Pei Jing stepped down from the air. His boots touched the pale dust at the bottom of the crater. Nothing rose around them. He could feel the weight of his descent pass through his bones and into the bedrock.
Broken wheels, burnt spars, and parts of siege engines lay in the dust. North of the crater, seventy Cloud Mist swordsmen came in three lines. Pale frost ran along their blades. They had been trained to leave no gap between one sword’s reach and the next.
South of him, eighty spear guards followed five bronze chariots that had come in from the reserve line. Their spearheads burned in a long red row. Behind them, crews leaned over the winches of the crossbow wagons. The seventy swordsmen and eighty spearmen were the first ranks. More than fifty hired fighters and scouts were still coming through the rocks behind them. The closer they got, the more they could see that Pei Jing stood alone.
He took the Black Mountain Whetstone from its pouch. He tapped the flat of it against his right palm.
Tap.
The sound carried past the wheels.
Tap.
The core turned under his ribs. Its nine rings gathered speed, and he felt their pull reach past the surface of his skin. On the third tap, he let the pull spread.
