The silence in the kitchen was so heavy it felt like the mountain stone Tehan crushed every day. Yan's breath hitched, his mind racing to understand how his father—a man who spent his life in the dark of a mine—could see through a secret that even the Soul Saint had missed.
The Confession of the Twin Souls,
Yan slowly lowered his wooden spoon. He realized that lying to those eyes—eyes that had watched over him with such fierce protection—was no longer an option.
"How did you know, Father?" Yan whispered, his voice trembling. "I didn't even show the Soul Saint. I kept it buried deep in my heart."
Tehan didn't answer immediately. He stood up, walked to the heavy wooden door, and bolted it. He then turned back to Yan, his expression softening into a look of ancient sorrow.
"A father knows the weight of his son's spirit, Yan. When the blue light of the **Spiritual Eye** erupted at the ceremony, the ground beneath your feet didn't just tremble—it cracked under a physical weight that no eye, no matter how divine, could produce. That weight... it belongs to our bloodline."
Yan took a deep breath. He closed his eyes and focused on the cold, dense core within his chest. He extended his right hand.
Slowly, the air around his palm began to distort. A black, obsidian-like mist coalesced, and a small, square-headed hammer appeared. It was simple, unadorned, and jet-black, but as it manifested, the legs of the kitchen table groaned under an invisible pressure.
The Revelation of the Clear Sky
Tehan's breath caught in his throat. He reached out, his rough fingers stopping just inches away from the hammer's surface.
"The Clear Sky Hammer," Tehan whispered, his voice cracking. "So, the heavens truly have a sense of irony. They gave you the most sensitive spirit in the world—the Eye—and the most brutal weapon in existence—the Hammer."
Yan looked up, his blue eyes wide with shock. "You know its name? You call yourself a miner, but you speak of Martial Souls like a scholar."
Tehan let out a hollow, bitter laugh. He walked to the corner of the room and pulled back a loose floorboard, revealing the metal medallion he had gripped the night before.
"I was never just a miner, Yan. I came to this village to hide you from the very thing you now carry. In the world of Soul Masters,
a Twin Martial Soul is a miracle to some, but to the Angel Sect and the Sun Moon Empire, it is a threat that must be controlled... or extinguished."
The Warning
Tehan knelt in front of Yan, grabbing his shoulders with a grip of iron.
"Listen to me carefully. The **Spiritual Eye** is your shield. Let the world see it. Let them think you are a prodigy of mental intent. But the **Hammer**...
you must never, under any circumstances, show it to anyone unless your life depends on it. If Empress Qian Xiao finds out that a descendant of the Clear Sky lives, she will turn this mountain into a graveyard."
The air in the small hut grew cold, the weight of the **Clear Sky Hammer** in Yan's left hand suddenly feeling like the weight of an entire ancestral legacy. Yan's spiritual eye pulsed with a rhythmic blue light, as if reacting to the mention of the mother he never knew.
The Legacy of Blood and Spirit
Tehan's voice was no longer that of a weary miner; it was the voice of a man who had stood at the precipice of gods and demons.
"Your mother..." Tehan whispered, his eyes distant. "She was the soul of the forest and the wisdom of the stars. She possessed the **Blue Silver Grass**, a soul of infinite kindness, but it was her **Spiritual Eye**
that made her a target. She saw truths that the Angel Sect wanted to remain buried. She saw the corruption in the heavens before the stars themselves did."
Yan felt a tear track down his cheek. The hammer in his hand grew warmer, as if acknowledging the "hao tian hammer (unbreakable power) of his father's bloodline.
The shift in the story is profound. Instead of stepping onto the grand stage of a Soul Academy, Yan has chosen the path of the **"Silent Forge."** This period of his life represents the perfect fusion of his past life's blacksmithing expertise and the mechanical future of the Douluo world.
##
Tehan's decision to send Yan to find work was a test of character. Yan walked through the bustling markets, his "Spiritual Eye" seeing the world in sharp, painful detail.
* At the **Blacksmith's Shop**, the master laughed at his small stature: "This is a game of iron, boy, not toys."
* At the **Grain Market**, the overseers didn't even look up: "We need men, not children."
By sunset, Yan reached the desolate edge of the city. The buildings here were skeletons of a forgotten era. In the shadows stood a shop so dilapidated it looked like a tomb for rusted metal.
The Pact with the Ancient One**
Inside, amidst cobwebs and the scent of cold oil, sat an old man with eyes like fading embers.
> **The Old Master:** "I can give you work, but I have no gold to pay you. Will you still stay?"
> **Yan:** (Looking at a rusted gear on the floor) "Knowledge is heavier than gold, Master. I stay."
>
### **Six Months of Transformation**
Yan did not just clean; he **restored**.
* **The First Month:** He scrubbed the grime of decades. Underneath the dirt, he found machines that defied modern logic—soul-powered engines from the era of the Sun Moon Empire's founding.
* **The Third Month:** He began repairing the structure itself. Using his **Beast-Soul agility**, he climbed the rafters, replacing rotted wood with reinforced iron.
* **The Sixth Month:** He organized the tools. His "Spiritual Eye" allowed him to see the internal microscopic fractures in the wrenches and hammers, allowing him to forge them back to perfection.
His discipline was absolute. He combined the **Tiger's Strength** to hammer steel and the **Serpent's Fluidity** to assemble intricate clockwork. In only six months, he didn't just become a worker; he became a **Master Mechanical Engineer.**
The Forbidden Blueprints
The old man watched Yan with a mixture of awe and sorrow. He had seen three generations pass without a single customer entering his shop. He felt guilty for taking six months of a prodigy's youth, but he knew he had found the "Chosen One."
One rainy evening, the Master pulled a heavy, iron-bound chest from beneath the floorboards. Inside were scrolls made of dragon-hide—the **Secret Designs of the Ancestors**.
The Old Master:** "These designs were deemed impossible. They require a mind that can see the flow of energy and hands that can strike with the weight of a mountain. I thought they would die with me."
>
Yan opened the first scroll. His Spiritual Eye flared a brilliant blue. It was a design for a
Mechanical Arm"**—a weapon that used mechanical precision to amplify Soul Power by ten times.
Yan looked at the blueprints and then at his own hands. He realized that while the world looked for Soul Masters in academies, he was building mechanical wepon.