Hunger was an odor that traveled faster than smoke.
In the vast, underground expanse of Entry hall 009—a sunken courtyard five hundred paces wide paved with pitted fiery tufa—the smell of empty bellies hung like a sour fog. It was the scent of dry, bile-tinged breath, feverish sweat, and the bitter dust of powdered barley husks scraped from the corners of empty travel-pouches.
For three days, the millions who had tumbled out of the sky had existed on the scraps they carried in their sleeves. But the biscuits had turned to crumbs, the dried marrow cakes had been devoured. The little goats and chickens brought down from the ark coops had been slaughtered and boiled in seawater down to their bills and hooves. Now, more than seven hundred thousand souls were camped across the terraces of Entry hall 009, and the silence of tiredness was giving way to the wild murmur of starvation.
Around the outer edge of the courtyard, several bands of rogue fighters—men whose spiritual spirit veins were very thirsty from the lack of astral qi—had begun stalking the outer rows of mortal tents, their hands resting upon the pommels of curved scimitars. They snatched dry bread from children. They overturned woven hampers, searching for hidden healing roots.
