A military office clerk came to the armory to check the inventory of three thousand items, but could only find 1,140, leaving a shortfall of nearly sixty percent. That night, the armory's supervisor had three old craftsmen pile broken blades and cracked fittings in the scrap-material shed to make a stack of new weapons. They covered it with oiled cloth and sprinkled iron filings over it to make up the numbers. As Chen Yan welded a broken fitting in the corner of the shed, he spoke up: “Stop stacking them. The breaks are facing inward. They'll fall apart in the first battle outside the camp. Three hundred weapons are being issued to three hundred men. If one breaks, one man dies.” The clerk brought soldiers with torches to shine a light on him and asked for his name and registration. The supervisor said, “He's Chen Zhongxuan's son. Three years ago, a furnace exploded in the case of the broken smelter, ruining three hundred new weapons. The state mines were short by thirty percent. The case was settled quickly: theft of materials and treason. His name was struck from the rolls, and he was sentenced to death.” The clerk said, “The son of a condemned craftsman has no registration. Repairing weapons under the law counts as stealing arms, punishable by death. There's no need for a trial.” Song Tieshan came in carrying an old hammer that had been repaired three times. He kicked the oiled cloth aside, revealing the broken edge. The fracture was slanted, with a blue-green tinge and a dark red seam running through the middle, as if two different metals had failed to fuse. Song Tieshan said, “We're short 1,200 weapons. If you execute him today, what will you use to make up the numbers three days from now?” He told Chen Yan to explain the metal. Chen Yan half-knelt and leaned forward, listening to the rhythm of the furnace flames, molten iron, and bellows. Ten breaths later, he opened his eyes and said, “This iron contains two batches of material. One is old iron from nine years ago, black and full of fine sand holes. The other is new iron from three years ago, bright and full of coarse sand holes. The two batches weren't melted together evenly, which is why the break has a blue-green tinge. The red line in the middle is from incomplete tempering.”
