At dawn, Fangyan Province looked like rot wearing a mask of fog.
The mist hung low across the valley, thick and soft as old wool, muffling the cracked footsteps of a dozen workers moving silently through the burned-out husk of the southern ironworks.
Jiang Ye stood atop the roof of the former overseer's office, arms folded, black robe cinched tight against the wind. Below him, six men moved across the shattered foundry yard—none of them speaking, each one doing exactly what he'd told them to the night before.
That is, nothing suspicious.
From above, the old ironworks looked like it had for the past three years: collapsed roof beams, ruined bellows, slag heaps and rusted carts half-swallowed by moss. Just another forgotten ruin left behind by a minor noble house whose fate had turned to ash.
Perfect.
"Perimeter surveillance node active," said the Sentinel, its voice smooth in his inner ear. "Visual sweep: no observers. Qi fluctuation minimal. Atmospheric stability acceptable."
Jiang Ye let out a slow breath and began descending the narrow ladder.
This was the first node.
He didn't need sect forges or open war camps. He needed quiet. That was why this place had to stay looking like it was falling apart—even as he rebuilt it from the inside out.
The large stone warehouse near the rear of the property still had intact foundations. Below it, the half-collapsed smelting chamber had been reinforced during his grandfather's reign with spiritual brick. That basement—three levels deep—was now his true workshop.
And it had no windows.
Just a single, guarded entrance through what had once been a well.
He dropped the final rung and stepped down into the yard. The men working paused.
All of them were in their early twenties or younger—orphans, dismissed servant sons, failed sect initiates. He'd found them over the past two weeks, each one chosen for what they lacked: loyalty to the old system, and anything to lose.
They wore simple work tunics. Only one of them looked up when Jiang Ye approached.
"Lord Jiang," said a lanky youth with burn scars across both hands. "The new moldings are set. We cured them overnight using beast-fat tallow like you said."
Jiang Ye nodded. "And the bellows?"
"Refit complete. The axle still warps a little under high heat, but the Sentinel's torque ratios helped."
"You remembered the alloy mix?"
"Yes, lord. Qi-stable iron, animal ash, and silicate blend, tempered across layered plates. Just like the schematic."
Good.
He walked past them without further comment. Praise was earned in results. Not obedience.
He approached the warehouse.
What had once been a rotted wooden door was now a heavy steel hatch reinforced from within. To anyone else, it looked like an ancient vault too rusted to open.
But Jiang Ye stepped forward, placed his palm on the center rune, and whispered.
"Open."
The steel pulsed once. Then split soundlessly down the center.
Inside, cool air and the scent of molten metal greeted him like an old memory.
He descended the stone stairs, torches lighting automatically as he passed.
The forge below wasn't impressive. Not yet.
But it was real.
A twin-bellows system, driven by a converted qi turbine, hissed softly near the far wall. Its construction was rough, patched together from salvaged sect equipment and retooled mechanisms designed through the Sentinel. The air was dry, even. Clean.
At the far end of the chamber, several workbenches stood arranged in a half-circle.
And resting atop them, three new prototypes.
All hammers.
But not the kind a blacksmith would use.
These were sleeker, narrower, with reinforced necks and qi-guiding channels carved along the shafts. One had a hooked end—designed to latch onto armor joints. Another had a pressure release core, releasing a concussive wave of qi on impact.
Silent, brutal, and devastating at close range.
But Jiang Ye wasn't looking at them. Not yet.
Instead, he walked to the blueprint table.
"Blueprints for Phase One deployment are ready," said the Sentinel. "Projected production targets:
– 40 Class I hammers
– 20 Essence-fueled drills
– 8 Atmospheric refinement chambers
– 1 Essence-powered rotary duplicator"
"Estimated completion time: 21 days, provided current labor rate."
Jiang Ye frowned.
"Too slow. I want the duplicator functional in ten."
"Warning: Accelerated schedule may lead to material inefficiencies."
"I'll trade inefficiencies for momentum."
"Understood. Recalculating fabrication prioritization."
He began marking the table with chalk—four circles, one for each of the covert workshops he planned to activate across Fangyan. None of them large. All of them innocuous.
A cooper's barn.
A collapsed shrine.
A hunter's lodge.
A long-forgotten alchemy shed on the cliffside.
From the outside, these would appear to be failed family holdings or old tribute sites. From within, each would slowly become a node in Jiang Ye's private grid of infrastructure.
Not a sect.
Not yet.
Sects could be challenged.
But workshops? Markets? Tools?
No one declared war on a hammer.
An hour later, as he checked the rotary press components for hairline fractures, a sharp knock echoed from above.
Three taps. Then silence.
He turned to the nearest apprentice, a wiry girl with soot-stained sleeves.
"Bring him in."
The apprentice nodded and vanished up the stairwell.
Jiang Ye placed the prototype down gently, then moved to the far side of the room and began untying the leather roll he'd prepared earlier.
Inside were papers.
Not talismans.
Contracts.
The man who arrived a few moments later was heavyset, pale, and constantly sweating. His robes were too fine for the mud on his boots, and he bowed awkwardly, his eyes darting around the chamber as though expecting a sword to drop from the ceiling.
"Master Xu," Jiang Ye said smoothly, "how good of you to accept my invitation."
Xu Daoming, merchant prince of the Black Reed Consortium, wiped his brow. "You, uh… said you had business?"
"I have opportunity."
He gestured to the forge.
"To build. To own. To trade."
Xu licked his lips.
"You don't mean spirit tools, do you? You nobles always dance around it, but if the Sect finds out—"
"Who said anything about spirit tools?"
Jiang Ye placed a metal cylinder onto the table between them. It resembled a heavy spindle, etched with tight concentric grooves.
"This is a hand-winder for rope tension. Anyone can use it. Even a child."
He paused. Then lifted it and twisted the base—click. A pulse of qi shimmered faintly down the length of the grooves.
"In the right hands, it can also rip open bone from twenty paces."
Xu blinked. Twice.
Jiang Ye leaned forward. "I want distribution. Not weapons. Devices. Sold as tools. Mining implements. Drilling kits. Hearth-pressure regulators. None of it violates Sect law."
Xu hesitated.
"You're... arming the peasants."
"I'm employing the peasants."
Jiang Ye slid one of the contracts across the table. "You take twenty percent of the first round of tools. You get regional resale rights across three provinces. And in six months, you'll be richer than your father's wildest shame."
"And the Sect?"
"They won't know. Not until I want them to."
"And if they do?"
Jiang Ye's smile was calm, pleasant, final.
"By then, I'll have made enough noise that killing me will make them look afraid."
That night, Jiang Ye returned to the manor only once the forge cooled to silence.
He didn't sleep.
Instead, he sat in the high chamber of the ancestral library, surrounded by scrolls no one had read in decades. Most of them were useless—half-forgotten cultivation manuals written by desperate elders too proud to admit their arts were outdated.
But a few…
A few whispered secrets about how old sects built their power. Not with spells. Not with swords.
With networks.
Trade routes. Marriage pacts. Control of ink and parchment. Regulation of resources like wood and copper. Ritual monopolies.
All things Jiang Ye now meant to replicate.
But with steel.
He unrolled a fresh scroll, dipped his brush in dark ink, and wrote just three words at the top of a new page:
Iron Mandate Doctrine.
Not a sect.
Not yet.
But one day, when this world burned with change, they would look back and ask:
Where did it begin?
Here.
In ash. In silence. In steel.