Dark Iron
On Mount Qingcheng’s Biseon Peak, vast deposits of vanadinite—one of the principal ores of vanadium—and rutile, a major ore of titanium, could be found in abundance.
How had Hwiyeom known this? In his previous life he had purchased the titanium and vanadium from that very place and used them as outer-hull plating for satellite weapons.
I practically wore out the threshold of the Sichuan provincial government office back then.
Without exaggeration, he had been on brotherly terms in private with every big shot who mattered in Sichuan at the time. Ah—had it been the same with those money-grubbing Wall Street demons in America as well? Anyway.
Hwiyeom shook his head hard.
The materials for Damascus steel are widely known, and I myself researched and used them as reinforced alloys, so recreating it shouldn’t be difficult. In theory.
Yes—that “in theory” was precisely the problem.
Producing an alloy demanded an extremely delicate process. The proportions of the ingredients, the temperature of the furnace, the method of folding the steel, the way it was quenched—if even one of those variables drifted even slightly, the physical properties of the metal would change dramatically.
The trouble was that, unlike the twenty-first century where everything was quantified and recorded so the same conditions could be reproduced exactly, this was an age that relied entirely on the personal experience and skill of individual craftsmen.
Trial and error is the only way.
Hwiyeom designated one of the metallurgy workshops in the Innovation Hall—emptied in advance on his orders—as the experimental site for Damascus steel smelting, then summoned the master smiths of Cheol-u-jeon and the forgers of the Innovation Hall.
“But why am I…?”
Secretary Lee Jinmyeong, who had recently been forced into the role of administrative secretary in place of Ye-eun after her duties shifted entirely to the Minjeongwon, wore a dubious expression that all but screamed Where am I? Who am I? Hwiyeom answered him.
“Secretary Lee, starting today you will record everything that happens in these experiments.”
“Everything?”
“Yes. The quantities and order of every material that goes in, the time, the temperature of the furnace, the color of the flame, the number of bellows strokes, even the amount of coking coal used—anything that can be recorded and turned into numbers!”
“Uh… understood. But then what about my existing administrative work…?”
“Secretary Lee.”
“Yes?”
Hwiyeom smiled brightly and clasped both of Jinmyeong’s hands firmly in his own.
“You can do it, Secretary Lee.”
“No, look, I already only sleep two shichen a night…”
“I said you can do it.”
“But…”
“It’s fine. I used to work like that myself, long ago.”
“….”
“In return, once you handle this too, I’ll assign you a junior secretary under you soon. How about it?”
“…Is that a promise?”
“Have you ever seen me lie?”
“No.”
Jinmyeong let out a long sigh, pressed his pitch-black eye sockets hard with his fingers, then nodded with a look of grim resolve.
“Understood. For the sake of the junior secretary… no—for the advancement of the Dang Family!”
“That’s my Secretary Lee.”
The researchers of the Innovation Hall who had been watching the comedy act exchanged bitter smiles, their faces just as hollow-eyed as Jinmyeong’s.
He got reeled in.
Hook, line, and sinker.
Looks like he got reeled in, doesn’t it?
Among them, Dang Su-jeong—who knew Hwiyeom’s true nature better than anyone—made her own private assessment.
Is Hwiyeom promising a junior secretary something to celebrate? Doesn’t that just mean he’s going to work him even harder?
Lee Jinmyeong was still too innocent.
Producing Damascus steel required two main things.
One was special materials such as vanadium, tungsten, and molybdenum.
The reason the original Damascus steel—Wootz steel—had first been made in India was that the iron ore from certain Indian veins contained high concentrations of those very elements. Melting such minerals in a crucible furnace at extreme heat produced a high-carbon alloy: Wootz steel.
And the Sichuan Dang Family was already producing and selling Wootz steel using crucible furnaces and coking coal.
If they simply added the correct ratios of vanadium and the other materials?
That would complete the Damascus steel billet—the raw cake—before any folding or oxidation process.
Unlike the European blacksmiths who had failed endlessly in their attempts to unlock the secrets of Syrian Damascus steel, Hwiyeom knew the approximate ratios and heating times, even if he no longer remembered the exact figures.
And knowing the rough direction to take made an enormous difference in efficiency compared to knowing nothing at all.
The Dang Family’s technicians would discover the secret far more easily than the original craftsmen who had first developed the technique.
“Easily?”
Lee Jinmyeong laughed hollowly as he stared at the mountain of paper piled before him.
“Easily, you say? Did the Young Patriarch actually say that?”
The ghostly aura in his eyes made even the normally unflappable Ye-eun flinch.
Having finished her Minjeongwon report, she had stopped by Jinmyeong’s office on the way back, intending to catch her breath and build a little camaraderie with a fellow overworked secretary. What she found was not the soft-spoken scholar who had once aspired to become a Qingcheng Sect swordsman, but a deranged figure who looked as if he had just staggered out of the asura hell at the center of a righteous-demonic war.
If someone had pointed at him right then and shouted, “Is that not the Demonic Cult’s strategist, the Extreme Demon Brain So-and-so?!” everyone would have nodded and thought, Yes, that level of venom is what it takes to serve as a Demonic Cult strategist, before drawing their swords.
Jinmyeong smiled blissfully through the ghost-qi streaming from his eyes and opened his mouth.
“You son of a bi—!@#$%$#.”
“That’s enough.”
Ye-eun’s hand moved so fast it left afterimages as she clamped it over Jinmyeong’s mouth.
The action was not for his sake; it was pure terror that if Jinmyeong cursed Hwiyeom and got dragged away, all of his work would fall on her.
Cold sweat beading on her brow, she said,
“B-but you succeeded, right? I came because I heard you succeeded. Doesn’t that mean you’ll get a junior secretary and things will be better? Hmm?”
“…I only came back to my office because we succeeded.”
Jinmyeong laughed emptily and slammed his forehead onto the desk.
“Twenty-one days. I lived in the Innovation Hall. Eating and shitting, eating and shitting.”
The absence of “sleeping” from the list flickered through Ye-eun’s mind, but she wisely did not ask. That was the sharpness and situational awareness Hwiyeom had recognized in her.
She quickly changed the subject.
“So… what about the results?”
“…By now,” Jinmyeong said, “the Young Patriarch is probably inspecting them.”
“Hmmmm…”
Hwiyeom stood with his arms folded, gazing down at the iron billets laid out on the floor.
Tension gripped the faces of the Innovation Hall researchers and the Cheol-u-jeon master smiths watching him.
Please, please!
Let it pass on the first try, please!
They had all shared the same twenty-one days of hardship with Lee Jinmyeong. In other words, they had been worked just as hard. The desperation and ghost-qi they radiated were no different from the demonic host of some old tale.
Anyone with a heart would never demand more from people this exhausted and driven to the edge.
And besides, the quality of this iron is the real thing!
Dang Rok, a direct-line member of the Dang Family and a master smith of Cheol-u-jeon, swallowed hard without realizing it as he stared at the billets.
Dark Iron—the legendary Dark Iron! With my own hands I forged Dark Iron!
He had lived as a craftsman for more than forty years. In that time he had seen things called “Dark Iron” a few times, but they had all been nothing more than Yunnan’s Black Iron or Zhejiang’s Ink Iron. Their surfaces were dark enough to look vaguely similar, yet they were heavy and soft—actually inferior to ordinary refined white steel when used for weapons.
But the Dark Iron billets he had produced possessed a subtle bluish sheen on their black surfaces, and their weight was little different from ordinary iron. And more than anything—
Flawless Steel snapped against it.
How they had cheered when the Flawless Steel billet they struck for a hardness test had broken cleanly. No one present doubted that this was true Dark Iron.
Sure enough, a deep smile curved Hwiyeom’s lips.
“It’s Dark Iron.”
“Yes!!”
“Aaaaaah!!!”
“Long live—!!”
“We’re off the clock, you bastards!!!!”
“Who said that last part?”
At Hwiyeom’s quiet voice the excited smiths clamped their mouths shut. But their success was undeniable, so the Innovation Hall researchers quickly provided covering fire.
“S-so this is the Dark Iron the Young Patriarch was looking for, right? We succeeded, didn’t we?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
Hwiyeom nodded with a satisfied smile.
“Halfway.”
“…Pardon?”
What?
What did this man just say?
Uh…
Uh?
To the blank-faced smiths Hwiyeom explained,
“What you gentlemen produced is indeed a Dark Iron billet. That is certain.”
“Th-then why…?”
“A billet only becomes a proper finished product after it has been forged, does it not?”
“No.”
That was true—it was true, but…
“We don’t forge Flawless Steel separately…”
“That’s because we sell the billets as-is. If you want to make actual items out of Flawless Steel you still have to forge them.”
“If we sold Dark Iron as billets too…”
“Oh my, what a dangerous thing to say.”
Hwiyeom’s eyes flashed wide.
“How much money do you think you’d make selling raw billets? Don’t you know that finished goods always carry far higher margins than raw materials?”
The retort Then why don’t you process the coal before you sell it, you bastard stayed trapped inside their mouths. The moment business talk began, no craftsman—no one in the entire Dang Family—could open their mouth in front of Hwiyeom.
“Listen carefully. The reason I called this only half a success is that the forging method for this Dark Iron is different from ordinary forging techniques.”
“…And the method is?”
“That’s what you gentlemen now have to discover.”
Am I a technician? I’m a businessman. Dang Rok suppressed the trembling in his fist and managed to speak.
“S-saying it like that doesn’t just make it happen…”
“Ah, is it difficult? Have you worked so hard that you want to rest?”
Hwiyeom beamed.
“Then rest. If you want to rest, you should rest.”
“Really?”
“Of course. Forcing exhausted people only causes accidents and produces meager results. I was too inconsiderate. Everyone go home and rest properly. Shall I give you… about a week of paid leave each? Ah, and I’ll make sure the bonuses for this project are this generous. You’ve all worked hard.”
“Uh… uh?”
Human psychology was strange. He was smiling and telling them to go rest—so why did it feel so unsettling, as if they were committing a crime?
Then Hwiyeom muttered under his breath, just loud enough for them to half-hear.
“Whew, I had high hopes because Cheol-u-jeon is supposed to gather the Dang Family’s finest smiths, but no matter how I look at it they’re inferior to Section Chief Han of the Forging Division and the forgers under him. Section Chief Han? He would have already tried forging these billets and handed me the finished products before I even came looking.”
“….”
“Huu… well, if every direct-line descendant were competent the Dang clan would already rule everything. Ah… I really don’t want to give more power to the branch families…”
“…Young Patriarch.”
Dang Rok and the other Cheol-u-jeon master smiths growled through twitching cheek muscles. The deep exhaustion that had filled their eyes was gone; only pure venom remained.
“What did you just say?”
“Ah, did you hear that? Oh dear, I’m sorry. My mouth runs away with me. Just pretend you didn’t hear. What are you waiting for? Shouldn’t you hurry off to rest?”
“Did you just say that the master smiths of Cheol-u-jeon are inferior to those iron-smelting mongrels?!”
“Well, not exactly that, but…”
Watching Hwiyeom hem and haw with an expression that clearly said I didn’t say anything wrong, fire ignited in the smiths’ eyes.
Craftsmen lived in a different world from martial artists, yet their pride burned no less fiercely. Like withered green onions suddenly springing back to life, the smiths blazed with piercing light and snarled.
“Spit out that damned secret method right now!”
“Forging?! Ha! I’ll make rice cakes out of Dark Iron for you!”
“Want me to show up at the Young Patriarch’s quarters with a Dark Iron dagger clenched in my teeth? Huh?!”
To the furiously enraged master smiths Hwiyeom smiled and said,
“Of course I’ll tell you. How could I refuse when the greatest craftsmen of our family are this motivated!
“Hey, you there—researcher? Would you mind fetching Secretary Lee for me?”
“Pardon? Ah, yes, but Secretary Lee just left for the day…”
“He has to keep the records, doesn’t he? Or would you like to do it yourself, researcher?”
“I receive your command!”
Whoosh—!!
The researcher vanished from the spot in an instant. Had any old master of the jianghu witnessed it, they would have given a standing ovation for such an excellent display of the Bow-Body Shadow-Dart footwork.
And then—
Every last detail of the affair reached Dang Un-sang’s ears, and he summoned Hwiyeom to deliver a dignified scolding.
“Look here. Even if the people of Cheol-u-jeon are not all of the main line, they are still our blood kin. When dealing with those older than yourself you must show respect and courtesy.”
“…More than I already do?”
“Hm?”
Hwiyeom wore an expression of genuine astonishment.
“If I wrote a report listing every time I overlooked incompetence, laziness, and self-indulgence simply because someone carried the Dang surname, it would fill this entire Family Head’s Hall and still overflow. More than that?
“Even though they are so proud and so talentless that they refused to listen to Secretary Lee, dragging out the completion of Dark Iron to twenty-one days when it could have been finished in fifteen?
“Even though every day of delay holds back the entire advancement of the Dang Family, you want me to treat them better than this? Sincerely?”
Had Hwiyeom’s face been cold or hard, Dang Un-sang would have assumed the boy was being sarcastic. But pure, undiluted bewilderment was written across his features. Dang Un-sang swallowed dryly without meaning to.
“So… in your own way, that was you treating them extremely well because they are relatives?”
“Yes! Look at how I work! Is there anyone in the Dang Family who works harder than I do?”
“…There isn’t.”
Even the half-dead Secretary Lee worked less than Hwiyeom. At times Dang Un-sang found it almost uncanny how thoroughly his son had adapted to crushing workloads.
“…Does your body hold up?”
“It’s a matter of mindset. Someone who thinks, ‘This is someone else’s job—I’ll just kill time and collect my monthly stipend,’ can never be the same as someone who approaches it with an owner’s consciousness and charges in as if it were their own work.”
“No…”
I’m the Family Head, and family affairs are my own work, yet I still get tired…
But Dang Un-sang sealed his lips tightly to preserve his dignity as a father.
Hwiyeom continued as if oblivious to the complicated feelings swirling inside him.
“When it becomes your own work, the boundary between work and life disappears. It’s no different from playing. You don’t even get tired. It’s this much fun.”
“Uh… um…”
So what I’m hearing is the same as saying that if you sleep only one shichen a day and train endlessly except for meal times, you can become the greatest under heaven.
Dang Un-sang hemmed and hawed, and in the end could only mutter quietly. His son’s zeal-filled eyes stabbed like spearpoints.
“…Just… show a little more consideration for the older ones. Once a person passes thirty the knees start taking wind and sand gets in the eyes…”
“…Yes, sir.”
As if I never grew old myself, Hwiyeom grumbled under his breath alone.