Three Years of Blacksmithing, Achieving Divine Martial Arts - Chapter 30

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 30. The Hammer of the Founding Master
The forge at Jangsimdang had roared back to life.
So Cheol placed the glowing Do-shin on the anvil and lifted the Osip.

Bang!

The first Gi-mun settled into place.
The hammer rose again.

Bang!

The second and third followed.
After finishing the first layer, So Cheol turned the Do-shin with tongs. Before, this was where his hand would tense—he had to add the second layer without damaging the Gi-mun he’d already formed. It had always felt precarious, exacting.
Now it was different.
The spot for the fourth Gi-mun presented itself to his eye first. He raised the hammer, tilted it slightly, and at the final moment released his wrist.

Bang!

A clear, ringing tone spread through the Do-shin.
At the adjacent workbench, So Shim-hwan looked up.

“Another success?”

So Cheol checked the fifth Gi-mun.

“One more left.”
“That makes it worse.”
“Worse?”
“When you made your first Pum-geup rank, you labored over it for six days straight.”

Gwak Geo spoke without lifting his gaze from his own hammer.

“You improve, you get faster.”
“Master. I’m not ignorant of that.”

So Cheol swallowed his laughter and brought the final hammer down.

Bang—!

All six Gi-mun held steady.
When he plunged the completed blade into water, steam rose in thick clouds. So Cheol watched the Do-shin through the mist, then set down the Osip.
A Pum-geup rank Beom-byeong was no longer something made once or twice if fortune favored him.
The problem lay ahead.

‘Pum-geup rank three.’

In seven days, someone from Ju-geom Sanjang would arrive.
Son Cheol-shim had promised to display his forging skill before that visitor. Two-rank blades could draw attention, but to truly turn the tide, he needed one more.
So Cheol tidied his workbench, then glanced toward Son Cheol-shim.

“Master.”
“Yes?”
“Could you find me another hammer?”

Son Cheol-shim looked at the Osip in So Cheol’s hand, then back at his face.

“That one works fine.”
“Not for me to use, Master.”
“Then?”
“I need old forging hammers. If possible, multiple ones—Grade 2 or higher.”

Son Cheol-shim’s eyebrows rose.

“Suddenly collecting hammers?”
“There’s something I want to see.”

He couldn’t mention the Cheongdong Sot.
Son Cheol-shim didn’t press for reasons either. It wasn’t the first time So Cheol had shown interest in old weapons or long-used tools.

“How many?”
“The more the better.”
“First money, now hammers.”
“Both work just fine.”
“Your ambition would swallow Jangsimdang whole.”

Despite his words, Son Cheol-shim vanished that afternoon.
* * *
As the sun tilted toward the horizon, Son Cheol-shim appeared again.
He wasn’t alone. Two disciples followed behind him, each carrying a long wooden box.

“Clear the way.”

The boxes were set atop the workbench.
As the lids lifted, five hammers came into view.
The first four bore distinct appearances—one with a broad head, another with unusually thin edges, one with a shortened shaft, and one whose hammer face was rounded on a single side.

“All Grade 2.”

Son Cheol-shim spoke.

“Some belonged to the clan heads of old, others were gathering dust in storage. Since you were looking for ones with a pedigree, I selected the oldest.”

So Cheol reached toward the nearest hammer.
Five-colored light flickered across it.
Even among Grade 2 Beom-byeongs, the lingering memories differed. One hammer held vivid the moment of drawing steel from fire; another cradled the tactile memory of catching impurities. The remaining pair each bore traces of different movements—the rhythm of striking the Gi-mun, the precision of selecting form.

‘They interlock like a single set.’

Though wielded by different craftsmen, when the four were brought together, the sequence of forging flowed unbroken.
So Cheol’s gaze shifted to the final hammer.
It was the smallest.
At the end of a black shaft slightly longer than a forearm sat a hammer head of deep violet. Its surface showed fine Gi-mun tracery before any sign of wear—though ancient, its presence differed entirely from the other four.
Before his hand even touched it, the Cheongdong Sot hummed faintly.

“Master, what is this?”
“The Yajuchu.”

Son Cheol-shim lifted the hammer.

“The Yajuchu—the tool our founder of Cheoljangbang is said to have used.”

When So Cheol reached out his hand, Son Cheol-shim passed over the handle.

“Originally it was far more extraordinary than it is now. Whatever the founder endured in those days, his power diminished after. Now it ranks as Grade 3 peak Beom-byeong.”

Five-colored light wrapped the entire hammer.

[Yajuchu
(Casting Hammer)
]
[Pum-geup: Grade 3 Peak Beom-byeong · Sealed]
[The founding master of Cheoljangbang once wielded this forging hammer.]

[You can gradually unseal it using the Hyeol-lyeon-beop method.]

[Equip Requirement: Yeol-seok-chu Method · Yeongsapa Punggeom-beop · Salho Chamshindo at So-seong level or higher]
[Equip Effect: Forging sense · Forging technique · Geun-gol enhancement]
[Special Acquisition: The founding master’s forging legacy and enlightenment in three martial arts]

So Cheol read the last two lines again.
Yeol-seok-chu Method.
Salho Chamshindo.
And the Yeongsapa Punggeom-beop he’d received yesterday.
Three martial arts he’d thought were completely separate now appeared side by side in the same hammer’s equip requirements.

“Master.”
“What now.”
“Does the founding master’s name survive anywhere?”
“No.”

Son Cheol-shim answered without much concern.

“Neither name nor surname. After coming to Nohyeon, they say he used only a single alias. Even the name Cheoljangbang was given in honor of that man.”
“Then these three martial arts were also left behind by the founder?”

This time Son Cheol-shim looked at So Cheol.

“You’ve figured out that much?”

So Cheol held up the Yajuchu once to show it.

“Looking at the hammer brings certain thoughts to mind.”
“Peculiar fellow.”

Son Cheol-shim stroked his beard.

“According to the legends passed down, that’s how it is. The Jinsan-gong Lineage, Salho Chamshindo, Yeongsapa Punggeom-beop—they’re divided into three branches now, but they say they’re the root the founder left behind.”

So Cheol asked nothing further.
He could see the memory the Yajuchu held directly.
But for now, he couldn’t equip it.
Yeol-seok-chu Method required mastery at the greater level. Salho Chamshindo required mastery as well.
Only the Yeongsapa Punggeom-beop remained.
As So Cheol set the Yajuchu back into the box, Son Cheol-shim asked:

“Doesn’t it suit you?”
“It’s the opposite.”
“Then why put it down.”
“It’s still too early for me to wield it.”

Son Cheol-shim let out a dry chuckle.

“You can say that too, it seems.”
* * *
When night fell, So Cheol locked the gate of Jangshim Il-won behind him.
He set the Yajuchu aside and began placing the four Grade 2 hammers into the Seon-gyu one by one.
The moment the first hammer blow landed, the stranger blacksmith standing before the furnace reached out and brushed the metal. In that instant when the iron’s color shifted from red to yellow, the tongs moved.
On the second strike, the angle of the hammer’s descent was different. On the third and fourth, each revealed a separate memory.
The parts So Cheol had vaguely glossed over while learning the Cheon-dan Method now caught one by one. Why did the Gi-mun flow unevenly from one side even with the same force applied? At what point did the metal fail to bear up when layering the second tier?
He hadn’t received the answer wholesale.
Instead, it had become clear where to look again.

‘I’m not completely blind to third-tier work either.’

So Cheol returned the discarded test scrap to the furnace. When he drew out the heated metal and pressed it lightly with one of the four hammers, a grain he would normally have missed caught his eye.

Tap.

He stopped without bringing the hammer down further. Forcing that spot with strength would cause it to fracture minutely before he could even create the Gi-mun.
It was something he’d only learned after failing before.
He wanted to pick up the hammer again, but there was something else to do first.
So Cheol drew out his Jok-geum.
Two taels left over from before.
Twenty taels received today.
Twenty-two taels in all.
Thinking of the fifth Seon-gyu, it was money he wanted to save. But he judged it better to fix what he had now into his body than to open a new Seon-gyu within seven days.
He lifted the Jikjeon-pae to his hand.
Five-colored light displayed numbers.

[Jok-geum required for Yeon-bo Sosoche: 6 taels]

Next was the Osip.
The hammer that had risen to third-tier after receiving eight drops of Bo-hyeol.

[Jok-geum required for Yeon-bo Sosoche: 12 taels]

Eighteen taels.
So Cheol slowly ran his hand over the Osip.
It was the hammer Son Cheol-shim had used for so long. Since placing it in the Seon-gyu, he’d gripped it most often both when forging and when fighting people.
When performing Yeon-bo Sosoche, the object itself would disappear.
A brief sense of loss arose in him.
Yet what he’d learned from Son Cheol-shim wouldn’t vanish with it.

“I’ll put it to longer use.”

He spoke words whose intended listener he didn’t know, and moved his consciousness.
Eighteen taels of Jok-geum appeared before his mind.
The Jikjeon-pae and Osip entered together into the five-colored light.

Whooooom—!

There was no sound of melting metal.
But inside So Cheol’s body grew hot, as if he’d entered the furnace itself.
The muscles of his shoulders, back, and arms pulled from within. His joints resonated sharply, and heat extended to his palms.
Crack-crack.
So Cheol clenched his teeth and endured.
The forging sense and hand strength he’d drawn from the Osip, the dexterous manipulations the Jikjeon-pae had granted him—all faded and then settled anew within his body.

[Yeon-bo Sosoche has been completed.]

[Partial bonuses from the Jikjeon-pae and Osip are fixed to your flesh.]

[Fixed attachment bonuses maintain one-tenth of their original effect.]

[Suk-neung Saeng-gyo bonus is fixed to your flesh.]

[The strength correction remaining in the Osip is fixed along with the influence of Bo-hyeol.]

The moment the final line appeared, his body grew heavier once more.
So Cheol clenched his fist.
This was not borrowed strength and sensation filtered through equipment. Even with bare hands, he could feel strength clinging to him now, unmistakably greater than before.
By the Cheongdong Sot’s measure, the equivalent strength of three oxen had been newly inscribed into his flesh.

“So Bo-hyeol leaves a surplus even in this.”

The seal explanation for the Yajuchu resurfaced in his mind.
He had one more reason to accumulate more Bo-hyeol.
Only then did he check the fourth Seon-gyu.
The fifteen drops of Jeong-hyeol he had placed there days ago had already completed their refinement. Combined with the two drops he’d kept before, the finished Bo-hyeol now totaled seventeen drops.
So Cheol did not touch those drops of Bo-hyeol.
He examined his physical condition first.
His Geun-gol remained at upper-middle grade. But it no longer felt suspended between levels as before. The threshold to upper-elite grade had drawn close, nearly within reach.
With the forging hammers loaded onto four Seon-gyu, once equipped, his Geun-gol would still remain at the very highest tier.

“I could extract one more time.”

So Cheol drew his fingertip across the surface.
He pushed out Jeong-hyeol one drop at a time.
Even after passing fifteen, his vision did not darken as it had before.
Sixteen.
Seventeen.
When the twentieth drop entered the fourth Seon-gyu, he finally stopped.
The twenty new drops of Jeong-hyeol were wrapped in five-colored light.
The seventeen completed drops of Bo-hyeol remained separate.
So Cheol swallowed a Gihyeol-dan and sat in lotus position for a time.
Once his breath had stabilized, he opened a book.
It was the Yeongsapa Punggeom-beop.
* * *
In the rear garden of Jangshim Il-won lay a single ordinary Cheol-geom.
It was not a Beom-byeong.
Now was not the time to borrow the strength of a blade—it was the time to embed the movements of the technique into his body first.
So Cheol opened the manuscript’s first page again.
The formal application was written only after So-seong level. Instead, the posture and breathing explained in the first section were compared against the footwork and sword path used at Inmun stage.
At first, he simply followed that.
His front foot extended at an angle and his body folded to the side. As he tried to drive the sword tip straight forward, his shoulder tensed.
So Cheol stopped immediately.
Again.
This time he loosened his waist before his arm.
The sword did not extend straight. It wrapped around his torso, then extended forward from an angle he had not anticipated.
Whoosh.
Once.
Twice.
The feeling was different from the Yeol-seok-chu Method, which drove straight with each footstep. There was no forward momentum like the Salho Chamshindo, pressing the opponent directly.
Instead, as the seemingly broken movements connected, his body grew suppler.
On the third pass, So Cheol bent far lower than before. His feet slipped to the side, his waist followed, and the sword tip emerged tardily.

Whoosh!

The thin bamboo stalk set before him trembled.
There was no cut mark.
The sword tip had merely brushed a single leaf and passed through.
So Cheol actually smiled.
Until moments before, he had been trying to sever the bamboo stalk itself.
This time, he had not forced the sword’s path to be rigid.
He let the blade flow as his body turned.
He resumed his first posture.
The lag between the first movement and the transition to the second had diminished. His breath now flowed naturally with the rhythm of his feet.
A moment later, brief characters shimmered across the Cheongdong Sot.

[You have entered the Yeongsapa Punggeom-beop
(靈蛇破風劍法)
technique.]

So Cheol lowered the Cheol-geom.
The conditions for equipping the Yajuchu had not yet been met.
After Inmun came So-seong, and not quite seven full days remained.
Still, now he could see the path ahead.
So Cheol lifted his blade again in the darkening courtyard.
There was one task to complete before the people from Ju-geom Sanjang arrived.
Expand what he could demonstrate to the maximum.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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