Chapter 214: Young artisans.
Lee didn’t expect to stand out so much.
He was by far the oldest one here – all the boys and girls were at most twelve years old and even though he was only a teenager, he felt old. More importantly, it turns out he signed up for the event as the first – the rest registered in the last moment, hoping their works would be inspected last. Apparently the prevailing idea was that a good item the judges held in hands was better than a great piece they saw earlier in the morning.
Lee didn’t particularly care whether it was so. In fact, he kind of liked the number one spot, right next to the spectator crowd. His spot wasn’t directly in front of the seats where the Xiao clan sat, but from the corner of his eye he could see Xiao Lian and his gray hair, at least Lee thought it was him. More importantly, since he was in the first group, he could get over with the competition sooner, and then go for a meal.
The moment the young generation was given the command to start, all the kids forgot about the tension and focused at the task at hand. Everyone picked up the metal they chose earlier while waiting and threw in the forge to heat it up. Lee did the same, except his choice was met by disappointed shakes of heads from the audience.
Because of the time limit, no one attempted to craft anything larger than a fist. Most kids went with something like a small knife, spoon or even a hook. The item didn’t need to be big for the judges to see the quality of work.
Lee didn’t give a fuck, though. Ignoring the pain in the abdomen, he used his own fire elemental energy to heat up the piece of metal and afterwards energetically hammered it, creating a thin sword. He had done something similar multiple times while working for the stingy blacksmith in the Celestial Abyss’s outer sect, and now the hard part was resisting the pain.
The joyful sound of hammering resonated through the city, but just when the rest began, Lee was already finishing. After shaping the sword, even though it turned out ridiculously crude, he cooled it in the bucket of water and gave it perfunctory grind to clean the edges. His work was beyond any critique, and many people in the spectator seats were openly laughing at him.
One didn’t need to be an expert to know that what he created could be considered a walking stick at best, but if people thought this was bad, what followed was even worse.
Lee took an actual stick and cut it in halves. The first attempt didn’t go well – he managed to break the piece of wood. He did the same with two more and some spectators began to cheer for the only lumberjack in town, excitedly sharing their experiences with their friends that they had never seen anyone being so good at chopping wood.