The northern wall of Cloud Mist Mountain faced the wind from the Great Steppes. The cliff dropped two thousand feet into a canyon of black firs and frozen waterfalls. Snow came off the peaks in sheets. Wherever the wind could reach the granite, it had covered it with black ice.
Pei Jing had left Pylon 19 behind that morning. He cut 20, 21 and 22 along the eastern circuit, then cut Pylon 23 at the foot of the northern wall. By the time he reached Pylon 24, he was hanging fifteen hundred feet above the canyon. Three fingers of his left hand held a crack in the rock. His tunic snapped in the wind. Frost had gathered along the brim of his hat, but the five-viscera fire kept his hands warm.
Pylon 24 was almost flush with the cliff. The northern anchors were made of star iron and cold-refined spirit steel. Each ran deep into the granite. Together the twelve had carried more than half of the Cloud-Swallowing Grand Array’s pull even when the other sectors still worked. Now the strain on Pylon 24 was four times what it had been built to bear.
Pei Jing laid his right palm on the metal. The sound rose into his bones like the whine of a barge rope in a storm. He followed the pull up toward the Seventh Peak. If he simply cut the pylon, the release of the qi inside it would tear a piece out of the cliff. He…
