The morning gale scoured the crest of the northern bluffs at fifty feet per second. It drove crushed rime horizontally across the rocks.
On the summit terrace of Raven Crag, Pei Jing stood rooted in the snow.
His boots were spaced fourteen inches apart. The Cloud-Splitter rested at hip height, its twenty-jin hard dark metal blade lined up with the horizon. His charcoal robe was stiff with frozen moisture. But his wrists were relaxed, his fingers loosely curled around the shark-skin wrap of the handle.
Across from him, Lu Tingxuan sat cross-legged on a flat granite slab, wrapped in his ragged hemp shroud. The old master’s clouded eye stared blankly into the white mist. But his right eye was fixed upon the hard dark metal edge.
“The air is denser today,” Lu rasped, his voice shaking with low chest deep ring. “The air pressure is climbing. The air is cold and thick. Then, the atom-deep holding power is thirty percent higher than in summer. If your intent wavers by half a grain of sand, the cold air will bite your blade and shove it back into your ribs.”
“The air thickness is one point three eight pounds per cubic meter,” Pei Jing stated calmly. “It provides greater pushback, but also greater reaction mass for bubbling blast.”
