The mist smelled of sulfur and wet stone. The Cloud-Piercer had gone back toward Grand Desolation City. Pei Jing reckoned it would reach the docks in forty-five minutes. He wanted to be below the crag by then.
He pulled on ox-hide gloves and laid four empty sacks on the granite. Then he went to the place where the Dragon-Scale Thunder Halberd had fallen. He freed it from the gauntlet with his brass tongs and lifted it out of the mud. The six-foot weapon weighed seventy-two pounds. Its bond to Beitang had died, but the star iron still held a little of the charge it had taken during the fight.
Pei Jing laid it across a rock and drew the Astral Bone Blade out of his marrow space again. Three measured blows divided the shaft into lengths he could use at a forge. He pried off the three-pound sleeve of spirit copper and gathered the rest of the metal, including the crescent head. He wrapped the star iron in canvas and drew it into storage. It would bring about eight hundred Mid-Grade Spirit Stones at a smelter.
The jar at the bottom of his basket had gone quiet. He lifted the ring out with the tongs and watched it in the light. The amethyst stayed dull. A thread of Chaos Qi opened the space inside.
