Heavenly Forge Ark, Tier Seven – Day 36 of seclusion
The second month is when the dead start teaching the living.
It begins on the thirty-sixth dawn (when the corpse-fire orbs burn blood-red instead of blue).
Liàn Xing is running his thousandth star-iron lift when the first ghost appears.
A translucent figure in ancient smith robes, face half-melted, eyes empty sockets leaking golden tears. It drifts through the ice bunker wall and stops directly in front of him.
The chunk of star-iron he is holding suddenly weighs exactly what his soul fears it weighs.
He drops it.
The impact craters the deck three metres deep.
The ghost speaks without moving its mouth. The words burn themselves into the air in golden primordial script:
WIELD NOT WITH FLESH.
WIELD WITH WHAT YOU REFUSE TO LOSE.
Then it places one translucent hand on the half-formed spear shaft.
The metal drinks the ghost's essence like a thirsty blade.
The shaft lengthens by three cun. New silver runes crawl across the surface (ancient smith characters that mean "resolve").
The ghost bows and dissolves into golden dust that swirls into the spear and vanishes.
Zhao and Lan Shuyin watch from the bunker entrance, weapons ready.
More ghosts follow.
They come every dawn now.
Some bring techniques.
One ghost (a woman with no arms) teaches Lan Shuyin how to forge frost into living lotuses that explode into absolute-zero shrapnel.
Another (a child-smith whose face is half starlight) shows Zhao how to condense sword rings into micro-black holes that cut intent itself.
A third (an old man with a hammer fused to his spine) sits beside Liàn Xing for seven silent days and teaches him how to breathe with the spear instead of the lungs.
They never speak aloud.
They teach by touch, by memory, by pain.
Every lesson costs.
On day forty-two Lan Shuyin takes a ghost's lesson too deeply. Frost lotuses bloom inside her meridians and freeze three of them solid. She collapses screaming, blood freezing on her lips.
Liàn Xing carries her to the anvil, places the spear shaft across her chest, and forces starlight through the ice until it melts. She wakes three days later with frost-blue spear runes branded along her collarbones and the ability to freeze an area the size of a city block.
On day forty-eight Zhao accepts a ghost's offer to "cut away weakness."
Golden sword intent carves a perfect circle out of his left lung. He coughs golden blood for six hours, then stands up laughing with nine perfect rings orbiting a new scar shaped like a star.
On day fifty-five Liàn Xing lets a ghost hammer his spine with pure law-force for nine hours straight.
Every strike brands a new silver constellation into his bones. When it finishes he stands, and the half-formed spear shaft grows another chi, now exactly seven chi long.
The ghosts never ask for payment in words.
They take memories.
Lan Shuyin loses the memory of her mother's face.
Zhao loses the sound of his first sword master's praise.
Liàn Xing loses the taste of the only meal a gutter orphanage ever gave him without spitting in it.
They do not complain.
They need the strength more than the past.
Resource Gathering
The dragon souls, now fully allied, guide them to hidden caches.
Tier Six is a dragon bone graveyard. They harvest marrow that still burns with star-dragon soulfire (enough to forge a hundred natal weapons).
Tier Eight's outer ring contains sealed vaults of thunder beast plasma (liquid lightning trapped in magnetic bottles older than civilisation).
Zhao spends four days learning to surf the plasma rivers on his sword rings, coming back scorched golden and grinning with bottles full of city-killing power.
Lan Shuyin dives into the marrow pits and emerges covered in frozen soulfire that refuses to melt, her twin short-spears now glowing with dragon frost.
Liàn Xing simply walks through both, spear shaft drinking everything it touches.
By the end of week six the shaft is eight chi long, black as the void between stars, with flowing galaxies that move when no one is looking.
First Real Tribulation
On day fifty-nine the Ark decides they are ready.
The corpse-fire orbs turn black.
Gravity triples.
Eight dragon souls form a perfect circle around the platform and roar in unison.
Tribulation lightning (real, heavenly, angry) gathers above the camp in a perfect storm a kilometre wide.
Zhenxing grows to full size, wings spread.
"First major tribulation," she announces. "Foundation Establishment complete. The Ark wants to see if you're worthy of Core."
Liàn Xing stands in the centre.
Lan Shuyin and Zhao take positions at his flanks.
The first bolt falls.
It is not purple.
It is gold.
The colour of the Ninth Law trying to finish itself.
It strikes Liàn Xing dead centre.
The spear shaft drinks it.
The second bolt is white (absolute purity, absolute judgment).
Lan Shuyin steps forward, twin short-spears crossed.
Frost lotuses bloom and catch the bolt, freezing it solid mid-descent.
The third bolt is golden again, thicker, meant for Zhao.
He laughs and meets it with nine rings.
The impact carves a crater fifty metres deep.
They stand together.
The tribulation intensifies.
Nine bolts fall at once.
They do not dodge.
They advance.
Every step forward costs blood, bone, memory.
Every step teaches the spear something new.
By the time the storm ends, the platform is gone (only a perfect circle of glassed star-iron remains).
They stand in the centre, clothes burned away, skin covered in new scars that glow silver, frost-blue, and gold.
Peak Foundation Establishment for all three.
The dragon souls bow their eight heads in perfect unison.
The Immortal Smith ghosts drift forward and, for the first time, speak aloud.
Their voices are the sound of hammers on the first anvil.
"Worthy."
Then they dissolve into golden dust that swirls into the spear shaft.
It grows one final chi.
Nine chi exactly.
Still no blade.
But it is awake now.
And it is hungry.
Two months down.
One to go.
They are no longer teenagers.
They are the storm that will make heaven kneel.
And the spear is almost ready to taste its first real blood.