Red Mist Valley had grown since Pei Jing first came through its gate. Galleries ran along both walls of the gorge. Hemp bridges hung between them, and timber winches lifted supplies to rooms high in the rock. Fifty thousand people lived where the old market had once stood.
From a room on the highest eastern terrace, Pei Jing could smell coal smoke, roasting mutton and sulfur from the smelters. A peddler below his window was arguing over the price of herbs. Two men in worn coats had stopped to look at a chipped knife. Some of the people in the valley had damaged spirit channels. Others had been turned away when a sect examiner found no root worth training.
He set the Black Mountain Whetstone on the elm table. The Astral Bone Blade whispered across it. He worked the two sides until the voices below had faded into one sound. Then he wiped the edge, put the stone away and drew the bamboo paper toward him.
The sect manuals he had read liked to say things such as The Golden Dragon rides the Vermilion Cloud to pluck the Purple Lotus. A student could spend years paying a tutor to find out what his own feet were supposed to be doing.
