Dawn reached Sky-Piercing Peak. The granite horn above the clouds was gone. A terrace of black glass lay in its place, two hundred paces across. The air smelled of scorched quartz, and frost was already gathering on the dark rim.
Volley after volley had filled Pei Jing’s ears with thunder and the sound of space tearing. In the quiet that followed the eighty-first strike, he could hear the rock cooling around his legs. It had been white when the spear came down. Now the last red had faded, and a gray crust had formed all the way to his knees.
He waited for his new qi to settle. He had read of elders who came out of a Nascent Soul breakthrough so weak their students had to feed them snow-ginseng by the spoonful. He looked down at his hands. They held steady.
He put his weight on one leg and drew the other up. The cooling rock broke in long pieces. He stepped onto the glass with bare feet. A black crust flaked away from his skin. The new skin beneath was dull as steel and could seal against poison or the pressure of the void. The trial had left a tear in one of his deeper channels. Now his ribs moved easily with each breath, and the new qi was bringing the injured organs back into their old rhythm. The deeper seams from old wounds remained visible beneath the fresh skin.
