While editing the book I came across a passage that seems best to invoke Kevin Jenkins's atmospheric cover - a scene inspired, as cineastes and wuxia enthusiasts will not need to be told, by King Hu's classic A Touch of Zen:
"You are standing in the weed-choked courtyard. Pampas grass stands all around to the level of your shoulders, dampening your clothes with dew as you press forward. Clouds of midges rise like smoke into the air to swirl about in the low sunlight..."