Biology didn’t grant extensions on defaulted accounts.
No matter how many Pure Grade pearls circulated through the rear window. No matter how many spirit stones filled the leather pouches beneath the floor, the physical ledger of Old Monster Gui’s body had reached its final reconciliation.
On the thirtieth morning, the old potion-maker didn’t rise from his straw cot.
His hickory cane lay on the floorboards where it had slipped from his numb fingers during the night. His bronze peg-leg was unstrapped. He leaned against the cold dark rock wall like an abandoned iron fitting.
Pei Jing knelt beside the cot with a clean heavy clay basin of warm water and a fresh linen towel.
Gui lay on his back, his head propped on two folded wool blankets. His face was the color of weathered limestone, his cheekbones jutting through thin, parchment-like skin that had turned a dull, leaden slate-grey.
Every breath the old man drew was a terrible, clockwork labor.
It was no longer the wet, bubbling wheeze of an inflamed chest. It was a dry, hollow, clicking rattle. The clear sound signed name of hard calcium stones grinding against each other inside a desiccated lung cavity.
