Chapter 88: Not so Plain Steel [ Castle Bonus ]

A full day had crawled past Iron Morning, and the outer yard finally ran without him in it. The breathing drills carried on under a senior outer’s clipped count, the wooden swords clacked through the warm-up sets Lin Xuan had drilled into them the day before, and from this distance the disciples almost looked competent.

He let himself enjoy the view from the eastern bench, Plain Steel laid flat across his knees.

The sword was, by any honest measure, ugly. Yellow rank, low end. A blade a country swordsmith would have hammered out between farming tools, with a grip wrap that had loosened twice in the last month and a faint notch near the tip from where he’d parried Yan Wuji’s Pavilion of Stillness through bad geometry. No engraving. No inscription. The pommel was a plain iron knob. Hand it to any young master from one of the great sects, and the boy would smile politely and offer to have his servant carry it for him.

Lin Xuan ran his thumb along the flat.

It had been with him through a tournament, an override that rearranged the laws of the universe for five seconds, and an ambush at a mountain pass that ate three Skyedge elders. It had not broken once.

He owed it something.

Mira’s panel bloomed in front of his eye, soft blue, the corners already pinking up.

[ Want to swap weapons? Or, if you prefer, we can upgrade this one. (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧ Up to you, Xuan. ]

He almost laughed.

’Wait. You can upgrade a sword? Level it up?’

[ Of course I can. ]

[ A skilled smith could reforge plain steel with rarer materials and walk out with something nastier than what he came in with. I’m just a smith with a better bench. ]

He turned that over for half a breath. She was right. A real forge master in Yuncheng would charge a small fortune to do exactly that, and the result would still be only as good as the cultivator carrying it. Of course his Limitless System could do the same. He should have asked months ago. He had been hauling Plain Steel around like a sentimental piece of luggage when it could have been climbing tiers under his hand the entire time.

’How does it work?’

[ I can show you exactly how far this particular sword can go. The catch is, the ceiling isn’t infinite. ]

[ Plain Steel is what it sounds like. Plain. Whatever we feed into the blade has to be something the steel can hold without splintering. Push past that limit and the sword cracks the first time you pour real intent through it. ]

[ Stronger base, further ceiling. Rarer reagents, grander effects. But to make that ceiling mean anything, your body would need to keep up with whatever you forged. You can’t swing a Heaven-grade blade at Stage 5 without the blade swinging you back. ]

He let that thought settle.

So Plain Steel had a real wall, not an aspirational one. Whatever they did to it now was a patch, not a transformation. The actual sword, the one he could grow into for years, was waiting on the other side of his own realm and probably buried under a mountain Blood Fang currently sat on.

He filed that idea away.

’About the body. If I dump those twenty thousand origin points into raising my realm, how far do I get?’

The panel quivered like she’d been waiting for him to ask.

[ Stage seven and a half, give or take a sliver. ]

[ Not quite eight, but you’d be standing where your stepbrother stands. Two and a half stages in so little time. Anyone in this sect would call that an obscene leap. A few of them would call it cheating outright. ]

She wasn’t wrong about that last part. He’d shown Stage 5 publicly since Yuncheng, and even that had spooked half the regional sects into spilling their tea. Vaulting to seven and a half would look less like cultivation and more like filing a tax return on someone else’s life.

But it would put him level with Lin Kai. Which was no small thing. Lin Kai had spent his entire existence being the better son in raw stages, and Lin Xuan had spent two of those years staring at a sickroom ceiling while his stepbrother climbed without him.

A petty, very Ethan-Reed corner of him wanted to walk into Lin Kai’s chamber at the same realm and not say a word about it.

’Good. But sword first. The body can wait a little.’

[ Smart priority, Xuan. Your body’s expensive. Your sword is, conveniently, free. ]

[ For the upgrade, we have two paths. ]

[ Path one. Go out and harvest the materials yourself. The continent is rich in creatures and ores that match Plain Steel’s tier. ]

[ Path two. Buy them through the shop. You unlocked Tier Two after Yuncheng, remember. There are reagents in there that make even me a little weak in the panel. I was actually saving Tier Two shopping for your body upgrades. I wanted to surprise you. But we can blow it on a sword instead if you really insist. ]

He shook his head before she’d finished the second option.

’We do it the long way. I go and get them.’

[ Oh? ]

’Origin points are points. If I spend them on the sword, they’re gone. And if I spend them on my realm, they’re also gone, but at least the realm sticks to me. If I go and harvest the sword reagents myself, I save the points for the body, and I rack up new beasts in the Bestiary on the way. Which pays out in more points. Sharper blade, fatter wallet, and you tip me on top.’

He turned Plain Steel across his knees.

’Win-win. Free upgrade and you pay me for the privilege of taking it.’

There was a small, suspiciously pleased pause inside the panel.

[ ...I forget sometimes you weren’t raised in this world. ]

[ A cultivator wouldn’t have thought of it this way in a thousand years. They’d have bought the materials, smiled at the receipt, and called it efficiency. ヾ(•ω•`)o ]

[ You’re hideous. I love it. ]

The corner of his mouth twitched.

’You’re welcome.’

[ Harvest it is, then. Good news, Host. Your father’s scouting run takes us straight through the range we’d want to be in anyway. Western mountains. Same road, same beasts, same veins. We can pick the materials up on the way to the mine. ]

[ Realistic timeline. About two weeks of prep here, give or take. The trip itself would run two days on foot if we don’t dawdle, plus however long the scouting takes once you reach the gate. By the time we leave, you should’ve pushed Plain Steel through its first reforging, climbed to Stage 7, and beaten enough drills into your new personal retainers that they won’t immediately go feral the moment you walk out the door. ]

He raised an eyebrow at the panel.

’Personal retainers? Is that what you’re calling my disciples now?’

[ It’s not a terrible description, is it? They follow you. They obey you. They look at you like you hung the eastern moon yourself. If you vanished tomorrow, half of them would relapse into slacking off inside three days, and the other half would probably start a cult. Either way: retainers. ]

’I’d rather we keep calling them disciples.’

[ Disciples sounds noble. Retainers sounds honest. ]

He couldn’t argue without lying, so he didn’t try. Yesterday’s first session had been a butchery dressed up as training, and the ones who hadn’t quit had walked out of the yard with the awe-drunk eyes of converts. He’d seen the same expression on customers at his old Earth job after he’d upsold them on a three-meal combo they hadn’t actually wanted. The look scaled, apparently, across worlds.

’I’ll keep grinding them. I need to put a working mindset in their heads before I leave them alone for a week, or I’ll come back to find half of them napping under the rack again.’

[ "Putting a mindset in their heads" sounds a little ominous when you phrase it that way. ]

’Only if you don’t know my method.’

[ Knowing your method is exactly what makes it sound ominous. (•̀ᴗ•́)و ]

He let out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh and looked down the eastern path, where the disciples’ yard had gone quiet enough to hear the wind in the cypresses.

’There’s also Lin Kai. I’ll have to try talking to him at some point. Not today, though. Maybe once the sword’s done. He’s not eating, the trays keep coming back full, and leaving him in there until he decides to walk out on his own would be exactly what I’d regret later.’

[ Three days of untouched trays is bad. Five would be a real worry. We watch him. ]

He shifted Plain Steel in his hand, set both palms flat against it, and lifted it across his lap until the morning light caught the flat of the blade.

’All right. Walk me through it.’

Mira’s panel deepened from blue toward indigo, the corners crisping into something more formal. The kaomoji blinked out. When her voice came back, it carried that particular weight she only used when she was about to dump a real list on him.

[ Reforging Path: Plain Steel ]