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Fates Parallel Chapter 45 - Making
🕑 Added 2021-03-17 17:38:00 +0000 UTCJia and Eui were headed towards the location indicated on the new schedules, where the first of the new classes was being held. Yan Yue followed along behind them grumpily.
“Do you really plan on learning enchantment from some sa—from a Yamato practitioner? Body cultivators aren’t exactly known for their quality artifacts.”
The class was artifact creation and enchantment, and the instructor was Murayoshi—no other name given. Apparently Murayoshi was Ienaga’s old master, before she became the continent’s most powerful martial artist, and she still referred to him as ‘Master Murayoshi’.
“Master Ienaga transcended the previously known limitations of martial artists, and Grandmaster Murayoshi is the one who taught her. I’ll learn whatever he wants to teach.”
Eui nodded in agreement before giving Yue a sidelong glance.
“Besides, since you’ve been training under us, you never got to hear Ienaga’s non-stop blacksmithing analogies.”
“She has not spared me the analogies—she has, in fact, been quite good about stepping in to fill the many gaps that your tutoring has left.”
Eui cackled unapologetically at Yue’s irritated tone, so she just sighed and changed the subject.
“Are you really calling him ‘Grandmaster’?”
Jia shrugged and gave Yue a quizzical look.
“Aren’t you the one who came up with the ridiculous story that Eui and I are personal disciples of Master Ienaga? I’m just selling the illusion for you. Besides, Master Ienaga has been the most attentive teacher in this academy by far, and I respect her enough to extend that respect to her master.”
Yan Yue had no rebuttal for that, and they made the rest of the walk in silence.
The building turned out to be—perhaps unsurprisingly—an open-air smithy. The inside of the building was fairly simple, with just a furnace, and anvil, and a barrel full of what appeared to be water. The walls were covered in tools of every shape and size—presumably used for creating complex shapes, engravings, and formations in the metal. In front of the building, several rows of stone benches had been laid out haphazardly, as if they’d been placed there as an afterthought.
Within the smithy, Murayoshi himself was at work, hammering away on some piece of metal. The grizzled old man was short and stocky, but he had shrugged off the upper half of his robes to reveal a thick, dense musculature like nothing Jia had ever seen.
They took their seats in the front row, and waited as a few other students—mostly from Yamato and Goryeo—slowly arrived. There were a few Qin disciples who chose to attend, however. Guan Yi approached the girls with Xin Wei in tow, looking rather put-upon.
“Greetings Miss Lee, Miss An, Miss Yan—my condolences once again for your brother.”
Yan Yue waved off Guan Yi’s well-wishes—he’d greeted her like that every time they'd met.
“Yes, yes. Thank you Sir Guan. You don’t have to keep saying it, you know.”
Guan Yi nodded, as he had the previous times, and Lee Jia wondered if he was doing it on purpose—the stone-faced boy could have the strangest sense of humor, and it was impossible to tell when he was joking.
“It pleases me to see you all here. With most of my countrymen continuing to boycott anything related to body cultivation, I had nearly given up hope of seeing some familiar faces while learning from Grandmaster Murayoshi.”
Jia shot Yan Yue a knowing glance and she just rolled her eyes at the same time that Xin Wei did. Oh ancestors, was she just a female Xin Wei? Lee Jia hoped not, but the thought was hard to shake.
Xin Wei sighed and shook his head.
“I don’t know what we can possibly hope to learn about enchanting from a body cultivator, but I came along since Guan insisted.”
Yue scoffed and nodded her agreement.
“That’s exactly what I said, but these two wouldn’t listen.”
Lee Jia glanced nervously at Murayoshi, but it appeared that he hadn’t heard them over the cacophonous noise of his own forge. Soon Dae and Takeda had arrived as well, but while the benches were getting filled, Lee Jia couldn’t help but notice there were surprisingly few students attending.
Dae explained one half of the problem.
“Ah, well I suspect that after Master’s grand entrance, most of our countrymen are expecting him to teach enchantment on the sly, despite Magus Hwang’s admonishment. I’m already quite well educated on the subject myself, but...”
Lee Jia nodded as he trailed off. Dae was as nerdy as they came—he attended every magic lesson, despite being well above the level of anything Magus Hwang had taught yet. To him, a new perspective on a familiar problem was just as valuable as a new problem to solve.
Takeda had another perspective.
“Murayoshi has a reputation. He’s never had an apprentice for more than a week, other than Ienaga, and even after Master Ienaga became famous, nobody’s managed to tough it out. He’s not very easy to get along with.”
Once again, Jia found herself glancing nervously towards the instructor, but he didn’t react at all—in fact, he’d been studiously ignoring them for the better part of thirty minutes, now. After ten minutes of awkward waiting—during which no other students arrived—one of the half-spirits that Lee Jia didn’t know raised their hand to speak. When Murayoshi failed to notice, they spoke up anyway.
“Um, teacher? I think everyone has arrived, so—”
“Stow it! I’ll get t’ya in a moment. Lemme finish this’un first.”
It was the first time he had spoken or even acknowledged the gathered disciples, and he spoke with a strange accent and a dialect that Lee Jia didn’t recognize.
‘A moment’ turned into ten minutes, and then thirty, and by the end of the first hour, over half of the students had given up and left. The few attempts at gaining the old man’s attention were met with similar responses to the first.
Curious, and with nothing better to do than ignore Xin and Yue’s complaining, Lee Jia tried extending her domain towards the forge to observe Murayoshi’s work. She was surprised when her domain was blocked by another, more powerful influence.
Murayoshi glanced to the side, as if at some invisible presence and muttered something that even Lee Jia’s enhanced hearing strained to pick up through the sound of the roaring furnace and the hammer ringing on the anvil.
“S’arright.”
After he spoke, the influence blocking Jia’s domain changed. It was still there, but it allowed her to sense what was within it. It was an odd experience—normally everything that she sensed within her domain felt like a part of her, aside from other people. This was like entering someone else’s house—she could see what was within, but she knew that it belonged to someone else.
What she saw fascinated her. Murayoshi’s ki ran a circuit through himself, then the hammer, then the item he was working on, and then the anvil before finally returning back to him. With each strike, the flow of his ki changed almost imperceptibly, and his next strike changed to match. It reminded her of the calligraphy technique she had shown Hayakawa, but many times more advanced.
When he placed the metal back into the furnace to reheat, the foreign domain took over, heating the metal perfectly evenly and infusing it with mana. Then it was back to the anvil where the process repeated. This went on and on, over and over—sometimes he would switch tools to do a bit of finer work, but the process generally stayed the same.
After what must have been hours, he grabbed the item—still red hot—with his bare hands and dunked it into the barrel. Once again, Lee Jia sensed the foreign domain doing something. The water was infused with a strange element that she didn’t recognize at all, and it was being infused into the engravings on the metal.
Finally, Murayoshi removed the item from the water and placed it back on the anvil for inspection. It was a spearhead—just a spearhead. All that time for such a small and simple item, and yet it was more than that. Through her domain, Jia could sense that it radiated a dense magical aura.
Suddenly, her domain was ejected from the forge once again, and Lee Jia realized that she’d been so focused on it that she’d been ignoring everything else.
“Right! All done! Still needs’n edge but I can do that any time.”
Murayoshi tossed another piece of metal into the forge before he looked up from his work and scowled at the gathered students.
“Eh!? Wha’s goin’ on? Why’s there so few o’ ya?”
Lee Jia looked around to find that almost the entire class had left already. Her friends and a few very determined Yamato students had stuck around, but everyone else was gone.
“Eh, their loss. Ey girlie! Forge tells me y’was snoopin’?”
Lee Jia was surprised as Murayoshi suddenly addressed her.
“U-uh, y-yes sir. Sorry—should I not have done that?”
Murayoshi chortled and shook his head.
“Nah, s’arright. Y’oughta ask, but it is a lesson, s’whatever.”
Lee Jia found his dialect a little hard to follow, but gathered that he wasn’t upset by her behavior.
“Did you say the Forge told you? I thought that it was your aura I was sensing.”
“Nah, I ent gott’n. Ol’ Forge does, though. She’s a tsukumogami—a spirit—stronger’n I am, I s’pose. That ent part o’ the lesson.”
Dae sat forward and began scribbling down notes enthusiastically.
“Master Murayoshi, am I to understand that your forge is an object spirit—not only that, but at the xiantian level as well? I have so many questions—”
“Bah! N’more questions! Yer here t’learn makin’, not Murayoshi’s personal business, y’hear? Now girlie, what’dja see wit’ yer snoopin’?”
Lee Jia jerked to attention and frantically tried to recall what she had witnessed.
“Uh, y-you infused the metal with ki, through your tools and anvil, then made a circuit and—”
“Bah! Y’been spendin’ too much time ‘round these Qin idjits what only knows how to flap their gums—an’ yes, I heard ya. Don’ tell me y’spent all’at time lookin’ without seein’?”
She wilted under Murayoshi’s scolding and wracked her brain. Maybe what was important wasn’t what she saw, but what it meant. She recalled the way Master Ienaga had described body cultivation as analogous to smithing.
“You...were in communion with the piece. It was like it had a predestined shape, and you were just bringing it out.”
Murayoshi grinned widely at Lee Jia.
“Hoh! Yer definitely one o’ Yumi’s kids—” his grin immediately turned into an ugly grimace “—I can tell from how y’stole the same fuckin’ wrong answer straight from outta her idjit mouth! Damn girl couldn’t make a blade to save her life, but heaven help whoever got in front o’er when she wielded one.”
Jia buried her face in her hands in shame. Of course Murayoshi would recognize Ienaga’s words—he was the one who taught her.
“Right, listen up, y’idjits! Obviously that empty-headed battle-maniac Yumi ent taught y’all a damned thing ‘bout makin’. Forget everything y’think y’know ‘bout it! Fancy materials, ancient techniques, intricate formations—fuck’em!”
There was a brief susurrus through the few students that remained, before several more stood to leave.
“Ye, tha’s right! If y’can’t even do that much, then y’can piss right off! I ent obligated to teach ungrateful brats! An’ you, girlie? With yer stolen words and blind snoopin’? Y’gon run off, too?”
Lee Jia crossed her arms and scowled.
“Tsk, of course not. It’s not like I knew anything about ‘making’ to begin with, and you wouldn’t be the first abrasive jerk to teach me something, either.”
“Hah! Haha, yer an honest one! Arright, good ’nuff. I ent gonna repeat m’self, so listen good—first step to makin’ somethin’ is to make somethin’. Don’ gimme that look! I don’ mean a fancy magical artifact or a grand weapon. Just somethin’! Anythin’! Don’ matter what, don’ matter how—just make somethin’.”
Dae raised his hand, then lowered it when Murayoshi glared at him, but asked his question anyway.
“Um, Master Murayoshi, what kind of thing? I’ve never attempted blacksmithing before—”
“Who th’fuck said anythin’ about smithin’!? I ent repeatin’ m’self, but whatever y’make it can’t be jus’ some half-assed thing. Y’gotta really put yer all into it! Give it meanin’! It oughtta be a reflection of who y’are, such that it’d tear yer heart out to see it destroyed. If y’can do that, I’ll tell ya the next step.”
As he finished speaking, Murayoshi turned from the group and removed the piece of metal that had been heating up in the furnace, before moving it to the anvil and wordlessly beginning to work on it.
After about a minute it finally sunk in that the lesson had just ended. Xin Wei stood with a huff and shook his head.
“What a ridiculous waste of time that was! I thought I’d at least find out what passes for enchanting in Yamato, but the entire ‘lesson’ was waiting around for four hours, getting insulted, and then being told to ‘just make something’? Come on, Guan, we’ve better uses of our time.”
Guan Yi’s expression was impassive as he stood, but as Xin turned to leave, Guan Yi turned to Murayoshi.
“Grandmaster Murayoshi, I do not believe that I can make an item appropriately representative of myself without working metal, but I have no experience with blacksmithing. Could I trouble you to instruct me?”
Guan punctuated his request by placing a fist in one hand and bowing deeply. Xin looked at his friend with a flabbergasted expression.
“You can’t possibly be serious—”
“Eh!? Y’want me to teach ya smithin’!? I ent takin’ apprentices, but y’can stick ‘round an’ watch me work, long as yer quiet. S’pose y’can borrow the forge if I ent busy—jus’ don’ expect any help, y’hear?”
Guan Yi stood and nodded seriously.
“Understood, Grandmaster. In that case, I will remain here. Xin, please return without me for now.”
Xin blinked up at Guan before sighing and shaking his head ruefully.
“Very well, have fun, I suppose.”
Lee Jia watched, nonplussed, as Xin Wei left while muttering a few invectives about Guan Yi’s obsession with ‘savages’. She didn’t understand how he still kept making that mistake—there was always someone who could overhear you. Guan Yi, meanwhile, was completely absorbed with watching Murayoshi work.
Jia turned to gauge her friends’ reactions to the strange and abrupt ‘lesson’. Eui and Dae both seemed to be deep in thought, while Rika just seemed confused. Yan Yue, on the other hand, was completely disinterested, and looked more bored than anything.
“So, what did you guys think about that lesson? It kind of reminded me a little bit of Elder Qin’s first lesson.”
Rika grimaced.
“You mean the one where he threw a jade slip at us and said ‘learn this’? At least the jade slip had instructions. How are we supposed to just make an artifact on demand?”
Yan Yue scoffed and shook her head.
“Tsk, obviously you're not. The old man didn’t tell you to make an artifact. You’re meant to make whatever you want, so long as you pour your heart and soul into it.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“I don’t know, and I doubt anyone can tell you. Figuring it out for yourself seems to be rather the entire point.”
Rika frowned for a moment before sitting down and joining Eui and Dae in the ‘deep thought’ camp. Jia looked askance at Yan Yue.
“I didn’t think you were interested in learning anything from Murayoshi. In fact, I had assumed you weren’t paying attention at all.”
Yue shrugged.
“I hadn’t planned on it, but then I saw him craft a second grade, high quality artifact from plain steel in the span of a few hours. Besides, it takes at least a century of constant qi infusion for an object spirit to form. That’s a hundred years worth of cumulative hours that Murayoshi—or his predecessors—have spent working that forge. So yes, I paid attention.”
“So—what do you think you’ll make?”
“Nothing. I paid attention, but I have no plan to participate. I don’t think you fully appreciate what his first task implies—I’m not comfortable baring my soul for the world to see in some piece of ultimate self-expression.”
When she put it that way, Lee Jia was suddenly a lot more nervous about the idea herself. She turned to Eui and Dae.
“What do you two think?”
Dae glanced up from his notebook briefly before returning to it and continuing to write as he spoke.
“That spirit is fascinating! It’s so rare to find a spirit docile enough to study that hasn’t been bound by a sealing formation!”
Jia gave him a blank look.
“I meant about making something for Murayoshi’s lesson.”
Dae blushed and scratched the back of his head.
“Oh! Hehe, um, I don’t know. Perhaps a book of some kind? A journal or a memoir.”
That seemed a bit too straightforward to Jia, but it was undeniably Dae-like.
“What about you, Eui?”
Eui’s head jerked up as if hearing her name had broken her from intense concentration.
“Hm? Oh, uh, I don’t know either. I don’t think it’s something that can be decided casually. He said anything, but if it’s supposed to represent who we are, then what it’s made from, how it’s made, and its final form are all going to play an important part, right?”
“True. I guess I was just hoping for some insight on what I should make.”
Eui gave her a quizzical look.
“I don’t know if asking other people is the best way to figure out how to express yourself, Jia.”
Jia blinked in surprise at Eui’s harsh words—she had nearly forgotten how direct her best friend could be. Before she had a chance to respond, they were interrupted by a heavy thunk as a steel ingot landed on the ground next to them.
“Oi! Piss off an’ do yer yammerin’ elsewhere!”
The group quickly fled before Murayoshi could find more heavy things to throw at them. As they ran, Eui’s words echoed in Jia’s mind. She was used to looking towards others for inspiration—whether it was quoting Dae or Ienaga, or seeking the aid of Magus Hwang and Elder Qin to modify her spiritual techniques—but to create something that truly expressed who she was as a person, she would need to look inward.
‘Baring my soul for the world to see in some ultimate form of self-expression’ was the way Yan Yue had described it. Could she do that? Jia hadn’t the slightest idea what something like that would look like—and she wasn’t entirely certain if she wanted to.
