Pei Jing had just put the Black Mountain Whetstone away when the wind died. The pines along the ridge went still. The sour smell of the salt flats vanished. In its place came a cold, metallic smell, like wet copper and scorched tin.
He stopped on a shelf of shale above the post road. The Nine-Fold Astral Bone Blade still lay across his back. A small pressure in his Dantian made the core miss a beat. It was the air changing around him. The drop came so fast that his ears popped twice in three breaths.
Then he heard the sky tear.
The sound was dry, like a bolt of canvas ripping between two millstones. He’d seen violet light behind the clouds when he left the overhang. Now he could see the old seam the caravan master had told him about. A thin black line ran out from it, farther south over the Black Basalt Crags.
It didn’t close. It split again toward the Heaven-Reaching Range. The black inside it had no stars. Purple smoke poured from the tear and spread over the clouds.
Eighteen freight carts stood on the road three hundred paces below. The oxen went to their knees in the dust. Foam ran out of their nostrils. Drivers jumped down and shouted in the Cangzhou dialect.
