The red lightning hissed like a nest of severed vipers, striking the dark water in savage pulses.
Scalding steam billowed from the center of the lake, smelling of cooked sulfur and bitter alkali. The boiling froth lapped against the lower limestone ledges, threatening the narrow soil terrace where the pale Jade-Marrow Salt-Orchids trembled on their fragile stems.
Old Barnaby did not watch the steam.
He knelt by the lead-lined chest near the drainage ditch, his iron chisel already biting into the corner of the second stone. Beside him, Master Wen and Master Guan worked with rapid, practiced movements, their hands dusted in grey powder.
TAP. TAP. CRUNCH.
The salt-granite rind of the second stone sheared away in three clean slabs.
Beneath the shell lay another amber sphere, choked with thick cords of black sediment. It was slightly smaller than Elder Shen’s core, but the calcified rot ran just as deep.
Barnaby did not stop. He moved to the third stone, then the fourth, and finally the fifth and sixth.
