Following the successful extraction of the void-venom from Qiao Ming’s shoulder, the healing safe hall shifted its attention to Yan Zhiqiu.
While Qiao Ming’s wound had been a packed, physical puncture of poisoned metal, Yan Zhiqiu’s affliction was systemic. Seventy leagues of running through damp underground rifts, breathing the acid-burning mist of the hanging sepulchers, and surviving the freezing void-frost of the upper round hall had left her lungs inflamed, scarred with tiny lesions that flared into violent coughing fits whenever the draft turned cold.
In the quiet Convalescent Hearth of Entry hall 643, a circular chamber carved from fragrant bitter pine-resin timber and heated by a low fire bowl of glowing charcoal, Clan-Mother Zhen prepared the healing medicine broth.
The chamber was furnished with simple elegance. Low benches of polished cypress, rush mats braided with dried lavender, and small hanging planters of silver tree-moss that absorbed excess moisture from the air. In the center of the room sat a massive bronze fire bowl filled with charcoal made from dried apricot pits, burning with a steady, smokeless glow that cast a soft peach-colored warmth across the timber walls.
The apricot-pit charcoal was prized by the clan for its total purity. Unlike stone coal, which poisoned the air with sulfur gas, the fruit pits burned with an intense, clean infrared heat that nourished the human nervous system, relaxing squeezed tight blood vessels and soothing the delicate wet inner skin of the lungs.
