The return to Lao's clearing was a journey back from a world of stark, metallic violence to one of earth and wood. The air no longer smelled of fear and sweat, but of damp moss and the lingering scent of Mei's carefully tended fire. She rushed to meet them, her face pale, her eyes searching Li for any sign of injury. Seeing him whole, the tension in her shoulders eased, and she offered a small, relieved smile.
Lao moved to the fire pit, adding a few pieces of wood with the same deliberate care he gave to his canoe. The confrontation at the lightning-struck oak might have been a seismic event in Li's life, but to the old craftsman, it seemed little more than a minor interruption in the day's work.
"He will carry the tale," Lao said, not looking up from the flames. "A woodsman who breaks Azure Cloud steel with a woodsman's axe. They will not take this valley lightly next time. We have won a season, perhaps. No more."
A season. The words were a bucket of cold water. Li had felt a surge of triumph, a sense that they had turned a corner. But Lao was right. They had not won a war; they had merely pricked a giant, and giants eventually wake.
"What do we do when they return?" Mei asked, voicing the question that now loomed over them all.
Lao finally looked up, his gaze settling on Li. "We make you into more than just a boy who can be brave bait. We give you a fang of your own." He gestured to a pile of raw materials near his workbench—pieces of flint, antler, and several thick, straight branches of a dark, heavy wood. "You cannot face the Dragon Master's followers with a piece of shale. You need a weapon. A real one."
For the next few days, the clearing was transformed into a forge, not of fire and metal, but of patience and stone. Lao taught Li the art of flintknapping. It was a frustrating, painstaking process. Li's first attempts resulted in useless, crushed flakes or jagged shards that cut his own hands. He lacked the feel for the stone, the intuitive understanding of its fracture lines.
"You are forcing it," Lao chided, watching Li bring a antler tine down too hard on a core of flint, shattering it completely. "You are trying to command the stone to become a blade. You must ask it. You must listen to its nature." He picked up another core. "The blade is already inside. Your job is to reveal it, not to create it."
It was the lesson of the uncarved block, applied to rock. Li took a deep breath, trying to find the stillness he had achieved on the boulder. He held the flint core, feeling its weight, its cool, glassy surface. He closed his eyes and tried to listen, to feel the hidden fault lines, the potential shape sleeping within.
He struck again, a lighter, more precise tap. A long, thin flake sheared off, its edge wickedly sharp. It was not a perfect blade, but it was a start. A true shape had emerged from the chaos.
While Li labored over stone, Lao worked on the wood. He selected a stave of the dark wood, as tall as Li himself, straight-grained and unyielding. He used a hand-adze to shape it, not into a simple club, but into the elegant, deadly form of a spear shaft. He showed Li how to heat the wood over the fire to straighten it, a slow, careful process that required constant attention.
"This is Ironwood," Lao explained, running his hand along the smooth, dark grain. "It does not break. It will not splinter. It is as stubborn as the mountain itself. A fitting spine for you."
Finally, came the hafting. Lao showed Li how to split the top of the spear shaft, how to seat the razor-sharp flint blade securely into the cleft, and how to bind it all together with strips of wet, tough rawhide that would shrink and harden into a grip like iron as they dried.
When it was finished, Li held his first spear. It was crude compared to the polished steel of the Azure Cloud soldiers, a primitive thing of stone and wood and sinew. But it was his. He had revealed the blade from the stone. He had helped shape the wood. He had bound it together. Its weight in his hands felt right. It felt like an extension of his own will, a physical manifestation of the resolve growing inside him.
"A tool is only as strong as the hand that wields it," Lao said, watching him test the balance. "Now, you must learn the hand."
The lessons turned physical. Lao, despite his years, was a whirlwind of controlled motion. He taught Li the basic stances first—the rooted posture that made him an unmovable object, the agile stance that allowed for swift movement. He drilled him for hours on the fundamental thrust, the parry, the retreat.
"The spear is the weapon of the clever and the patient," Lao grunted, easily deflecting Li's clumsy thrusts with a stick. "It keeps your enemy at a distance. It gives you time to think. You are not a brawler. You are a strategist. Use your mind. Your enemy expects rage. Give him calculation."
Li's muscles burned. His hands blistered and then calloused. He fell, over and over, into the dirt. But with each fall, he got up again. The grief and rage that had been a chaotic storm inside him began to find a new outlet, channeled into the disciplined repetition of the thrust, the parry, the step. The spear became a moving meditation.
In the evenings, while Li practiced forms until his body screamed for rest, Lao would sit with Mei. He did not teach her the spear. Instead, he taught her the forest. He showed her how to make cordage from plant fibers, how to set simple snares for small game, which mushrooms were edible and which brought a swift, painful death. He taught her to read the signs—the broken spiderweb that indicated a recent passerby, the specific alarm call of a bird that signaled a ground predator.
"Your weapon is knowledge," he told her one night as she practiced tying a complex snare knot. "Li's spear can protect your body. Your wits can protect your life. You are the eyes and ears of this… whatever it is you two are becoming."
Whatever it is you two are becoming. The words hung in the air. They were no longer just refugees. Under Lao's tutelage, they were being remade. Li was being forged into a weapon, and Mei was being honed into a scout, a survivor. They were becoming a pair of complementary blades—one for striking, one for seeing.
One afternoon, after a particularly grueling session where Lao had disarmed him a dozen times in a row, Li stood panting, sweat stinging his eyes. He looked at the spear in his hands, then at the calm, unreadable face of his teacher.
"Why?" Li asked, the question bursting forth. "Why are you doing this? Helping us? You said yourself the Azure Cloud Clan will return. You are bringing their wrath down upon yourself."
Lao considered the question, his gaze drifting to the Jade Dragon Mountains, visible as a hazy purple line in the distance.
"A long time ago, I turned my back on the world of clans and masters," he said, his voice quiet. "I chose the simplicity of wood and water. But a man cannot outrun the world forever. It always finds you." He looked back at Li, his eyes holding a deep, old sorrow. "Perhaps helping you is my way of finally facing it. Perhaps by shaping you, I am atoning for a choice I made long ago. Or perhaps…" He gave a slight, almost imperceptible shrug. "…perhaps I am just a stubborn old man who does not like bullies."
He picked up his adze and walked back to his canoe, the conversation clearly over. But Li understood. They were not master and student in a formal sense. They were allies bound by a common enemy and a shared, unspoken history of loss. Lao was not just giving them tools; he was giving them a fighting chance, and in doing so, was perhaps reclaiming a part of himself he had thought long buried.
That night, Li lay awake, the solid weight of his spear beside him. He was no longer the boy who had fled Dragon's End. He was not yet the warrior who would hunt the Dragon Master. But he was something in between. He was a blade, newly forged, waiting for the whetstone of experience to give him his final, deadly edge. The season of peace was a borrowed one, and he would use every second of it.