Commanding Wind and Cloud
Chapter 48: [Blade-washing] Skill and [Forging Breathe Technique]

After an hour, Qian Jin stretched his arms as he breathed heavily and threw the axe that he just sharpened in front of Blake.

It was not until now that Qian Jin realized that sharpening blades took a lot of stamina and strength; it didn’t take any less than forging. Just to sharpen this axe, Qian Jin used both of his arms, waist, back, legs and every muscle in his body to move at different paces to maintain the consistency of the sharpening movement; it was more exhausting than forging.

Blake blew at the blade of the axe and smiled. “Great, you have learnt the basic blade-washing technique.”

“[Blade-washing]? What is that? Didn’t I learn the [Sharpening] skill?” Qian Jin was too immersed in watching Blake sharpen the blade, so he didn’t hear the notification from the System Wizard. When he called up his status screen, he was stunned.

[Sharpening] Skill: Max level! Learning requirement for [Blade-washing] Skill satisfied

[Blade-washing] Skill: Elementary!

“[Sharpening]? How much is that worth?” Blake sneered, “How can you become a god-tier Blacksmith Master if you don’t know [Blade-washing] skill?”

God-tier Blacksmith Master? Qian Jin stared at Blake blankly. Although he didn’t know what a God-tier Blacksmith Master represented in the Endless World, a God-tier Blacksmith Master in his world… ever since both humans and demons existed on the continent, the total number of God-tier Blacksmith Masters could be counted on one hand. Even if someone had three fingers cut off of their hand, they would still be able to count the number of God-tier Blacksmith Masters that appeared in history.

In the current society on both the human and demon side, Forging Masters were rare to see, and they had high prestige. In terms of God-tier Blacksmith Masters, it was just a dream; there weren’t many Forging Masters that had this ridiculous dream.

“Alright, it is useless to tell you too much. If you work hard, you will know these things naturally.” Blake walked to the forge with the hammer in his hand. “You had enough rest. I will teach you something new now,” he said to Qian Jin.

Qian Jin really wanted to tell Blake that all of the muscles in his body were still sore; if he walked up or down the stairs, both of his legs would probably collapse. But when he saw Blake’s excited face, he decided to shut his mouth temporarily.

“I will teach you different forging strikes many times, and you can learn as much as you can. It is okay if you can’t get the hang of it today.” Blake looked at Qian Jin with a very serious look on his face. “In terms of this [Forging Breath Technique], you have to learn it carefully,” he said.

“[Forging Breath Technique]?” Qian Jin asked Blake in a surprising tone. He didn’t expect that there would be a complementary breathing technique for forging. It was the first time that he heard it.

“Yes, [Forging Breath Technique]. You can only use it when you are forging. You can’t use it during other times, even if you want to.” Blake said calmly, “Look at that burning fire and take in a deep breath; imagine that you have sucked the life out of this fire into your body. Breathe in harder!”

“So hot!”

Qian Jin took a deep breath. It felt like his chest was on fire, as if someone placed burning charcoal into his lungs. When he opened his mouth to breath out, he felt like he was blowing fire out of his mouth.

“Close your mouth! Listen to my instructions and breathe in patterns!”

A rare tough expression appeared on Blake’s face. His finger pressed on the location on Qian Jin’s body where Qian Jin was feeling the most heat. His finger slowly slid to the right of Qian Jin’s chest and drew a path into Qian Jin’s left arm. As he was doing that, he shouted, “Exhale, exhale, exhale; three short and rapid exhalations! Then, take a deep breath, and imagine that you are inhaling the life of the fire… Listen! Exhale, exhale, two short and rapid exhalation…”

Qian Jin focused and controlled his body as he followed Blake’s instructions strictly; he was trying to move the heat energy in his body. The path the heat energy was taking was very strange.

At first, Qian Jin thought that this was an energy training technique. Soon, he rejected this hypothesis. Every energy reservoir that the path Blake drew on his body was a waste reservoir.

Warrior! A mature training system was already formed on the human’s side after many years of war with the demons. In this training system, the greater warriors in the past discovered that there were many energy reservoirs in humans’ bodies after numerous trials and errors. Some of the energy reservoirs in the body could generate more warrior energy when the energy circulated through and nourished them. These reservoirs were sometimes called live reservoirs. However, some energy reservoirs were completely useless. It didn’t matter how much warrior energy circulated through and nourished them; these energy reservoirs were called waste or dead reservoirs.

When people were training to gather more warrior energy, they didn’t need any kind of strange breathing techniques. They only needed to circulate the warrior energy through the live energy reservoirs in their bodies.

The [Forging Breathe Technique] that Blake was teaching Qian Jin went through all the dead energy reservoirs; it completely went against all common sense and knowledge. After two hours, Qian Jin sat on the ground and breathed heavily as he heard Blake say that he could stop.

“Rest for a bit. Just watch me forge.” Blake seemed unprecedentedly happy. With a hammer in each hand, he started to strike on a piece of red-hot pig iron.

Unlike before, it seemed like Blake’s strikes were simplified. There were in total 18 different type of strikes. However, Qian Jin felt that these 18 simple strikes were way harder to learn than the stuff he learnt before. He felt that these 18 simple strikes contained numerous varieties, and these strikes all required different speeds, power, and angles.

After three hours, Blake finally stopped demonstrating to Qian Jin. He threw the hammers beside Qian Jin’s feet and said, “Keep forging until I say stop.”

“Forge until you say stop?” Qian Jin barely stood up after he tried his best. He grabbed onto the two hammers and started to recall the way that Blake forged. He suddenly realized that he forgot the majority of the 18 strikes he thought he remembered. He could only… only remember one strike…

Qian Jin suddenly took a deep breath as he imagined himself breathing fire into his lungs. He immediately felt that heat energy running wild in his body; he divided some of his focus onto controlling the energy with the [Forging Breath Technique] as he mimicked Blake’s first strike. The heat energy instantly rushed into his arms, and it let out an unprecedented power. Qian Jin even felt that the angle and the path of the strike was a little bit easier to control.

Tink…

“Yuck!” Qian Jin spit onto the floor as to cover up his failure. “Memorizing and utilizing the memory to perform are two completely different things,” he thought to himself.

Blake on the other hand sat at a corner and smoked the tobacco in his pipe; he didn’t look at Qian Jin at all. He returned to his resting state as if he couldn’t see what Qian Jin was doing.

One strike… Ten strikes… Fifty strikes… One hundred strikes… One hundred and thirty strikes…

Qian Jin cheered as he finally performed the same strike that Blake did after failing one hundred and twenty nine times.