The eastern plateau of the Floating Mountain smelled like a forest after a summer thunderstorm. It was an intoxicating, pine-scented blend of balsamic cedar, wild mountain mint, and warm stone, sweetened by the morning mist that rolled across the two-thousand-meter cliff edge.
Spread across the freshly laid dark rock flat stone slabs were twenty-four huge logs of ancient storm-cedar, harvested from the lightning-scoured crags by Da Peng’s talons. For three hundred years, these alpine titans had absorbed the crackling fury of heavenly thunderbolts and the razor chill of high-sky blizzards. Their bark was charred in delicate. It spiraled lightning-traceries, but beneath the scorched husk lay heartwood of breathtaking beauty. Rich amber-crimson grain so dense with stone-hard resin that water simply beaded on its surface like dew on a lotus pad.
Tie Shan stood with his massive bare feet planted wide on the dark fiery stone. The Divine Titan Smith had stripped to his coarse hemp work apron. He showed iron-gray fur knotted with thick cords of muscle. His right arm—an iron-hard marvel forged from living star-iron marrow and golden titan bone—gleamed softly in the morning sun as he rotated his wrist.
“Bring the bronze two-man rip-saws!” Tie Shan bellowed, his deep rumbling through the mountain bedrock with the force of an avalanche. “No spiritual blades, no qi-burners! A high-sky thunder-cedar must be cut cold. Or you bake the bitter pine-resin right out of the pores!”
