Before dawn, the wind over Thunder Cliff eased. Stars were fading in the east. Pei Jing crossed the powdery floor of the crater to the workbench under the overhang.
The Cloud-Splitter lay on the slab. It was three point eight feet from the end of the grip to the tip, with a single black edge and a white spine. He had forged it in twelve hours from twenty-eight dragon vertebrae, eight pounds of star iron, and the steel of his old blade. With its fittings it weighed forty pounds.
He took it by the ray-skin grip. The weapon came off the slab as easily as a dry pine twig.
Out in the open, Pei Jing sent a pulse from the Nine-Zhang Crystal Dao Foundation down his arm and into the handle. The blade answered with a clear, high hum. The star-iron edge vibrated ten thousand times a second. Air bent around the steel, but his grip stayed steady. The dragon bone held the vibration and sent it down the edge.
Thirty paces away, a twenty-foot granite pillar stood in the rubble. It had held up part of the roof for centuries. Its base was still fixed in the mountain.
Pei Jing stepped up to it and swung the cleaver in an easy, level arc.
