By the third day in the limestone fissure, Pei Jing’s living clock had timed together fully with the underground cycle of Red Mist Valley.
Dawn didn’t arrive with golden sunbeams. It announced itself as a sick, bronze pallor bleeding through the ceiling of heavy fog. That turned the dripping limestone walls the color of dried liver. Dusk was marked by the thickening of the mist into an oily purple grease that smelled of swamp rot and cold charcoal.
During the four hours of deepest night—between the Hour of the Rat and the Hour of the Tiger—Pei Jing didn’t leave the crevice.
From his vantage point behind the screen of stinging nettles, he observed the night-hunting life of the valley. It was the hunting hour of the scavengers. Hooded figures drifted through the red gloom, wearing lead-threaded bamboo hats and greased oilcloth cloaks to shield against the acid-burning drizzle. They carried hooked skinning knives, bone chisels, and small wicker traps.
Sometimes, a sharp, choked gasp would drift across the rocks. It was followed by the wet thud of a falling body and the swift, practiced rustle of cloth being stripped from cooling flesh.
No alarms rang. No watchmen shouted.
In Red Mist Valley, death was treated with the quiet office indifference of an uncollected debt. If a man walked into the night fog alone and failed to return, his canvas stall square was rented out by noon the next day to the next desperate drifter stepping off the mountain trail.
