On the nineteenth morning, the stone under the forge began to shake. Every minute and a half, magma climbed the bronze gates and fell back with a roar. The twelve magnetic pillars under Sword Sovereign Xiao’s dais were coming into line. When they moved together, their pull reached the anvil through the bedrock.
Pei Jing stood over the blade. The five channels lay sealed beneath the spine, and six dark teeth rose above them. He felt the lodestones shift when he turned it on the anvil. The marrow inside it pulsed in time with his own heart. He had one fold left to finish.
In the ten days he had spent studying Xiao’s sword intent, he had learned to feel the lines of tension that ran through the space around him. They were as real to him now as the grain in a piece of wood. A blade that cut across them had to force its way through the air and any ward in its path. Xiao’s last secret was how to set the grain of a blade along those lines. The old text called it the World-Cleaving Void Grain.
Pei Jing unwound the cloth from his hands. As soon as his right palm touched the bare tang, he felt all twenty pieces of the dragon’s spine inside the star iron. He brought the Black Mountain Whetstone up to the edge and kept the little chasing hammer within reach.
