The northern wind died at the crest of the Broken Spine Ridge, choked out by a warm, rotten-egg updraft that tasted of stale marsh water and scorched fat.
Pei Jing paused on the shale outcrop. He set down his wicker pack, adjusted the coarse hemp strap cutting into his collarbone. Then he wiped the grey road grit from his chin with the cuff of his linen shirt. His fingers were calloused and blunt, the skin over his knuckles thick as boiled hide from nine mortal realms of tempering. Beneath his ribs, the newly formed Five-Elemental Chaos Martial Root spun with a slow, heavy pulse. He drew minute traces of heat from the morning sun and the iron-rich stone under his boots.
He looked down into the rift.
For four hundred years, the poets of the Great Yan court had filled silk scrolls with sky verse. White cranes circling jade-tiled terraces, daoist masters drifting upon gossamer clouds with wind whistling through clean sleeves, and mountain streams running sweet with melted spiritual dew. Mortal boys grew old in rice paddies dreaming of those towers, trading their family heirlooms to itinerant monks for a chance to touch an immortal hem.
The reality spread out five hundred paces below was a scar in the limestone.
