Pei Jing could still smell burnt pine tar and sulfur on his left sleeve. It was the evening of the tenth day since the Old Cauldron Workshop burned in Red Mist Valley. The five attackers were already dead before he lit that fire. The mire had taken their bodies.
Ghost-Eye Mountain was only twelve li from the workshop by the direct trail. He’d done his first session the day after the fire. Nine sessions later, he was still circling the patrols and looking for cover for the tenth. Now, in the mountain’s lower folds, the drizzle turned into a fine, cold mist. Pei Jing shifted the strap on his collarbone. Gui’s three-legged cauldron lay wrapped in oiled sheepskin against his back. It weighed eighty-six pounds. A weaker cultivator would have been dragging his feet after four miles on the shale.
Pei Jing’s heart beat thirty-eight times a minute. His Martial Saint training kept his body warm without drawing on the qi he had stored. He stopped under an overhang of slate. The ground was dry there, and the rock hid him from anyone looking up the trail.
He lowered his pack until the cauldron’s feet touched stone without a sound. A pot that size could draw every hungry rogue in the hills. Before he sat down, he set three quiet alarms of horsehair and reeds along the approaches to the shelter. A shift in the line would drop a little dry sand onto bark. His trained ears could hear that…
