At dawn, a slab of mossy granite shifted in a ravine forty miles west of Grand Desolation City. Pei Jing stepped out of the fissure. The cold air smelled of pine. Before he climbed high enough to see the highway, he felt the wagon wheels through the rock.
No scout kites crossed the sky. The low bushes and the wet shale around him were quiet. He sat long enough to sort the pieces of the identity he had used at the auction. There was the bronze token for Box Thirty-Seven, the stained alchemist’s smock, and his copy of the consignment contract signed Jing. The birch-bark voucher had admitted him for the first appraisal. He wrapped them together and put them away. The auction records would keep the name beside the sale of three flasks of pills and the purchase of the tablet. The clothes and papers could stay in storage.
He put on his faded hemp coat and drew the lead-lined bamboo hat down to his brow. He took the Astral Bone Blade out of his marrow space and strapped it across his back in its sharkskin sheath. The bracers were empty after the fight on the crag. He replaced the lost astral needles with twenty-four of the ordinary cold-iron needles he had packed separately before the crag fight. The Precursor Tablet, and eight hundred and thirty-six High-Grade Spirit Stones stayed in his marrow. The salvaged metal stayed in Beitang’s ring.
