Cold meltwater dripped from the black pine needles. It struck the frayed collar of Pei Jing’s straw cape with a rhythmic patter.
Four days had passed since the avalanche roared down the eastern shoulder of Mist Peak, burying his shelter beneath twenty feet of packed ice. An ordinary hunter would have suffocated within forty minutes. Pei Jing had simply folded his legs into a half-lotus against the granite floor. He pulled his chin toward his chest bone, and allowed Turtle Breathing to throttle his pulse down to six beats per minute. For ninety-six hours, his five internal organs had drawn minute trickles of oxygen through his bone marrow, metabolizing stored animal fat without shivering a single muscle fiber.
When the tremor finally ceased, he drove both fists upward through the crust. Then he climbed out into the spring sun.
Now, at nineteen years of age, his body moved with the silent smooth speed of a watermill wheel. His height had settled at five feet ten inches, his center of balance anchored two inches below his navel. Beneath his charcoal-grey hemp robe, his forearms bore the faint sheen of horn. At the same time, his ribs possessed the dense, stone-hardened weight of cold river jade.
