When the jade door shut, he couldn’t hear the market bells or the debt guards. Inside Cave Forty-Two, Pei Jing heard the spring drip into its basin and felt the Grade Two spirit vein pulse through the dark serpentine dais. Beads of condensed qi fell from the walls into the gutters.
He sat cross-legged with the Black Mountain Whetstone in front of him. From his deerskin purse he took five mid-grade stones. Each was a six-sided green prism three inches long, with a faint smell of ozone.
He set a thin slate plate on the dais and cut five shallow channels into the plate. When he left, the rented stone would still be whole. Metal to the west, wood to the east, water north, fire south, and earth beneath his seat. He put a stone into each node.
The last stone woke the others. A hum rose from the earth vein at thirty beats a second. Qi gathered over the dais. In ten seconds it went from four times the normal density to seven. White and violet ribbons floated six inches above the floor.
Before he began, Pei Jing drew his chipped cleaver. He wet the Black Mountain Whetstone with three drops from the spring and made forty passes on each side. The scrape of the steel cleared the lower city out of his head. His pulse fell to sixteen. He let forty seconds pass between breaths. The old stone drew stray sparks from his qi into the bedrock.
