On the fourth day Pei Jing returned to the recess and lifted the ward. A little blue blood still drifted from the crab’s head. It gave the water a bitter copper smell.
The shell was eighteen feet across. Taking it would cost him almost all the room in his pouch. What he wanted was in the legs.
He took his eight-inch skinning cleaver from his thigh and knelt by the first joint. The shell was hard as cast iron. He worked the blade through the soft seam until the leg came free. A pale core of marrow filled the hollow inside. Water qi ran through it, clean and strong. One pound cooked with salt and wild yams could feed his Chaos Root through twelve hours of hard work.
He cut the other nine legs free. From all ten he took a hundred and eight pounds of marrow. He divided it into lengths, sealed them in oiled bags, and stowed them beside his casks of spring water. He’d be able to eat well through three months of training.
Then he took the hammer and chisel to the meteorite. A two-inch neck of ore held the sixty-pound spur to the main body. He set the chisel against it.
