Pakura entered the forge, closing the door behind her.

Lin Feng glanced up at her and said, “All our preparation has led to this day.”

Pakura nodded as she exchanged her normal garb for a standard vest and a blacksmith’s apron.

Finally, today, after a month of preparatory work, they were ready to start the actual forging process.

Pakura watched Lin Feng move about the forge gathering the materials as she went about unsealing the tubs of blood they had undergone untold hardships to collect.

She could feel her cheeks heat up more than the poor ventilation of the forge warranted as she studied the corded muscles of his shirtless back.

She hurriedly averted her gaze and suppressed the errant thoughts lest he pick up on it through their bond.

He returned, strenuously carrying the two large swords, the Executioner’s blade and Hiramekarei.

“Phew. I really need to exercise my mortal body. In my world, we could use world vitality to manipulate stuff, unlike here where you can directly create material out of energy. If you wanted an earth wall, you would raise it from the ground, using the dirt already there. Here, you ninja just spit out tons of rock like its nobody’s business… thankfully they disappear in a minute or so and require massive amounts of chakra to maintain beyond that, otherwise you’d be filling up the seas and creating mountains.

“Back home, after I broke through Communing with the Heavens realm, I never carried a thing again. I just used my control over world vitality to carry stuff… telekinesis if you will. There were even practitioners who majored in controlling swords and blades and using them to attack. Sword cultivators, were what they were called, I believe.

“The closest thing here would be the puppet technique… but that needs tangible chakra threads… its similar to what the sword cultivators of the demonic path used. The Magnet release and Shukaku’s sand bending is also along the same vein in that it turns the biological energy into a manipulative force instead of just turning it into the material itself.

“I think that whatever method the intruder used to substantiate the Will also affected chakra and world vitality, making techniques such as transformation jutsu possible where you physically change your contours with solidified chakra.”

Pakura chuckled, “That’s why you are using that puny hammer.”

“Finesse my lady, finesse. My job is to attend to the finer details, the hard-labour falls to those unskilled in the craft.”

“Tch… fine… get on with it already.”

Lin Feng grinned as he hefted the Executioner’s Blade onto four stones affixed to the floor in such a manner that they supported the rectangular cleaver by its four corners a couple of inches above the ground.

His index finger glowed white hot as he drew upon the power of the four-tails and Pakura’s scorch style through their bond.

Using it like a blow-torch, he slowly cut out a rectangular hole in the giant blade, letting the piece with glowing edges drop onto the ground.

He explained as he worked, “Now this blade here is a pure piece of blood steel. In my world, it was known as a divine material as it could only be obtained by melting down divine weapons that had been repeatedly used on the battlefield. They absorbed the baleful aura of war and the blood of their enemies and gained the ability to repair themselves with the iron from an enemy’s blood. What is more important, the newly formed material would contain traces of the enemy’s abilities, strengthening the blade.”

He picked up the piece of metal from the ground and flicked it with his finger. A melodious sound emanated from it as it vibrated in his hand.

He pointed to the patterns on the steel as he explained, “See here, there are some flame patterns on this part while here you can make out wavy patterns that represent water. Basically, whenever a blood steel weapon is damaged, the part that falls off loses the self-repair ability due to the portion of the World Will remaining in the most complete part, but the good news is, the discarded portion is still energy conductive due to having once housed the World Will and it still has characteristics of the enemies whose blood was used to make it.

“Thus, this piece here was made from the blood of one or more ninja with fire affinity and/or water affinity. Thus, if I turned this piece into a dagger, those with water and fire dual affinity would be fighting over it as it would be able to boost their techniques.

“Having a blood steel weapon is basically equivalent to having an infinite amount of materials for blacksmithing. Back in our sect we had one, which we had won from a particularly rampant empire that had tried to encroach on our jurisdiction. So, when I saw this beauty, I knew I had to have it.”

Pakura curiously examined the piece of metal and tested it with her fire natured chakra, finding that it flowed extremely smoothly through the plate.

She asked, “What about the blades you didn’t take? Other than sparking the war between Konoha and the Hidden Mist, what other reason did you have to let them off?”

“Well, Helmet splitter was just two hunks of metal in the form of an axe and a hammer, special only due to the chakra conductivity and hardness it had acquired by soaking up fame for being one of the seven swords.

“The blast-sword is a recent addition to the line-up… formidable only because of its clever combination of explosive tags with a chakra conductive blade. No special power or Will fragment there.

“The Nuibari, the needle-sword, had too little material to matter… it’s the same as the helmet splitter otherwise.

“Only the twin-swords, Kiba, had some worth as their fame over many years had allowed a portion of the current version of the World Will to condense in them, giving them powers over lightning. The Executioner’s blade and Hiramekarei is same in this respect having portions of the current World Will condensed in them due to their illustrious history. Samehada was the only throwback to the old World Will among the seven swords.

“When I saw the blood steel, I knew what I wanted to build… I needed the final weapon to be equally attuned to all elements, Kiba would unbalance it… so I left it there. Seeing one of the older and more famous swords in the hands of Konoha will hire more hatred from the Mist than only losing the newer swords.”

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She nodded in understanding, “So that’s why you’ve been collecting all this blood from people with pure and strong affinities to the five chakra natures as well as the blood from those people with elemental kekkei genkai. You want to obtain steel with affinities to those natures. Right?”

“Right! You are worthily the most talent kunoichi of your generation… even this was deduced by you.” Lin Feng acclaimed.

Pakura blushed and then quickly regained her composure. “Ahem. So, what next?”

“Next? Next, we make the most artistic steel known to man: Damascus steel.”

She watched intrigued as he poured the blood from the prepared tubs on the damaged blade, causing the rectangular hole to fill up with newly formed material.

He then cut out the metal and set it aside, repeating the process for each type of blood till he had nine rectangular pieces. Activating the power of the four-tails on his right hand, causing it to glow internally as if magma ran in his veins, he slit his wrist, causing the boiling hot blood to splash on the sword and get absorbed, forming a new metallic piece patterned in a manner indicative of the lava release kekkei genkai.

He cut the lava release piece into half, softening both of the pieces with her help and beating them out into two thinner pieces equal in size to the others.

He stacked the pieces in the following order of elemental affinities: lava, fire, scorch, wind, ice, water, storm, lightning, explosion, earth and lava, completing the cycle. Each of them had a distinctive pattern and tint representative of their elements.

He then drew upon Samehada’s power and his already healed right hand grew greyish and the marine features like the webs between his hands grew more prominent. Slashing his wrist, he irrigated the Executioner’s blade with the blood while using the resonance from their Karmic bond to force the Will fragment into the rectangular area using her yin chakra and his soul force.

Next, he cut out a similarly sized rectangle from Hiramekarei after Pakura flooded it with pure yang chakra and they used the principle level coercion of the Karmic bond to drive the Will fragment into the piece.

The white piece from Hiramekarei, with the ability to store and manipulate the shape of chakra represented the yang release while the dark piece with Samehada’s power of chakra absorption denoted the yin release.

Placing these final pieces on either side of the stack, Lin Feng welded them together to form a twelve-layer stack of different metals.

Collaborating with Pakura, he heated the metal block to red heat and had her hammer it with all her might until it was stretched out to twice its length as he held on with a tong.

Using a chisel and the smaller hammer, he cut the metal almost all the way through at the halfway point and folded it, doubling the number of layers to twenty-four.

Repeating the process twice, he had ninety-six layers on the metallic block and it was starting to show signs of brittleness. Determining that it was enough, he had her hammer it out into a two-metre-long bar.

Maintaining the levels of heat, the two perspiring weaponsmiths brought the bar over to a large clamp and fixed one end. Holding onto the other end with another clamp, they twisted the billet until they felt the stress levels within the metal reach a critical point.

During the entire process, they kept a constant coating of flux, a mixture of borax and plant ash, on the heated metal to prevent oxidation, reapplying it whenever necessary.

Returning the twisted billet to the anvil, they divided it into two at the two-thirds point with the hammer and chisel, giving them two pieces to work with, one, half the length of the other.

They worked on them alternately, maintaining their heat levels as they hammered them flat, and used the domed head of the smaller hammer to give them the shape and curvature of a traditional katana and wakizashi pair.

They took a break to rehydrate themselves as the two swords cooled on the clamps, tightened so they wouldn’t bend.

Pakura asked, “Why the daisho? Are you familiar with wielding such blades in your world?”

He shrugged, “Throwing weapons are out as the opponents at my level could have a hundred means to prevent me from retrieving them or even use them against me and as a mobile artillery, I don’t need a weapon for long distance. I’m no swordsman, but at the same time, any weapon for close combat would be new to me, so why not?

“The fact that it’s a traditional weapon and status symbol for the samurai I have to meet in a few days is an added bonus. Also, it’s a paired weapon which is helpful in developing our Karmic bond further if we each carry one.”

Pakura gawked dumbfounded for a long time before she blushed deeply and averted her eyes.

Lin Feng was overwhelmed by the fluster he could detect through the bond. “What?! What did I say wrong?”

Taking several deep breaths, she forcefully restrained her mood and turned to him and spoke very seriously as she looked him in the eyes: “You just proposed marriage to me by samurai custom.”

He was stunned, “Oh.”

This time he was the one who averted his eyes. They fell into an awkward silence until he interrupted it.

“Oh well, I think the swords are cool now… let’s get it over with.”

They both got back to work but a tint of red remained on both their cheeks.

Taking down the roughly shaped blades, Lin Feng compressed sand into whetstones of varying hardness and set about smoothing and grinding the wakizashi, the shorter blade, into shape while Pakura worked on the katana.

He used his control over sand to hasten the process and she her chakra enforced strength, completing the process which took mortal swordsmiths months, within mere hours.

They worked together to heat both blades to near melting point, ensuring that the accumulated stress in the metal dissipated and the internal structure of the metal settled into regular patterns.

Taking the swords out of the heat, they checked to ensure that they weren’t bent.

He then used a brush to coat the backs of the blades with a mildly heat resistant clay, leaving the edge clear while creating a wavy pattern between the transition zone, setting up the blade pattern (hamon).

They plunged both blades into the pure water for a hard quench followed by the salt water to make them extremely hard.

The lack of clay allowed the edge to cool faster, making it harder but more brittle, while more clay allowed the centre and spine to cool slower, thus retaining its resilience. This also generated a visual pattern on the blade showing the border between the differentially hardened areas.

The blades were now at a very fragile state where a hit from the wrong direction could snap them. Thus, they were put into the vat of extremely hot oil to slowly temper the metal, allowing the crystals in the steel to set, resulting in a much tougher and more flexible sword while retaining its hardness and sharpness.

After the blades cooled, both of them went to work on them with the grindstones, for the final round of polish and sharpening.

In the preparatory phase, they had consulted with Chiyo as the resident expert on poisons and chemicals in the area. She along with several of the swordsmiths had worked with samples of the constituent metals of the Executioner’s blade and Hiramekarei that he had provided them and developed two chemicals.

One, which would dissolve the Hiramekarei, leaving the Executioner’s blade untouched. The other, which would do the reverse.

Obviously, he kept the fact that he had the blades a secret from them to prevent the information from reaching any spies Konoha or Kiri might have planted in Suna.

Now, Lin Feng dipped the wakizashi in one while Pakura dipped the katana in the other for half a minute in which, the pattern from the Damascus process had been etched out and revealed in all its glory. The patterns only formed on the body of the blade as the edges were too hard for the solutions to dissolve within the limited time.

The wakizashi had a dark body with a shining edge. The patterns on the body of the blade glittered with a multicoloured brilliance like the stars in the night sky. It seemed as if someone had cut the blade out of the very fabric of the cosmos. As such the name Inlustris, meaning starlight seemed fitting.

The katana had a bright body with a dark edge. The patterns on the body seemed to swirl and drift like clouds across the daytime sky. The entire blade seemed to have been crafted from a piece of the Heavens. As such the name of Solis, meaning sunlight seemed appropriate.

Pakura’s heart thumped as Lin Feng turned to her with the wakizashi held out horizontally to her on both palms.

His gaze docked with her own and in it she found sincerity. Through the bond she confirmed it.

So, when she heard the words: “Marry me”, as she handed him the katana in the same way, she said, “Yes!”