The shaft opened onto the Great Basalt Shelf, three thousand feet above the forge. Rain swept across the black rock. Fifty yards to the south, waves struck the barrier reef and threw foam into the gray sky.
Pei Jing stopped three paces below the lip of the shaft. The stone overhang hid his face. He leaned against it and touched the worn corner of his grandfather’s Black Mountain Whetstone beneath his vest. The stone was cold even through his wet clothes. He knew every dip and nick in it.
The shelf was eighty paces wide, with a cliff on one side and a drop into the pit on the other. Twelve bronze barricades stood across the path to the coastal shoals. Fifty guards waited behind them in scale armor. Their crossbows were loaded, and those nearest the open ground held long pikes.
Nine black and silver pennants snapped in the rain. The three parts of the Nine-Ring Spirit-Suppressing Array drew loose qi out of the air and sent it into the rock. The bronze barricades had their own barrier, the Nine-Palace Bronze Lock. The pale line between the plates was still dark, waiting for Zhao’s signal. Pei Jing felt the pull even in the shaft. He could see why nobody had tried to fly over the wall.
