Chapter 16 Market and Sword

During the rest of the history class, they learned the very basic non-magical history such as Yu the great and the floodings all the way to the very first walled cities, of course, this was a very rudimentary and crude overview designed to show the students what would be expected of them in the class.

"And with that our first class ends now, for homework you will study the first five walled cities, you will in detail write about who made them, how many people were required to make them, and finally how long it took to make them" Niàn zhēn ended "Before any of you ask, no, most of the time this textbook will not have all of the answers, therefore, it's advised to go to the library and check out a copy of either The Chinese Compendium for the Bronze age or the other popular Shangshu better known as the Documents of antiquity".

After the teacher stopped talking and began to walk to his desk the girl with the dragon on her back spoke up with her question "Teacher, is the Shangshu complete or are they similar to the reconstructions that the non-magics have?".

"An excellent question, unlike the Non-magics we have the original unaltered set of 35 chapters straight from Confucius".

Walking out of the room, Zhāng decided to walk to the city market he heard so much about– not to buy anything but to simply check out the place, especially because the scarcity of the Huang and being beaten isn't very high on his to-do list.

Following the path that he memorized through the winding pavilions and bridges over flowing water dotting the campus, Zhāng quickly found his way to the end of the campus on the north side and through the inner wall would be the city proper. The inner wall separated the campus where all the learning and classrooms were while the student dorms and the training areas along with the market and private stores were on the other side of the inner walls, of course this wasn't iron clad as there were classrooms outside the inner wall while there were no stores or dorms inside it.

Following the wide street, Zhāng found a large opening to his left which was filled with small tent-like structures, Under them were students or unknown adults, but the majority of them were students. Bobbing through the students walking throughout the market Zhāng found many different cool items, none very powerful in their 'advertised' effects such as clarity boosting a very popular item for studying purposes, or the magical boosting properties from a magical potion which was impossible to identify the authenticity of without buying it which was a waste of 40 huang.

Around the top middle of the market was a stand with a bunch of weapons, a popular item for collectors, however, for any other person such an item is completely useless as it is not allowed in any regulated fights nor is it capable of overpowering even the weaker wizards and witches, and finally, it isn't very practical. This isn't to say there aren't a few powerful weapons such as Excalibur, The Longquan Sword, Cheng Ying, Chun Jun, or one of the many other very famous swords from across the world, these, if the legends persist then they would make a world-class wizard such as the emperor, or Albus Dumbledore out of even the weakest of fools-- if they can conquer it of course.

But the likelihood of a world-class weapon being inside anywhere other than a powerful witch or wizard's hands, a nation's hands, or a wealthy collector's hands would be very improbable. Picking up a sword from the rack it was obviously not made by a Chinese craftsman, the metal was thicker, longer, and wider than usual more resembling a german messer with a more Asian hilt. Seeing that the thick heavy sword wasn't to Zhāng's preference he put it back carefully into the rack and picked another smaller sword, which was a Damascus red sword with a golden rain guard and a smooth dark brown handle with a dark steel pommel. It was a classic Chinese Jian.

Moving to pick it up nothing happened and after a swing or two Zhāng began to really like the weight, it was only after a few seconds that the hilt began to heat up to terrifying degrees which began to burn Zhāng's hand. Almost instantly he dropped the sword and fell to his knee with a tear in his eye, looking at his hand he saw no expected burn mark nor did the pain last, in the stand a man began to run to Zhāng before asking "did you cut yourself?".

Not answering the man he tried to pick the sword up with his other hand before once again dropping it in pain, the man looked at Zhāng like an idiot but didn't say anything due to the dragon on his back and the twelve aiguillettes. Taking a piece of cloth out of his ring he picked up the sword by the blade and dropped it into its sheath on the rack, not risking another painful event picking up the sheath he continued to use the cloth to pick it up.

"How much is this?" Zhāng politely asked, "it's four Huang and are you ok?".

With a monthly allowance of 50 Huang, it wasn't that expensive but it wasn't cheap either. Handing the man four coins, Zhāng asked another question "what do you know about this sword?".

"Not much, it was pawned for a few coins over 600 years ago and since then it's just been a dust collector in my blacksmith shop so I thought I would get lucky selling it to a student and it looks like I was right".

"Do you have any other old swords or weapons like this one?" Zhāng asked impatiently "No, I don't but if you are looking for old weapons then you should go to the weapons shop over there" the man replied while pointing across the market and over the street, and down the intersection.

"Are you not the weapons shop?".

"Hahaha, kid this is a stall, not a shop, a shop has walls and cooling magic of course" the man said while waving his wand above the red and gold sword "now you can place it in a ring".