The wooden yoke bit two inches into Lu Chen’s shoulders, creaking under four hundred pounds of rotting viscera.
He didn’t adjust his stride.
Each step landed flat on the wet limestone stairs. It pressed water and grease from the slimy moss beneath his straw sandals.
Around him, the underground air was twenty-two degrees, stale, and thick as warm grease.
It smelled of fermented sheep blood, rancid human animal fat. The nauseating sweet fragrance of crushed winter orchids.
Seventy yards below the mountain castle wall of the Hundred Blossom Sect, the world narrowed to a cave carved from damp limestone.
Terraced stone trenches stretched into the gloom, lit only by pale blue glowing lamps hung from dripping stalactites.
Inside the trenches grew tens of thousands of Ghost-Face White Orchids.
