The sulfur canals ran twenty feet below the street. Pale lichen lit the arches, and steam rose orange through the vents in the floor. A greasy film moved slowly over the wastewater.
Pei Jing stepped into a dry recess three hundred paces west of Drainage Pipe Nine and set down his pack. He let the limp go. His spine settled with a few soft clicks. He stood five feet eleven again, with the qi flowing freely through his right knee.
He wet the Black Mountain Whetstone with three drops of water from an overhead pipe. Forty passes on each side of the cleaver brought his pulse down to twelve. He wiped the blade and put the stone away. Then he put on Daoist Jing’s dark robe and bamboo hat.
At the junction of Canal Seven and Pipe Nine, he moved along a high iron line beneath the vault, his boots riding a film of qi. He stopped on a girder about two hundred paces from the drop.
Pipe Nine was four feet across and half full of black slime. A loose grating hung over its mouth. Water fell from the rim in slow drops. Through Spatial Vision, Pei Jing could see pale yellow grains spread over the bars and the stones leading up to them. Blood-Phosphorus Scent Dust. It clung to leather without giving off qi. The cartel’s hounds could follow it for forty-eight hours, even through rain.
