Pei Jing climbed the Grand Western Incline in a dark wool coat and a linen headcloth. The ash staff stayed packed and so did the chipped cleaver. He meant to lease the cave as Shen Wen and speak in his ordinary voice instead of Daoist Jing’s rasp. The ninety-seven jade prisms were safe in his purse.
Four hundred feet up, the mountain wind began to thin the yellow fog. At eight hundred feet, the silver-mailed City Guard checked the ten-day token he’d already renewed at the Guild Hall under the terms of his Cell 114 booking and took two loose shards for the toll. The guard checked the date and bearer seal. The token carried no name, and he made no entry beside the toll. Then they waved him through.
Above the checkpoint, flying carriages drawn by silver-horned stags passed along white gravel roads. Pavilion windows displayed five-hundred-year ginseng, jade array plates, and pills that cost hundreds of mid-grade stones. The people in silk robes walked past without thinking about the hundreds of thousands coughing in the mud below.
Cloud-Breeze Valley stood twelve hundred feet above the crater floor. The air smelled of pine, granite, and snow. White marble pavilions lined the cliff, with arched bamboo bridges and herb gardens below clear waterfalls. Qi flowed through jade channels in the rock. Pei Jing could feel the difference in his first breath.
