Dawn was still two hours away when Pei Jing returned to the guest pavilion.
The rain outside had stopped, replaced by a biting northern wind that whistled through the roof tiles and rattled the paper lattices. On the low deal table, the animal fat candle had burned down to a flat disc of hardened grease. Pei Jing didn’t light a new wick. He struck a small charcoal fire bowl into a slow, cherry-red glow, placed a cast-iron kettle over the embers, and laid out three sheets of coarse wood-pulp paper alongside an ink-stone and a wolf-hair brush.
He unrolled Master Chixiao’s silk scroll across the table. He anchored its brittle edges with clean river stones.
Beside the ancient scroll, he laid out his own journals—six years of dense, micro-brushed logs recording every grain of millet burned up, every ounce of hard dark metal steel worn from his cleaver-saber. Every pulse variance noted during daily two-hour training blocks.
To common martial artists, training was a matter of old family piety, poetic metaphors, and emotional passion. They spoke of “roaring dragon marrow” and “unbending tiger fury” as if shouting at the sky could alter physical mass.
To Pei Jing, human anatomy was a heat-powered system governed by conservation of energy.
