Ling Xiao backed away along the rail. His jade sword hung low in his hand, and its edge rattled when he tried to lift it. His eyes went past Pei Jing to the ruined pillars and the altar beneath the overhang. He began to edge toward it.
“You forced this, peasant.”
From a fold in his robe he drew a dark bone disc three inches across. Blood had dried in the marks cut into it. The mark on it matched the line he’d seen running from the altar to the workshop. The plan had called it the banquet feed. He hadn’t known it could be opened from here with a single seal.
“You think this mountain was built on stone and iron?” Ling Xiao said. “There are forty thousand lives feeding it. I’ll burn every one of them if that’s what it takes to reach Nascent Soul.”
He put the sigil on the red stone altar. The mountain shook. Red light spread through veins carved into the stone. Far below the terrace, old blood wards woke along the channels from the Fourth Peak. Pei Jing could feel them searching for anything that still carried life qi.
On the lower terraces, two hundred wounded Inner Court guards began to scream. A red mist rose from their robes. Men too weak to reach the stairs dragged themselves toward them, then went still. In the dormitories, sick students and mortal servants dropped where they stood. The array’s pull spread from the mountain toward…
