The hooded lantern swung in Barnaby’s left hand, casting an amber circle across the slick shale behind the warm spring.
Kaelen groaned softly, swinging his legs over the side of the hemp hammock. He slipped his feet into his wool slippers, pulled his cotton sleeping robe tight around his collar, and reached into his haversack.
From a padded wooden case, he pulled out a pair of spectacles with round lenses ground from soot-darkened river crystal. He hooked the wire frames over his ears and blinked at the shadows.
Barnaby paused at the edge of the water, squinting at him in disbelief. “Why in the ancestors’ name are you putting on smoked spectacles in a pitch-black cave?”
“Precaution,” Kaelen said smoothly, smoothing his robe. “Ancient caves are notorious for having Dao poems and sword scriptures carved into the walls.”
“And what if they do?” Barnaby grumbled. “Most cultivators would cut off an ear to read an ancient wall carving.”
“I have already scheduled my afternoon nap,” Kaelen said, walking toward the narrow cleft. “The last time I glanced at an ancient diagram without tinted glass, my comprehension track surged by eighty hours and gave me a splitting headache.”
One stray glance at an archaic sword stroke and suddenly my brain is calculating celestial trajectory formulas, Kaelen thought, adjusting the dark bridge of the spectacles. I am here to find fresh air and avoid sulfur smoke. I refuse to accidentally master a dead elder’s secret art before lunch.
