The two-hour threshold arrived with a sensation of cold iron clicking into a greased groove.
Pei Jing had not shifted his stance by a single tiny fraction of an inch for one hundred and twenty minutes. His thighs, locked parallel to the mud, burned with an acid buildup that felt like boiling salt water poured over raw muscle. Sweat had pooled in his collar bone hollow, dripping down his chest bone to mingle with dried blood on his linen tunic.
When the final second elapsed, the stone-slate HUD flared against his eye:
An immediate body event occurred.
It wasn’t mystical light or ghostly qi. It was living synthesis running at forced speed. A deep, packed heat originated in the outer bone of his shins, crawled upward through knee tendons. Then it coiled into his hip abductors.
Micro-tears in his thigh muscles didn’t swell with inflammatory fluid. Instead, the muscle fibers tightened, knitting together with a heard snapping tension like twisting hemp rope.
Pei Jing straightened his knees slowly.
His left shoulder gave a sharp twinge. But the surrounding upper back muscle had tightened into a protective sheath. He held the broken collar bone motionless. When he placed weight on his heels, the ground felt different. His arches gripped wet river gravel with clockwork balance, balance point lowered by two inches of newly conditioned tendon tension.
“Ten percent,” he said.
He closed his right fist. The skin over the first knuckles was taut, tiny blood vessel breath flow beneath unusually warm.
“A ten-day payoff schedule for a martial threshold. No risky risk. No mental bottleneck.”
He walked back beneath the roof edge of the West Pavilion and sat down on the split-pine bench.
Beside him lay the Black Mountain Whetstone, its dark rock surface washed clean by morning rain. The three copper cash remained where he had placed them.
Pei Jing picked up the stone. It weighed four pounds, dense and balanced, its grain finer than any heavy-duty grinding block he had seen on Earth. The underside was unpolished, carrying the scent of deep stone earth and sulfur.
He carried the stone inside his quarters.
The West Pavilion consisted of three rooms. A central hall with a dirt floor, a bedchamber containing a rope-bed and a thin cotton quilt, and a storage lean-to filled with broken baked-clay jars.
Pei Jing audited the domestic assets.
In the corner of the bedchamber stood a hardwood chest banded with rusted tin. Inside lay the legacy of the host’s sixteen years:
Item one: A worn grey winter robe lined with coarse goose down, three patches along the hem.
Item two: Two pairs of hemp trousers, stiffened by sweat and river mud.
Item three: An old notched iron mountain chopper. Blade length two feet two inches, weight six pounds, balance forward-heavy. The cutting edge was marred by seven notches where the boy had tried to chop dried oak without proper edge posture.
Item four: A notched skinning knife, five inches of pig-iron set into a split-antler handle bound with copper wire.
Item five: An ink-stone with a cracked rim, half a stick of pine-soot ink, and four sheets of yellowed mulberry paper.
Pei Jing pulled the iron chopper and the skinning knife from the chest. He set them on the low pine table.
He examined the chopper’s edge. The metal was poor. Bog iron smelted with too much melted rock waste, brittle and prone to flaking off. Yet with proper shape, even pig-iron could sever flesh. In the hands of a butcher, an eight-ounce cleaver divided an ox. That was because the edge traveled between joints, not against solid calcium.
He brought the Black Mountain Whetstone to the table, ladled water from the courtyard trough. Then he poured a thin film across the dark rock.
Scrape. Hiss.
He seated the chopper at a consistent fifteen-degree angle. He drew steel from heel to tip across the stone. With every twenty strokes, he reversed the face. He felt the burr form along the apex with the ball of his thumb.
In his mind, he timed together the host’s memories with the reality of Cloudford Town.
The Great Yan Empire was a huge office organism, its northern border always raided by steppe barbarians, its western provinces controlled by warlords. Its skies dominated by immortal training sects who demanded annual tithes of grain, iron ore, and spiritual herbs.
Cloudford Town belonged to Azure Province, five hundred li south of the country capital. Three powers governed the local basin:
First, the County Judge’s office, content to collect the seasonal grain heavy tax through his chief tax officer, Scribe Sun.
Second, the Zhao Clan. Led by Patriarch Zhao Cangshan—a ruthless martial artist whose Iron Sand Palm had cracked the bones of twenty rivals—the Zhao family operated five iron smelters and controlled sixty percent of river transport barges.
Third, the underworld proxy: the Black Tiger Gang. Commanded by Iron Claw Hu Biao, a river bandit with three-pronged steel gauntlets, the gang enforced protection levies and ran underground gambling dens.
At the bottom sat the Pei Clan.
Thirty years ago, Pei Jing’s grandfather had retired from the Royal Border Guard with mining permits, founding the clan. But after his death, the First Branch had mismanaged the smelters and piled up debts with Zhao cartels.
Pei Jing’s father, Pei Hongcheng, was head of the Second Branch. An exhausted man with swollen knuckles, Hongcheng oversaw extraction at the southern iron mine, bearing the debt. Meanwhile, First Branch elders squandered revenue on private tutors for their own sons.
Pei Jing was Hongcheng’s third son. His eldest brother had vanished on a military caravan. His second brother worked twelve-hour shifts at the smelting furnaces, coughing black dust into his sleeve.
And Pei Jing? At age eight, an itinerant Taoist had tested his spiritual aptitude.
The Taoist had laid a cold jade disc on the boy’s chest. The disc remained dead grey.
“A barren vessel,” the Taoist had declared. “Spiritual qi will slide off his skin like rain off glazed fine china. He will never sense the Dao. Put him to work in the mine.”
From that day forward, Pei Jing’s monthly allowance of healing paste had been revoked. His food ration had been halved. He had become a working expense with zero expected yield.
Scrape. Hiss.
Pei Jing tested the blade against his thumbnail. The steel bit cleanly without slipping.
A commotion at the courtyard gate broke his focus.
The rusted hinges groaned as someone kicked the timber open. Two men entered, boots shod with iron heel-plates.
Pei Jing set the chopper down, wiped his hands on his hemp trousers, and walked to the doorway.
Standing in the courtyard were Steward Liu and a burly yard guard, Zhang Qiang.
Liu wore a plum-colored cotton robe and held a brass-tipped counting rod under his arm. Zhang Qiang carried a six-foot oak staff tipped with a blunt iron metal ring.
Steward Liu surveyed the muddy yard. His mouth curved into a thin smirk when his eyes found Pei Jing standing with his arm in a sling.
“Third Young Master,” Liu said in an oily tone. “The First Elder instructed me to deliver the quarterly revision to your provisions.”
He held up a wooden token.
“Beginning this morning, the monthly millet share-out for the second branch’s unassigned dependents is reduced from two bushels to one peck. The firewood ration is suspended. The First Elder noted that since you don’t labor in the south mine and have no martial training, your heat requirements are minimal.”
Pei Jing leaned his right shoulder against the doorframe, his stance relaxed.
“One peck of millet for thirty days,” Pei Jing said evenly. “That provides about four hundred calories per day. Basal human survival needs twelve hundred. The First Branch is voting for starvation.”
Steward Liu chuckled.
“The clan’s iron wagons were turned away at the river dock this morning, Third Young Master. The family faces a fine of thirty silver coins to the Zhao Clan. Every mouth that doesn’t earn its bread must tighten its belt.”
Behind him, Zhang Qiang grinned, tapping his oak staff against the gravel.
“Besides,” Liu added, “the second young master, Pei Hu, has entered the second stage of Skin Tempering. He needs thirty pounds of dried venison and two pots of deer-horn glue this month. Resources must flow to where they produce value.”
Pei Jing didn’t argue. He looked at Zhang Qiang’s feet: right foot advanced, weight on his forward heel, grip loose. An amateur stance, reliant entirely on upper body mass.
“The decree is delivered,” Pei Jing said. “Leave the token on the trough.”
Steward Liu tossed the wooden token onto the muddy gravel, turning toward the gate.
“Aunt Fang has already drawn today’s millet,” Liu called over his shoulder. “If you try to steal from the pantry, Zhang Qiang will instruct you on clan discipline.”
Pei Jing stepped across the threshold. He walked to the trough, picked up the token, and wiped the grey slime from its face.
On the wood was carved a single character: Restricted.
The slate HUD in his vision remained clear:
Pei Jing walked back to the bench. He set the token down beside the three copper coins, and sat down.
He took the whetstone into his palm, lifted the iron skinning knife, and resumed his steady strokes.
Scrape. Hiss.
“Nine days,” he murmured. “Then we begin liquidating debts.”