Chapter 237: CH. 237 | The Furious Blacksmith Shop Owners

A few days passed.

News about Lin’s Blacksmith in Xiayu Village made the rounds through Yanzhe City faster than anyone expected.

The blacksmith shop owners there were stunned when they first heard it, and stunned turned to something uglier once they realized what it meant for their bottom line. A new shop, run by some no-name from a backwater village, was pulling business their way.

For the first time since they’d rebuilt their shops in the aftermath of the disaster, the four of them set aside their usual rivalry and agreed on one thing: Lin’s shop needed to be dealt with.

They rode out together, the four owners crammed into one direction with a plan and a temper.

An Yue, who was watching the front of the shop that morning while Lin Tian worked in the back, looked up and froze for a second when she saw them coming, four men, faces twisted with anger, marching straight toward her.

"Lin!"

"Get out here!" they shouted, practically shaking with rage.

An Yue narrowed her eyes, sizing them up before stepping forward to meet them halfway. She kept her voice even, a thin smile on her lips as she asked what had brought them all the way out to the village.

"Where’s the man called Lin? Tell him to come out. I’ve got business with him!"

"He’s in the back working on something right now. I don’t think I can—"

Before she could finish, the door to the front room swung open. Lin Tian stepped out, his expression calm but firm, three freshly forged swords balanced in his arms. His eyes swept over the group gathered in front of his shop.

"Who are you?" Lin Tian asked.

"You? You must be Lin!"

"I’m Lin. What brings you here?"

"You set up a blacksmith business without our permission. That’s a shameless, underhanded move!"

An Yue drifted closer to Lin Tian’s side, worry plain on her face. Lin Tian gave her a quiet look and told her to head back inside, promising he’d handle this himself.

"Gentlemen." He set the swords down carefully on the counter before continuing. "Business rivalries should be settled with a level head, not with shouting matches at someone’s front door. I don’t need permission from any of you. There’s no such rule in this town, written or otherwise."

"To hell with rules! Our unwritten rule says any new blacksmith business has to get our approval first!"

"And if you don’t get it," one of them added, stepping closer, "we’ll make sure something bad happens to your shop."

That was when Lin Tian noticed they hadn’t come as just the four of them. Behind them, filling the narrow street in front of his shop, stood a good ten more men, thick-armed, hard-faced, the kind of men who made their living with their fists rather than any trade.

Bandits, plain and simple, with no real cultivation to speak of, just muscle for hire. It didn’t take much to guess that the four blacksmiths had scraped together whatever coin they had to bring in some muscle for this little visit.

"Don’t you get it? This is my shop. I’m the one in charge here," Lin Tian said, his tone still level, though there was an edge creeping into it now.

"Sure," one of the owners sneered, "but those swords of yours don’t have an owner yet."

At his signal, the bandits surged forward, reaching for the weapons lined up along Lin Tian’s wall rack. Lin Tian didn’t move to stop them, not physically anyway.

One hand slipped behind his back, fingers weaving through a series of subtle motions, quietly triggering the rune arrays hidden within each blade.

The bandits grinned as they reached out, confident, expecting an easy grab. But the moment their hands closed around the hilts, their grins vanished. The swords didn’t budge. Not an inch.

"It’s so heavy!" one of them barked, straining with both hands now, veins bulging in his neck.

"Huh? Are you kidding me?! No sword’s that heavy, you’re just weak!" one of the blacksmith owners snapped, shoving past to try it himself.

His face went pale the instant his fingers wrapped around the grip. He heaved, grunted, threw his whole back into it. Nothing. The blade sat on the rack as though it had been fused to the wall itself.

One after another, they all tried, and one after another, they all failed, red-faced and humiliated in front of each other.

Lin Tian watched with quiet amusement. Mortal strength, no matter how impressive it looked, simply had no chance against the weight of qi-infused steel.

He walked over to the same rack, reached out, and lifted one of the swords as easily as picking up a twig. The silence that followed was absolute.

Even the bandits, men who prided themselves on brute strength, stood frozen, faces draining of color.

"Y-You... how did you do that?" one of them stammered.

"I just picked it up," Lin Tian said, tilting his head slightly. "Can’t you?"

"Isn’t that pathetic?" he added, almost gently, which somehow made it worse.

"Lin!" they shouted in unison, fury boiling over now that humiliation had joined the mix.

"Get him!" one of the blacksmith owners barked at the bandits.

They came at him bare-handed, ten men rushing in with fists and boots, relying on raw numbers to overwhelm him.

Lin Tian reacted in a blink, sweeping his sword forward in a wide arc. The motion alone kicked up a violent gust of wind that slammed into the front line of attackers, stopping them dead in their tracks, boots skidding against the dirt floor.

"Don’t be reckless. I have a weapon," Lin Tian warned, voice steady, almost bored.

"If you want to keep your bodies in one piece, turn around and leave. Don’t ever come back," he added, giving them one last chance.

But the bandits didn’t care about warnings. They’d already taken payment to kill him, and whatever fear had crept into their spines wasn’t enough to override the promise of coin, or maybe just simple stubborn pride. One of them broke from the group and charged, swinging a fist toward Lin Tian’s jaw.

Lin Tian didn’t so much as flinch. He brought his sword up in a short, precise arc, catching the man’s wrist mid-swing.

The blade sliced clean through flesh and bone, severing the hand at the joint. The bandit staggered back, staring at the stump where his hand used to be before the pain caught up to him.

"AAARGH!" His scream tore through the shop, raw and desperate. Lin Tian barely reacted. He’d witnessed far worse in his years as a cultivator, this was nothing.

"One down. Nine to go," he said flatly, almost like he was counting inventory.

"YOU’RE COURTING FOR DEATH!" the rest of them roared, surging forward in a wave.

What followed was less a fight than a demonstration. Lin Tian moved like wind through grass, weightless, unpredictable, slipping between their attacks with barely any effort.

His sword flashed again and again, cutting through limbs, opening gashes across chests, and in at least two cases, taking heads clean off shoulders.

Blood sprayed across the wooden floor and walls of the shop, pooling dark and thick beneath the fallen bodies.

The four blacksmith owners who’d started all this stood rooted in place, faces white as chalk, hearts hammering so hard they could feel it in their throats.

Not one of them had imagined that Lin, some nobody from Xiayu Village, could wield a blade like that.

"You’re insane!"

"Do you have any idea what you’ve just done?!" one of them finally managed to shout, voice cracking.

Lin Tian answered by finishing off the last bandit standing, a clean, final stroke that separated the man’s head from his body. It hit the floor and rolled, coming to rest in the spreading pool of blood from the others.

"Of course I know," Lin Tian said, wiping a bit of blood from his cheek with the back of his hand. "I’m protecting my shop from bandits sent to rob and kill me. That’s a noble act, wouldn’t you agree?"

"You killed them! The town ruler will have you punished for this!" one of the owners shouted, though his voice wavered, fear starting to override the anger.

Lin Tian raised his sword again, this time letting the tip rest gently against the throat of the man who’d shouted the loudest.

The blade barely touched skin, just enough to draw the thinnest line of blood, but it was more than enough to make the man’s whole body go rigid with terror.

"A-Are you going to kill me too? I’m a citizen of Yanzhe City!"

"So am I, in a manner of speaking," Lin Tian said, his voice quiet now, almost conversational. "But whether I decide to kill you or not depends entirely on what you do next."

"If you kneel down right now and apologize, sincerely, I might just let this whole matter go. I might even let you and your friends visit my shop again someday, as customers."

"But if you keep testing my patience," he continued, tilting the blade just slightly, "then I won’t have any reason to hold back, no matter what punishment the town ruler decides to throw at me afterward."

The threat landed exactly as intended.

All four of them understood, in that instant, just how close they stood to the edge of their own deaths, the same fate that had just swallowed ten hired men in the span of a few minutes.

If they didn’t act, and act fast, they’d end up nothing more than another stain on Lin Tian’s floor.

Every single one of them started apologizing at once, words tumbling out in a panicked rush, though none of them actually dropped to their knees.

Pride, or maybe just sheer terror, kept them upright, but only for a moment. A heartbeat later, all four turned and bolted, sprinting away from the shop like men fleeing a burning building, stumbling over their own feet in their hurry to escape.

Lin Tian let out a slow breath and watched them go, making no move to stop them. He had little doubt they’d come crawling back eventually, whether out of desperation, curiosity, or plain stupidity.

He wiped the blood from his blade with a clean cloth, taking his time, then walked the sword back to its place on the wall rack. In seconds, it looked just as pristine as it had before the fight ever started, no trace of what it had just done.

With a simple wave of his hand, Lin Tian erased what remained of the mess, the bodies, the severed limbs, even the wide pools of blood soaking into the floorboards.

All of it vanished without a trace, leaving the shop looking spotless and ready for business, as though nothing had happened there at all.

"I figured they’d come around eventually, trying to stir up trouble over my business," Lin Tian murmured to himself, glancing toward the door where the four owners had disappeared. "But I didn’t expect them to go this far, hiring bandits just to scare me off."

"This is going to get messy before it’s over, I can already tell."

"I’ll need to keep my guard up from here on out."