Four hundred and twenty royal li stretched between the southern gate of the capital and the jagged fiery foothills of Cloudford Mountain.
Pei Jing traveled on foot. He hadn’t taken a royal courier horse, nor had he hired a mule cart at the river way-stations. A horse needed grain, water, and rest every four hours. Its hooves wore down on gravel roads. Its breathing gave out after forty miles of sustained gallop. A living machine that depended on four fragile hooves and an animal’s uneven nervous system was an inefficient transport gearwork for an urgent deadline.
His own body was far more reliable.
In the Tendon Stretching stage of his foundation, the plantar aponeuroses in his feet, the thick bundles of his Achilles tendons, and the iliotibial bands running along his thighs operated as clockwork springs. With every stride, forty percent of the striking force from his downward landing was captured, stored in the elastic pulling fibers of his muscle-sheath sheets, and released into the next forward thrust.
He kept a stride hum of one hundred and twenty steps per minute. Each stride measured exactly six feet two inches. At that rhythm, his ground speed locked at six point two miles per hour.
