Lu Chen kicked the wooden door shut and dropped the heavy oak bar into its iron brackets.
The latch fell into place with a dull clank that echoed through the cramped lean-to behind the Seventh Ward dead-house.
Outside in the alley, a passing night-soil cart rumbled across the frozen ruts, its iron-rimmed wheels screeching against stone. The curses of the cart driver drowned out the hurried footsteps behind him, buying Lu Chen a few precious minutes.
He set the heavy clay pot crock of beef animal fat onto the scarred pine table.
Then his knees buckled.
A violent, freezing shudder tore through his chest cavity, knocking the wind from his lungs. He caught the edge of the table with both hands, his knuckles turning chalk-white against the dark wood.
His blood heat was dropping off a cliff.
The red tracking data blazed across his vision like burning coals.
Thirty-eight point six degrees. To any mortal in Black Water County, that was the heat of a feverish sickbed.
To Lu Chen, it was cellular starvation.
The black glass melted rock waste-veins running up his left forearm hardened rapidly, contracting beneath his skin like cooling glass rods. The brittle hardened channels pulled against his muscle tissue, threatening to splinter if he bent his elbow past ninety degrees.
He didn’t have time to light charcoal and boil broth.
With his right hand, Lu Chen drew his marrow-knife and sliced through the beeswax seal of the clay pot crock.
He wrenched the lid free. A heavy, pungent wave of raw beef suet and salted sheep fat filled the damp room.
Lu Chen carved out a slab of pale yellow animal fat the size of his fist. The cold animal fat was dense, waxy, and dotted with grains of coarse preservation salt.
He shoved the entire lump into his mouth.
He chewed twice, crushing the dense animal fat between his back teeth. Then he forced the heavy mass down his throat. The cold grease coated his tongue and throat-pipe like chilled wax.
He reached for the clay jug on the hearth, tilting a cup of lukewarm well water down his neck to wash it down.
Then he carved another slab. And another.
Nearly a full pound of high-thickness animal grease slid into his belly within sixty seconds.
For ten heartbeats, there was only cold nausea in his gut.
Then the Asura Crucible woke up.
Deep within his lower belly, an invisible fire door kicked open with a roar that echoed through his bone marrow. The packed fats didn’t undergo slow mortal digestion. They were dragged directly into the spirit crucible and burned up in an explosion of heat energy.
Heat blew up outward through his belly main heart artery like boiling oil pumped through copper pipes.
The heat wave crashed into his chest, flooding his subclavian arteries and surging down into his left arm.
The brittle black glass melted rock waste-veins greedily drank the molten flow. The glassy hardness softened, expanding under crushing pressure as forty-degree blood flushed out the creeping frostbite.
Thin wisps of white steam began to hiss from the pores of his left forearm.
Lu Chen exhaled a long plume of gray vapor, his chest muscle loosening as the cramping finally released its grip.
His blood heat locked firmly at forty point two degrees. Fire smooth speed had climbed to ninety-one percent.
The physical seizure was broken.
Then the second horror arrived.
The sudden burning of heat fuel stirred the eighty units of malice pooled inside his dantian.
The spiritual dregs of Lady Yan’s drown-curse and the marsh frost-wisp’s rotting chill flared against his optic nerves like burning pitch.
The walls of the lean-to began to warp.
The smell of beef animal fat vanished, replaced by the stale stench of canal mud and rotting river weeds.
Beneath his boots, the packed dirt floorboards turned semi-clear. It showed black, freezing water rushing beneath the room. Pale, waterlogged fingers sprouted from the gaps in the timber, their bloated nails clawing at his ankles.
“Cold...” a woman’s weeping voice hissed directly into his left ear. “It’s so cold down here...”
The shadows in the corners of the room stretched into weeping brides and drifting blue specters.
Dizzy head-spin pulled at his lower brain. The memory of his past life on Earth, of buzzing white lights and humming computer monitors, flickered like a dying candle, threatening to dissolve into the bottomless swamp of this rotting world.
If he gave in to the dizziness, his mind would shatter. That left only an empty husk to be inhabited by the Uncanny.
Lu Chen kept his eyes open. He recited no scriptures.
He reached into the lining of his left sleeve and pulled out a four-inch iron bone awl.
The iron was unpolished, rough from the blacksmith’s hammer, its tip sharpened to a cruel, three-sided needle.
Lu Chen placed the blunt base of the awl against the palm of his right hand. He set the iron point directly over the thick, calloused pad of his left palm, right below the lifeline.
He didn’t hesitate.
With a sharp, practiced thrust, he drove the iron point half an inch deep into his own flesh.
Crunch.
The iron punctured the tough outer skin and sank into the dense muscle beneath.
A blinding spike of pure, pure living agony flashed up his forearm nerve, cutting through the spectral hallucinations like a butcher’s axe through rotten twine.
Dark-crimson blood welled up around the iron shaft, hot and thick. It steamed faintly as it ran down the heel of his hand and dripped onto the pine table.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
The sound of his own blood hitting wood was solid. Heavy. Real.
Lu Chen looked at the crimson pool, his breathing steady, his voice quiet and firm in the empty room.
“Flesh breathes; blood resists; anchor checked.”
The words acted like an iron clamp on his mind.
The weeping voices died in mid-breath. The black water vanished from beneath the floor, replaced by honest, dry dirt.
The pale hands grasping at his boots dissolved into ordinary dust motes dancing in the dim daylight.
His mind was clear. The reality seam was locked.
Lu Chen pulled the bone awl from his palm with a steady tug. He wiped the blood from the iron shaft against a patch of clean sheepskin, returning the spike to its sheath in his sleeve.
From the shelf above the table, he took a roll of boiled hemp bandage and wrapped it tightly around his left palm. The clean, stinging ache anchored him to the present moment.
He bent his fingers. The tendons responded with crisp, clockwork care.
Then the alley outside went dead quiet.
Three distinct sets of heavy boots came to a halt right outside his wooden door.
The sound of iron-studded wrist wraps brushing against boiled leather was clear.
A heavy wooden heavy club slammed against the oak planks of the door with a splintering crash.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“Dead-house boy!” a harsh, scarred voice snarled through the cracks in the wood. “Open up!”
The timber shook in its frame, dust raining down from the low rafters.
“We know you’ve got five pounds of animal fat in there,” a second voice chuckled, rough and menacing. “Hand the pot through the window, and maybe we leave your kneecaps in one piece.”
“Don’t waste breath on a dead-man’s apprentice,” the scarred voice barked. “Kick the bar!”
Lu Chen stood in the center of the room, fully motionless.
The Crucible was humming at ninety-one percent. Forty point two degrees of molten heat circulated cleanly through his restored black glass melted rock waste-veins.
He reached down to the weapon sling at his hip.
His calloused fingers closed around the coarse handle of his twelve-pound notched ox-bone cleaver.
He lifted the heavy iron blade, resting the flat against his shoulder.
Another kick bucked the oak bar in its brackets. A crack raced up the plank beside it.
Lu Chen walked to the door and lifted the bar himself.