A sword was a very common item among Cultivators. It was a popular weapon and many branches of cultivation were ford around its usage. They were also sowhat large without being too obvious. The aim was to catch the attention of a Cultivator from the Spire and get picked up. If the form it took was too eye-catching then it would co under more scrutiny. If it was too small or innocuous then it might never get noticed. If it was too large, like a suit of armor, it might be left behind. That ant a weapon was the best choice, and a sword was quite common and easy to conceal. It also needed to be sothing made entirely of Blue Icesilver, so bladed weapons were the obvious choice.
Over the years that Sage was in hiding, this plot was underway. Once the Sea King left, the new sword burrowed up out of the ground next to the Spire. It stayed outside the radius of the protective formations and waited near one of the places where Sages clones were destroyed in battle. The conflict was a good reason for sothing like a sword to go missing. A few months later, those of the Spire were relaxed enough to again head outside for training and that was when the Blue Icesilver sword was discovered. Three different groups walked past it and none of them even gave it a second look. The last even seed like they contemplated giving it a kick, but the naked blade turned him away.
Disdain? I guess we went too simple.
The sword sprouted a few pseudopod-like limbs and skittered away, finding a different position and then starting to change shape. It wouldnt be good to be in the exact sa spot yet look differently. Now that it was in a new location, the sword started to reshape itself. Instead of the most simple and generic of looks, the guard and poml took on a more stylized appearance, like that of a flowing wave of water. In addition, more Blue Icesilver was expelled and ford into the shape of a scabbard, which the sword sheathed itself into. Lastly, since everything was ford of a single material, the different parts of the sword were given slightly different textures. The handle was knurled for grip, the blade was mirror smooth, the guard and poml were highly sculpted in three dinsions, and the scabbard looked like a stack of rings.
This new approach was far more successful, with one of the passing Disciples choosing to take the sword. They chose beauty over ability, using the plain Blue Icesilver sword instead of the Magic one they had previously. It was a little tricky to forge a magic item through just a Soul Fragnt, especially out in the open like it was. It was a good lesson, as it proved there was no lack of vanity, even among Cultivators.
With the first Disciple picking up the sword, the first hurdle was successfully passed. With soone to bring it past the defensive arrays upon the Spire, they were much closer to their goal. By listening to the conversations around the sword, they gained more information about the hierarchy within the Spire and who they needed to target next. To get closer to the upper echelons, they needed to move from the possession of the low level outer disciple to a core disciple. With the success of targeting vanity, they gathered information about the core disciples of the Spire, picking out the most vain one and learning that they were known to carry folding fans.
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When the disciple carrying the sword was asleep, a small chunk of liquid Blue Icesilver crept under the door, leaving behind the sword completely intact yet without its Soul Fragnt passenger. Blue Icesilver wasnt very valuable to the Blacksmiths or Weapon and Tool Refiners of this world, but that didnt an it was useless. Instead of being known for its strength, weight, or flexibility, its defining characteristic was changing from a solid into a liquid. There were a few cultivators that had both water and tal nature arts combined which prized it, but they were rare enough that it was not very valued.
On the other hand, it was quite useful to Sage as the liquid state it could take made it similar to the energy based Heavenly Materials: it could be replicated. Those bonded with Heavenly Materials could produce more of them by feeding in their Qi and the more solid it was, the more Qi this process took. The other Heavenly tals were mainly used to create weapons and this special property made it so they were effectively invincible, simply requiring more Qi to recover from damage and restore themselves to perfect condition. Blue Icesilver was very useful to Sage because of this odd quirk as he could endlessly produce tal, even if it wasnt outstanding, it was still technically higher performance than sothing like Spirit Steel, the most common tal used for forging Magic Tools. That made it more valuable, but not exceedingly so as its special property was only sought after by certain people.
In one of the scrolls he read, it spoke of a whole Sect of liquid tal users that had a thod to bond to the Blue Icesilver and split off portions of it so that every mber could be a wielder of the Heavenly tal if they were skilled enough. They had possibly existed for thousands of years and that existence had spread the tal through the world. Or so it said. The Sect was said to be very far away and the book was hundreds of years old. The sharing of knowledge between Empires seed to be quite limited. Sage guessed that only the higher ups in the capitals or the leaders of the different Kingdoms under them would have access to those news channels. That source was similar to Storage Treasures. It didnt make it cheap, but it did make it common enough to et all the demand.
All this boiled down to the Blue Icesilver not being that valuable, and so simple items made of it would not be enough to tempt soone at a higher level. Sage instead relied upon the artistic talents of the citizens of the Inner World, holding a competition for tal fans and using the winners design to catch the core disciples attention. The piece of liquid tal ford into the design that looked like the feathers of a bird even to the smallest vane and ford a tallic case around itself with a simple engraving for Blue Peacock, a stylized version of the core disciples na. With just a little bit of ti spent, the case was found by one of the disciples. Eager to earn the favor of a core disciple, she rushed to Blue Peacocks room and handed over the lost box without opening it.
They were both surprised when the box was opened and it was not one of his possessions or a ssage for him. The female disciple was demoralized as she realized shed just delivered soone elses gift, turning her into nothing more than a side character. Blue Peacock kept the gift and showed it off for a few days, trying to bait out its source only to be disappointed and hanging it up on his wall along with a hundred other fans. This was both a blessing and a curse as it gave them plenty of ti alone in the mans room without any interference, but it also ant they had no access to any other mbers of the Spire.
They tried to target so of the other core disciples, but they cared little about things made of Blue Icesilver. Weapons, trinkets, and accessories, none of them caught the attention of another core disciple, in fact it did the opposite. While in the shape of a large hamr, the Blacksilver Pawn was picked up and sent to a smithy to be turned into a proper weapon.
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