The dawn on Raven Crag was dry, clear, and bitter. The heat gauge outside the trench guardhouse had read thirty-one below zero before sunrise, and at this height, the wind snapped over the jagged granite cliff edge like a dull iron rasp.
Pei Jing climbed the final terrace carrying a copper kettle of boiling codonopsis tea and two pounds of dried bear animal fat strips wrapped in oiled paper.
Lu Tingxuan was not sitting on the top door beam today.
The eighty-year-old master stood upright in the center of the wind-swept summit platform. His bare, horn-calloused feet rested flat against the frost-glazed rock. His ragged hemp shroud was whipped wildly by the gale. But his body remained unmoving, balanced upon an invisible gravity axis that anchored him to the bedrock.
In his right hand, the four-foot knotty bamboo staff rested vertically against his thigh, its bronze metal ring touching the granite without bearing weight.
As Pei Jing stepped onto the platform, Lu didn’t turn his head.
“You brought tea,” the old master said, his gravelly voice cutting cleanly through the wind without raising its volume.
“Tea infused with wild codonopsis and dried ginger root,” Pei Jing said. He set the kettle and the fat strips beside the sheltered wall. “Optimal for outer vasodilation.”
