The northern wind didn’t blow with the clean, biting chill of alpine snow. It drifted across the barren borderlands like the breath of an underground fire that had long gone cold. It dragged with it the bitter stench of hardened bone, crushed limestone powder, and rotten-egg ash.
Lin Tao pulled his charcoal wool traveling cloak tighter across his chest, adjusting the leather sling that secured the heavy wooden carrying case at his hip. Inside that oiled pine case rested the Grand Ancestor’s Precursor Relic, recovered from the hundredth floor of the Demon Trial Pagoda. The dense six-sided prism of star-iron and brass alloy hummed at a barely noticeable pitch. Its dormant bus lines shook in subtle synchrony with the irregular deep-rock flux of the northern rift.
Beside him, Tie Shan stepped forward with heavy, measured strides. The giant’s triple-soled boots crushed frozen shale into grey dust with every pace. Across his broad shoulders rested the familiar twelve-pound cold-drawn iron pry-bar, its midnight-blue whale oil finish dull and matte under the overcast grey sky. At his waist hung the six-pound hardened steel wedge and the eight-inch mallet, ready for immediate deployment. The crimson silk sash across his chest, stitched with silver tigers, fluttered stiffly in the freezing northern gale.
