The muddy briar ditch on the southern flank of Cloud-Piercing Pass was neither grand nor dignified.
It was filled with stale bog water, rotting autumn leaves, and thorny brambles that tore at silk clothes with vicious persistence. Two hours earlier, it had been an unremarkable patch of ditch water. Now, it was the resting place of the supreme commander of the Thirty-Thousand-Strong Traditional Crusade.
Grand Elder Xuan Ji dragged himself forward on his stomach. He clawed through the black muck with trembling, dirt-caked fingers.
His spotless, triple-stitched golden robes—woven from sky cloud-silk and inscribed with ninety-nine defensive sword wards—were shredded into filthy rags. The dragon-headed jade pins that had held his silver topknot in clean order had been lost in the crash. That left his stringy white hair plastered across his face in greasy, mud-soaked strands. His breath rattled in his withered chest like dry peas shaking in an empty gourd.
For thirty years, Xuan Ji had lived in terror of a quiet grave.
With each passing decade, his hardened spirit veins had hardened like dry riverbeds, poisoning his dantian with piled up pill toxins and cutting his leftover lifespan down to fourteen fragile years. Deacon Zhao had brought him that taken away bottle of Jade-Dew Wine. Then, Xuan Ji had tasted uncorrupted wood-qi that could heal his soul. But instead of approaching the forest as a humble buyer, the ancient, rotting pride of a high-sect hegemon had poisoned his mind.
