The freshwater pool was four feet deep, fed by an underground mountain fissure that kept the water crystal clear above a bed of coarse grey gravel.
Eighty paces to the north, the squelching of heavy boots in the wet peat grew steadily louder, with the muffled rustle of parted cattails.
Pei Jing didn’t run.
Running across open wetland was an amateur’s reaction. It churned the mud, snapped reed stalks, and created visible ripples across thirty yards of mist that could be spotted by any scout with basic tracking experience.
He moved with calm, deliberate economy.
He picked up his wicker basket containing the fourteen sealed salt water jars and the rolls of leech hard shell. He underwater the basket in the deepest hollow beneath an overhanging limestone shelf at the pool’s northern edge, anchoring the wicker handles beneath two heavy river stones. The cold spring water would keep the delicate bile enzymes steadied while hiding the bulk from view.
Then Pei Jing stepped into the pool.
He didn’t splash. He sank into the cold freshwater like an iron anchor dropping through still water.
