The three bronze flasks plummeted from the timber drying rafters in a shrieking green arc.
Emerald necro-acid hissed through the air, trailing plumes of acid-burning vapor that dissolved the falling drops of stone water before they could touch the stone.
The medicine cave was vast, hollowed out of living karst limestone by hundreds of years of slave labor. Dozens of waist-high copper chimney pipes jutted from the damp floor, channeling boiling stone water from deep underground springs into massive bronze cooking pots where foul concoctions simmered over banked embers. Along the outer edge walls stood rows of curing racks and two iron-bound supply carts laden with drying monkshood and dried viper gall, their timbers already groaning beneath the toxic foul fog.
Lu Chen reacted without a split second’s pause.
His heavy leather boots exploded against the damp flat stone slabs in a violent lateral vault, his corded thigh muscles driving him eight paces sideways behind the heavy oak wheel of the nearest medicine cart. His fifteen-and-a-half-pound Calamity Cleaver swept up to guard his throat, the black glass-black iron absorbing the crimson glare of the phosphorous lanterns.
CRASH.
The three flasks shattered against the limestone floor where he had stood a heartbeat before.
