The cutting-open of six hundred pounds of monster beast needed three hours of razor-sharp labor in sub-zero wind.
Pei Jing worked with his knees planted in the red snow of Black Stone Deep gap.
First came the gallbladder.
In wild mutant boars that fed on sulfur roots, stone veins, and high-sky mountain herbs, the gallbladder was a packed pool of fiery living bile. If the thin cystic duct was cut improperly, the skin-burning fluid would spill across the belly cavity, tainting three hundred pounds of prime meat with an unbearable, acrid bitterness.
Using the five-inch antler-handled knife, Pei Jing made a delicate clean cut through the falciform joint cord. He clamped the cystic duct with his thumb and forefinger before slicing the vessel free.
The gallbladder emerged intact: an oval organ the size of a goose egg, dark amber in color, hot to the touch. Then he filled with a thick, glowing golden bile that smelled of crushed juniper and sulfur.
He placed it carefully inside a wide-mouthed glazed jar padded with clean snow, sealing the cork with beeswax.
Next came the tusks.
The two fourteen-inch curved tusks were rooted six inches deep into the premaxillary and lung-sac bones of the upper snout. Attempting to pry them out with an iron pry-bar would cause transverse stress fractures, reducing their market value by seventy percent.
Pei Jing took his cold chisel and three-pound iron hammer.
Tink. Tink. Tink.
He chipped away the surrounding spongy bone in a circular groove around each root socket. The bone was cleared. Then, he gripped the base of each tusk with both hands, twisting gently along the natural curve of the dental canal until the periodontal joint cords snapped with a dull pop.
Both tusks came free unbroken.
Each was fourteen point two inches long, curved like a scythe, two and a half inches thick at the base, and gleaming with a creamy, semi-clear ivory luster fully unmarred by tooth rot or impact fractures.
He wrapped each tusk in strips of soft rawhide, tying them with hemp cord.
Then came the meat.
Pei Jing peeled away the two-inch composite armor of dried resin and quartz gravel. He exposed the dark, heavily marbled muscle beneath. This was not the pale, flabby meat of domestic pigs. It was the dense, crimson muscle of a mutant hunting beast soaked with natural mountain energy.
He carved out the long backstraps, the sixty-pound hindquarters, the thick brisket, and the marrow-dense thigh bone bones.
Total yield of usable meat and bone: three hundred and ten pounds.
To transport three hundred and ten pounds of meat, plus sixty pounds of hide and ivory, across six li of snowy mountain crags, Pei Jing built a timber skid.
He felled two four-inch spruce poles with three strokes of his mountain saber, cross-braced them with split willow boughs. Then he lashed the carcass bundles securely with his thirty-foot braided hemp rope.
He slung the chest harness over his shoulders.
With Tier 2 Flesh Forging, his cross-woven back and leg muscles tightened with easy high-pressure power. The four-hundred-pound sled broke the snow crust and glided smoothly behind him down the mountain trail.
By midday, he reached the western outskirts of Cloudford Town.
He avoided the public gates. He pulled the sled through the drainage ditch behind the abandoned plum orchard into the West Pavilion.
He hung two hundred pounds of marbled boar meat in his storage shed, salting the cuts with coarse stone salt and hanging them from the smoke rafters. The sixty pounds of heavy thigh bone bones were stacked beside the hearth cooking pot, ready for daily marrow extraction.
He took the wrapped tusks, the sealed jar containing the gallbladder. Then he walked down South Canal Street to the rear gate of Fragrant Cloud Pavilion.
Inside the quiet tea room, Su Mei’er sat with an elderly man wearing circular horn-rimmed glasses and a dark robe of stitched satin.
Master Wen—the town’s premier jade and ivory carver, who held official royal tenders from the Azure Province governor’s palace.
On the table between them, Pei Jing laid the two rawhide bundles and the glazed baked-clay jar.
He untied the hemp cords, letting the rawhide fall open.
The two fourteen-inch ivory tusks gleamed under the warm light of the oil lamps. Their creamy surfaces reflected the polished pear wood of the table.
Master Wen gasped. The old artisan picked up the right tusk with trembling, liver-spotted fingers. It held a small brass magnifying glass to the dental grain.
“Flawless,” Master Wen breathed, his voice quivering with skilled ecstasy. “Look at the nested Schreger lines... Forty-five-degree intersections. The thickness is nearly one point nine grams per cubic half-inch. Pure mutant mammoth ivory from the high peaks. Ordinary southern elephant ivory is porous, with wide pulp cavities that crack under the carving chisel. This mutant ivory is dense as mutton-fat jade. Not a single fracture from root to tip.”
The old carver looked up at Su Mei’er, then at Pei Jing.
“The country governor’s office has commissioned a pair of ritual dragon seals for the New Year festival,” Wen said eagerly. “These two tusks will yield four flawless seal blocks and twelve hairpin blanks.”
He opened his iron-banded chest, drew out a heavy stack of royal silver metal bars. Then he placed them before Pei Jing.
Twelve heavy box-shaped bars of Azure Province treasury silver.
Each bar was stamped: Azure Province Mint, One Tael Fine.
“Twelve silver coins,” Master Wen said. “In full, without deduction.”
Pei Jing picked up the twelve silver metal bars, testing their cold thickness in his palm. Added to his leftover reserves, his liquid capital surged to thirteen silver coins and two hundred copper cash.
Beside him, Su Mei’er picked up the glazed jar, broke the beeswax seal. Then she inspected the dark amber gallbladder resting in snow.
A faint, sweet smell of wild juniper and sulfur filled the room.
“Intact,” Su Mei’er smiled, her dark eyes flashing with satisfaction. “Not a drop of bile leaked into the peritoneum. A rare hand, Young Master Pei.”
She reached into her private lacquer cabinet and brought out three heavy clay pots, each sealed with yellow royal wax and stamped with the glyph Astral Marrow.
“Three pots of Astral Marrow Bone-Forging Paste,” she said, sliding them across the table. “Formulated from century-old polygonum, powdered bear bone, and refined red stone. Eat one spoonful boiled in marrow broth each evening. It will speed up your Flesh Forging to Tier Three within twenty days.”
Pei Jing took the three pots, placing them into his canvas pack alongside the twelve silver metal bars.
His floating sight screen activated with crisp, gold-rimmed monospace shape:
Pei Jing bowed his head slightly to Master Wen and Su Mei’er.
“A clean transaction,” Pei Jing said.
“Watch the town docks tonight, Young Master,” Su Mei’er murmured softly as he turned toward the door. “The Zhao Clan’s river barges brought in twelve crates of sulfur and pitch this morning. And Iron Claw Hu Biao of the Black Tiger Gang was seen drinking in the Zhao manor tavern.”
Pei Jing paused at the threshold.
“Sulfur and pitch?”
“The south grain depot,” she whispered. “Where your second branch stores its winter reserves. If the grain burns, the Pei Clan starves before the solstice. The Zhao Clan doesn’t just want your mine deed. They want your laborers begging for porridge in the snow.”
Pei Jing walked back through the twilight streets of Cloudford Town.
He returned to the West Pavilion. He set the three pots of Astral Marrow paste in his locked cupboard. Then he boiled a heavy cooking pot of wild boar marrow broth. He added a generous wooden spoonful of the dark, aromatic paste.
The broth turned golden, glistening with rich globules of mutant fat and red stone-infused connective tissue.
He burned up the broth down to the last drop. He felt the dense energy flood his lower-back spine and ribs with a deep, load-bearing warmth. His muscle fibers tightened, absorbing the nutrients with greedy smooth speed.
He took his three-foot mountain saber, unslung the pigskin sword sheath. Then he drew the Black Mountain Whetstone from his pack. He set the dark stone flat beside the lamp. He dampened its surface. Then he ran the blade along the dished face ten times on each side, shaving away micro-burrs left from skinning the boar until the edge bit cleanly into his thumbprint. He inspected the twelve high-carbon spring steel needles in his rawhide forearm bracers.
He pulled a dark wool cloak over his shoulders, hiding the steel beneath the folds.
He walked toward the South River docks. That kept to the narrow stone alleyways running parallel to the canal. Along the riverbank, the dark outlines of the grain warehouses stood like silent timber fortresses against the freezing mist. Outside the main gate of the Pei Clan’s South Depot, two men in ragged dog-skin coats were lingering near an empty flatboat, their breath steaming white as they pretended to mend an iron mooring chain.
Pei Jing’s eyes tracked them from seventy paces away.
Their shoulders were broad. Their hands didn’t hold hemp rope like coolies, but rested within their sleeves where short hatchets and clubs were hidden.
Black Tiger Gang lookouts.
“The inventory,” Pei Jing whispered, fading into the shadow of the cedar timber stacks, “is insured.”
He turned back toward the warehouse rooflines, calculating the entry vectors before the midnight storm struck.