei continued more gently. "But we're not safe here."
Yun Che's fingers tightened around the hammer.
"The sects know who you are. They know Lei Zhenyu. They know you were traveling with us. They have already stopped the caravan several times. We're sitting in a town within their region. The longer we stay, the more likely someone realizes you're here."
"I know."
"If they take you before we reach Goldriver, Elder Ruan thinks they might make an example out of you."
"I know."
"Then you understand why we have to move."
Yun Che looked toward the open smithy door.
People passed outside.
Ordinary people.
A farmer.
Two children.
A woman carrying vegetables.
Nothing frightening.
His stomach tightened anyway.
"Let me think."
"All right."
"And…"
Yun Che swallowed.
"Don't leave."
Jin Wei looked at him for a moment.
Then leaned back against the wall.
"I wasn't planning to."
Yun Che sat beside the forge long after the metal had cooled.
Around him lay what remained of his confidence.
A broken sword.
Bent pieces from the Mountain Piercer.
Fragments of lances.
Lengths of damaged wire.
A cracked rifle barrel.
Pieces of armor.
Twenty days ago, he would have looked at them and seen equipment.
Now he saw failure.
The wyvern's beam had not cared how many hours he had spent making them. It had not cared about his plans or clever tricks. Barriers had disappeared. Armor had broken. His puppet had been destroyed. His sword had snapped. His rifle had become scrap.
And he had nearly gone with them.
Yun Che closed his eyes.
Immediately he saw red-black wings.
His eyes opened again.
The hammer was still in his hand.
His breathing settled.
All right.
He had survived.
That mattered.
He had made mistakes.
That mattered too.
But sitting in a smithy for the rest of his life would not undo either.
There was nowhere truly safe.
The thought frightened him.
Then another thought followed it.
There never was.
Yun Che stared at the forge.
He had died once already.
Not in a monster-infested wilderness.
Not beneath a cultivator's sword.
Not while fighting some legendary creature.
He had lived in a world of hospitals, laws, police, modern medicine and cities where millions of ordinary people went about their lives without expecting monsters to descend from the sky.
And somehow he had died.
He still did not know how.
People died asleep in their beds.
They died crossing roads.
They died while eating dinner.
They died in hospitals surrounded by people trying desperately to keep them alive.
Safety had never been a promise.
Death did not need a wyvern.
Yun Che slowly turned the hammer in his hand.
Worry had not saved him in his first life.
It would not save him in this one.
But preparation might.
Knowledge might.
People might.
And if his frightened mind could no longer manage fifteen separate weapons, three different traps, wires, lances, a rifle, a sword, armor, barriers and whatever else he decided to carry—
Then perhaps the problem was not that he needed more equipment.
Perhaps he needed fewer things.
Yun Che looked at the fragments scattered across the table.
One sword.
One rifle.
One lance.
One shield.
One chain.
Separate objects.
Separate controls.
Separate weaknesses.
His gaze settled upon a handful of bullets.
Small.
Simple.
Repeatable.
Building blocks.
Yun Che stopped moving.
Everything was built from smaller things.
A wall was bricks.
Armor was plates.
A formation was runes.
A technique was movements and principles combined into something greater.
Why should his equipment be different?
His eyes slowly widened.
He closed them.
The smithy disappeared.
Inside his soul space, Yun Che stood before his great forge.
A small metal plate appeared above his palm.
Round-edged.
Roughly the width of a table-tennis ball.
Small enough to manipulate.
Large enough for Lin Xia to inscribe proper runes.
Another appeared.
Then ten.
A hundred.
A thousand.
Ten Thousand.
They floated around him.
Yun Che raised one hand.
The pieces moved.
They locked together.
A sword formed.
He twisted his wrist.
The sword dissolved.
A shield.
Dissolve.
A lance.
A wall.
Wires.
A rifle.
Armor.
A rotating barrier.
Waves
Spikes
Yun Che's heart began beating faster.
Not from fear.
Excitement.
Every piece could carry runes.
Not one enormous formation.
Thousands of small ones supporting one another.
If half were designed for attack and half for defense, he could change the ratio depending upon what he needed.
A sword did not need to remain a sword.
A shield did not need to remain a shield.
Everything was simply—
"Pieces."
His eyes opened.
Jin Wei jumped.
"What?"
Yun Che stood so quickly the stool fell backward.
"Pieces."
"That clarified nothing."
Yun Che was already searching through the scrap.
Jin Wei watched him pull apart what remained of the Mountain Piercer.
Then the broken sword.
Then his wires.
Then his damaged chains.
"Yun Che?"
"I need Lin Xia."
Jin Wei blinked.
"What happened to don't leave me?"
"Bring her here."
There was something different in Yun Che's eyes.
Jin Wei recognized it.
He smiled.
"There you are."
They began with Gao's spear.
Yun Che refused to touch the larger project immediately. His hands needed work. Lin Xia needed practice. More importantly, he wanted to prove to himself that he could still make something without turning every decision into a desperate attempt to protect himself from death.
Gao had needed a better weapon for some time.
So they built one.
Elder Liang supplied the materials, though he made it very clear that Yun Che was buying them rather than receiving a gift.
"You can owe me."
Yun Che looked uncomfortable.
Liang noticed.
"Young man, debt is not a moral failing."
"I don't like owing people."
"Nobody does. That is why lenders remain unpopular."
Lin Xia laughed.
Yun Che did not, but the corner of his mouth moved.
The spear took several hours.
Its shaft contained a reinforced core capable of surviving enormous torque. Lin Xia inscribed the first major formation near the spearhead: Rotation. The second was Wind, arranged along narrow channels that would draw air toward the rotating blade rather than fight against it. The third was Repulsion, designed to release a sudden burst upon impact and prevent an enemy from simply absorbing the strike with armor or dense Ki.
At the base they added Weight.
When inactive, the spear remained manageable.
When activated, its apparent weight multiplied.
A thrust could become a collision.
A planted spear could become almost impossible to move.
When Yun Che finally activated Rotation, the spearhead blurred.
Wind screamed around it.
The local blacksmith took three steps backward.
Lin Xia's hair whipped around her face.
Jin Wei stared.
"Are we giving that to Gao?"
"Yes."
"Does Gao know?"
"No."
"Should we warn him?"
Yun Che considered this.
"Probably."
It was the first time since the wyvern attack that Jin Wei heard him sound completely like himself.
Then came the real work.
Yun Che melted the remains of his old equipment.
That hurt more than he expected.
The broken sword disappeared first.
He watched the blade that had accompanied him through so many battles turn orange, sag and finally lose its shape.
Then went the lances.
The chains.
The wires.
Finally the Mountain Piercer's damaged components.
For a moment Yun Che held the cracked barrel.
That weapon had begun as an idea from another world.
He had spent months developing it.
Testing it.
Improving it.
Building runes into it until something that should not have belonged in this world had become undeniably part of it.
Now it was ruined.
Yun Che placed it into the furnace.
Metal swallowed metal.
Nothing was wasted.
That thought helped.
He added the Blue Ki Ore his father had given him, a material capable of carrying far more Ki than ordinary enchanted steel. From Elder Liang he purchased Starfall Iron, a dark ore found inside ancient meteor craters that was prized for surviving violent impacts, and Silverflow Mithril, a pale magical metal that conducted Ki exceptionally well and responded beautifully to magnetic manipulation.
The resulting alloy was expensive enough that Yun Che preferred not to calculate his debt.
Then they started making pieces.
500 of them.
The local rune master joined them by noon.
Without him, it would have taken days.
Even with three people working, it consumed the entire day.
Lin Xia surprised everyone.
Twenty days ago, she would have required several minutes to properly inscribe a single stable rune onto such a small surface.
Now her brush moved almost continuously.
Ki flowed through its tip.
Lightning.
Durability.
Attraction.
Next plate.
Lightning.
Durability.
Attraction.
Next.
Her hand occasionally trembled from exhaustion, but the lines remained precise.
Half the plates received Lightning, Durability and Attraction.
The other half received Weight, Barrier and Attraction.
Attack.
Defense.
Movement binding them together.
Yun Che forged while Lin Xia wrote.
The local rune master corrected errors.
Jin Wei kept count until he lost count and decided moral support was more suitable to his talents.
Lei Zhenyu occasionally appeared, watched the growing mountain of tiny plates with increasing concern, and disappeared again.
By sunset, Lin Xia could barely straighten her fingers.
Yun Che looked at the 500 finished pieces spread across the workshop.
Then at her.
"You've become fast."
Lin Xia flexed her aching hand.
"You only noticed now?"
"I noticed before."
"Then you should have said it before."
Yun Che nodded seriously.
"You were slow before."
Lin Xia stared at him.
Jin Wei burst out laughing.
Yun Che blinked.
"That came out wrong."
It was a small moment.
But Lin Xia smiled.
Because Yun Che looked embarrassed rather than frightened.
That was progress.
Night had fallen when they carried everything into the smithy's rear yard.
Yun Che wore his repaired armor.
The white-and-gold plates had been restored, strengthened wherever possible, and reinforced with additional Ki-storage runes. It was still his armor. Permanent. Reliable. Something that would remain around him even if his concentration failed.
That mattered now.
The new system would not replace it.
It would surround it.
Yun Che stood in the center of the yard.
500 metal plates lay around him.
Lin Xia stood beside Jin Wei.
Lei Zhenyu watched with folded arms.
Elder Liang and Elder Ruan had come as well.
Even the local smith and rune master refused to miss the test.
Yun Che breathed in.
His mind reached outward.
Magnetic Ki spread through the yard.
The first plate trembled.
Then another.
Then hundreds.
Then all of them.
Metal rose.
The sound was extraordinary.
Hundreds of tiny clicks filled the yard as plates lifted from the ground like a metallic swarm.
Yun Che's jaw tightened.
Already the strain was considerable.
Parallel Thought.
His consciousness divided.
One thought maintained the field.
The other commanded structure.
"Sword."
The swarm moved.
Pieces slammed together.
Lightning runes connected.
Speed runes aligned.
A sword formed beside Yun Che.
Not forged.
Assembled.
It hovered in the air, larger than his old weapon, blue-white electricity crawling across its segmented edge.
Yun Che stared at it.
"Shield."
The sword exploded apart.
Lin Xia flinched.
The pieces flowed around Yun Che and assembled into a broad hexagonal shield.
"Wall."
The shield expanded.
More plates joined.
A segmented wall appeared.
"Lance."
The wall collapsed inward.
A long weapon formed.
"Chains."
The lance scattered into dozens of linked strands.
"Rifle."
That one took longer.
Yun Che frowned.
Pieces rearranged several times before the structure finally settled into something recognizable.
Jin Wei stared.
"You rebuilt the Mountain Piercer."
"No."
Yun Che studied the weapon.
"I rebuilt the idea. I still need to work on this weapon to recreate the rifle for real."
He released it.
The rifle disintegrated.
Hundreds of pieces floated around him.
Yun Che raised both hands.
"Barrier."
The defensive plates moved outward.
A sphere formed.
Not solid.
Hexagonal.
Layered.
500 interconnected plates supported a web of Ki between them, creating a barrier around Yun Che's body.
Elder Liang's expression changed.
He understood immediately.
The individual pieces were not especially impressive.
Together they were.
Destroy one?
Another replaced it.
Break the formation?
It could rearrange.
Need defense?
Barrier.
Need restraint?
Chains.
Need range?
Rifle.
Need melee?
Sword.
Need penetration?
Lance.
Yun Che had not created a weapon.
He had created building blocks for weapons.
Ruan crossed his arms.
"Ki consumption?"
"Terrible," Yun Che admitted.
"How terrible?"
Yun Che looked at the plates.
"Very."
Jin Wei laughed.
At least he was honest.
Yun Che already knew the weakness.
This system could consume his reserves frighteningly quickly. Without his storage runes, prolonged use would be impossible. Even with them, this was not something he could throw around carelessly.
But it didn't need to be.
He had wanted something his damaged mind could understand.
One system.
One command structure.
One set of building blocks.
The forms could change.
The principle remained the same.
This was still a prototype and he would need to work on it.
Yun Che exhaled.
"Cloak."
The barrier collapsed.
Metal flowed toward him.
500 plates slid together behind his shoulders, overlapping without fully locking. They descended across his back and sides until they formed a long segmented incomplete mantle over the white dragon armor.
Then everything became still.
Silence filled the yard.
Yun Che stood beneath the moon.
White-and-gold armor underneath.
Dark metallic cloak above.
His sword could come from it.
His shield.
His chains.
His barriers.
Everything was there.
He did not need to reach for ten different weapons.
He did not need to remember where each one was.
He did not need to wonder what had been destroyed.
One thought.
One system.
Hundreds of pieces.
Yun Che closed his eyes.
For the first time since the wyvern had appeared, the tightness inside his chest loosened.
It wasn't rational.
He knew that.
This cloak could fail.
His armor could break again.
A stronger enemy could destroy everything he had created tonight.
Nothing he built could guarantee his survival.
But his fear did not care about philosophy.
It wanted evidence.
Something solid.
Something he could touch.
Something that proved he was not the same person who had stood helplessly beneath that beam.
Yun Che placed one armored hand against the cloak.
Metal.
Real.
His.
He smiled.
Not the weak smile he had forced for Lin Xia.
Not the embarrassed twitch Jin Wei had managed to drag from him.
A real smile.
"I like it."
Lin Xia laughed.
"After all that, you'd better."
Yun Che laughed too.
And then his Ki moved.
He stopped.
The smile disappeared.
Not from fear.
His dantian pulsed.
Once.
A pressure Yun Che had been unconsciously holding for months suddenly shifted.
The Ki within him surged.
The storage runes across his armor lit in response, but they were not the source. Energy rushed through his meridians, striking boundaries worn thin by months of cultivation, battles, injuries, recovery and relentless practice.
Elder Ruan straightened.
"Everyone back."
Yun Che barely heard him.
His cultivation method began cycling instinctively.
Ki flooded inward.
The air around him trembled.
The metallic cloak lifted.
The plates separated and began orbiting him as his control momentarily slipped. Lightning flashed between them. The repaired armor shone. Frost spread beneath Yun Che's feet.
Four months.
Four months at the First Stage of Foundation Establishment.
He had fought.
Trained.
Nearly died.
Recovered.
Pushed his Ki until his reserves emptied.
Refilled them.
Emptied them again.
Used telekinesis until his head hurt.
Rotation until his arms shook.
Barriers until his concentration failed.
Lightning.
Frost.
Fire.
Every struggle had pressed against the same wall.
Now the wall cracked.
Yun Che inhaled.
Ki rushed through.
The First Stage broke.
Power expanded through his meridians with enough force to make him gasp. His dantian seemed to open wider, its capacity increasing as the circulation pathways throughout his body strengthened to accommodate the new flow.
Second Stage Foundation Establishment.
The pressure rolled outward.
The local smith stumbled backward.
Jin Wei's eyes widened.
Lin Xia broke into a grin.
Lei Zhenyu watched closely.
Elder Ruan said nothing.
But approval appeared briefly in his eyes.
Yun Che stood in the center of the storm of metal and felt the pieces around him respond more easily than they had moments before.
His control had not magically become perfect.
His fear had not disappeared.
The Abyss Seed remained.
The sects still wanted him.
His equipment still had weaknesses.
The wyvern was still somewhere out there.
And tomorrow he would have to walk out of this smithy.
That thought still frightened him.
But it no longer froze him.
The plates slowed.
One after another they returned.
500 pieces joined behind him until the incomplete metallic cloak formed once more.
Yun Che looked toward the smithy's open doors.
Beyond them lay the road.
Goldriver City.
Then whatever came after it.
His stomach tightened.
He let it.
Fear was there.
So was excitement.
Perhaps that was enough.
Jin Wei approached carefully.
"So…"
Yun Che looked at him.
"Are we staying for the month?"
Yun Che was quiet for a moment.
Then he looked around the smithy.
The forge.
The anvil.
The tools.
The place that had sheltered him when the rest of the world seemed unbearable.
He would have liked to stay.
That was exactly why he couldn't.
"Tomorrow."
Jin Wei nodded.
"Tomorrow."
Lin Xia stretched her aching fingers.
"Good. Because if you ask me to inscribe another thousand runes tomorrow, I'm abandoning you here myself."
"Understandable."
"I mean it."
"I believe you."
Lei Zhenyu looked at the cloak.
"What are you calling it?"
Yun Che paused.
He hadn't thought about that.
Jin Wei groaned.
"No. Don't encourage him. We'll be here another day while he invents something dramatic."
Yun Che looked down at the 400 pieces resting quietly across his armor.
One could break.
A hundred could break.
The whole could change.
Sword.
Shield.
Lance.
Barrier.
Destroy one form and another could take its place.
He thought of his own journey.
A life ending.
Another beginning.
Plans breaking.
Plans changing.
Mistakes.
Fear.
Pieces of himself that did not always fit together neatly, but somehow still belonged to the same person.
"No name yet," Yun Che said.
Jin Wei looked relieved.
"We can leave."
The others laughed.
Yun Che did too.
Later that night, when the smithy had gone quiet, he returned alone to the forge for a few minutes.
He placed his hammer on the anvil.
For two days this place had been his shelter.
Tomorrow he would leave it.
His heartbeat quickened at the thought.
Yun Che waited until it settled.
Then he extinguished the forge.
Outside, the others were waiting for him.
This time, when he stepped through the doorway, he did not ask anyone to stay behind with him.
The second journey of his life had begun with curiosity.
It had given him wonders, friends, mistakes, terror and consequences far larger than anything he had expected.
He had left Mistforge believing preparation meant having an answer for everything.
Twenty days on the road had taught him otherwise.
There would always be something he had not predicted.
A village.
A storm.
A tiger.
A wyvern.
A broken sword.
A frightened mind.
Perhaps preparation was not having every answer.
Perhaps it was learning how to build another one after the first had shattered.
Behind Yun Che, the forge went dark.
Ahead waited Goldriver.
And for the first time since the mountain, Yun Che walked toward the unknown without needing to pretend that he wasn't afraid.
End of Second Arc: Journey to Goldriver