Runes • Rifles • Reincarnation

213. Broke

Jin Shu held a tiny, flat disk that fit snugly in the palm of his hand. A single rune was etched into each side—a bright rune on one, a qi reservoir rune on the other. Ninety-nine more lay neatly arranged on a nearby table, identical in every way.To test his new invention, he fed qi into the reservoir rune until it reached full capacity, draining roughly ten percent of his total reserves. Then he activated the rune and tossed the disk toward the far corner of the forge, spun around and squeezed his eyes shut.

Mid-flight, the reservoir rune dumped its stored qi into the bright rune, barely crossing the activation threshold.

Light exploded outward.

A blinding flash erupted from the minuscule inscription, turning the dim forge into the inside of a lightbulb—an aggressively bright one. Even facing away with his eyes shut, Jin Shu felt a sharp sting pierce through his eyelids, leaving his vision swimming with white-hot afterimages.

Perfect.

A runic flashbang.

Blinking away the pain and lingering blind spots, Jin Shu crossed the forge and searched for the disk. After a moment, he found it lodged beneath an ore container, having bounced several times before coming to rest.

“…I should’ve made them easier to find.”

Shaking his head at the oversight—too small—he set the disk back with the others and reached for the next weapon.

This one was for himself, though he had made a second copy for Zhu Ren. After all, he’d promised to show her once it was finished.

At a glance, it looked like an ordinary dagger—slim, unassuming—save for the dense runic inscriptions etched along its surface. But appearances were deceiving.

This was a ballistic knife.

Just beneath the hand guard sat a small button, connected to a compact formation woven through the handle and blade. Jin Shu gripped the dagger, blade pointed downward, and aligned a shallow groove he’d carved into the guard as a makeshift sight. He aimed at the wall and pressed the button.

The runes along the handle flared to life.

A heartbeat later, the runes on the blade ignited—and the dagger fired.

Clink!

The blade appeared embedded in the wall, quivering slightly, sunk in by less than an inch. Jin Shu stared, momentarily stunned.

The forge dated back to the founding of the sect. It had been constructed for Master Realm cultivators at minimum, its walls capable of blocking attacks from Grandmasters.

Without moving closer, Jin Shu tapped the button again. The blade vanished instantly, then reappeared, sliding smoothly back into the hilt as if it had never left.

He raised the dagger to eye level and watched as the faintly glowing space rune between the hand guard and the blade’s base dimmed. A compact formation linked the space rune to the firing mechanism, allowing the blade to return on command.

Exactly as intended.

The ballistic knife was meant to be a sort of hidden weapon—small, concealable, and utterly lethal when needed.

He set it down beside a row of identical knives. Enough for everyone he could think of who might use one… and a few extra besides.

Better to be overprepared than caught lacking.

Several other items rested on nearby tables. Each was far too dangerous to test within the forge’s confined space. Even so, Jin Shu picked them up one by one, inspecting them carefully to ensure no runes were missing and no details overlooked.

He reached for the closest.

An unassuming black sphere, roughly the size of a baseball.

Its matte metal casing concealed hundreds of densely packed runes. Nearly ninety percent were explosion runes. The remaining ten percent formed a carefully balanced mixture of acceleration, qi release, force—and a single elemental rune. The one in his hand bore the ice element.

Much like the flash disk—a crude but effective flash grenade—the sphere was a makeshift fragmentation grenade.

A frag.

Its outer surface wasn’t solid at all, but composed of hundreds of interlocking metal plates, each etched with a rune. At its core sat a dense array of explosion runes designed to detonate first, launching the plates outward. Once airborne, the individual panels would activate mid-flight, and through a linking formation tied to the core, each would carry the combined effects of the other runes.

In theory, it was quite possibly the deadliest weapon he had ever created.

…And also the stupidest.

If it activated too close to him—or worse, near an ally—he didn’t even want to imagine the result. The frags would be reserved for absolute last-resort situations only.

He set the sphere down gently and moved on.

The next creation wasn’t as reckless, but it was no less lethal.

Resting on the table was what appeared to be a rifle, vaguely resembling an AR-15. In truth, it wasn’t a normal firearm at all, but a redesigned railgun.

This version came with built-in charging capabilities through integrated lightning runes, eliminating the need for his heavenly lightning affinity. It also sported several new refinements.

Unlike the previous iteration—which had been single-shot, requiring manual loading of one dart at a time—this model used a compact magazine holding five smaller darts.

Smaller didn’t mean weaker.

If anything, these were more dangerous.

Each dart contained acceleration, explosion, force, and space runes, carefully layered to create a projectile that was disturbingly fast and violently destructive. However, the darts themselves were crafted from weaker materials, sacrificing penetration for speed and explosive output.

Jin Shu wasn’t sure whether that was a blessing or a flaw.

On one hand, they wouldn’t be quite so world-endingly powerful. On the other, their simpler construction meant he could produce them in bulk—hundreds with the time and materials it once took to make a dozen of the original darts.

He inspected the weapon thoroughly, checking every seam and rune. Finding no flaws, he set it back down.

There was no chance he was testing it in an enclosed forge.

He preferred to not kill himself, if he could help it.

Luckily, the next creation was something he could test without killing himself.

…Hopefully.

A sleek black pistol rested in his hand, its long silver barrel gleaming faintly in the forge light. There was no magazine well. Instead, it used a break-action loading mechanism that required the barrel to be snapped open and a single round inserted directly—much like a double-barreled shotgun.

Except this one only had a single barrel.

The pistol itself was fairly ordinary.

The bullet standing upright beside it, however, was anything but.

Its runes were nearly identical to those etched into the earlier ballistic knife. In fact, they were the exact same set.

Since he’d run out of conventional gunpowder ammunition, he’d been forced to improvise. This—what sat beside the pistol—was his solution.

A reusable bullet.

Inside the casing was an explosion rune meant to replace gunpowder. The rune functioned by drawing in a small amount of ambient qi from its immediate surroundings, then releasing it an instant later with volatile force—just enough to generate explosive friction.

It was similar in principle to how he’d created his pellet gun.

The difference lay in scale.

Because the casing was so small, the amount of qi the explosion rune could draw in was minimal. That limitation capped the force it could produce.

Which was why he’d added another rune.

A qi release rune.

The qi release rune would feed additional qi into the explosion rune as it activated, amplifying the output far beyond what ambient qi alone could manage.

At least… that was the theory.

There was also a very real chance the entire thing would literally explode in his face.

He decided not to dwell on that.

Jin Shu picked up the pistol, snapped the barrel open, and slid the bullet inside. It fit snugly. With a practiced flick of his wrist, the barrel locked back into place with a sharp click.

He raised the pistol, leveling it with his eyes, and sighted down the iron sights. He aimed just to the side of the mark left by the ballistic knife.

Then he squeezed the trigger—

Bang!

The pistol exploded in his hands.

Smoke filled the forge as fragments clattered to the floor. Jin Shu staggered back, choking as he coughed out a mouthful of acrid smoke, waving the cloud away from his face.

“I told you that would happen,” Gold said calmly from within the soul space.

Jin Shu didn’t answer.

Instead, he knelt down and began gathering the shattered pieces, examining them carefully. It didn’t take long to identify the problem.

The bullet casing—and the projectile itself—had been forged from exceptionally strong metals. Strong enough that neither would deform under immense pressure.

That… was the problem.

A normal bullet functioned by trapping explosive force inside the casing, which expanded just enough to propel the projectile forward while the cartridge remained behind in the chamber.

But here?

Both the cartridge and the bullet refused to give way.

Rather than one yielding to launch the other, the explosive force had nowhere to go.

So it went everywhere.

He’d intended to create a reusable round.

Instead, he’d made an unusable one—where the casing and projectile detonated together inside the gun.

Jin Shu sighed, rubbing his temples.

“Well,” he muttered, “at least I didn’t die.”

He calmly plucked several metal fragments from his hands, watching with detached interest as blood stubbornly refused to spill. It was an eerie sight—but at least it meant he couldn’t bleed to death. Slowly, the wounds sealed themselves, aided by his cultivation-enhanced regeneration and Nano’s boosted healing effects.

He blinked.

A thought struck him.

“…Why didn’t I just inscribe a self-repair rune?”

He stared at the shattered remains of the pistol, then snorted softly.

“It wouldn’t be instantaneous,” he muttered, “but I could still achieve near-limitless ammunition.”

Nodding to himself, satisfied that he’d finally solved the problem of pseudo-infinite ammo, Jin Shu turned toward the bins of forging materials—

Clang!

A heavy lid slammed shut over them.

At the same time, the forge door—previously sealed tight—slid open just a crack.

Jin Shu froze.

Slowly, he turned his head toward the wall near the door. His disciple token flashed angrily, crimson characters hovering above it.

Insufficient Funds

“…What?” he said flatly.

That didn’t make sense. He’d had enough contribution points to stay locked in the forge for at least a week.

“Hey, Nano,” he asked, tilting his head. “How long have I been in here?”

“You have occupied this forge for five days, twenty-one hours, eleven minutes, and forty-six seconds,” Nano replied immediately.

“…”

“…Oh,” Jin Shu sighed. “I see.”

His gaze drifted slowly around the room.

Only now did he really see it.

The tables crowded with completed weapons. The racks stacked with experimental variants. And beside the forge itself—piles upon piles of scrap metal, warped frames, shattered barrels, and failed designs so thoroughly ruined they couldn’t even be reforged.

Most of it came from failed railguns.

The new design had taken far more iteration than he’d expected.

“…So that’s where the time went.”

He sighed again, rubbing the back of his neck.

“I didn’t manage infinite ammo,” he admitted to himself, “but I did make enough backups to last through another small war.”

His consciousness dipped into his space earring. Countless compact projectiles floated neatly within—ammunition for various weapons. They weren’t traditional gunpowder rounds, but refined designs using the explosion rune combined with a qi release rune.

Finite.

But functional.

And—most importantly—not prone to detonating in his hands.

“Good enough.”

He straightened.

“Well,” he said lightly, “guess it’s time to leave.”

Summoning a ripple in space, Jin Shu stepped through without hesitation—only pausing long enough to sweep his arm and draw every finished creation into his space earring.

He didn’t bother retrieving his disciple token.

He didn’t plan on coming back.

This would be his last time—for now—within the Immortal Phoenix Sect.

After the southern excursion… after exploring the hidden realm with the others… his path would take him to the border between the western and eastern regions.

There, he hoped to find answers.

There, he hoped to find the Azure Dragons.

Their clan.