Official tournament passes granted each advancing competitor two hours of access to the Provincial Military Library, a damp, underground vault beneath the western castle walls of Cangzhou.
While other examinees hurried toward the upper gallery to pore over popular sword manuals, spear katas, and treatises on footwork, Pei Jing walked straight past the lighted reading rooms. He had no interest in decorative forms designed to impress tournament audiences.
Instead, he followed the downward curve of a moss-slick stone stairwell. He dropped into the deepest underground annex where three hundred years of tax ledgers, defunct land-tax surveys, and water-damaged boundary rolls were kept in cedar chests.
The air here smelled of bat droppings, dried woodworm powder, and decomposing hemp paper.
A single oil lamp on a rusted iron bracket flickered in the draft, casting long, wavering shadows across towering racks of wooden pigeonholes. Down in this forgotten cellar, no scribes attended the shelves. The floor was covered in a thick layer of grey dust that recorded Pei Jing’s straw sandal prints with undisturbed clarity. He set down his traveling pouch on an unpainted cedar chest. Through the rough cloth, his fingers pressed against the Black Mountain Whetstone. The eight-inch slab of cold border dark rock was a familiar, physical touchstone that had grounded him since Cloudford, far sturdier than ancient parchment.
