The diurnal reset occurred at midnight.
Pei Jing lay on the thin cotton mattress, listening to the drip of water drops from the roof rafters. The sky spirit vein shifted past the third watch. Then, a faint pulse of cold shaking washed through his skull.
In his vision, the stone slate updated without sound:
He didn’t wait for dawn.
At four in the morning, the courtyard of the West Pavilion was shrouded in river fog so thick it beaded on his eyelashes like dew. Pei Jing stepped into the mud, barefoot to ensure maximum tactile feedback from his plantar muscle tissue.
He had removed the linen sling from his left arm.
The collar bone still carried a hairline fracture. But forty-eight hours of forced bone-mending growth had formed a hard new bone ridge over the break. When he rolled his shoulder backward in a tight circle, the bone ends no longer grated. Pain remained—a sharp, hot needle whenever the shoulder muscle engaged—but the joint kept solid strength up to twenty pounds of direct load.
He dropped his hips into the Rooted Cauldron stance.
Mountain-Cleaving Fist was the foundational martial art of the Great Yan Royal Army, distributed to millions of border conscripts over three hundred years. It was devoid of ornamentation. It contained exactly three physical vectors:
Vector One: The Piston Thrust—a linear punch driving striking force from the rear heel, through the hip rotators, along the side-rib muscles, and out the first two knuckles.
Vector Two: The Sweeping Bend—a forearm roll designed to redirect enemy spear thrusts across the chest line.
Vector Three: The Cleaving Axe—a downward hammer-fist strike aimed at an opponent’s collar bone or neck spine.
Standard recruits in the clan guard spent months flailing at wooden dummies, their form deteriorating as fatigue set in. An teacher was not watching. Then, they rested on their heels, curved their spines, and threw arm-punches that generated zero ground reaction force.
Pei Jing didn’t permit variance.
Every repetition was audited against clockwork perfection. His rear foot remained planted at forty-five degrees. His knee tracked directly over the second toe. His pelvic floor tightened to brace the lower-back spine before every strike.
Punch. The right fist shot forward, rotating ninety degrees at the final inch of extension. The impact with the damp mountain air produced a dull, whipping snap.
Retract. The elbow scraped his ribs on the return path, storing elastic energy in the broad back muscles.
Punch.
One hour. Two hours.
The pain in his thighs ceased being an emotional experience and became a numerical variable. His body heat rose to thirty-eight degrees. Sweat dripped from his chin, carving dark circles in the grey river mud between his feet.
At one hundred and twenty minutes, the dark rock HUD clicked:
The heat flush returned, sinking deeper into his muscle bellies.
The muscle strands in his triceps and chest muscles tightened in tight, timed together waves. He looked at his right hand. The skin over the metatarsal knuckles had darkened slightly, the epidermal layer thickening into a firm, leathery pad.
“Twenty percent,” he breathed.
He picked up a dry plum leaf from the ground, tossed it into the air, and struck. His fist caught the leaf three inches before it touched the mud, punching through the brittle center without disturbing the outer veins.
Clean slowdown. Zero wasted heavy rush.
The living bill arrived twenty minutes later.
Pei Jing sat on the split-pine bench, washing his muddy feet in the water trough. A violent cramp seized his belly wall, twisting his stomach into a knot so tight he had to plant both hands on his knees to keep from folding forward.
His vision greyed at the edges.
His body was screaming for substrate. The Ledger had forced body repair and tendon reconstruction, but it couldn’t manufacture amino acids or calcium out of nothingness. To fuel the twenty percent gain, his liver had empty its entire stored energy store. Now his system was beginning to catabolize fat under the skin and muscle proteins to protect heart function.
If he tried Day 3 on an empty stomach, the Ledger would cannibalize his own flesh to meet the ten percent mandate.
The courtyard gate creaked open.
A man walked into the yard, his footsteps heavy, uneven. He dragged slightly in the wet gravel.
He wore an indigo coat stained dark with grease and iron dust, the hem stiff with red mud from the southern hills. Over his shoulder hung a coarse hemp sack containing three broken iron chisels. His face was weathered like split cedar, scored with deep lines around the mouth and eyes, his black hair streaked with ash-white at the temples.
Patriarch of the Second Branch, Pei Hongcheng.
In his left hand, the man held a ten-inch cast-iron tobacco pipe, its bowl soot-blackened, a thin wisp of bitter grey smoke trailing from the rim.
Hongcheng stopped five paces inside the gate. His tired eyes swept over the courtyard. The mud churned up by bare feet, the hardwood practice post, and his third son sitting on the bench with an empty bowl and wet knuckles.
Clack. Clack.
Hongcheng tapped the iron bowl of his pipe against the heel of his leather boot. Two charred specks of wild mountain leaf dropped into the gravel.
“You took the sling off,” the father said. His voice was gravel dragged across an anvil.
“The bone has formed a union,” Pei Jing replied, standing up from the bench. “Splinting beyond forty-eight hours causes tendon atrophy.”
Hongcheng walked to the bench, his joints popping with a dry, stiff sound. He set the heavy sack of chisels down, sat on the edge of the wood. Then he looked at the Black Mountain Whetstone.
“Steward Liu told the elders you broke the courtyard rules,” Hongcheng said. He pulled a pinch of coarse, sun-dried tobacco from a deer-skin pouch at his waist. “He claims you threatened him with an audit.”
“I told him one peck of millet provides four hundred calories. That’s an arithmetic watching, not a threat.”
Hongcheng paused, his thumb packing the bitter leaf into the iron bowl. He reached into his coat, pulled out a piece of flint and steel. Then he struck a spark onto the charred cotton tinder. The red glow flared, lighting up his swollen knuckles.
“Arithmetic doesn’t feed a family in Azure Province, Jing’er,” Hongcheng said quietly, blowing a cloud of harsh, pungent smoke toward the grey sky. “Power feeds people. Iron feeds people. The Zhao Clan raised the river tax by another copper per metal bar this morning. If our south mine can’t produce fifty piculs of refined pig-iron by the first of next month, the County Judge will revoke our mining permit.”
He looked at Pei Jing’s knuckles.
“Your grandfather was a Seventh-Rank Sergeant in the Border Guard. He had iron bones. He could lift a bronze caldron with one arm. But he died in this town with three arrows in his back, paid for by merchants who smiled at him in tea houses.”
Hongcheng reached deep into the breast of his greasy coat.
He withdrew a small bundle wrapped in an oiled cabbage leaf, placing it on top of the Black Mountain Whetstone beside the three copper coins.
“Eat,” the father said.
Pei Jing unfolded the cabbage leaf. Inside lay two ounces of dried salt mutton—hard as wood, crusted with coarse grey salt—and three steamed sorghum cakes that had dried into solid bricks.
Beside the food, Hongcheng laid down five copper cash.
“The mine had two spare coins from the charcoal purchase,” Hongcheng said. He stared at the mud between his boots. “The mutton was my ration for the evening shift. I can’t eat it. My teeth are loose from forge fumes.”
Pei Jing looked at the five copper coins, then at the dried mutton.
In the currency of Cloudford Town, five coppers was nothing to the elders of the First Branch, who spent half a silver coin on a single pot of green tea. But in the south mine, five coppers bought five iron nails or half a bowl of rice wine for a man whose lungs were burning from rock dust.
This was Hongcheng’s personal reserve.
“Father,” Pei Jing said.
“Don’t speak,” Hongcheng rasped, standing up and shouldering the sack of broken chisels. “Take the food. But put down the fist forms. A boy without spiritual roots who swings his fists in the mud only makes the Zhao Clan laugh. If you want to survive, learn to write receipts for the ore wagons. An accountant lives longer than a swordsman.”
The father turned and limped out of the courtyard, the gate clicking shut behind his stooped shoulders.
Pei Jing stood beside the bench.
He didn’t waste time with sentiment. If he let his throat tighten up now, he wouldn’t be able to swallow. Instead, he took the dried salt mutton, put it into his mouth, and began to chew.
The meat was tough as cured leather, salty enough to burn his gums. But as his spit broke down the protein, the hollow, twisting ache in the belly quieted. He ate the sorghum cakes, washing the dry meal down with cold water from the trough.
The slate HUD refreshed:
Pei Jing picked up the five copper cash from the whetstone and added them to the three in his sleeve.
Total capital: eight copper cash.
“An accountant lives longer,” Pei Jing murmured, looking at the Black Mountain Whetstone. “He was correct. But an accountant who can’t enforce his ledger is merely a clerk waiting for his throat to be cut.”
He sat down on the bench, took the iron skinning knife from the table, and laid its edge against the wet dark rock.
Scrape. Hiss.
“Day two complete,” he said to the empty courtyard. “Eight days to forced payout.”