Put six hundred spirit stones on one counter in Red Mist Valley and everyone from the shopkeeper to the gate guard would remember your boots. By the time you reached the outer wall, men would be waiting in the fog with bone knives.
In his old work, a sudden change in buying habits had told Pei Jing more than a clean ledger. He spread the four purchases across the valley, with time between them.
The rain let up at the fifth bell. He left the cave in a patched sheepskin vest and a greasy smith’s apron. An iron frame on his shoulders held old pick heads and chisels. Coal dust hid the shine in his hair.
He found Old Man Geng between two foundries in Northern Smelter Alley. Geng had a wooden leg and a Layer Four aura. He bought roots the child miners dug out of the deep copper fissures.
“Binding root,” Pei Jing said, putting some scrap chisel tips on the stone. “Something that won’t split when I wrap a handle.”
“Brambles,” Geng said. “Ten coppers.”
“Too brittle. What about the vine hanging there?”
“Three-Hundred-Year Iron-Root Vine. Forty yards below the water line. Copper poison nearly killed two diggers. A hundred and fifty low-grade stones.”
