Torches hissed over the Great Square of Red Mist Valley. Ten thousand people had come out into the damp wind. Some wore caravan armor. Others had come straight from the forges with soot on their faces. Nearly every hand held one of the pamphlets that had fallen from the terraces at nightfall.
They had read for four hours by lantern light. Some people had tried the first stance in the dirt. Others wanted to know who had written the book and whether the sects would come for them if they kept a copy.
Pei Jing sat on a crate at the top of the central watchtower. He ate a spoonful of bitter ginseng paste and washed it down with three swallows of well water. Then he drew the qi from fifty high-grade spirit stones. The Armored Nascent Soul took the power in quietly.
He drew the Astral Bone Blade over the Black Mountain Whetstone. The sound cleared the tightness from his chest. He put the tools away, then walked to the rail.
Pei Jing had learned to let his voice ride the deep sound of the valley. Now he sent his first words down into the square.
“I was sixteen when I lay half dead in the alley behind the grain stalls in Cloudford,” he said. “I think the people who left me there knew I had no spirit root. I think they counted on me being too weak to stop them.”
