For ten in a row days, the rhythm of Pei Jing’s existence shrank to the outer rim of an iron-maple chopping block and the four damp walls of Cave 74.
Every morning, three hours before the sun managed to burn a yellow hole through the canyon’s red fog, Pei Jing pushed open his heavy door.
He navigated the dark, rotten-egg galleries of the lower catacombs, walked past the snoring drifters and the coughing elders in their damp cells. Then he emerged into the muddy slaughterhouse clearing. Just then, Butcher Tu was unlocking the iron meat hoists.
From sunrise until the midday bell, Pei Jing cut.
The work was relentless, brutal, and unsparing. Hunting parties returning from the fringes of the Black Miasma Swamps hauled in whatever hunting beasts their nets and crossbows could drag from the muck:
Armored Marsh Crocodiles with diamond-hard armor scales that dulled standard iron knives in thirty seconds. Spotted Marsh Vipers whose venom glands remained lethal for two hours after decapitation. And ferocious, wiry Mire-Wolves whose matted pelts were caked with sulfur clay and bone-shards.
Where other skinners hacked and cursed. He sweated through their stained leather tunics as their blades slipped against joint padding, Pei Jing operated with the cold, clockwork smooth speed of a water-powered triphammer.
