For a woman whose entire adult life had been spent classifying the material artifacts of the Nine Heavens, Qiao Ming was a walking impossibility.
Yan Zhiqiu sat upon the edge of the glow-stone base, her keen scroll-keeper’s gaze studying him with the systematic, test care she had once applied to contraband magic charms seized by the Royal Judges.
In the outside world, a man who possessed the power to survive in a lightless deep pit seventy deep-water lengths beneath the sea would have been a high-realm Daoist Sovereign. A Grand Elder clad in flowing robes of nine-colored sky silk that repelled dust and water, his fingers adorned with spatial rings of carved spirit-jade, his brow crowned with an astral headdress, with a hovering cloud of flying swords that hummed with destructive sword-intent.
Qiao Ming had none of these things.
He wore a knee-length coat of boiled hemp sailcloth, heavily treated with amber linseed oil that had darkened with age to the color of roasted chestnuts. The coat was stiff, salt-scoured, and visibly mended. At the left shoulder was a diamond-shaped patch of tough, grey sharkskin, stitched with heavy waxed twine, and along the hem were many rows of coarse darning where the fabric had frayed against barnacle beds.
