The wind across the high saddles of Sword Saint Mountain carried the scent of frozen iron and ancient dark rock. Ten thousand paces above the cloud sea, the Nine-Peak Celestial Proving Grounds jutted into the upper air like the broken teeth of a buried giant statue. Frost clung to every sheer edge, not as soft snow. But as razor-thin sheets of rime ice that snapped like brittle glass beneath their iron-shod marching boots.
Lin Tao stopped at the edge of the northern promontory. His breath condensed into rapid plumes of pale steam. His gray linen coat, patched with coarse hemp along the left shoulder where royal fire had scorched it three provinces back, flapped wildly in the gale. Beside him, Tie Shan stood planted like an ancient boundary stone. The giant’s broad hands held the fourteen-pound star-iron pry-bar resting across his wide shoulders, his newly remodeled Diamond-Bone frame streaming unmoving thickness against the howling mountain draft.
“Wind is sharp,” Tie Shan said. His deep voice barely carried over the howling mountain drafts.
“The air pressure is dropping by four percent every hundred paces,” Lin Tao replied quietly, his fingers resting on the brass casing of his medical kit. “Keep your weight centered over your heels. The frost on this ledge is sitting on a slick layer of crushed mica. A single slip will send us three thousand paces into the southern gorge before gravity even finishes the math.”
