The tenth morning began in silence. For nine days the vault had rung with the sound of more than ten thousand blades. Now the veins of qi beneath the rock had come into balance. The weight pressing on Pei Jing’s shoulders was still a little over four times what he felt on the surface, but there was no tremor in the stone.
He stood at the mouth of the last bridge. The magma was a long way below, and two hundred paces of open space lay between him and the floating black island. On a throne at its center sat the skeleton of Sword Sovereign Xiao.
Pei Jing stayed where he was. He had one session left.
Two more hours. He reached over his shoulder and closed his hand around the coarse wrapping of the Cloud-Splitter. The blade usually scraped when he drew it. This time it came out with a hiss, trailing a bend in the air. Cracks ran all the way from the handle to the tip.
The cleaver had seen him through years of butchering, fights in the mountains and sect ambushes. Even after its reforging, these last nine days had asked more of it than all that work put together. He was about to ask for a little more.
