At the seventh bell, the hum under the platform settled into a steady note. Pei Jing took off his boots and stood barefoot on the cold basalt. He could feel the faint shifts in the stone when a heavy sword passed overhead.
He left the Cloud-Splitter in its sleeve while he got used to the weight. He sank into the Three-Point Earth Anchor with his feet flat and his hands raised. Even empty, his arms felt as though someone had hung weights from his wrists.
Two thousand blades passed above the platform every minute. Pei Jing picked one to watch. It was a curved cavalry saber with a notched brass hilt and a chipped tip. The missing piece made the saber whistle as it turned. It passed him, caught the pull of a nearby vein, and curved back around. Twenty-two seconds later, the saber entered the same arc at the same height. It made the same sound.
He watched it come around twice more. Under the roar of the storm there were patterns he could follow, one blade at a time. The earth veins drove them like the works of a clock. If he learned the path of one, he could start to see what carried the others.
