"I feel extremely fortunate," Shen Qingqiu agrees. "Even if Calloway did make me pay out the nose to get it back. Foolish man. It's not as if anyone else would have been able to wield it even if they cared to pay his price." Well, maybe a teenage Luo Binghe...he'd no trouble using Xiu Ya to cut Shen Qingqiu's bonds, that time they'd been kidnapped by a Skinner Demon. It must have recognized what a good little disciple he was, loyal despite the terrible way the original goods had treated him.

"The energy you're sensing is concentrated spiritual qi," he explains, setting Jon's cup of tea down in front of him and taking his own place at the table, cup in hand. "Collected in the bedrock of Cang Qiong Mountain by its own natural feng shui and the results of centuries' worth of righteous cultivators making it their home. On Wan Jian Peak they carefully study and manipulate that energy, winding it into ever tighter spirals until it coalesces into a form like that of solid metal. They refine it further until it takes on the shape of a sword, and from there a sect disciple or honored guest may pull the sword out of the mountainside and call it their own." He smiles over the rim of his cup. "It's one of our sect's most precious techniques, and it can't be replicated anywhere else in the world."