On the fifteenth day in the pit, ash came down the chimney like gray snow. It settled on the anvil, the floor, and Pei Jing’s blackened arms. He left it where it fell. He was sitting beside the grinding trough with the new blade across his leather trousers.
The iron bar had become a broad cleaver with a square nose. The blade was four feet from collar to nose. He had marked twenty-eight inches for the cutting edge. The fifteen-inch grip would bring the finished cleaver to five feet three inches. The tang still lay bare beyond the collar. The five qi channels lay sealed in the spine. The lodestones in its belly moved when he tilted the blade. Now he had to give all that weight an edge it could trust.
Sword Sovereign Xiao had shown him how to part the air with a swing, but the old sword intent expected a blade that could hold one clean line. A thin edge would bite easily and might break the first time it hit one of the old flying swords. Pei Jing wanted a cutting edge with enough star iron behind it to survive that first blow and the next one.
