Wind roared through the Old Crow Gorge like a wounded dragon. It threw knives of packed ice against the black shale cliffs.
Lu Chen walked through the teeth of the gale.
Behind him, nine leagues down the winding stone pass, the crimson ash of the Nine-Mile Red Sedan had long been swallowed by the squall. The paper-doll bearers, the shattered sedan frame. The spectral bride had dissolved into raw malice, devoured and refined within the roaring iron chamber of his dantian.
Now, the mountain had answered with a white disaster.
The heat had plummeted twenty degrees below freezing. Snow didn’t drift. It drove horizontally, scouring skin and leather with the screech of fine emery cloth.
Yet around Lu Chen’s boots, the frozen earth hissed.
Every step he took pressed through six inches of packed snow, leaving behind a steaming footprint of black mud and bubbling slush. His skin radiated a dry, choking heat that warped the freezing air around his shoulders like the exhaust of an ironworks chimney pipe.
The upgrade to the second tier of the Molten Tiger Vajra Body had turned his bright red blood into liquid fire.
Beneath his coarse linen shirt and oilcloth coat, black glass melted rock waste veins coiled up his ribs like braided iron cables. The hardened vessels ached with a dull, throbbing weight. A permanent reminder that mortal flesh was never designed to channel the heat of a forge.
At sixty-five degrees, his blood kept the ghost frost at bay.
The cost was sky-high.
His stomach tightened with a sharp burst. The blood fire was devouring his living reserves at four times the normal rate. Without fuel, his scorched spirit veins would freeze solid within minutes.
Lu Chen drew a slab of salted sheep fat from his satchel. The fat was frozen hard as slate, crusted with rock salt.
He bit into it.
His teeth sliced through the frozen animal fat with a dull crunch. As the fat hit his mouth, extreme heat melted the grease instantly. It sent a scalding stream of salt and animal calories coating his throat on its way to his gut.
A low, deep-throated sigh escaped his lips. A thick plume of white steam jetted three feet into the storm, vanishing into the howling whiteout.
Flesh breathes. Blood resists. Anchor checked.
Through the swirling wall of snow, a dark mass loomed against the jagged mountainside.
It wasn’t a natural cliff.
A twelve-foot wooden wall of blackened hardwood logs rose from the rock. Their sharpened tips were bound with rusted iron bands. Heavy watchtowers leaned over the corners, their timber frames groaning against the gale. Above the main gate hung a pair of dented iron lanterns, shielded by horn panes. It cast a sickly yellow circle of seal-oil light across the snowdrifts.
Black Crow Post-Station.
This was the only fortified outpost between Black Water County and the high country plateau of Gu Ning. In this fractured era, such stations were manned by hardened veterans and armed escorts who sold firewood and broth at exorbitant rates.
Lu Chen adjusted the heavy oilcloth strap across his chest.
Beneath the wrapping, the twelve-pound notched ox-bone cleaver rested against his spine, cold and steady. In his left sleeve, the four-inch iron bone awl touched the callous of his wrist.
He climbed the final frozen ridge and approached the hardwood gates.
The heavy timber doors, heavy with iron studs the size of walnuts, were barred tight from the inside. Thick hemp ropes hung from the watchtower, connected to strings of brass magic charm bells. The bells rattled wildly in the gale, their clappers frozen in rime frost, issuing no sound.
“Halt right there!”
A harsh, gravelly shout cut through the screaming wind from the watchtower slit ten feet above.
A crossbow quarrel, tipped with pitted iron, poked through the narrow embrasure, wavering as the sentry shivered in the sub-zero draft.
“The gate is barred for the night! No entry past the hour of the Dog! Turn back or freeze in the drifts!”
Lu Chen kept his head level and his voice low. It carried with ringing thickness beneath the storm.
“Traveler from the lower county. Seeking shelter from the white disaster.”
“Traveler?” The sentry laughed, a wet, hacking cough rattling in his chest. “No traveler walks the Old Crow Pass on foot during a nine-mile blizzard. You’re either a mountain bandit or a crawling corpse! Stand clear before I loose an iron bolt through your throat!”
Lu Chen took two measured paces forward.
He stepped directly beneath the lantern light.
The sentry leaned closer to the slit, squinting through a frost-crusted sheepskin hood. His breath caught in his throat.
The stranger was not shivering.
Steam poured continuously from the collar of his coat. He rose into the blizzard like smoke from a blacksmith’s chimney. The snow falling toward his shoulders melted six inches before touching his wool coat. That turned into a fine, shimmering mist. Where his worn leather boots touched the drift, the snow gave way to black, bare rock.
No corpse had heat like that.
A corpse carried the chill of the grave. A specter brought the frost of the nine nether springs.
This man walked through the blizzard like a walking iron stove.
“Wait,” another voice sounded from behind the watchtower timber. Deeper, older, raspy from decades of sulfur smoke and bad wine.
A weathered face framed by graying sideburns and a jagged sword scar across the jaw appeared at the watchtower opening. A pair of sharp, yellowed eyes took in Lu Chen’s height, the broad shoulders corded with lean muscle, the calm dead-house cleaver strapped to his back, and the steady, unflickering gaze.
“You carry a blade,” the older man said, his hand resting on the wooden lever of the crossbar winch.
“An ox-bone cleaver,” Lu Chen replied calmly. “For cutting meat.”
“You walked through the gorge alone?”
“Yes.”
The older man spat a mouthful of dark tobacco juice into the snow. It froze into brown pebbles before hitting the ground.
“The toll is two bits of broken silver or five copper strings. Station rules. No credit, no barter in grain, no exceptions for royal couriers.”
Lu Chen reached into his belt pouch and produced two rough fragments of silver, flicking them upward with his thumb.
The silver arc rose through the blizzard with easy care. It passed cleanly through the narrow embrasure into the older man’s leather mitten.
The scarred man weighed the silver in his palm, tested one edge against his yellow back teeth, and nodded slowly.
“Wind the winch, Xiao Wu,” the older man grunted to the younger sentry. “Pull the lower crossbar.”
“Master Han, you’re letting him in?” the younger sentry hissed, his knuckles white on his crossbow stock. “Look at the steam off him! What if he’s one of those blood-cult corpse-grafts from the northern hills?”
“A corpse-graft would have thrown a bone javelin through your skull ten breaths ago,” Station Master Han snapped. “And blood-cultists don’t pay in pure county silver. Move your hands, boy, before the wind tears the hinges off.”
With a groaning screech of rusted iron pulleys, the heavy winch creaked into motion.
The lower crossbar lifted with a hollow thunk. One leaf of the massive hardwood gate cracked open just wide enough for a broad-shouldered man to pass through.
Lu Chen stepped across the threshold.
The gate slammed shut behind him instantly. Three thick timber braces dropped back into their iron cradles, sealing the mountain out once more.
The courtyard was narrow and smelled of wet straw, horse manure, and cold pine pitch. Under a low lean-to shed, a dozen pack mules and heavy-boned mountain horses stood huddled shoulder to shoulder, their flanks draped in coarse burlap blankets. They shivered as they stamped their hooves against the frosted stones.
Across the courtyard stood the main lodge. A sprawling, low-slung building built of squared pine logs and river granite, its roof edges weighed down with two feet of fresh snow. Yellow light bled through the oiled-paper window lattices, with the muffled murmur of voices and the faint, greasy aroma of boiling mutton.
Station Master Han dropped the wooden ladder from the watchtower. An iron-banded heavy club was resting against his shoulder.
He limped slightly on his right knee, his gaze fixed on Lu Chen’s boots.
The snow in the courtyard was four inches deep. But wherever Lu Chen’s soles touched the ground, the slush hissed and turned to gray mud.
“You’ve got fire in your blood, stranger,” Han said, his voice flat, cautious.
“The mountain is cold,” Lu Chen said. “A man needs warmth.”
“Aye. But too much heat draws moths in the dark.” Han pointed his heavy club toward the heavy double doors of the main lodge. “The common hall is packed to the rafters. Three merchant caravans, a royal dispatch courier, and four iron escorts stranded by the storm. Find yourself a corner, keep your hands off other men’s packs, and don’t draw steel under my roof.”
“Understood.”
“If you need hot water or mutton stew, it’s twenty coppers a bowl,” Han added, squinting through the steam still drifting from Lu Chen’s shoulders. “The peat fire is in the center. Though looking at you, you hardly need the hearth.”
“I need fuel,” Lu Chen said. “Mutton fat. As much as your kitchen can spare.”
Han’s brow furrowed, but he nodded curtly. “Silver buys what the kitchen has. Go on in.”
Lu Chen stepped up to the massive pine door, lifted the iron latch. Then he pushed the heavy, felt-lined leaf inward.
The roar of the storm was instantly cut off.
A blast of thick, stifling air washed over his face. The choking heat of smoldering peat, the sour tang of unwashed bodies, the pungent sharpness of cheap liquor. The faint, sweet reek of drying hides.
As the heavy door thudded shut behind him, the murmur of the crowded room died away.
Thirty pairs of eyes turned all at once toward the stranger standing in the threshold.