At sunset, Pei Jing sat on a granite boulder above the Iron Rift Basin. The last sunlight reached the ridges and went out. The smoke coming up from the forest had thinned enough for him to see the two halves of the White-Jade Dreadnought among the trees.
Cang Yunzi had crawled out with broken ribs and a burst dantian. A small cloud skiff had carried him north toward the sect’s mountain halls. The officer who used the earth talisman had gone ahead of him. In the south, a few retainers had dragged Gu Tianjiao away from his wrecked chariot. The Half-Step Golden Core structure had collapsed, leaving him at Early Foundation, and the men who carried him left their banners behind in the mud.
Below the ridge, conscripts and camp hands walked out in small groups. The officers who had ordered them into the trenches had stopped giving orders. A boy took a Cloud Mist badge off his coat and dropped it beside a broken wheel. Two women who had been hauling supplies down to the front turned east together. Pei Jing watched them follow the dry edge of the road until the shadows hid them.
The fighting in the basin was over. The camps still smelled of burnt pitch and cedar. The autumn wind carried that smell a little farther each time it moved through the basin.
