Before he knew it, Lin Feng had been tempering his heart in the workshop for eight whole hours.
The sky had been somewhat dark when he went into the room, but it was completely bright outside when he reemerged.
Letting out a long breath, Lin Feng felt utterly refreshed. After he strengthened his heart with the Grade-4 material and other rare ores, it beat powerfully in his chest, as though telling him that he had been reborn.
He walked down the Smiths’ Association corridors, but when he wanted to find a place to properly wash himself up, he suddenly heard a somewhat familiar voice calling his name.
Lin Feng looked around and saw that it was the old man who had once appraised the weapons he handed in.
The man looked considerably older than Lin Feng, his hair white and his face wrinkled.
His eyes looked slightly world-weary, as though he had seen all the beauty and ugliness the world had to offer.
Lin Feng was a little confused because this old man was a Five-Star blacksmith here at the Smiths’ Association.
He did not usually socialize with others. Even when he appraised Lin Feng’s commissioned weapon, he only told Lin Feng that the weapons passed and how many points they were worth. It was indeed rare for him to call out to Lin Feng like this.
“Master Lin Feng… Please wait.”
Lin Feng paused and then nodded, approaching the old man.
“Where are you going?”
The old man’s straightforwardness did not take Lin Feng by surprise.
Blacksmiths were usually level-headed people who wore their hearts on their sleeves. Things like minor acts of sabotage amongst colleagues were few and far between.
Eventually, blacksmiths became known as the most honest class on the continent.
“I was just forging some stuff I use in my daily life, so now I’m planning on taking a bath and resting for a day. May I help you with something?”
Lin Feng tilted his head as he looked at the old man, and the latter coughed softly before pointing at the desk in front of him.
Looking in the direction he pointed, Lin Feng saw and picked up a brochure covered with words and designs.
“The Smithing Tournament?”
Lin Feng frowned when he saw the large words at the very top.
As he ran his eyes across the rest of the brochure, he quickly began to have an inkling of why the old man sought him out.
“Sir, do you want me to complete?”
Grimm’s Smithing Tournament was a competition held by the Smiths’ Association together with the Warriors’ Association and the city defense corp.
They called it a tournament, but it was only a series of friendly matches between a few established smiths.
Within an allocated time, the competing smiths would try to forge higher-quality weapons to earn more points. The one with the most points would eventually earn a rare Grade-4 ore and a thousand points with the Smiths’ Association.
Lin Feng was indeed tempted. He looked up at the old man to ask more, but the latter took a sip of water before saying,
“Actually, I’ve been watching you for half a month now.”
His words took Lin Feng by surprise.
However, the old man just ignored his reaction and continued,
“There’s something you might not know, but…
“For every commission you completed lately, almost every client would come back and pester us to know who the smith was.”
“…”
The corners of Lin Feng’s mouth twitched. Unsurprisingly, the old man’s gaze on him was rather gentle and even somewhat approving.
“Let me put it this way. The Grade-3 weapons you made might be even better than some of the ones we elders can forge.
“I’m almost certain that the tournament will be especially interesting if you join it!”
Lin Feng placed the brochure on the table and smiled at the Five-Star smith, bowing at the old man as he said,
“You flatter me, sir.
“The brochure says that all the weapons made by the smiths in this tournament would be sent straight to the frontlines and into the hands of the soldiers fighting the beasts at the risk of their own lives.
“If that is true, there is no way I would refuse to participate.”
As soon as he said that, the old man’s eyes lit up.
“Well said! …”
With the old man’s help, Lin Feng was soon properly registered.
It was only then that he found out who the old man really was.
“You’re the vice president of the Smiths’ Association here in Grimm.”
Seeing Lin Feng’s stunned expression, the old man seemed pleased that he won one over Lin Feng, smiling as he replied,
“That’s right, that’s me.
“Go back and rest well. We’ll have the Smithing Tournament here three days from now. Just come in the morning, claim your number and start forging.”
The vice president did not tell Lin Feng too much about the Smithing Tournament. There were probably more things the participants had to do for themselves on the day itself.
Lin Feng bid him goodbye and set out onto Grimm’s busy streets.
He had spent the past few days in the Smiths’ Association workshops, so the bustling streets felt like a distant memory to him now.
Before this, Andera had roughly introduced the city’s overall layout to him, so he found an inn with a connection to the Smiths’ Association without much trouble.
The inn at Grimm had an abnormally large number of rooms. Even when he looked at it from the street, he could see at least a dozen blocks as large as mansions.
The place probably had at least a few hundred thousand gold pieces in their savings, or else it would be quite difficult for them to survive here in Grimm.
Lin Feng walked into the hotel that was several dozen times the size of his smithy and immediately looked at the room prices on the wall.
To his surprise, however, the board had several different prices inscribed.
As he read the tiny numbers, Lin Feng’s eyes soon brightened.
He clearly saw that the price column stated that smiths recognized by the Smiths’ Association could receive a twenty percent discount here at this inn.
Over the past few days, Lin Feng had gradually begun to understand the status smiths had in this city.
Thanks to the presence of the Smiths’ Association, blacksmiths were actually quite widely-revered here.
It was all because the smiths from the Association kept working their hardest that the frontline fighters could keep updating their equipment in their war against the beasts.
It was also because of the smiths that Grimm continued to prosper, and the citizens’ standard of living kept improving.
In Grimm, blacksmiths were treated like nobles elsewhere.
“No wonder Andera was in such a rush to come here…”