Humiliation is a slower poison than burning acid.
Ji Mingchuan struggled to his feet in the dry gutter of Entry hall 128, his fingernails scraping against the rough dark rock wall for purchase. His right leg was numb from the magic charm blast, dragging behind him like a waterlogged timber. At the same time, his left cheek throbbed with the raw, blinding agony of his burns beneath Qiao Ming’s linen compress.
He looked at Qiao Ming, who stood upon the stone base with his back turned, quietly brushing a smudge of soot from Master Lu’s stone knee with his boar-bristle brush.
For three seconds, Ji Mingchuan stood frozen in the mouth of the channel, his fingers hovering over the hidden pockets of his inner coat. Within those pockets lay three spatial needles of refined heavy dark metal, each tipped with a drop of soul-freezing liquid silver. Weapons that could kill a mortal in half a heartbeat if driven through the base of the skull.
He looked at Qiao Ming’s broad, oilskin-clad back.
The land-mapper was fully exposed. He wasn’t wearing spiritual armor. He had no protective magic charms pinned to his shoulders. His neck was bare, weathered and dark from forty seasons of salt-mist. A single flick of the Scholar’s wrist would send the heavy dark metal needle flying into the marrow of his spine.
