Two days after touching the false ceiling, Pei Jing sat in a grotto eight hundred feet below Iron Peak. Iron Peak was part of the Cloud Mist range. He had left Sky-Piercing Peak to trace the feeder line here, then chosen the grotto because the rock hid him from the intake above. Water fell from the limestone roof into a bowl it had worn in a flat piece of granite. Each drop made the same hollow sound.
Three rushlights burned beside him. Their smoke smelled of wet stone and old fat. He had taken his outer robe off. A thin white mark lay across his collarbone where the Black Tiger Gang had broken it. Other scars showed on his back and along his ribs. He felt the wet air against every one of them as he leaned over the table.
He rolled waxed paper across the stone and set pieces of iron ore on the corners. The long sheet held copies of thirty-six broken inscriptions. The World-Severing Tablet he’d bought in Grand Desolation had given him the main text. He had filled some of the gaps with rubbings from old ruins and the backs of formation plates. Most people passed those marks without looking. The stone held no qi worth taking.
