Pearl Port lay between two black headlands on the Southern Sea. Three hundred fishing boats and trading junks rocked in the bay. The wind smelled of kelp and hot pitch. Tax collectors from Cangzhou seldom came this far south.
The Vanguard Martial Academy stood three hundred feet above the surf. The Cheng family had run body-training halls here for years. The recruits in the yard knew their local drills. Pei Jing had come to fit the new manual to what they already did. Its walls enclosed timber rings, earth barracks and a parade ground of hard granite. From the balcony, Pei Jing watched five thousand young people in indigo tunics take a breath together.
They stepped. Five thousand fists went out into the salt wind.
Every one of them had been turned away by a sect examiner for lack of spiritual talent. Now their backs stayed straight under the force of the blow, and each foot landed with the same sound. On a nearby terrace, two hundred students passed heavy training stones between them. Farther along the cliff, another group climbed by holds they could barely see from below.
Pei Jing went down to the training ground with the instructors.
