Do you think striking as hard as possible is the right way to go?
If you think it is, you are wrong striking too soft also makes it useless. Just to be at entry level in our Qian Cui techniques. One needs to strike a thousand times on this tool
Now watch as I start to hammer on this tool.
It is modified from a toy for some test of strength. Bring the hammer down on this area and see the token move to the top. See the area in the middle that is yellow and the red line in middle? Your goal is to hit the token within the yellow area and make the counter on the left increase. Hit too hard and the counter goes down by 1 instead. The final goal is to make it stop right at the line . The counter on the right will increase each time that happens. When it is time to stop I will tell you so. Today is just a start so for the next 3 hours. You are to keep striking at it with... Let see... This 2.5kg hammer. No no no. This 0.5kg should do the trick. It is for getting the arm used to the motion anyway.
Handing it over to Marcus, Mastersmith Derrick proceeded to lecture once again.
Do not think it is light. As you keep hitting your hand will tire your muscles will sore. You will be glad when this is over that it is just a 0.5kg hammer."
Mastersmith Derrick then stepped out of the room and left me to my own devices.
10 seconds later he returned.
"Forgot to turn the tool to 1.1 times, and while I am at it, change the responsiveness of the toy to a 0.5kg hammer. While I am at it add this counter to see if you get lazy and hit less that minimum. It is not that i do not want to teach you the craft. You need the basics before you can learn the craft. Oh and remember to change hands every 15 minutes or so or you will not last the three hours."
With that said, he left room and only returned after 3 hours to call me for lunch.
It seemed easy at first. After the first few test hits, I hit the maximum easily. Thinking that I got the hang of it, i began to aim for the yellow zone. 15 minutes left, 15 minutes right. By the first hour, i hit the yellow zone about 40 times already. That was about 1 in 10 hits that I could hit the yellow zone. Many of times I would end up lowering my strength too much and hitting with too little of strength.
It was not until the start of the 3rd hour that I realize what he meant by 'last 3 hours'. My shirt had become thoroughly soaked with sweat and were clinging onto me like snakes. It was heavy and it was fighting against every movement I make. The intervals between each strikes had slowly become longer and longer. It had become a slow countdown to the end of each 15 minutes.
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"Ahh I see you have not been slacking off only 300 below minimum out of the 1200 strikes. you made about 100 hits within the yellow zone and 7 lucky hits to the red line. Go clean up yourself. You look like crap."
After the oddly refreshing shower, i headed to the dining area only to see that Mastersmith Derrick had finished his meal and left me my portion.
After the meal I thought I was in for another round of training. It took me by surprise when I got my new instruction.
"Go be a kid. Have fun. Play. You are to tell me at least 10 names of the kids around the area. Just get back 1 hour before dinner for your evening run"
It was about 5 days later that instructions changed. Here I thought I needed to achieve 100 hits on the red line before I graduated to a heavier hammer.
All I got from Mastersmith Derrick was that my muscles should have adapted to the hitting motion by now.
It was a simple life. Wake up, select the ores, jog, eat breakfast, hammer practice, lunch, play, jog, dinner and rest.
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It took 3 months before I noticed the changes. I had become taller and more muscled. It was not the big burly muscles that I see from all the men that would cause Tavern fight but more of the lean muscles of those who put themselves to hard labour like those who work on the fields.
As 15 was the age for marriage for most, many adults had began eyeing me as their future son-in-law. I am only 10 and they are already envisioning me as my future self. To them, 5 years would be just a blink of an eye. it was not that i do not want to be tied down, but I am a Daylight. I have a heavy reaponsibility to bear. I have enemies that I do not know of and I do not have the power to find out. An uncertain road is before me and being married would shackle me down.
To the world, I am just Marcus Theodore the young blacksmith apprentice.
It was another 3 months before I graduated from the ore selection. It was the beginning of the next phase of blacksmithing.
Control your strength. That was the first thing he said.
"This is steel. In the past, we would use pine coal and a waterwheel to fan the flames. Now, we use something simpler, a fire tool for the heat and a wind tool to fan the flames.
I like the best of both worlds. I use all 3. Pine coal, fire tool and wind tool. Using just the fire tool and wind tool is fine but i would say that having the pine coal spread the heat more evenly around the blade like heating stones used in cooking."
Now look at these two raw ore that i have chosen, you can tell by now that one is the low quality grayish ore and the other is the higher quality bright silver. Here I will show you what is the difference.
I watched as he began heating up the bright silver ore. After achieving the needed bright red, he began to slowly hammer out the ore into a flat cracker thickness and left it aside to cool. Next he began working on the grayish ore in the same manner. I looked at the time it took for him to flatten the two ore and was surprised that it took him almost the same amount of time to hammer both.
"In Qian Cui, the goal is effeciency and consistency. A thousand strikes. For this step most blacksmiths would take 50-100 strikes to get to where I stopped for the higher quality ore and lesser for the lower one. The greyish ore is softer so with each hit it changes form faster. I am just saying though, do not think this is my normal speed. If I am doing this at my normal speed, I would have completed this phase for over 10 times already. However, if I do that, there would be no way you can learn anything."
10 times the speed? He took 3 minutes to hammer these ores. That is like 18 seconds for one ore!
I gave him an incredulous look which he noticed fairly quickly.
"You do not believe it? Grab me another ore."
5 seconds. it took only 5 seconds. All I could see was a blur and sparks that almost never flew out and what sounded like a hundred birds chirping at the same time.
All I heard from Mastersmith Derric was how he had slowed down and that he used to be able to flatten 18 in under a minute. He went on to talk about the past grandsmiths and their speed but I was not listening already. My mind was still stuck in the flow of the the hammer and how the ore took the final shape.
It was rather odd. That form, that blur. That strange euphoric feeling blossoming from within my chest. I had forgotten about the world and became fully immersed in the very motion of the hammer.
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As I was talking about the past grandsmiths and their speed, i noticed that Marcus seemed to be in a daze and was not listening to what I said.
That got me angry. I was talking about the great grandsmiths and their glory and he was not listening to me. That stoked a small flame of anger in me and made me want to strike at Marcus. It soon changed from a flame of anger to a flame of jealousy. He has what most grandsmiths would die to have. That small kindling of flame that was dancing within his eyes, that small glimmer of hammer that flickers in and out of existence within his eye. He has a the fabled soul hammer. Of 1 in thousands of children or so, a blessed child would be born with soul tool. Most would never awaken. Some would be like Marcus, awakening his soul tool from something like this.
There is no two same way for their soul tool to awaken.
To have a soul tool is rare, a soul hammer is just as rare. Not to mention, a soul hammer user born in the bloodline of grandsmiths. It had to be God sent for such to be possible and I am there to witness the birth of the great miracle.
Hours passed as I watched that kindling flicker within his eyes. That fire that encompass the hammer. That ever changing color. It is really hard to tell what element it is.
And then it finally took flight and left like the owl of minerva with the falling of dusk. The flames washed over his body in a myriad of colors burning away all impurities within his body. The humor took flight as well. His clothes had taken flight as well. The flames took care of impurities within and without.
The flames faded and a new life took its place within the eyes of Marcus. I could only smile in amusement as I waiting for Marcus to notice that he is in his birthday suit.