The cave sheltered Pei Jing from the rain and the searchlights. Outside, the Eight-Trigram Locking Array gave the wet pines a pale violet shine. He heard the Cloud-Piercer’s winches and the tread of men spreading out among the trees. When their boots stopped moving, he would have to get up.
He sat with his back against the granite. The bronze tablet stirred in the storage space his core held within his skeleton. He opened his palms. Dark grains flowed out of them and gathered into the eight-hundred-pound slab. It settled on the floor with a thud he felt through the back of his head.
Pei Jing set the Black Mountain Whetstone beside it. He drew his small file over the working surface of the stone in slow, even strokes. The old rasp gave him something to listen to while the tablet shook at a pitch just below hearing. He could feel what had driven earlier readers mad. If he let the bronze set the pace of his thoughts, the tremor would reach his dantian before he finished the first line.
He read the first band from left to right. The old sect manuals called qi the breath of heaven. They spoke of the right bloodline and the right prayers. The first line on the bronze began with the weight of a speck of matter.
