The fire at the central granary was not yet an inferno. It was a creeping, hungry beast of blue sulfur flame and acrid white smoke.
From the moment the pitch fuse met the dry alpine rye grass, Pei Jing calculated he had ninety seconds before the first clay jar of wolf-bile powder blew up its high-pressure gas reserves. Those ninety seconds belonged entirely to Phase Four: the decapitation of the guard post’s junior command.
He didn’t remain in the lower bailey to watch the fire take hold.
Turning on his heel, Pei Jing bounded up the thirty granite steps toward the middle terrace.
His Python Tendon mechanics allowed him to clear four steps with every stride, his deer-hide boots touching the wet stone with zero sound rebound. With his silvery-white bone marrow eliminating all muscular lag, his thigh muscles fired like high-pressure pistons. It carried his one-hundred-and-ninety-pound frame up the incline in three seconds flat. He paused before the threshold. Then, his fingers brushed the Black Mountain Whetstone secured in his sash, checking that the heavy dark rock block had not shifted during the sprint. The contact gave him an instant of cold, steady focus before he breached the door.
