They moved to a private room with blackwood chairs and a low cedar table. Snow-pine charcoal smoldered in a bowl. Its smoke took away the last trace of the pill’s scent.
Ye Qinghan sat across from Pei Jing in a plain gray coat. A silver pin held her hair back. The Nameless Iron sword rested across her knees. Pei Jing knew the way she held her right hand near the guard. She had stood the same way when she first warned him about the sound traps in Xiao’s tomb.
She looked at him for a breath. Then she looked down at the three flasks. Feng sat beside her, with both hands flat on his knees.
Ye Qinghan lifted the stopper of the second flask with frost-iron pincers. She held one pill up and turned it slowly. She let her divine sense pass over all nine rings. The pine charcoal clicked as an ember broke in the bowl.
“Less than one tenth of a percent residue,” she said. “The cold set the rings all the way through. Almost everything in the Snow-Bone Ganoderma is still there.”
She checked the third flask, then put the pills back and set the pincers down.
